WorldEmber 2025

The focus for WorldEmber this year is once again going to be all over the place. Mostly, I will be working wherever the inspiration strikes, but I will also be working on lore for our ongoing campaign. So much has happened in our campaign, split across two groups, that I really need to catch up a bit on the lore that our players need to flesh out their fabulous characters more. As usual, I will probably be focusing on the Northern Continent of Isekai, where our campaign is currently taking place, but I will also go wherever the inspiration takes me.   As one group continues making its way through literal hell (a shrine dedicated to an Ancient Black Dragon known as a necromancer), I have created a few player characters that may be needed sooner rather than later. I want to flesh out Saeris Rosemore, a Human Cleric of Dern, who may make her debut sooner rather than later.   I also plan to flesh out more of the Royal Dwarven Military, the most structured military in our world. This has been a passion project of mine that I really want to continue, especially now that we have a Dwarf in our group that may have hailed from this organization. In a lot of ways, I feel like this group is the pinnacle of my worldbuilding to date, so I'm glad to go back to working through the rest of it.   All of this is to say that while I have a focus, I really don't. I want to go into WorldEmber this year like I did with Summer Camp, little plan but with the excitement to write whatever comes my way. I'll have a few articles that I want to tackle, but for the most part, it will be whatever best inspires me to write.

Plan/Prep

Honestly, I have to say that there really isn't a plan for WorldEmber this year. The last 2ish months have weighed heavily on me in real life, and I felt like I was dragging myself to do anything on WA. But the weight of real-life problems lifted, and the craziest of DnD ideas came to me, and I finally feel like I'm back and ready to attempt this. It's taken me a couple of weeks to write this pledge alone, and my plans have changed a few times, but I'm not going to change what's written here because I will probably end up coming back around to my original ideas.   In terms of prep, a burst of inspiration has led to some major visual revamps of some central articles that Isekai has really needed. The Pantheons of Isekai and Standard Metal Value were two of the earliest articles we built in this world, and it is so exciting to see these upgrades, especially since they align with what else I want to work on for the rest of this month.   I have no other true plans for prep over the rest of the month, but I will work on things as time allows. The holidays are coming, and we will be traveling, so I'm losing roughly a week, but hopefully I can make up for it around all my other responsibilities.

Research

Since I'm going back to working through the remaining parts of the Royal Dwarven Military, I do have some research to do. This group takes heavy inspiration from the real-life US Army, an organization that is close to my heart, and I love delving into my research to figure out how I can best translate modern-day technologies and organizations to a group that is much longer lived and has access to magic.   The hierarchy of the Royal Dwarven Military is by far the most organized of the militaries in Isekai, and I spend a lot of time thinking through which facets of real-world militaries would still be necessary. This is just one area of worldbuilding that I get to utilize my area of academic focus, and I absolutely love it.   Other research I'm conducting before WE is to read through some existing parts of Isekai in order to work on a secret project that I hope our DnD party may someday figure out. Having finally hit a million words in world, this task alone is massive, as this secret project will be tied into a number of lore pieces that I have already created.