WorldEmber 2025 | Magical Lifestyles
The city centers have been quiet, the fairgrounds undisturbed, and the residents frozen in time. When better, than in the coming frost, to let them thaw, and set their destinies back on course?— Awakening from a slumber to create once more
WorldEmber 2025 Pledge
This year I pledge to write 10,000 words (or more!) of worldbuilding for my worlds Malkora and Ayun Sovos, focusing on magical themes and lifestyles!
Last Year's Pledge!
2024 was the first WorldEmber where I wrote for two different worlds! Following their new storylines helped direct a lot of my writing!WorldEmber Prep: Gridmaster Edition!
Homework is looking a little different this year! It's like the WA team looked at my play history and saw me losing hours of my life to Old School Runescape's Gridmaster event and knew it was the way to pull me back into writing (they were right).First Impressions:
I'm excited to jump in here! I think that WorldEmber homework has needed a refresh for a little while now (I can only go update my meta so many times, y'all) and this is such a fun approach!There are lots of tasks I've already been planning to tackle, but some on this list have me pretty inspired!
Review or collect your world inspirations
Refresh your author profile
Create a moodboard for your focus area
Review your world homepage
Review your category tree and organize
Tidy up your writing space
Define the scope of your worldbuilding
Review or create your world primer
Find an accountability buddy
Get some feedback from readers or players
Finish articles you started before December
Read a book
Free Action!
Prepare visual elements for your articles
Make a list of stubs you'd like to expand
Plan your worldbuilding playlist
Make a list of articles you want to write
Plan your writing schedule
Identify types of people found in your world
Do some research on topics you'll write
Re-read your core articles
Join the community!
Review the visual appearance of your world
Go for a walk
Describe your world in adjectives
Some Freebies for the Road Ahead!
Before I jump into getting this bingo adventure fully kicked off, I'm happy to have the tiniest of headstarts with two squares I can check off right off the bat!Find an accountability buddy
Mochi and I have been plotting and scheming for the past week about being each other's accountability buddies heading into WorldEmber and the upcoming WAWA — you better watch out for what these two chefs are cooking!With a friend like Mochi, I feel like I can do anything! Most importantly, I feel like I can make some banger worldbuilding, and still make time for naps and self care. They WILL bully me hard if I don't do that. It's exactly what is needed during these big events!
BONUS BUDDY! Do I get to cross off this square twice? Another player has entered this accountability circle, forming a delightful little pod: Nulcheck! This event just got even more fun!
Join the community!
And, of course, I've been a member of the community for YEARS, so that was an easy box to check! In addition to the community in general, I've got the chapter I'm part of, we've got the challenge discussion crew in Discord, and I've got my fabulous friends in and out of the official server that I can share my worldbuilding successes and struggles with!Fresh Coats of Paint!
I've been slacking on some of my world housekeeping, even with the last few big events. I planned to do these steps from the start, so let's dive into this bingo challenge with some renovating and refreshing!Review your world homepage (and the visual appearance of your world)
Two things that go hand-in-hand in this lifetime: Reviewing homepage contents, and finding things to fall into a CSS rabbit-hole with. It's a good thing I sat down and took a look at my homepages, because oh my goodness was there a lot to tweak!I updated both Malkora and Ayun Sovos with latest articles, recent highlights, and some general tidying (fixing up a CSS issue that's been bothering me for months, yay!). If you could take some time to give them a little peep, please do!
Refresh your author profile
I didn't have to do too much to my profile itself, but it's always good to remind myself that I need to occasionally change my community signature, or else I risk telling everyone it's Summer Camp in the middle of December, every time I leave a comment on someone's work. Or my own.I guess in hindsight, I could just tell people that on purpose. That feral energy doesn't have to truly die, does it?
Review your category tree and organize
I took some time to ponder my categories, particularly in Ayun Sovos. I moved a few things around, added some new categories, and I'm waiting for a few more ideas to strike before I call myself content with them all. It might also just be too early to decide exactly how I want them, but we'll see how that changes as I write new articles!Realigning Myself with My Worldbuilding
It's been a long year and the brain is pretty scattered. I think it's a good idea to start with re-acquainting myself with my own worlds and getting my headspace primed and ready to get lost in the writing process!Painting the Scene for My Worlds
Describe your world in adjectives & identify types of people found in your world — These squares seemed to really suit my scope of worldbuilding this year, so I'm adding them to the task board! I think it's a great idea to know what your core themes and vibes are before you get too deep in the writing process.Unstable and Chaotic: Malkora
Malkora as a setting is meant to be a dark post-apocalyptic fantasy, but I would consider its defining theme to not be darkness, but instability.Its instability opens the door to a lot of dark outcomes and storylines, but the world as a whole is built on hope. Hope Incarnate, Vosra, the New Dawn is the principal deity of this world that brought it from darkness, and the notion that darkness can be beaten back wherever it appears is the driving narrative that keeps the world moving forward in spite of its unstable nature.
Malkora's Fractured People
The best way to describe people in Malkora is resilient. Yes, there is peril and there is death, but populations are adaptable by their own human design and can withstand just about any force that seeks to destroy them, even if it means that they might lose what we in the real world might consider to be their humanity in the process.What is lost could always return, if the conditions are right.
Whimsical and Bright: Ayun Sovos
Ayun Sovos is a setting built entirely from the heart, its focus centered on concepts that bring warmth to my spirit. Cute creatures, pretty flowers, wholesome interactions — it's a polar opposite to Malkora, by design.This is a bright, cozy fantasy setting, where most days are lovely, and every disaster has a solution with folks ready to put in the work to achieve it! There is plenty of mystery to unravel in the world, and adventure awaits, but it's just as good to stay in town, make friends, and do the things you love most.
The Bubbly Denizens of Ayun Sovos
Life is good in Ayun Sovos, and so are the people! You might not get along with everyone, sure, but there aren't many places you can go where you won't find some warm hospitality and a quest or two.This world is one where everyone has the freedom to pursue their true passions. Adventurers set off on epic quests, artisans craft works of wonder, and many denizens choose to live simple lives, building communities that give the folks living large a place to come home to when the quests are turned in.
Reviewing What We're Missing
Malkora certainly has more articles built up than Ayun Sovos, but both worlds have core articles published or in progress that I ought to do some catch-up reading for! So, let's tackle another two squares with this one: Re-read your core articles & review your world primer!Checking up on Malkora - Pillars and Primer!
Malkora does have a primer, and some great core articles that I've worked on in the past year! I'd just done a hefty rework of Ancient Bloodlines, which I think will be the main focus of my Malkora worldbuilding during this WorldEmber. All that delicious human lore needs to be expanded!Lots of human subtypes are unexplored, and most of my individual leyline articles are still stubs! The world is wide open for exploration!
Checking up on Ayun Sovos - Core Articles & Concepts!
Now, Ayun Sovos isn't particularly heavy on pillar articles yet. There's still plenty of room to grow and develop, but I've got some great starts going already after this past Summer Camp event!I'm thrilled about the Artisans article, but it's a reminder that Adventurers is still a sub article! It'd be a great idea to build that one up too, as the collaboration between Artisans and Adventurers is so crucial to the world's theme!
Defining My WE Scope & Wrangling Concepts
This WorldEmber is round two for working with two different world settings during the same winter event, and I have plenty of ideas for what I want to tackle for both. Lucky for me, both worlds are calling for similar topics, on the grand scale: magic.Malkora's Lens on Humanity
This is a subject I've been putting a lot of thought into in the past few months, diving into exactly what it really means to be a human in this world, and how one's life can change at any time due to its magical nature. I really got into asking these questions during Spooktober 2025 where I made a challenge of editing older content, including some of my earliest human variants! The Worldbuilding Showdown flash challenge really set that in motion, I think.Transformations in humanity are varied and can be affected in many different ways by who people are, how they live, and what magic flows natively through their veins. I'm excited to unpack this some more!
Topics on the brain: Malkora
The Magics of Ayun Sovos
This world is still so delightfully blank-slate, with very little world-wide development in place. I would love to change that with this event and explore what the magic system of Ayun Sovos looks like! I think starting with magic systems is my favorite way to worldbuild, because it seems so foundational to fantasy as a genre — it sets the world apart from our own in a clear and immutable way.I've been contemplating these systems in my journal, coming up with little diagrams, charts, concept notes, and more, and I'm so eager to turn all of that theorycrafting into something real in this world!
Topics on the brain: Ayun Sovos
- Adventurer Stub (Profession)
- Schools of Magic Idea (Natural Law)
- Unnamed School 1 - Lawful Idea (Natural Law)
- Unnamed School 2 - Whimsical Idea (Natural Law)
- Unnamed School 3 - Spiritual Idea (Natural Law)
- Spells! Broad Topic (Spell)
- Third member of the Reliquary League? Idea (Character)
Wrangling the Real Life!
There are a solid handful of tasks to complete that aren't exactly worldbuild-y in nature, but they'll really help get the ball rolling! Cleaning, planning, preparing, and more! Gosh, so much to do!Tidy your writing space
I've been on quite the decluttering kick lately! Making sure my desk is in tip-top shape before I start sitting down to write. I know a mess is the most distracting thing I could sit with. Stress cleaning, anyone?Read a book
I've been working on reading Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir, and I'm loving the wild ride that it is. Is it done yet? No. But have I been reading? Sure have! I say that counts for the square.Go for a walk
Grass was touched! Nature pondered, thoughts explored, and fresh air taken in (it's cold, though, so the air hurts my face now). Getting out of that stuffy room sure keeps the brain moving.Review or collect your world inspirations
I took some time to think about the things that inspire me for both of my settings, and I'm keeping that page of notes in my journal close to me while I write during the month.Plan your writing schedule
I know lately that my work weeks have been killer, so I'm likely not getting much weekday writing done. I'll be counting on taking my weekends to bust out as much writing as possible! Plus the last week of the year I took for vacation, which lines up just perfectly with the final week of WE!Free Action: Go all out!
I really wanted to go all out with WE prep this year, thinking things through, getting myself organized, and knowing exactly what I want to get out of the month ahead. I think I've nailed that with all of this prep here! I'm using my free space for going beyond the bingo, and really getting in the WorldEmber headspace!Quadruple WorldEmber Bingo!
I went into this prep expecting I'd stop at just one line complete. You know, a job well done, dusting my hands off, then hibernating until WorldEmber arrived. I'm delightfully surprised to see I put so much effort and thought into this whole process!That just means this WorldEmber is primed and ready to be absolutely amazing! So excited.
LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
LET'S CRUSH IT RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA GOOD LUCK BESTIE
WorldEmber is coming...
Seek a new dawn, in Malkora!
Craft a bright new world, in Ayun Sovos!