Lore of Ahneria: Intro and Index

It's a small world, after all

Welp, the Creature Loot table, nearly three years in the making, is finally done.

I'd say it's very satisfying, but now I have to figure out what to do with my Friday articles.

Juggling videos?

No, wait. I can't juggle.

Hm.

Why don't I take a page from some of my favorite blogs and start posting about my homebrew world, with an emphasis on fiction writing and usability in other campaigns?

Okay!

Also, still trying to figure out how I want to post articles on music. But that can come later.

Lore of Ahneria

Subtitle: An Indefinite Friday Series

Basically, this is the new Friday topic until I get bored, switch worlds, or stop writing this blog. If there's another series of articles that I want to do, we'll just do them every other Wednesday, like the Instant Settlement series.

In doing this, I came up with some goals for the series::

1. Create a body of lore for my reference and player reference
2. Go through a world building process of my own
3. Work on fiction writing

The first thing is to create a public reference space, much like how the Monday Recaps are used by my group to catch up with what's been going on and reference before we start a session. If the information is online, a player who is interested can look it up and I get to save some time.

That said...

I don't want to make this required reading. Ahneria is purposely built on existing D&D stories and common tropes, so that people can jump in and play. All I have to do is say "high magic fantasy, like Elder Scrolls" and people get it.

Fus Ro Duh

However, I do want to write things that players would be interested in. If a cleric wants to know who the Gods are, I can point them to an article. If a ranger wants to map the entire world, I can point them to a map. I want this to be driven by player interest, not by setting requirement.

I'll probably come back to that subject at some point. But basically, I'm against making players read a book before they can play in a game.

The next order of business is going through a worldbuilding process. I've put in a lot of legwork on this, and it doesn't make sense not to share it. There are a bunch of good setting books out right now, and I want to use their inspiration to craft my own world.

That said, I think each of these articles will kind of be a working document. I'll have a basic "Gods" and "Magic" article, but if those things change, I'll try to update them with the changes. For example, if a God dies, I'd remove their name from the list of Gods and put a blurb about their death in the article.

Basically, I want this to be a project that not only demonstrates a world but also improves with time.

Also, I want this project to help me work on writing fiction. Some of these articles aren't going to be straight setting references, they might be stories or legends with varying amounts of truth. I want to work on writing out these ideas in prose. That way, aside from just explaining the lore, I can actually expand it.

Someday, these ideas might become a novel or something. I'm not making promises, but who knows what the future could hold?

Finally, I have a few notes about my methods here.

Like I said, Ahneria borrows A LOT from existing media, especially existing D&D settings. I won't be rehashing stuff that can be found elsewhere, but if something looks suspiciously similar to an adventure module, it's 100% because I wanted to run that module and stuck a similar location in this world.

If there's some variation in a particular subject, I might include random tables in these articles."10 Tribes of Norstone Barbarians" or "What's on sale at the Merchant's Guild?" might pop up.

And at the end of each article, I want to put a couple sentences that could connect these ideas to another setting. "Make heroes exist in the world beyond your PCs" or "Give the group a special NPC they look up to, then take that NPC away" or such.

Finally, just so this article isn't completely devoid of content...

Here's the current draft of the Ahneria world map. Yes, I drew it by hand. Yes, it's garbage. However, one of my wonderful players, Makayla, is putting together a nicer version! I'll put it here once she's finished.



Pictured: a garbage world

Thanks for reading!

Also, as I write these articles, I'll be collecting them here for ease of access.

Gods
Magic
The Darkest Sea (skies above Ahneria)
Life After Death
Garlancia: A History
20 Questions (x2) about Garton
20 Questions about the City of Auraglow
Garton Merchants