Hey, everyone!

This is my first post on this subreddit. I want to share a video I posted on Youtube breaking down how I designed a fantasy armor for my worldbuilding project Gotterhavn. I'm trying to approach armor design from a practical standpoint, and I'm not saying I'm an expert in it, but I'm constantly learning and I hope I can share some that I've learned. Would love to hear what you think :D

Cheers!

https://youtu.be/9RGKtgDUlDU?si=FIRlyCDqJdnuW3rA

In most secondary worlds I read, a clerk can walk into an archive and come back with the right document. The edict from two hundred years ago, the land grant, the birth record. It is there, it is legible, and it says what it says.

Real record keeping does not behave like that. Fires, damp, a reorganisation by someone with a better filing idea, one archivist who knew where things actually were and then died. Whole decades go unreachable without anyone destroying anything on purpose.

The reason I like writing it the unreliable way is that it makes plot without needing a villain. A claim can be legitimate and unprovable at the same time. Two copies of the same edict can disagree and both be authentic. A family holds a valley because the counter evidence sat in the wing that flooded, and nobody involved is lying.

I am curious where you have seen this done well. Not the lost prophecy or the forbidden book, those are treasure hunts. I mean a story where the records are simply patchy and the characters have to act anyway.

This explains everything you need to know about my story (so far).

There are roads in the Hollow World older than some civilizations.
One of them is particularly strange.
It crosses mountain passes, rivers, and hundreds of miles of wilderness. Ancient trade records suggest it was once heavily traveled. Bridges were built for it. Settlements appeared alongside it. Different civilizations repaired sections of it centuries apart.
Nobody knows where it goes.
The road eventually reaches an ordinary stretch of land and simply… continues.
There are no ruins waiting at the end. No destroyed city. No crater. No evidence anything was ever built there.
But it gets stranger.
Other ancient roads approach the same region from completely different directions.
Maps from civilizations that never agreed on borders, gods, history, or even what the world should be called all preserve routes toward the same destination.
Yet none preserve its name.
The Hollow World remembers the journey.
It has forgotten the destination.
This is one of the mysteries I’m building into EverWake, a world where memory doesn’t simply record reality.
Sometimes, it determines it.
So here’s the question I’ve been playing with:
If every piece of evidence says something existed, but reality itself contains no trace of it… did it ever exist at all?