Worldbuilding in "The Threads of Fate", first chapter of Caverns and Dryads

Not long ago I redid the first chapter of Caverns and Dryads, which is the intro to the game on Steam. 

In that chapter (you can read it here) there is much more than simply the beginning of the story: clues that will matter later in the plot, worldbuilding notes, character descriptions... 

In this post I am going to talk about them. I will try not to spoil anything. I put the quotes from the chapter in italics, followed by my explanation of each highlighted part.

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One night, at the edge of the vast forests of Drozz, a female figure emerges from the grove and heads towards a solitary tower standing atop a hill.

Drozz is the country where everything happens. That country is not on Earth, but in another universe and on another planet. Do not try to place the world of Caverns and Dryads in any period. If you had to look for an explanation, you can think of all this as a parallel world. It has similarities with our world, but it is not our world. The same entities live in their world and in ours, because myths, paramental entities and imaginal entities live in both.

That element is actually consistent with the ideas about "Fairyland". There are even characters, such as Dryope and Aubeline, who travel between both worlds. But in general, you can think of Caverns and Dryads as a unique fantasy world.

The grass coils around her as she approaches, caressing her as a lover would.
The small hand knocks on the tower door. Two sharp, powerful knocks.

The plants mould themselves, welcome her and caress Tamzyn, because she is a dryad. A dryad is a nymph of the forests. There are 3 types of dryads. Tamzyn is a Daughter of Fire, with part pure blood and part human blood. This is explained throughout the novel, in the Bestiary of the Steam game, and in the chapters that appear between scenes of the game as well.

The detail that her hand knocks hard on the door is not accidental. She has more strength than you would expect from her appearance. However, many times in the story we are reminded that she cannot lift an enormous weight, but she can anchor her body to hold it. Exactly like a tree.

A man opens it. He is her height and strongly built. His long golden hair shines beneath the lantern light illuminating the doorway.
He wears a cloak over his shoulders and a long tunic from the waist down. His chest, however, is bare.
He raises his hands in the same way a warrior draws his sword. He is a wizard.

Tamzyn and Sioul are the same height. I have wanted to underline this detail from the very beginning. Here nobody is more or less necessary. Nobody is looking for a father or a mother, or a boss. Neither of the two. They do not seek for the other to be more powerful, or rich. 

This is the story of a man and a woman who come to love each other completely, who obtain the best by collaborating together, and in which neither tries to tame the other nor submits. 

I have portrayed it all as I have seen it. But it is also no accident that he is the opposite of the "shadow daddy" of dark romance fantasy. Sioul has flaws, such as being untruthful at times, too passionate sometimes, or reckless occasionally, or his own vulnerability and stubbornness. But he is someone luminous, physically and mentally. Tamzyn would never ever be attracted to someone dark, harmful or evil. 

He wears his chest bare for reasons I will comment on later. 

We also see that hands and words are fundamental for a wizard. If you tie a wizard's hands or gag him, his ability to use magic disappears. This is seen often in the novel: wounds on the hands or arms are very worrying, and a wizard being unable to speak is too.

Further down I will also tell you more about this.

She wears a bronze cuirass, blue and red cloth panels hanging over part of her legs, metal bracers and greaves. Her untamed hair stirs in the wind. It is golden-red, or chestnut... or both at once, shifting like a flame or an iridescent sheen. And her eyes are a deep green, almost black, save for an emerald glimmer whenever the light reaches them.

Tamzyn is described in the novel. In the Steam game it is not necessary, because you already see the images. 

The detail of the eyes: dark green, almost black. With emerald gleams when the light reaches them, just as cats' eyes shine at night. Those eyes can seem black if you do not look at them up close. 

The changing hair color is also something that comes from her dryad nature, but rare between them too. 

The sight of her strikes Sioul the mage like a blow. His heart quickens.
"How beautiful she is," he thinks. That beauty sends his mind spinning like a whirlwind. He feels exhausted and euphoric at once, as as though her splendor stabs a dagger into his soul.

Here Sioul suffers from Stendhal syndrome. The dizziness, the euphoria and the exhaustion at the same time, and other effects. It is a sensation that occurs in some people before the contemplation of something extraordinarily beautiful. 

Most of the characters who cross paths with a dryad in the story experience this. You see it when Tamzyn, Aubeline or Aurora appear in the novel. Tamzyn has to wear ordinary clothes, and regulate her aura so that it is not like that. Despite doing so, almost everyone is still amazed.

In Sioul's case, the effect is more intense. First because she does not regulate that aspect of herself well the first time she appears before his tower. Second, because Sioul is particularly sensitive to the beauty of everything he experiences. We often see him narrating how beautiful something is. His desire to explore and travel comes from pursuing beauty. 

They climb a staircase dimly lit by moonlight filtering through the tower's arrow slits. They arrive in a modest chamber with scarcely any furniture.
The place feels poor and neglected, as though he had forgotten to provide himself with even the most basic necessities, obsessed with a single task.

I am not going to reveal this. I did not describe this tower where Sioul lives this way for no reason. He was trying to do something. You will find out, or you will read it... 

"What an unusual appearance for a sorcerer," Tamzyn thinks. "That build, that hair." And that gaze, hard and gentle at the same time, a look she has seen only a few times in her long existence.

Tamzyn expected, like you, to find a decrepit old wizard, wrinkled and somewhat conceited. Instead of that, she finds a young, sturdy man, who seems never to feel cold, blond, with blue eyes. And she reads in his gaze something that she didn't expected. 

The mage says:
—I find it difficult to look directly at you. I feel confused.
Sioul blinks. A faint white halo surrounds the woman. He blinks again and it is gone. Now his heart no longer races when he looks at her. But those eyes...

Here Tamzyn has regulated her nymph aura. If she did not, Sioul would not be able to speak coherently with her. In spite of himself, he has lost control. 

This detail is important. It sows a doubt in Tamzyn's mind: is he enchanted by her aura, or does he truly appreciate her? 

And he also denies what we already see, attributing it to the nymph's nature. 

The end of the paragraph tells us, however, that he remains curious, intrigued and attracted even though she represses the aura.

They sit around a small table. He places a dandelion seed in a vase and, running a hand over it, makes it shine like a star.
Tamzyn feels that everything he does holds meaning.

The dandelion seed has a specific symbolism. This symbolism appears at several points. One is here, at the beginning. Another is in a dream of Tamzyn's. And in a certain conversation. 

I will leave you to search, ask and deduce what it means, so as not to ruin the story.

She looks at him with a slight smile, gentle and perhaps lethal.
—I know you are a friend to all the creatures of the forest. My mother, Dendratlia, Devourer of the Ancient Forest, is in danger because her tree may die. It has fallen ill. Her life is bound to that tree, for she is an ancient nymph, unlike the younger dryads such as myself. It is the price of her immense power. I need your help.

The slight smile, gentle and lethal. Lethal because she is a dryad. They are always ambivalent. Tamzyn is neither good nor bad. We see her as good because her actions are natural, but she is not governed by human morality. It is our sense of good that has been forged from the natural, not the other way round.

Here she explains to us that her mother is a goddess of the forest, a pure dryad. In fact, you will see... she is more than a dryad. Dendratlia coincides with a universal myth of all humanity, for at least tens of thousands of years.

So Tamzyn is what we would call a demigoddess, just as the other Daughters of Fire are.

—But you helped us in the past. You are a friend to my people. That is what my sisters told me, though I don't know the details. You don’t care much about rules!

Later in the book, or in the game, you will read why they already knew him. But the story is completed in book 2, at the hands of another very important character.

Tamzyn needs a wizard, and the only one who is going to defy the Council and its rules is Sioul. They, the dryads, already know that he feels more curiosity than fear, and he has already broken the rules before to help them.

—My sisters have told me about the Chasm, but I have never been there.

Tamzyn was never in the Chasm. She learned about everything through the visits of other dryads, especially Aubeline. She visited her in the Ancient Forest, where she lived. She knows there is a Palace of the Dryads, and her sisters live there. Even so, Tamzyn is one of the surface dryads.

The mage suppresses a smile, and his eyes sparkle.
—Every human king has a palace beneath the earth. And the Great Purple King, who reigns over the other monarchs, has one as well. The Chasm is far more than that. There are places where no one dares venture. Countless caverns, forgotten palaces of unsurpassed beauty and decay, filled with dangers and monsters. Among them, the Emerald City.

Here we get a glimpse of the world. We have kings of surface cities who have a palace underground, located in the Chasm. And the emperor of all of them is the Purple King, Urvhal V. 

What Sioul proposes is to go into the caverns that connect those cities and into the cities abandoned by the Ancients, who were never human. Everyone avoids those places. People use the elevators to come up to the surface and travel there, not the caverns.

Tamzyn studies the mage's hands, short fingers, thick palms. He does not have the physique she would have expected. He looks like a mountaineer or a laborer.

Sioul's medium-height build, short hands and arms, muscular and broad, his body hair, his long straight hair, and even the colour of his skin are adaptations. Adaptations to the lack of light and to the cold. Sioul comes from the Golden People. They are people who live in the north, who are nomads, and inhabit caverns in winter and simple wooden houses in summer.

This explains his climbing skills, his strength, and his physique. Also, Sioul knows how to draw, because that skill is important as a shaman. They trace animals and symbols in the caverns. In the book you will see it frequently. In the game, that is why you are sent on missions where you portray places and animals.

The dandelion crackles, burning in the flickering magical light. The mage gazes at the nymph's rosy cheeks, tinted by the orange glow. Her voice breaks his reverie.

Tamzyn's cheeks blush easily. She is eternal. She is not an impassive being like sappy elves. 

Elves are very sappy, I repeat. But dryads... dryads are eternal, not immortal. This means they have an unalterable nature. 

The capacity to blush is a reflection of the capacity to retain the freshness and wild authenticity of youth. It is not a sign of innocence or modesty.

—I would like to become Lord of Time, and rule over time and space. Then I could do so much good and put an end to so many injustices.

Sioul has other reasons for wanting to travel in time. You will discover it, in the novel and in the game.

—The realms we will visit are dangerous. The sap in your veins is stronger than blood, and binds you more closely to life. If you fall, I can heal you. But magic is ineffective against wounds suffered by human flesh. Do you understand?

In the Chasm there are healers, who are not wizards. Magic can help to heal, but it does not replace medicine. In the case of dryads, as he explains, it is different, because they have part vegetable nature, and therefore related to sprouting anew and rebirth.

—Although there are elevators that descend into the Chasm, you and I will not take them, my companion. I do not have enough gold to pay the toll. We shall travel by another route, rougher and more dangerous... That way we will not have to explain why a wizard and a dryad are journeying together.

Sioul is poor. He tries to disguise his poverty with justifications. Even so, his reasons are rational.

—See there, between those fork-shaped trees? There are three caves, then another one further inside. Let’s go, let’s enter. Watch the roots, don’t trip. It smells strange, like moisture. The yellow-flowered plants, so much like the sun... Look at them because soon we’ll be underground. Follow me, follow me...

Here we see a device I use often, and it is also something typical of Sioul. He describes what they experience and what they see, paying attention to the details. 

Sioul usually expresses himself more vividly than other characters in the story. Tamzyn is simpler and more direct, for example. The purple king is more pompous. Aubeline is brutal and acid.

But the difference, which is seen in their speech, between Tamzyn and Sioul is this: she is more natural, more anchored to the earth. Tamzyn often prefers actions to words. 

Do not be mistaken: Tamzyn has experience, she is intelligent, and she is not a girl. She simply sees things without adornment, without worrying about civilized conventions and flourishes.

All this comes to her from her dryad nature.

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And that is all. In a while I may analyse another chapter. Ask whatever questions you want in the comments! :)