It began, as so many things do, with a map.
I began with a world already dreaming — fairytales stitched together at the borders, folklore pressed up against mythology, a realm where Neverland sits in the Cerulean Sea and Narnia shares a mountain range with the Highlands and somewhere in the Impassible Desert, a boy who refused to grow up made a deal with goblins and became something altogether stranger. The map had names that landed like old friends: Wonderland, Arendelle, Germonia, Oz. And underneath all of it, a family tree so tangled and ancient that tracing it felt like unspooling a myth.
I ruminated on where it might go.
Fraying stories? Angels and demons? Witch queens, ancient creditors, so much to consider. So much planning required!
Then things moved quickly, the way good world-building does when the pieces want to fit together.
I started with a lore compendium first — origins and existential wounds. Personalities big and small, quotes and genealogies, weaving fairytales and mythology and folklore with well-known stories and iconic characters. I worked backward through the divine family tree. Danu, the First Mother, who chose not to fight and won more by retreating than any war could have given her. The One God, who arrived in a dreaming world and could not bear that it had no master. Lilith, who walked to Adam’s threshold willingly and then refused what was asked of her, and whose refusal became the founding myth of every witch who ever said no. Lysandra, who finds mortals endlessly entertaining and has been stage-managing their political dramas for ten thousand years. Limnas, who went into the ocean and became it. Samael, who owes nothing to anyone and means it constitutionally, not dramatically. Adam, who had the chance to know Lilith and chose dominance instead. Eve, who built a livable life inside an unlevel structure and whose quiet endurance is the reason the mortal world is kinder than its divine inheritance deserves.
And then the Three Sisters — Grimhild, Mal, the Beldam — each one a different answer to the same inheritance, each one ten thousand years into the consequences of that answer. I wrote the line about the Beldam that I think matters most: the horror of her is not that she is hollow. It is that she is full.
Between the cosmology I built session notes. Then cities. Then shops. A bakery that wins its own competition. A lighthouse half-sea-hag who smells of brine and old magic and has been expecting the party for longer than she’ll say. Nine shops. Six districts. Two random encounter tables for day and night. A compass in a glass case that keeps pointing at whoever in the party is carrying the sacrifice pearl.
My World Bible is currently 321 pages long. It’s not done yet. It may never be done. But I’m loving every minute of it.