Worldbuilding Weekend Prompt #156 - Prophets
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 - Prophets
In biblical and ancient times, prophets were seen as holy men and women (but usually men.... it was a patriarchal time, that's just how these things work) with a direct line to whichever god they worshipped. They conveyed their god's will to the people, who might or might not listen with varying degrees of belief and attentiveness. Over time, they became less like someone issuing orders, and more like messengers to keep people in line. Finally, a prophet nowadays is anyone who is thought to have a reasonable chance of guessing what the future will look like.
Tell me a story of a prophet from your setting ! Is it an old man with a white beard bringing a message of fire and brimstone, or the lowest of the low living a humble life and exhorting people to follow his unselfish example ? What is the message - is the prophet warning of imminent doom, or just trying to bring people back to their faith ? How do people react - fervent belief, or dismissive mockery ? How do the authorities react - make the prophet a wise advisor in the palace, to subject them to persecution, exile, imprisonment or even execution ? How does the story end - with an execution (and possible ascension), or maybe a great disaster or a crusade ?
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.
- AI images to illustrate your posts are fine, as long as they are credited to whichever software you used to make them
- Posts using AI to create the text are not acceptable; these prompts (and community) are a way to expand and have fun with human imagination, and I firmly believe AI will never be able to replicate the human spark.
Some other neat communities for writing that you might want to check out are:
It can be a lot of fun to mix and match our prompts with some of these other community prompts.
People who have asked to be tagged;
@sherah
If you'd like to be tagged in on these prompts, let me know and I'll happily add you 🙂