Worldbuilding Weekend Prompt #107 - Colony Collapse

Welcome to the next in an ongoing series of writing prompts in the Worldbuilding community !

I'm aiming to post one of these each Sunday. They aren't a replacement for the excellent daily prompts from @worldbuilding they're just an extra opportunity if you have a writing itch you want to scratch. 😀

Image generated by AI in Wombo.art

The prompt this week is - Colony Collapse

Not all colonies are successful. Whether it's historical, fantasy or sci-fi, creating a settlement in a new world is a hugely risky venture.

In our own history, the Viking colony on Greenland died out after around 500 years of success; causes are still debated, but include worsening climate, shortage of resources such as iron and timber, conflict with the indigenous skraelings, and political changes at home reducing the level of contact and support. It's notable that in a marginal setting, support from home was still needed after 500 years.

Part of the short-lived Viking colony in Vinland has now been found by archaeologists. It had better resources than Greenland (bog iron, and timber from further south), but failed due to small numbers, distance from the homeland, and lack of domestic support. It's also thought that conflict with the locals was a major factor, possibly caused by the Viking habit of giving gifts of milk as a gesture of friendship. The only problem is that most North American Indians are genetically lactose-intolerant, and would have been made so ill by the gift that they'd have assumed it was an attempt to poison them. Cultural differences !

The first English colony at Roanoake was also a stunningly nightmarish failure, with attempts to settle the place repeatedly wiped out by famine, internal conflict and clashes with indigenous peoples.

Tell me a story of a failing colony from your setting ! Is it a state or private enterprise ? Does it get enough support from home ? What resources doesn't it have ? Do the stresses of failure create internal conflict ? Are there pre-existing locals, and how do the colonists deal with cultural differences ? Is failure unknowingly built in from the start ? What is the first clue, and what is the final straw ? Does everyone die, or are there survivors who are rescued or merge with the native tribes ?

Just to add a bit of spice to things, the two entries I most like (and are linked in comments to this post, so I can find them !) that are posted by midnight (GMT) next Saturday will each get a prize of one Hive SBI.

This link will take you to the FAQ where you can read more about Hive SBI - it's a project I thoroughly support because it gives both the donor and winner a steady trickle of passive income paid out in the form of upvotes on posts.

Guidelines

I stole these guidelines straight from @worldbuilding prompts (I hope that's okay !), I couldn't have written them any better myself....

• Prompt replies may be anything! Art, game assets, stories, worldbuilding details, fake wiki entries, maps... whatever you want to create!
• Please ensure you reply to this post with a link to your reply
• Posting in or cross-posting to the Worldbuilding community is highly encouraged
• Use the hashtag #worldbuilding
• Prompt replies can be any length.

Some other neat communities for writing that you might want to check out are:

• Freewriters
• Scholar and Scribe
• Tabletop / DND
• The Ink Well

It can be a lot of fun to mix and match our prompts with some of these other community prompts.