Change Log 2025

Welcome to the 2025 change log for Aanrah! Instead of making update pings constantly given how I work on articles, I thought it would be easier to basically update a running article for changes. Major/large article updates will still send out a ping, but articles that are worked on slowly or have had more minor changes will just be left to here.
This will also include the initial major changes between this version of Aanrah and the previous one(s)! Even though these changes started before the new year, it's easier for me to just... put it here now.

January + 2024

Aanrah 4.0

• Decided to make major rehaul changes to previous world that would essentially require such major overhauls to the previous WA that it just was less daunting to make a new WA. Also, allowed me to keep the previous one for reference without deleting it. Many of these issues and things I was unsatisfied with could be basically boiled down to 'Ray was still leaning too hard on how DnD does shit, especially in regards to races & cultures, and Ray Does Not Like It'. These major changes include....
• Language Overhaul: While still relying on Vulgar for conlangs, I previously did not spend as much time tweaking and paying attention to the languages I generated. Languages were re-generated/made with more attention, including additional languages to help with the fact that the previous version of Aanrah was running too much on the 'race=culture=language' issue I was having.
• Culture Overhaul: Similarly, though a lot of it wasn't on the previous WA either, I have sat back down and tried to tease culture away from just race, and have generally tried to set up more of the base world like this.
• Atlas Overhaul: Several aspects of the world layout I had previously were starting to bother me, namely the way its four large seas were situated and what that meant for the rest of the world. Something about it was just leaving me feeling very unsatisfied, so the world has been remade to include less small oceans/seas, a larger landmass to match what I had imagined for the predominate 'wood elven' cultures, and the help of Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator to aid with figuring out rivers and biome layouts.
• Race Overhaul: Again not as visible on the front end, but a lot of reconsideration has gone into how I had the races set up, and what I wanted to do with them. Ultimately, this has lead to an attempt to step away from generic fantasy terms like 'elf' for my races, and hopefully in doing so allowing myself to go a bit more wild with some of the designs / hopefully relieving a burden from myself in terms of design expectations per names.
• Art Overhaul: While I was enjoying the style I was doing for my previous deity art, it has lead to two problems: A) I absolutely did not take the time to actually rehaul old character's designs enough, especially to fit into Aanrah properly, and did not have racial details fleshed out enough to keep out inconstancies / issues on that front, and B) Unsurprisingly, gold line art that isn't using any form of real shading does, uh, not work great for images/individuals with predominately light-colored color palettes. Going forward, style may still be all over, but! We're working on it and looking into how we wanna do things.
• History/Timeline Overhaul: A surprisingly more minor point- the time line has been bumped up by a few thousand years, as previously I felt that enough time did not happen between major breaks.
• Pantheon Overhaul: Similarly to my issues with culture and language, I was leaning too much on the DnD racial pantheon idea, which neither made sense nor was just... generally working. Pantheons are now being overhauled to act more like actual religions that aren't just tied to a certain race, and the individuals within the pantheon are also being rehauled/reexamined. Some degrees of how divinity and godhood work have been overhauled as well, including domain number per status.