Brainstorm types of mythical creatures and unusual environments

6. Quivira

Similar to the El Dorado legend, but a few thousand miles further north, this was a legendary province that was said to contain seven cities of gold. It was around 1540 that Spanish explorers in New Mexico heard of the legend, and set out to find it. Sadly, all they found was some copper and iron. The exact location of Quivira has never been established,. But that only fuels the legend, and Quivira has appeared in many works of literature and the name has been used for a vineyard, among other things.

A sort of opposite to Shangri-La (a work of fiction based on years of mythology), Utopia was originally a work of fiction, but years of mythology have built up around it. It originally appeared as an island in Thomas More’s 1516 novel “Utopia” and was a simple society that revolved around agriculture and tolerance.  The idea took hold and has appeared in several different guises since – from the forced utopic societies of “Brave New World” and “1984” to untouched rainforest civilizations in films like “Avatar”. Utopia is meant to be a perfect place, but even in Thomas More’s original, there were elements that feel uncomfortable to our modern minds (slavery, lack of privacy, wives confessing their sins to their husbands) and every utopic society since then has either had a hidden dark side (e.g. people being euthanized at 30 in “Logan’s Run”) or has been incredibly boring. Goes to show there’s no such thing as a perfect society!