History of the Project

This page is out of lore.

Pontragolia as a project has passed through 5 versions from which some modern features are derived to which some features refer.

Early Ideas
The initial idea, inspired by an exhibition at the Science Museum, London on the speculative exobiology project Aurelia and Blue Moon (link to the 2005 exhibition here), was for a top-down strategy game in which a player would select to play as a given organism and interact with other players, attempting to find prey, nesting sites and so on. Though this idea was quickly dropped, some parts, such as the moss-like cruss (then called 'crosh') persist.

This idea developed into a story focused on the travels of a zoologist from the planet Pontret, a goblin-like creature named Sortir-Rue who gathered live specimens for his collection. Again, this idea was short-lived, though the main character has become a notable historical figure.

The third original concept was for an exoplanet visited, without explanation, by a boy. Though not considered in much depth, this version introduced certain creatures, such as the phygons and a whale-like creature from which emyupi's got their crossed tails. The idea of an exolanguage originated here, although there was no species in that version to speak it and it was extremely simple, called simply Pontragolian.

Version 1: Greencrest
The first detailed version of the project still focused on a storyline but paid closer attention to the planet and its biosphere. It focused on a single phygon which had become separated from its pack and lost. More concepts for species emerged, such as the enteledont-like fangtooth or peculiar sisellas.

The separation between Pontragolia (supercontinent) and Pontret (planet) was made here and early ideas for maps were drawn.

Version 2: The Four
The idea of a single planet then became almost irrelevant, with the second major version focusing almost entirely on story. This featured a crew aboard a ship collecting live specimens, a nod toward the second early concept, as was the name of one character called Sortir. Over the course of their travels, the crew would gradually come across four jewels which, when brought together under the right conditions, produce a planet on which the specimens could be released, termed by one of them Pontragolia, which would mean 'haven' or 'home'.

Though highly flawed as a concept for a story and with little reference to the planet around which the current project revolves, this version is likely to inspire lore in the future.

Version 3:
The third major version of the project still centred on a storyline but also treated the planet as an exoplanet to be developed from a scientific perspective, with explanations given for everything. It was one of the most well-developed and influential.

The plot, in brief, was that a man named Darren travelled via a portal from Earth to Pontret. Here, he would discover that humans were persecuted as beings of violence and war due to a complex history between the two planets. Kept safe by an elderly native Pitlupuli (the first use of the term), another guise of Sortir-Ru, and his apparently adopted human apprentice Kayla through which the native could study Earth, the man would make contact with nomadic human groups avoiding discovery by the Pitlipuli authorities. Darren would, with time, attempt to convince each species to trust one another, as Sortir trusted Darren and Kayla.

The explanatory backstory was that an alien race called the Shalin (an influence on the idea for the gods, the Sallen) observed a planet, Earth, teeming with life near to themselves and hoped for the development of another intelligent species. To increase their chances, they terraformed a second nearby planet, Pontret, using species from Earth at that time (the very early Triassic 247 mya, shortly before the evolution of dinosaurs) transferred using portals. Said portals worked using a complex process involving folding spacetime such that two points that are very distant from the perspective of a 3-dimensional entity on that plane are near meeting in spacetime, as if folding a piece of paper so that two dots nearly met, whilst a 2-dimensional entity sitting on that piece of paper would see a flat plane along the paper, being unable to observe the 3-dimensional curving.

The Shalin closed the portals again and moved forward until the evolution of near-intelligent pre-humans on Earth (the Shalin had technologies for time travel, though how they worked could not be explained. It was assumed that they could only travel forward in time) and, hoping for another space-faring species to develop more rapidly if two chances were given, connected Earth to Pontret again. The two planets were disconnected again and left for a few millions of years so that two sentient species could evolve separately, to transfer knowledge later on (the Shalin had time-travel technology, though the way this was done couldn't be explained). They were then reconnected via the portals and left for thousands of years but the humans, being a territorial and resource-hungry species, fought the Pitlupuli and wiped them from the Earth, pushing them back to the portals which acted as bottlenecks. The humans who had gone through to Pontret were also fought in retaliation and though most were wiped out, some remained. Humanity became legendary as vicious, dangerous beings and were therefore persecuted or killed upon sight. Seeing the damage done, the Shalin closed up the portals again, hoping each side would recover.

The planet Pontret itself was treated from a more scientific perspective, with all species from lineages separated from Earth 247 million years ago except for the hominid Pitlipuli. As such, many organisms were developed here, such as the tree-like starbranches and the strange rofgols. Ideas for eses such as the goyamans and cricketbirds were also developed.

The language evolved from the fairly simple Ponutugica (now a dead root language in the lore) to the more functional Nical and cultural ideas such as the propensity for living in trees also emerged, although the homonid versions of the Pitlipuli built around hollowed trunks rather than being truly arboreal.

Version 4: True Realism
The fourth version of the project focused entirely on realism and was treated as a thought experiment rather than a story. It was to be an ambitious attempt to construct a model planet from scratch. From the tectonic structure of the planet`s crust to the fauna and flora of this world to the cultures which could develop, the project attempts to investigate how an exoplanet similar to Earth could develop and to use this to compare and observe our own planet.

The planet itself was re-imaged, with other celestial bodies in its solar systems taken into account, as well as the make-up of the atmosphere and the position and movement of tectonic plates. It was for this version that the modern geographic map of Pontragolia and it's planet was originally developed.

The life in the project was to be more unique, using new ideas for the sake of finding alternatives to the standards of life on Earth. The idea of intelligence and society remained, as well as certain characteristics of it such as rudimentary politics, economics, art and spoken language for the sake of experiment and comparison, even though the species responsible for this culture was very different to humans.

The idea for this version, unlike the others, was to produce an ever-improving model of a planet which was never intended to be complete. This version had main three aims: An additional purpose for the project here was relfection on the real world by considering why things are how they are by encouraging a closer look at life, especially in exploring more overlooked, mundane things and how they could be reimagined.
 * To produce a model planet in as much detail as possible, considering as many minor aspects of a planet as possible.
 * To produce a model which, though only speculative, is scientifically plausible.
 * To avoid too much outside influence, such as the use of organisms or belief systems similar to, or taken directly from, other works of fiction or from real life. It should also be noted that convergence will likely mean that many aspects of Pontragolia will resemble those of Earth

Version 5: Storybuilding
The latest of this long line of largely-unrealised ideas, version 5 has come closest to being realised. The concept of Pontret as a strictly alien place is being relaxed to encourage any readers to relate more easily and to allow focus instead of storyline and writing. However, the ideas of difference from Earth, detailed complexity and strict realism (as far as practical) are continued. Religions and mythos will allow for the exploration of more fantastic concepts.

The core principle for this version is the construction of Pontragolia bottom-up through an accessible anthological story series.

There are intentions to eventually introduce other 'series' under the same 'Project Pontragolia' banner but focusing on, for example, more fantastic & abstract settings or on the process of worldbuilding itself.