This week, we were sorted into our initial groups for the “design a world” project. Our first task was to come up with 100 ideas for fictional worlds, then whittle it down to the best one. My group came up with quite a few good suggestions, but eventually we settled on one of my ideas – a sunken submarine, deep at the bottom of the ocean. It sank decades ago, with the crew still on board – they were never rescued, but eventually children began being born on the submarine. It’s been generations since then, the people living on the submarine now have never experienced life outside – in fact, with every new generation, they slip further and further away from being human at all.

Once we had agreed on an idea, we expanded on it and added more detail. We decided that the people on the submarine would worship a bigfin squid as their God; those squids look extremely creepy and alien, we thought they would fit with the dark atmosphere we wanted to go for, plus their otherworldly appearance would be fitting for a deity. We also came up with a story for this setting.

The protagonist hears about a submarine that went missing many years ago, with valuable assets on board. He decides to travel to the wreckage to retrieve the assets and sell them, but when he gets there he discovers the horrifying truth – generations have been born and died on this submarine, and the people alive now are too detached from humanity to be reintegrated. He decides to stay and document what he sees (the people are blind from years of inbreeding and zero sunlight, so they don’t see him) to tell the world when he returns – but he starts to lose his mind being isolated with these people. Eventually, he fully believes in their deity and agrees to be sacrificed to it.

After deciding on a plot and adding more details, we started to sketch out some of our ideas.

We were also asked to make a series of thumbnail drawings based off our idea.