Faerie Dark

The idea started with a dream I had about a woman turning into a little white mouse with a red scarf. Over time, elements like her being a model came up. I thought the idea of her accidentally turning into a mouse while in a sketch class was pretty cute. Over time, I named her Mylene and developed the idea that there were no animals in the city.

Once I had the idea for the story in my mind, I knew I wanted to start creating a small scale city to figure out how it worked. Other stories took place in other, larger cities and I wanted to start with something a little more manageable to get practice.

I knew the aesthetics of the place. I wanted lots of open spaces with charming details to feed the sensual people that lived there. The city’s aesthetics were really built around Mylene. She was my ambassador, an average citizen. Once I had her voice, I built the city around her. She liked the colours red, black, and grey and she was charmed by beautiful details. I wanted the city to reflect this.

One of my first inspirations for the city was Paris. I’ve been working in a book store and came across a photo book about architecture photos shot in Paris. It was beautiful. I knew this was the kind of city Mylene would live in. I pulled a few elements from the pages that I loved like the wrought iron detailing, the painted signs, and tons of beautiful little courtyards and stonework.

I knew from the stories I was working on that I wanted there to be few kids and lots of greenspace. I didn’t want the population to be too dense. I knew there were no animals and I knew that most of their public serves were handled by administration, automation, and robotics.

Next, I needed to figure out the geography of the city. I started with about 24 acres, but after figuring out how much land that was, it seemed much too small. I decided to pattern the city after the Vatican city and ended up with 800 people on about 1000 acres. From there, I decided that one third of the population would be coupled, and that about 100 of those people would be children.

Real cities are much denser, but because of the history of the place – knew I needed a small population.

After I had my population and size, I had to think about how many buildings I wanted. I chose 300 because it seemed like a good number. Using math and my population numbers, I figured out 140 of the buildings would be a variety of housing for the population – a mixture of apartments and houses. For example, I decided that the apartment buildings would be at most 3 levels, made a third of them one bedroom, a third two bedrooms, etc.

From there, we made a list of the different public buildings the city would need.

- food, sanitation, water
- clothing
- public administration
- entertainment
- career

There are no animals in the city so it was important to remember that when going through the list. Remembering the culture of the city was very useful here. I knew that they needed handmade quality goods, that mass production was unheard of. I knew that they were artistic and had lots of galleries. I also knew that this city had a history as an academy town – the island it’s on was built to house a school and the needs of the students.

From there, I thought about what felt right. I liked the romance of water flowing through the city, so originally I wanted a river. I wasn’t sure of the geographical reprocutions of having a river on an island – so I made them canals instead. My friend who was helping me brainstorm that day asked if there could be covered bridges. I looked them up and thought they’d look lovely with the wrought iron details I’d see in the Paris book, so I added that in.

*** SPOILER ***
Also, since iron is historically said to block faerie magic, I thought it was kind of funny that Mr. Darcy would use it in his reconstruction of the city.
*** END SPOILER ***

By the end of it, I had a reasonable vision of what the city would look like.

Next is hashing out logistics. Because it’s an island, some of the elements that the White City would need would have to be shipped in. Airplanes aren’t really used, so it would have to be by boat. That meant there needed to be docks. I decided that the city would have 3 gates, one of them opening to docks for ships.

From there it was to flickr to look for examples of Paris architecture. As I went, I was inspired by the images that I saw. While searching for wrought iron, I saw frescos and thought they would be an interesting contrast to the elegant stone structures. I could just imagine Mylene thinking them garish and quaint at the same time. I also saw some ruins that inspired me to create a quarter that housed all the old buildings that Mr. Darcy couldn’t destroy. Even if he’s our resident bad guy, I think the psychic taint of so many deaths would be too much for even him to erase.

Now that the city was starting to take shape in my mind, with details and aesthetics, a few story elements that had inspired me before starting connecting with it. I sketched out a rough map of the quarters, blocking one of them off as the dead one.

Next, I needed to hash out the details of what daily life was like.