Worldbuilding a Highly Advanced Civilization in a Standard Fantasy Setting

After posting a question regarding a plot-twist in my latest fantasy story idea, I decided to start hashing out how the setting itself would look and function. While thinking of the general setup, I thought it would be both interesting and useful to include a society whose overall level of advancement is significantly higher than the rest. Here is what I have thought of so far:

• The vast majority of kingdoms/realms/countries would have their tech levels set between Mid-Renaissance/Early Clockpunk at most and the standard fantasy middle ages style tech and least. The highly advanced nation possesses Steampunk/Dieselpunk technology, including airships, firearms, and large-scale industrialization.

• While the other realms are busy squabbling amongst themselves over matters of honor, chivalry, and feudal duty, this advanced nation has outgrown such traditions and has instead begun playing around with more modern political ideologies.
  • Consequentially, the other realms' governments are a collection of disparate feudal kingdoms, duchies, and fiefdoms whose monarchies are still at the apex of their power and influence, while the advanced civilization's own imperial monarchy is a vestigial relic of their past which they cannot do away with soon enough.

• The other realms' military forces are also still feudal, consisting of military warlords and their private warbands/retinues; the advanced nation's own military is a standardized, highly-trained fighting force supplemented with political paramilitary cells.

• Culturally, the other realms are idealistic, valuing romanticism and sentimentality most of all; the advanced nation, by contrast, are rationalistic, valuing disciplined enlightenment and progress above all else.

Given all of the above, I have the general concept of the advanced nation being a borderline eldritch Outside-Context Problem to the other realms after the latter provoked the former somehow. When I try to dive into the specific details, however, I struggle to answer the following questions posed:

1. What would the ramifications be of such an advanced nation's mere existence, let alone its active participation in the world at large, in regards to the other realms?

2. How could I "balance the scales" such that this advanced nation cannot simply roll over everyone else and conquer the entire world while still being seen by most others as a nigh-Lovecraftian threat?

3. How could I justify this nation being so advanced despite being the newest player in the setting's international political scene?

The easy way to do this is to have it isolated from the other nations. Distance is a great equalizer. Even with more advanced technology, if you're massively outnumbered, you need to trade, not conquer and you'll generally rely on the imperial playbook of relying on local allies and attempting to divide and rule.

The big historical example here for a geopolitical/military model is European contact with the Americas. But if you're trying to keep this relatively stable, you don't have disease tilt the demographics away from the locals, allowing them to keep the numerical advantage even as they trade/steal/discover how the other nations tech works.

Edited by ECD on Aug 24th 2023 at 8:36:09 AM

Another thought might be to have the less-technologically-advanced nations wield powerful magics.

(Now, this does incur the whole "magic vs. technology" thing, the palatability of which may depend on the reader and on the specifics, of course.)

On the more mundane end, the more-technological nation might simply be much, much smaller than the others: even if one of their steam-rifle soldiers is worth twenty feudal archers, their neighbours might each have fifty archers for every one of their steam-rifle bearers.

As to the question of how they became so advanced...

Well, this being fantasy, one thought is that they entered from another world. (That might, for one thing, explain their lack of magic and/or lesser size.)

(Or, more prosaically, the physical isolation suggested by the poster above might be sufficient that they were above to develop largely independently.)

My Games & Writing

They're basically the british empire during the victorian era. Although in that era Brittain did have peers and near-peers whereas in this world it's the singular superpower.

Well, they would have to want to conquer the world in the first place. But if they're a highly developed nation with freedoms and a nice standard of living, why would they? Pre-industrial era there was a lot to gain by conquering land and people. But for post-industrial nations this gets worse and worse. The destructiveness of war increases massively whereas the gains do not. Investing in the economy becomes much more profitable than war.

The only real option you have is a contact scenario. Another option is that being the newest kid on the block is due to a scenario like the foundation of Germany, which suddenly changed the balance of power massively.

One way to get them ahead on the tech-tree could be to have them be the oldest player at large but only arrived on the board of world affairs just recently making them a "new" nation in the eyes of the others, their seclusion and lack of internal conflicts allowing them to move forward without setbacks like the others have been doing with their conflicts, resulting in an advanced civilization.

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."

I'll point out that the issue with post-industrial war is about war between industrial powers, because the destruction of infrastructure and industry far outweighs what is likely to be gained. None of that applies to an industrial nation going to war against a pre-industrial nation.

But the question of what they want and why they want it will be crucial. An obvious motive given the set up and conflict clash you've got going on is either a 'civilizing' mission, a 'colonial' mission, or a 'missionary' one, if you want the more advanced power to be viewed negatively by the audience.

If you want them viewed more positively, a simple exploration motive may end up with them unavoidable entangling themselves in local politics, or with the best of philanthropic/EA motives trying to help only to discover the situation is far more complicated than they believed.

That actually gave me inspiration on how to limit the starting influence this nation has over the others. Their home continent could be the fantasy equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle or even an Eldritch Location, thereby rendering it another world from the perspective of the other nations. Alternatively, they actually could be from another world, courtesy of a fantasy space program that wouldn't look out of place from The Elder Scrolls. Not sure which one I prefer more, but both options sound good.

Indeed, I think the fact that I'm still trying to define what their culture is beyond broad themes and concepts I wish to include may be hindering my ability to give a satisfactory answer to this question. That being said, here are the themes and concepts so far:

• This nation's culture views nature much like how the Sith from Star Wars Legends view the Force: rather than an entity to be venerated or submitted to, it is a resource or tool to be molded, used, or abused as they see fit. I already see this placing them in conflict with one of the largest and most powerful of the feudal realms, whose own culture is an amalgamation of Medieval France and Feudal Japan which seeks to symbiotically exist in harmony with nature and derive their magics from it.
  • As a corollary, they look upon untamed/undeveloped nature with a degree of suspicion that borders on paranoid superstition, as if the wilderness itself were conspiring to oppress, abuse, or even kill them at any moment. Conversely, anything man-made is likely to be viewed with respect, awe, and admiration, though anything made by foreign hands will still be treated with a healthy dose of caution.

• This nation's greatest fear culturally is of being powerless/helpless. This is due to their early history of existing at the complete mercy of a widely capricious civilization (perhaps based on The Fair Folk to also explain this culture's aversion to raw nature). In fact, this nation's early mythology revolves around a coven of four significantly powerful and beautiful human sorceresses joining their primordial magics to rend open a wound in the barrier between the material world and the spirit world so they can march into the spirit world and massacre the entire pantheon of Jerkass Gods that were oppressing humankind during their era. The timeline of events in this mythology coincide with the decline and eventual extinction of the ancient enemy civilization, and the mythology also explains their aversion to the concept of anything potentially more powerful than themselves (deities, eldritch abominations, etc.) or nigh-impossible to understand or comprehend (the supernatural).

• Much like the Ancient Greek Stoics and the Victorian-era British Empire, the people of this nation would value emotional and psychological self-control and discipline and look down on hysterics, viewing them as a sign of helplessness/powerlessness. This would also imply a mindset geared toward rationalism and a reverence of pursuing knowledge.

• In terms of international politics, they would plagiarize the entire unilateralist playbook of the early United States; they would resist and resent any motion to intertwine international politics with their own, and fight to preserve what they see as their political sovereignty. They take part in international affairs if and only if doing so would be in their self-interest, and shrugging while saying, "Not my problem" otherwise. Of the points listed so far, I'm most uncertain of committing to this one for this nation since I can easily see it conflicting with the themes of power, stoicism, and rationalism expressed in the others, even though I like the rugged individualism this implies for the people of this nation.
  • Alternatively, they could adopt the Russian playbook of expanding the borders as far as defensibly possible and establishing a hegemonic power base of puppets to buffer them against the outside realms.

Based on all of the above, the best answer to the above question I can muster involves the discovery and exploration of the continent on which the feudal realms reside, but whether or not that involves establishing colonies akin to the thirteen founding states of the United States or the Caribbean Isles depends on what I decide on the final point listed. Either one of the feudal realms antagonizes one of this nation's expeditions into the continent during the exploratory phase or attacks one of the colonial settlements. Regardless, the negative first contact draws the newly present nation into a series of skirmishes that eventually blows up into a full scale war that shocks the native feudal realms to their cultural core, thereby ending the status quo on the continent.

Overall, the main theme of the story this all takes place in is the End of an Age and Dawn of an Era. The aftermath of first contact forces long overdue changes for every party involved. The feudal realms originally had two prior chances to progress past the feudal stage—one was when a wave of Invading Refugees charged south toward them on horseback, the other was the emergence of armed forces belonging to a subterranean collective of communal clans—and both times the feudal realms refused to ascend to the next era. The advanced nation, meanwhile, had been of two minds as to what to do about their imperial monarchy; the monarchy, wishing to keep their power, sought to stymie any attempt to transition fully away from monarchy while the ultra-nationalists, alienated by the detached and decadent monarchy, seek to accelerate that transition and make it permanent. By the time peace is declared, the status quo of the feudal realms is forever changed, while the other nation finally flips governments.

Actually, I'm hoping for the setting to consist of a Nobledark take on Grey-and-Gray Morality, where each party involved has their virtues and vices. Still, all of the above gives me plenty to think about.

Another option, if you want to go more supernatural, is that some sort of storm or other event has made navigation between continents nigh-impossible. And that only in recent years the storm has started to die down. it could be the result of human activity, but it may also just be a kind of magical climate change or purely natural phenomenon.

Or, since they've got flight, have monsters living in the oceans which would eat ships, but their airships can fly right over?

Grey-vs-grey morality is always tricky (mostly as an audience reaction, as the audience will tend to view whichever side they agree with as correct and expect the narrative to agree, then get grumpy if it doesn't).

If you don't decide to go with colonies, one way would be, presumably your advanced folks want something, that might be furs, spices, or minerals (which are rare or don't exist back home, as an industrial nation will be far more efficient at extraction of minerals, even without the added cost of shipping).

So an easy way to create a pretty grey conflict is trade effects. Advanced nation trades to feudal nation A, trading more advanced weapons for whatever, extra bonus points if these trade goods/weapons require something only the advanced nation can make in bulk to work (ala gunpowder). Feudal nation B, a rival of A finds itself endangered by this and either wants to sever that relationship, or steal weapons to reverse-engineer, or whatever. These are all perfectly reasonable motives.

That's the thing about the Red Queen's effect (https://acoup.blog/2021/05/07/collections-teaching-paradox-europa-universalis-iv-part-ii-red-queens/) everyone acting rationally/even morally under some moral codes can still result in conflict. However, in this case, there's a bit of a problem. More powerful nations usually try to divide and rule, less powerful nations usually try to triangulate between more powerful ones, might be worth considering playing up some of the internal conflicts in the more advanced nation. You've got traditionalists and nationalists inside, right? The traditionalists might look to this land as a fertile source of recruits/support/whatever, with the nationalists following right along behind to make sure no one gets an advantage.

If you want a more 'feudal nations vs. advanced nation' vibe, then...this is a feudal society, they should have mines, but a mine for a rare mineral (gold, unobtanium, whatever fits your setting) exists in the midst of nature, on a noble's land. He sells the mine to folks from the advanced nation, under the unspoken understanding that, of course, they'll mine as his miners always have, with respect for nature and all that jazz. Instead, they bulldoze themselves a landing tower and start using mountaintop removal mining (or the equivalent, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_removal_mining), which is both a religious affront and illegal under oral legal codes.

But the company has invested a lot of money into this mine, if it doesn't produce, they're going bankrupt, and besides, the damage is already done, shouldn't we get the minerals out?

TBH while it's good to consider cultural elements to international relations, it's hardly the only type of influence. In the colonial era, mercantilism was a dominant economic theory which basically saw the economy as a zero-sum game. It gave the economic basis for colonization since imports were king and exports for suckers, and so all the economic potential of places like the USA, Asia, and Africa were things you would be insane not to have, even if it was purely to deny others those resources.

Religion also plays an important part as the spanish in particular saw it as their mission to spread the word of God, and thus spent quite a bit of effort converting many places. It's why the spanish in particular left such a legacy in terms of language and religion compared to, say, the Dutch (who were in it for the money mostly).

Politis is another element, and here we also have interstate anarchy vibes: a bunch of empires on each other's doorsteps needed any advantage they could get over the other, and the wealth and manpower that colonies provided was a crucial element to getting these advantages.

But if you have a singular empire without (near-)peers and with a developed industrial economy, much of that falls away. I mean, imagine them to take the place of the USA: the USA has basically all the resources it needs. The USA was isolationist in part because it simply could afford to be. It's part of why it didn't participate in colonizing other places like during the scramble for Africa. So why would it bother doing all that if it had no advantage?

To be honest, I still need to worldbuild what kinds of resources both real and fantastic exist in this setting, where they can be found, and in what quantities. Presumably, this nation would want more minerals and would seek to either trade for them or establish colonies in order to extract them, either one providing a source of potential conflict. Again, I'm still deciding on fully commit to an answer on whether or not they would form colonies, but after extensive thinking, there probably would be places the native feudal realms would not have populated (either because of social/cultural taboo or because they couldn't) that could contain whatever the advanced nation needed or even wanted; those places could be potential sites for this nation's first colonies.

Also, thanks for providing that blog link outlining the Red Queen's Effect. That post, as well as several of the others available, gave me the motivation to finally start worldbuilding the feudal realms' relationships to each other in order to further discover how this advanced nation would influence each of the feudal realms.

That's true, and I haven't tried to intentionally neglect those other factors. I only listed the cultural elements because I started the worldbuilding for this setting with a premise of an advanced nation discovering a new continent of feudal ones as well as a general sense of what kind of society this advanced nation would have; the idea was to work backwards from that core concept not only to justify that kind of civilization but also discover what other non-cultural motives it would have for meddling in the new continent. Of course, I still have to worldbuild all the kinds of Unobtainium this setting has to justify both the advanced technology this nation has at its disposal as well as the magics the feudal realms wield.

Of all the non-cultural reasons for this nation to entangle itself in this new continent, religion currently seems the weakest. So far, the most worldbuilding I've done for this nation's religion has been the four human sorceresses invading the spirit world, killing the gods, and usurping their power for Mankind. Aside from that, I also have the following:

• One of the sorceresses gave her life to enable the others to launch their invasion of the spirit world (Whether or not she did so willingly is debated and controversial within the setting.)

• The surviving three then used their newly gained divine powers to enhance the humans of their time into the variants that currently populate the advanced nation at present, granting them exceptional endurance and magic resistance at the cost of their ability to use magic normally.

• Each of the three remaining sorceresses developed a close relationship with a series of chosen champions, one at a time, teaching them things like blood magic, runic enchantment, eldritch secrets, etc. that would eventually lead to and evolve into the technology they use currently.

None of the above seems to lend itself to any tendency toward proselytism, let alone a religious mission of conversion. Maybe if this nation encountered different varieties of humans, those other humans might be inclined to adopt this religion, but I plan on implementing at least a few of the Standard Fantasy Races, with my own unique take on each, and I highly doubt any of them would actually consider converting save for those who may be so disenfranchised by their feudal overlords that they have permanently lost their own cultures. Besides, the religion in its current state seems more like a mythology than a full-blown religion, though I'm by no means an expert on religion, so I could be wrong on that judgement. In either case, all of the above is currently treated as a collection of apocryphal parables informing contemporary secular thought, mores, values, and customs rather than as raw belief or literal truth by the citizenry at large, with a few exceptions.

In terms of colonial/imperial competition, I would have to introduce at least one more advanced nation as a peer or near-peer, which could increase the pressure and conflict the feudal realms face. Since this advanced nation leans politically to the right, a hypothetical additional rival nation would best be made as an ideological Foil to lean to the left in order to maximize and stress the potential for conflict. Then again, enough realpolitik could occur that renders this dynamic unnecessary.

Without at least a near-equivalent rival, the only one of the feudal realms that currently can hope to stand up to this advanced nation (and the only one I have done any worldbuilding for so far) is the one that was the dominant power before the new arrival of the advanced nation. That would be the Cultural Chop Suey of Medieval France and Feudal Japan, which actually could best be described as French Catholic Shinto Jedi to contrast the Sith influences I've previously mentioned regarding the advanced nation. Their more intimate command of and mastery over the druidic/celestial magics of their land make their MagicKnights (or MagicWarriors rather) formidable threats even to the advanced infantry from the far-away continent. I will most likely have to adjust how feudal or otherwise this native nation is in order to justify the scale required for its soldiers to actually be effective.

So, two minor comments:

1) If the continent has been populated for a long time, everywhere will be part of some nation/people's territory, there won't really be any virgin soil. Now, there will definitely be less-populated areas and areas lying fallow, or not currently, officially in use, but most places will have people, if only those who've been driven out of other, more valuable places.

2) I think adding in a second advanced nation will actually decrease the pressure on the locals, same as introducing a second faction within your existing nation. A second advanced nation introduces different potential policy choices and a desire to arm auxiliaries against one another (this was crucial to American Indian nations survival and acquisition of more advanced weaponry, as playing the French and English off against each other, or being able to threaten to switch sides if mistreated, or not provided with weapons, was very, very helpful).

A larger comment, when I hear feudal nations, I assume sort of medieval European, with fairly small governments (hence relying on feudalism) and there you've got a lot of fairly endemic small-scale conflict/raiding, but most combat isn't stealth related and logistics are going to rely heavily on what you can carry or take from the local populace. This is a place where a medieval society is going to be at a significant disadvantage when compared to Native Americans, who relied heavily on what I would call (stealing the phrase from here: https://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Off-Way-Indigenous-Warfare-1500-1800/dp/1469673789) the cutting-off way of war common in the American northeast. The minimal logistical requirements, combined with warfare which focused heavily on stealth and raids was a really bad match for imperial nations which relied on infrastructure which didn't exist and enemies who you could either fight in open battles, or besiege in towns.

A medieval society has a lot of advantages over the tribes (greater organizational structures, more coercive means of gaining labor/soldiers and more infrastructure, as well as metal-workers and a metal-working tradition which can probably figure out more advanced tech, if given time (and prisoners)), but the actual military/logistical conflict would go real bad for them, if the advanced nation can get an army and stable flow of supplies (which also means that if you want to balance the scales, limiting the times such arrivals can occur, or giving the locals an opportunity to raid/block such arrivals may be helpful).

Also, side note, if you're looking around that blog, there's a great series on feudalism and its structures/limitations called How It Wasn't (https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-was-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-i/) comparing GOT to reality.

Edited by ECD on Aug 28th 2023 at 7:07:23 AM

Yea this is worth highlighting. Farmers pushed nomads out to the periphery, and this continues throughout history. Eventually every place gets settled because for many it's the only place they *can* exist. Social taboo is not a barrier because it's not going to be someone else's social taboo.

For an industrial nation this doesn't have to be true. More advanced extraction techniques could easily make further exploration pointless. Demand for specific resources (like rubber), control over africa as a route to Asia and economic circumstances (like heavy protectionism due to economic malaise) led to the scramble for africa. But again, in this scenario there would be no peers. There's no pressure to gobble up as much territory as possible to deny it to the other. There would be investments and trade and exchange, but no guarantee of Empire.

I would argue you don't really need unobtanium. Technological disparities existed in the past too. Magic could be a macguffin, or not, that depends on the story you want to tell. This is especially true if the advanced nation is isolated to some degree, as its ideas and advances would not easily spread to the feudal nations, leading to a technological rift.

This still comes with the assumption that the greater nation would want to micromanage the world. That the only possible option for such a nation is to do a British Empire. But e.g. the Qing dynasty was perfectly content with making their neighbors tributaries and leaving it at that. The USA declared the Americas their backyard, and other than some coups, didn't do a World Conquest. All of it turns back to that initial idea: there's no reason why an industrial nation *MUST* do a world conquest. If the Empire had a peer or near-peer, then there would be a much stronger incentive to mark their territory. But as a solitary power there are no threats. There would be a very weak incentive to go conquer the world. Why would you want to go die in the dirt on some foreign continent if you're perfectly comfortable at home? After all this trend was overcome historically with imperial, colonialist, or religious ideas. Go die in America to spread the Word of God, that sort of thing. You can also see it with American adventures abroad: Vietnam was a quick and easy war until it wasn't. And then it becomes harder and harder to convince people that it's worth doing war abroad.

So sure their power would be the center that all international politics would orbit around, but that doesn't require conquest. Some feudal powers would want to be allies, some would be forced to become tributaries or vassals. But if the feudal powers pose no real threat, there would also be no real rallying effect in the advanced nation nor any real incentive to go do some war. That leaves colonialism and religion as the only real incentives to go do war.

Also random aside, you've mentioned this advanced empire being almost an eldritch threat, but have you considered them... actually being one? Like they find the hand of a dead god and that in turn gives them the means to cross an otherwise uncross-able barrier. Like perpetually stormy or misty seas. I think One Piece also did it with just unbelievably powerful fish, strange weather and a ring of mountains (and the World Government possessing the means to cross these barriers). Perhaps their magic is eldritch in kind. Or they use their industrial power to go kill sea monsters, the sea monsters fuel their magic, and so they discover the Feudal continent basically by accident. Traversing this ocean might still be very dangerous, but for the Empire it's at least feasible while for the Feudal powers it might be nigh-impossible.