The Universe of Etrath
Biology as Fundamental Law
Etrath is a biopunk science-fantasy world where biology and magic are fundamentally the same. The Collapse of a majority of the Living Domains has left Etrath in a state of chaos and uncertainty. A man from Earth, reborn on Etrath, must navigate the complex Commune System of the Codex to become the Shepherd of a new generation of those with the power of the Tongue. Can Owen learn to master his power and guide the people of Etrath to sing the Song intended by the Architects?
The Laws of Life
Codex
The device that all Etrathan Humans are hatched with. It is a crystalline terminal that interface with the nervous system of the user and the Lattice, the mainframe of the planet. The Codex is the tool left to the Caretakers by the Architects to guide life on Etrath.
Virella
The floating city that was left to the Caretakers by the Architects to serve as their base of operations. It is the seat of power of humans on Etrath, a hive of political intrigue and beaurocratic machinations.
The Hatchery
One of the last remaining sources of life on Etrath, the Hatchery is a massive facility that hatches and raises life from eggs. Plants, animals, insects, and even humans are hatched on Etrath. Without the Hatchery, humans would be the only life able to reproduce since they have access to their own incubation pods. This is where Owen is hatched and where he starts to grow his Garden.
How a Genetics Nerd Rebuilt the World
Volume I: The Incubator
The Shepherd and his Garden.
Owen was a simple biology teacher back on Earth. He had a YouTube channel where he would share his passion for biology and genetics. His "Mutant Keep" and he was the Monster Breeder. That all changed when he slipped on a ladder while cleaning his lizard's terrarium.
Owen awoke with the power to manipulate the genome of living things around him and the AI strapped to his wrist gives him the mission to save the dying planet. Can this biology teacher from Earth rebuild a planet on the brink of geological and ecological collapse or will the monsters of this world chew him up and spit him out?
The War of Ash
Volume II: The War of Ash
The war to prove cooperation can triumph over control.
The conflict between the biological sovereigns and the encroaching mechanical blight intensifies. New alliances are forged in the fires of mutation.
TBA
Volume III: To be Announced
After the war. Owen must rebuild the world.
TBA
Volume IV: To be Announced
An exploration of what it means to live in utopia and the price of perfection.
Ecosystem Storytelling
Writing the Etrath series is an exercise in AI assisted worldbuilding. This started as a simple prompt from my friend who couldn't find a book about a monster breeder in a fantasy world without weird sexual undertones. I asked ChatGPT a simple prompt:
Can you write me the first chapter of an isekai (reborn in a fantasy world) about someone who is a monster breeder who specializes in proliferating rare mutations. Introduce the world, the main character's backstory, and a hook to make you want to keep reading.
The response was interesting to me and to my friend so I kept at it. I asked for the next chapter and so on until I started to see a direction I wanted to take the story in. Eventually I had a 40+ chapter novel that told a compelling story, but I saw an oportunity to turn compelling into something greater. I broke the story into 3 volumes about Owen's life on Etrath and the world he created. Then I took the epilogue from the unified novel and made it into a fourth volume about a new character.
Once I had the structure I established the worldbuilding documents and started fleshing out the world. I developed storylines to tell Owen's journey on Etrath and created a world that was rich in detail and history. I built skeltons of each chapter and had various AI tools flesh it out. Then I would review and remove any continuity errors. After a few weeks of this process I began operating as an editor and author, alternating between the roles as I worked on the story. After a while I found the AI tools were unable to help edit any more and were actually introducing more errors then they were fixing.
I am still developing the AI workflow for this project and am currious to see where it will take me. My plan is to document my findings and share them on my Patreon. When the project has culminated in a completed 4 volume series I will consider sharing those findings with the wider world through a book or other medium.
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