What it’s like world building in someone else’s world and a celebration of the release of Audra Balion’s Flight Nineteen omnibus!
It’s a very exciting week. Audra Balion is launching the omnibus of Flight Nineteen. The full story is finally together in a single compendium, marking the end of over a decade of effort. It’s a huge achievement and I’m incredibly proud of her.
For those that don’t know, Audra is more than the illustrator for Crown of Horns. She’s also the primary worldbuilder! Crown of Horns takes place within the world of her silent graphic novel and she is responsible for much of what makes my book so special.
I thought this would be a fun opportunity to explore the world she has created and what it was like building on top of it.
Powering the World of Flight Nineteen
Audra created a wide and vibrant world for her comic, one that expanded far beyond the bio-mechanical revolution of Mephistopolis. She built out an array of continents, built out trade routes by water and air to connect them, and even vast underwater cities in between. One of the key features she decided on for each continent: power.
The story of Flight Nineteen focuses on a burgeoning technological revolution that turns sour when its leaders lose sight on humanity in favour of progress. Sound familiar? That all came about years before the technological quagmires of today, and her story has only become more relevant. Well, to power this revolution within a steampunk setting, she needed to figure out different methods for generating electricity.
For her story, she decided that oil was the right choice for the smoggy city of Mephistopolis. It was the perfect dynamic—allowing the upper class pump smog into the lower city to keep their skies clear, and create a grungy, oppressive world. In her research, she decided that each place would have its own methods for generating power.
For Vsevora, she decided on wind and solar.
Opening Up Her World
A little over a decade ago, I was struggling creatively. I had left behind an acting program at school, I was working a crappy job at a parking lot, and I wasn’t getting a lot of day-to-day creative fulfillment that I craved. Audra had started working on Flight Nineteen. The comic combined her love of art, comics, and theatre to tell a story entirely through images. The colourful characters and conflicting world enchanted me. I wanted to help.
The story she wanted to tell was her own, but she let me into the world. She showed me a country inspired by her Ukrainian heritage. Some of its cities were even named after her family! She let me name it. I did a lot of research, looking up Ukrainian words and combining roots to find something that was evocative of its origins and unique for a fantasy setting. From there, she let me create and build alongside her.
Transforming the World to Tell the Story
Power was important for Audra’s story, and it was important for mine as well, but it was power of a different kind. I was focused on politics and people—the connections and divides between the country. This necessitated a lot of changes from Audra’s original designs to help the world tell the story, instead of being beholden to the world.
Originally, Audra imagined the glass mountains of Oksana dominating the continent. (Actually, Oksana didn’t even exist originally; I had to sneak it on up there). To tell a story of a refugee in a foreign world of crystal mountains, some of the landscape needed to change. The cities of Ksenya and Sophia needed to look and feel very different. Stony mountains dominated the central area of the map instead. And for Siranna to feel the weight of leaving her home of windmills and mirror-glass, Sophia needed to feel grungier. It turned to coal—driven by an industrial revolution. Perhaps it was inspiration spilling over from Mephistopolis.
Then the Greenshield. There was no Greenshield on Audra’s map! But as I built out the concept of the Feras and their mystical hideaway behind a field of grass that grew taller than trees… well, I needed to keep that! Audra helped me find a home for them. She told me about how everyone avoided the Phantom Sea for it was a dangerous place where ships went missing. It became the perfect way for legends of ghostly Feras pirates of generations past who travelled to Lyudmila and whose legends were recounted by Velodik in the book.
Crown of Horns and Flight Nineteen Come Together
So that’s a little picture into how these two tales share a world! I cannot express enough my gratitude for my wonderful partner who opened up her world to me at a time when I needed a place to let my imagination run wild.
If you want to explore more of Audra’s world, I encourage you to get your own copy of the Flight Nineteen complete edition!
Learn more about Audra Balion, a Saskatoon-based comic artist and teacher.
