Constructing Crita — Conjuring a Fabricated Planet for Hallow Claw

Reimagining what already exists or inventing something new is the basis of worldbuilding. For me, this process begins with questions that reality can’t answer—at least not fully. What does the future look like when our current systems have collapsed? What might history have been if a single variable had shifted? I’ve learned speculative fiction thrives in the space between what is/was and what could be, and the worlds writers create are where those possibilities take shape.

As I’ve talked about, every speculative setting, no matter how strange, grows out of a familiar seed. The art of worldbuilding is, at its core, an act of imaginative projection: taking the known world and asking how it might evolve, fracture, or be rebuilt.

When I began developing the planet Crita for Hallow Claw, I didn’t start with landscapes or aesthetics. I started with purpose.

Designing a World with a Function

Crita was never meant to be a thriving world. It was designed—intentionally and narrowly—to serve a single function: food production (an all in one basic nutrition source which I call Cebus). I envision Crita as a planet sized factory, albeit one where the whole manufacturing system is automated. A constructed planet built to provide a resource for other planets, not itself. For my story, that limitation became the foundation for everything. I found that when I built a setting around this specific purpose, the implications rippled outward. These implications generated more questions that I strove to answer in my narrative:

·      What does a world look like when biodiversity is controlled/manufactured rather than organic?

·      What happens to culture when survival is engineered instead of earned?

·      Who benefits from a world like this—and who is excluded?

By asking these questions, Crita began to take shape as a place and as a system. For writers, this is one of the most effective entry points into worldbuilding: start with what your world is for. A single defining function can generate conflict, hierarchy, and history.

From System to Sanctuary

Worlds don’t stay static, particularly not in speculative fiction. Crita evolved beyond its original purpose. What was once a controlled, void environment became something else entirely: a last refuge. Humans and intelligent robots—both displaced, both carrying the weight of failing natural worlds—began to arrive on its surface.

This shift transformed Crita from a system into a sanctuary, and with that transformation came tension:

-A planet designed for output now has to sustain life in a broader, messier sense.

-A controlled environment must now adapt to unpredictability.

-Beings with fundamentally different needs—human and sentient machine—must coexist in a space never meant for either.

I believe this is where worldbuilding becomes storytelling. A setting stops being background and starts becoming an active force that shapes character choices, relationships, and conflicts.

 Crita is both a vision of the future and a response to a broken past. It reflects the consequences of human decisions, technological ambition, and the persistent need to survive, even if survival means starting over somewhere artificial.

For readers, I hope this kind of setting creates immersion because it feels earned. For my fellow writers, it offers a framework: build forward from function, especially when the premise is fantastical.

Worldbuilding isn’t about perfection or completeness. It’s about creating a space that feels like it could exist just beyond our current reach. A place with rules, consequences, and a history that continues whether or not the reader is watching.

Crita began as a controlled idea—a planet with a single purpose. Like all good speculative settings, it refused to stay contained. It expanded, adapted… became something more complicated. A refuge, a system under strain, a world trying to redefine itself. That’s the real goal of worldbuilding—to create a place that can change.