My idea of these characters sort of fit into this mold, but I figured I would take it a step further. I dug into the backgrounds of the character, having a brainstorming session with artificial intelligence about what would make these characters have more depth. I worked with the language learning model on how I could incorporate Joseph Campbell’s heroic arc into each of the characters throughout the story. Eventually, I knew I needed a place to call home for each of these characters, as they each came from wildly different backgrounds. I still needed to go about naming fantasy places in my world.

Developing Fantasy Places for the Characters

The human capital needed to be the center of the continent. This is a commentary on how we as a species think we are the center of everything; in the book, the humans have their hands in everything. They are the center of the continent, but they are not the center of the story.

This land needed to be rich with biomes, so I imagined there was a forest for the elves to the west, the Featherfolk would be a species that prefers warm weather, so I put them to the south in a tropical climate. Since they had a relationship with the dwarves, I put the dwarves to the east, close enough to have ties with the Featherfolk, but further north in some mountains so they could be a mining society. Since the orcs are a tough species, I elected to have them as a nomadic people growing up in the tundras to the north.

Developing these locales also helped me to imagine what the societies would have been like for the main characters. The humans would have a lively capital city where cultural exchange and trade happened, but there were fortifications that protected them against any that may turn against them. They would have wealthier citizens toward the center of the city, with museums and institutions of learning. This is where the wizards would learn their arcane magics. I would also have the poorer citizens on the outskirts, away from the more royal families. The marketplace would cut from the central castle gates to the outer city walls, with goods decreasing in value and quality as they moved toward the capital’s outskirts. But I still needed a name for the capital.

Naming Fantasy Places

When you are naming fantasy places, they tend to fall into one of a few categories: names of prominent people, historical events, geographic features, or local wildlife. For example, how many places in the United States are named after George Washington? We have cities named after him, streets named after him, schools named after him, and even a state named after him. There are also places named after events, such as the cities in the U.S. named Waterloo after the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium where the Napoleonic Wars ended.

Of course, Waterloo itself comes from the etymology of its surrounding geographic features, that being a watery forest, a bog, or a marsh. We can also look to places like Colorado, which means “colored red” or “ruddy,” which describes the river that runs through the state. Then there are names of places after creatures, such as Boca Raton, which translates to “mouse mouth” or Oxford, which means “where the oxen cross a river safely.”

This is where I turned to Greek for naming fantasy places in my story. Kyriakora means “Main Country.” This is the land where the book happens. The human capital is named Kefalayo, which translates to “Capital,” the Featherolk capital is Pouli, which means “bird,” and so on.

By brainstorming with ChatGPT, I was able to develop the cultures of these places, building those cultures into the backgrounds of the main characters. This is also how I developed political differences between the societies, established reasons for intercultural relations, and developed tensions among the different peoples that could lead to a continental war if the right diplomatic, informational, military, or economic levers were pulled by a bad actor, such as the leader of the Cult of Taishan.