The Most Powerful Type of Worldbuilding

“Now… ROT! ” I was a good twenty hours into ‘Elden Ring’ when I realized I needed  to go bury a sandwich in the woods. For days, I had tried to chart the game’s festering ruins  and putrid gods, hoping to understand why this rotting world captivated me like only a few ever  had.

It’s seldom been claimed that ‘moldiness’ is the key to great worldbuilding — but after  analyzing tons of sci-fi and fantasy settings, and sacrificing some expired bread, I  genuinely believe that mildew is one of the most powerful devices in fiction. Because  ‘rot’ …is a story. And stories stay with you.

You can hear it if you listen closely. The squelch  of a newborn god-thing slipping from the womb of the old world, the hush of a billion dreams  becoming fertilizer for the age to come. It is the sound of ‘digestive rebirth’ — an idea central  to creating a working definition of ‘moldy’ worldbuilding.

I’m using the term digestion rather  than decay because, well, we’ve all seen decaying worlds: post-apocalyptic landscapes left barren  from the fires of Armageddon, but a digestive world is actively feeding, consuming its own  foundations to fuel what grows atop it. Nowhere is this concept more apparent than in the games of  Elden Ring developer Fromsoftware — each title set in a realm where rot devours both nations and gods  alike… and yet these lands are rank with life, the gastric humus giving rise to a thousand new  entities. As fungi must chew dead matter to bloom, moldy worlds exist in a state of constant gnawing,  grinding ruins of past upon their rotting molars to create a future.

Moldy worldbuilding does not  always require literal mold, however. Across the regions of Elden Ring, while the land of Caelid  is choked with fungus, the Altus Plateau and Limgrave erode under coverings of vegetation.  Yet said areas are unmistakably ‘moldy’ in how they fester upon the bones of ages past, the very  landscape dependent on ruins.

As a consequence, the world itself feels like an archeological  dig, a geology of lore that legions of fans have loyally tried to excavate. The devotion  that Elden Ring’s environmental storytelling has inspired speaks to the larger power of a  mildewed setting — because on a fundamental level, each ruin is a story. The most basic  unit of plot is a change in circumstance, and what is overgrown wreckage but a proof of a  world’s change?

There’s a reason why derelicts are so common in narrative-focused games: a simple  coating of leaves can utterly transform what a building means to an audience, suggesting a vast  timeline of unspoken eras. Rot is, ironically, among the most effective ways to make a setting  come alive. Decomposition offers a rich and living history without even a single line of exposition. 

In the game Skyrim, vast, weathered structures and putrefying catacombs indicate an extensive  backstory — regardless of whether the player is motivated to read through the in-game lore.  The scars of history are similarly unmistakable in the kingdoms of George RR. Martin’s A Song of  Ice and Fire, where one doesn’t need to know that the series is set after the collapse of various  empires to smell the stench of necrosis.

As is the case with Skyrim, in all corners of Martin’s  world, monuments of civilizations past cast shadows over lesser present dwellings, the current  nations but rats cannibalizing the towering corpse of their forbearers. One could even call such  settings post-apocalyptic, and indeed, much of moldy worldbuilding overlaps with the concept, but  a planetwide doomsday is not required for rot to take root. Time alone can swallow a civilization  — erasing names and events, leaving nothing but enigmatic remnants.

For beyond acting as a story,  a ruin is a question. Why is the wall in Skyrim outside of Whiterun broken? Why was the ice wall  in the north of Martin’s Westeros truly built at all?

It’s not entirely clear, and though various  potential explanations exist, the quiet ambiguity that an eroded world leaves you with only adds to  the setting’s intrigue. Indeed, the most effective rotting settings layer mystery upon mystery,  piling multiple deposits of ruin atop each other. In Elden Ring, the corpse of a dragon festers atop  the remains of an even older church.

Elsewhere, the awe-inspiring Walking Mausoleums are stone  goliaths both overrun with moss and tree growth, and burdened with a second layer of crumbling  tombs upon their backs. Every new stratum of wreckage adds subtle depth to a world. Part  of why a series like The Last Airbender feels so fully realized is because its environments  feature not just debris from the more-recent Air Nomad genocide, but remnants from countless other  fallen civilizations — the ruins so commonplace that many go unnamed and unremarked upon.

In every  region of the land, the wounds of long-forgotten eras mar the background — a throughline that both  underlines the show’s themes of loss and rebirth, and makes the setting feel authentically grounded  in a robust mythos. It’s a method of worldbuilding one could compare to, like, those cross sections  of the earth in cartoons — you know the ones, with like the bones and stuff? Or even… a  sandwich, where each new layer builds to the greater whole.

The worldbuilding of the show  Adventure Time is especially sandwich-coded, with the vestiges of multiple epochs all mushed  together. When I was younger, I felt like an archeologist while watching each episode: using  background details to piece together that this cartoon about a boy and his magic dog was set  not just after a nuclear apocalypse, but multiple Armageddons — resulting in the ultimate hodgepodge  of lore to pick through. Generally speaking, with every additional level of moldering leftovers, a  setting will feel that much more storied.

Simply dumping a junkyard worth of scrap upon a setting  is not sufficient for effective worldbuilding, however — true moldy perfection requires  exploration into how said relics shape the current populace. The most interesting scrapheap  worlds often feature completely novel societies that have learned to make use of the discharge of  the past. In settings like Fallout and Mad Max, entire cultures exist based on the repair and  rediscovery of lost technology.

Scavenger worlds are typically set in Earth’s imagined future, but  occasionally fester in more fantastical settings. Elden Ring could be considered a scrapyard  world with how most characters rely on salvaged materials, and the only new structures are meager  hovels built atop grander ancient foundations. Perhaps the largest scrapyard ever envisioned is  the Star Wars galaxy — a cosmos where seemingly every other planet is a landfill of debris from  endless galactic skirmishes, with a population whose employment seems like 90% scrap-rummager. 

But Star Wars being a moldy yard-sale of a universe helps the setting feel lived in — the  original trilogy in particular emphasizing that this is a world filthy with use and reuse, where  nearly every piece of technology feels like it has gone through multiple retrofits. As is often  the case with scrap, the remnants give you a sense of the eras that came long before, prior to those  eras actually being put to screen — creating an impression of history even if you have no  further context. But while wreckage might convey backstory to the audience, the characters  who inhabit these ruined worlds frequently lack the context to understand the very relics they  scavenge.

This misunderstanding trope is most common in stories where there is a significant  technological or cultural gap between a realm’s current inhabitants and the civilizations that  preceded them, resulting in mix-ups that are often played for laughs: “We’re about to lose our  American deities! ” But the profound alienation that can emerge between a society and the defaced  ruins of their forerunners may also be a source of tragic false interpretations. The recent  Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes film offers a surprisingly layered investigation into the  dangers of a history disfigured by time.

In the setting, there’s the obvious dramatic irony  of ape societies failing to understand that the structures which dominate the land were built by  the now diminished human population, but also a subtler misconstruction of the apes’ own heritage.  The story sees a cult-like clan waging war under the banner of the ancient ape-leader of Ceaser,  turning his doctrine of peaceful unity into a pretext for zealous conquest. “The Masks take  his name.

Twist his words! ” The story explores how even the most well-intentioned philosophy can  become putrefied through willful mistranslation, positing that it is not just buildings that rot  eats away at — but beliefs. The decomposition of an idea, of a system of principles, is an abstract  concept that moldy worldbuilding has the power to make physical.

In the ever-relevant setting of  Elden Ring, the titular ‘ring’ is a corporeal manifestation of the order of the world. Before  the events of the game, that order is literally shattered by a vengeful deity — adding context  to the ruined nature of the land. The fractured realms of Elden Ring are filled with deities  similarly willing to deface their beliefs (and their own bodies) in exchange for greater power.

A  prideful demigod grafts on additional appendages, a divine dragon forges a sword from seemingly  his own innards, a titan rips off their leg without hesitation as an offering to the divine —  nothing, it seems, is so precious that it can’t be sacrificed for the chance at grasping additional  strength. And as the gods rot physically and mentally, so too do the larger belief-systems  of the world — most places of worship left abandoned and in disrepair, the statues of  the divine slowly corroding alongside their philosophies. In this land of forsaken principles,  some monuments even depict deities so forgotten in the present they’re never mentioned anywhere else  in the game.

Did these gods, too, deserve to rot, or was something vital lost when their names  were last spoken aloud? There is a particular melancholy to an overlooked structure that clearly  held great meaning in a past age. The Lord of the Rings is filled with such megaliths, some of which  are still revered — but just as many have crumbled away in total obscurity.

Tolkien famously wrote  his mythos as if he were translating an imperfect text, and would sometimes intentionally leave out  details to suggest time had eroded the records. Lord of the Rings is deeply mournful of the idea  of a history or culture becoming lost — though it simultaneously offers hope that such losses can be  recovered. The deterioration of the world in Elden Ring does not seem so fixable, however.

There is  something irrevocably funerary about the setting, the entire realm like a single mass grave,  with the tombstones already too weathered to know whom to offer condolences. It is a world  stripped of its past: the only records existing in eulogies from unreliable narrators. Perhaps the  best-surviving ruins border the city of Leyndell, the walls outside the capital still standing  proudly — but even these relatively intact structures appear to be in the early stages of  compost.

No empire is so grand that it lasts for eternity. Themes of a kingdom succumbing to  rot are unavoidable in any sufficiently moldy setting: all those cool-looking ruins have to come  from somewhere. But what the corpse of an empire represents in-narrative varies significantly. 

In Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel, the destruction of the kingdom of Hyrule is  presented as an unambiguous negative. This was a nation of gentleness and prosperity, and the  ruins that remain are — well, much has already been written about how haunting they feel, each  battlefield a bad memory the land has been unable to forget. Scars from a similar battlefield  mark a region outside Leyndell’s borders, but the emotions of the scenery are… less clear-cut. 

It is evident from the crack on the wall that here an army tried and failed to overtake the city, but  what is less evident is why an army marched upon this realm, if their cause was just or unjust —  and in a way it scarcely matters, because though the forces were repelled, the city seems to have  fallen to ruin regardless. All across Elden Ring one can find ruined battlements presented without  any straightforward connotation, beyond perhaps the simplest one: that it is the birthright of  any empire to die. Even Zelda acknowledges this: Old Hyrule is far from the only kingdom whose  wreckage is strewn about the land — the entire realm a cemetery of cultures that must have once  also been the height of civilization.

Indeed, some of the oldest ruins are ironically the most  technologically advanced — suggesting that no level of achievement can fully safeguard against  decline, and reframing the most recent collapse as just the latest in a long and predictable  cycle. Perhaps part of why moldy worldbuilding is so consistently resonant is because it reminds us  that of the simple truth that nothing is so mighty it cannot be brought low by time. When exploring  virtual ruins, it’s impossible, at least for me, not to think about how the people who lived in  these empires probably thought their way of life would last forever.

A similar feeling creeps  in whenever I pass by the giant corpses in the margins of Elden Ring, each titanic cadaver as  nameless as the statues of the south, left barren and forgotten despite their obvious former might.  Did these giants too, believe themselves to be unconquerable, before the rot set in? Impossibly  vast powerhouses falling to ruin is an aspect of moldy worldbuilding prevalent across genres.

In  science fiction, it most commonly appears in the form of immense superstructures, left festering  after the empire that built them inevitably collapsed from their hubris. This trope is a  tried-and-true method for sci-fi worldbuilding, adding a little moldy sauce to the lore-broth,  with the most famous examples likely coming from the game series Halo and Mass Effect. In both  cases, humans seek to use the megastructures left behind by a collapsed forerunner species for  their own devices, hoping to build their futures on the carcasses of the past in familiar digestive  fashion.

As you might imagine, how good an idea this turns out to be varies greatly, with the same  ego that ended the previous empire often flaring up when the new upstarts try to appropriate the  ancient power. Even the mightiest foundations, these stories suggest, can prove too rotted to  construct something novel upon. At what point is a skeleton too decayed, too putrid at its core to be  salvaged — no matter its former grandeur?

Inside Elden Ring’s capital of Leyndell, the greatest  structures of the entire game rise to pierce the heavens, and yet this city feels sick in a  way that not even rot could reclaim. The layered architecture of the city recalls Minas Tirith of  Middle Earth, a city whose foundations similarly feel like they're rotting out from under it, with  the latest generations of rulers said to care more about building up their legacy, than if the city  can withstand the weight. Lindell similarly bears the burden of the unfathomably titanic Erdtree, a  golden lifeform that can be seen from all corners of the land, a physical manifestation of the  cosmic laws that supposedly binds the world together.

And yet the roots of the Erdtree are  ravenous, its tendrils choking the very heart of the city, and carving deep catacombs where corpses  rot and monsters fester. It’s a slight spoiler to say — although the lore of Elden Ring is frankly  so interpretable that it’s hard to spoil any of it — but the tree itself might in fact be a kind  of cosmic parasite, draining life from the capital and the lands beyond while offering nothing  in return. Every city, like every land, is a hierarchy of layers, and if the bottom becomes  too corroded while the top continues to grow, the entire structure will come crashing down.

You  can feel the rotting base of a city preparing to buckle under the mass of its topside from the  very first episode of the series Arcane. An impeccable example of sociological worldbuilding,  Arcane presents a nation split between the wealthy and bloated city of Piltover, and the festering  damp of the impoverished undercity. Everywhere you look, there is evidence these layers are not  stable, that the entire house of cards is about to come crashing down.

A metropolis built too-tall  atop too-meager an edifice is hardly an unfamiliar idea, both in fiction and also outside of it. In  moldy worldbuilding in particular, cities made of multiple mildewing layers are a foundational  trope, almost as common as white birds. Because I’m serious, there are always white birds in these  settings — I know they’re more generally used for scale, but it’s a legit trend that if you see  white birds, you’re in for some premium moldiness.

Anyway, birds or no birds, there is something  uncomfortably familiar about decomposing cities, the municipal deterioration recalling any number  of real-world spaces in decline. Because here’s the thing — Planet Earth’s worldbuilding is,  in general, extremely moldy. Just think of how many actual cities are built atop more  ancient foundations, or still have standing ruins you can see to this day.

Earth is a setting  absolutely riddled with eroding evidence of ages past. I think that’s part of moldy worldbuilding  makes a setting feel more detailed and realistic, is because it is realistic. We don’t always think  about our own planet this way, but Earth’s history is filled with the kinds of epic kingdoms and  empires that would not feel out of place in works of fantasy, with cultures that are unfamiliar  to us, that we too have tried to piece together from the imposing remains of their crumbling  megastructures.

Earth has even gone through its share of ‘semi-apocalypses:’ the bronze-age  collapse, the Indus valley decline — we are not on the first draft of civilization. Technology  has been lost and rediscovered as well: in much the same way that in Martin’s A Song of Ice and  Fire, advanced metalworking has been forgotten and the only new Valyrian Steel swords must be melted  down from preexisting blades, throughout Earth’s history, steel sword-making techniques have been  forgotten and re-intuited multiple times. Earth’s Greek Fire is an even mightier piece of technology  lost to time; this ancient chemical flame could supposedly burn green even when exposed to water. 

Martin’s world has its own equivalent in ‘Wild Fire,’ and just in like our reality, all records  of how to make the chemical mixture eventual mildewed away — which sounds too fantastical to be  true, but genuinely, we’re still not entirely sure how to make Greek Fire after centuries of trying.  Earth itself really is the preeminent example of ‘moldy worldbuilding:’ an endless cycle of rot  and rebirth. So, in a way it should be no wonder why barnacles and rust, grime and weathering are  shortcuts to a believable setting.

Why the easiest way to make a fictional map look more genuine is  to add a tasteful bit of wrinkling. Imperfections are the key to physicality — that’s why you  see people, and I’m including myself in this, use so much film grain and glitch effects in their  videos, trying to emulate the authentic flaws of physical media formats. I think there’s at least a  broad correlation between moldy worldbuilding and physical media, not just in how material storage  models can mildew: but if you think of real maps at the start of fantasy novels, or material  guidebooks that used to come with games — giving your audience something corporeal and capable  of weathering is like putting a fragment of your setting in their hands.

The indie game Tunic is  in a way all about this connection: throughout the game’s world there are the layers of ruins upon  ruins that one would expect from any moldy world worth its salt, but there are also pages of a faux  instructional guidebook for you to collect. This strategy guide comes marked with all the little  signs of age you’d expect from such a booklet, with various sections including little pen doodles  or notes written into the margins by an imagined player. And I know I filled all my old guides  with scribbles like these.

Such marks are proof of history in the same way a piece of wreckage  is: a testimony that someone has been here before. How much comfort one can find in the records of  moldiness, ultimately comes down to individual philosophy. There is a portion of me that is  uneasy when I see the wreckage of civilizations past, be they real or virtual, and know that they  were once as uneroded by time as we are now.

But there is also a portion of me that is comforted  to see evidence of those that have walked before me — that the world has endured long before this  sliver of time, and will continue long after. A moldy setting is a realistic one, a storied one,  a living one. Maybe the past is not reclaimable, maybe what has rotted has rotted for good, but  even if something thoroughly digested cannot be… regurgitated, it can still feed the growth of  something new.

There is beauty in decomposition, waiting to be dug up. “Ugh, that’s gross. I don’t  — don’t really know what I was expecting.

. . ” There’s one massive unanswered question that  making this video left me with…how many of these settings actually qualify as ‘post-apocalyptic?

’  Is “Fallout” post-apocalyptic? Is “Breath of the Wild” post-apocalyptic? Is… “Lord of the Rings”  post-apocalyptic?

In all cases, it’s not a straightforward answer, because — as I discovered  — there’s another stage that comes after what we traditionally think of the ‘post-apocalypse’. I  ended up having so much to say about this topic that I couldn’t fit it into the conclusion of  this video, so instead, I made an entire second video where I dive deep into worlds like Akupara  Games’ Rain World and Ghibli’s Castle in the Sky, both of which originally played a much larger  role in this essay, but ultimately didn’t fit and deserve their own dedicated video. You can watch  this other video right now exclusively on Nebula.

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