The Reach | World Ember Prep | 2025

Hey all! Firstly, thank you for visiting my page and diving into The Reach.
  This is my first World Amber, and I'm going to be ambitious with it because I'm very excited about my world and the story I'm writing for it (as part of novel ember) and I'm very distracted by World Anvil badges, and I must now collect them all.
  I'm pledging 25,000 words of new world-building content, and I'm going to spend most of this on locations. Planets, cities, city-ships, and city-stations. Broad, I know, but locations are very important in my setting. I'd also like to branch out and begin exploring the realm of writing one-shots, and I'd like to base them in my setting.
  I'd love to hit 50,000 words, but I don't know if it's feasible, so I'm playing it safe - gotta get that badge.
  I'm a person with crippling shyness, and I live in an isolated area, so my partner and I have never actually gotten to play TTRPG, but we love watching it and coming up with ideas. Since I already make miniatures for TTRPG, it feels like a natural extension to start working on adventures for players! I like creating content for other people to consume in one way or another. So, a book, and some adventures for adventurous folks.
  But I'm not good at mechanics! So, my work (for now) will be all story-based.

 
 

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Review or Collect your World Inspirations.

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• Spartacus, Blood and Sand

• Star Trek Discovery

• Star Wars

• Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon

• Gladiator

• Furiosa

• The Expanse

• Rogue One

• Battlestar Galactica

• Firefly

• Saga (graphic novel series by Brian Vaughn)

 

Refresh your author page for new readers.

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I assume this is my 'author' page on World Anvil? If there's another one, or we're meant to create a page specifically for it, I'm unaware of it. (for now).
  https://www.worldanvil.com/author/JaxonLeeRose

  Also this:
 

Create a moodboard for your world.

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This moodboard is based more on my characters than the world, but my characters drive the overall story, so, here we are.

Review or set up your world homepage.

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Review your category tree.

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Tidy up your writing space.

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Take my word for it. I've cleaned it up as much as possible and removed as many distractions as possible, but the cat hair remains eternal.

Define the scope for World Ember.

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I think I'm going to focus on a quadrant of systems and planets to build a setting that may come into play in my book series at some point, but will make for a fine area to create some one-shot adventure ideas for TTRPG. Knowing me, I'll hyperfixate, and expand certain areas more into species, people, and maybe some culture.
  I get distracted.

Review your world primer article.

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Find an Accountability buddy.

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I am terrible at 'making friends' as an online-centric person. I'm terrible at keeping up with online engagement, and spend most of my time harassing my partner. So I'll probably just have to use him, but he'll probably forget.

Get some Feedback.

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I shall rely on my muse, Moose, the cat. I am confident in his abilities. Unless someone else wants to volunteer - sci-fi really isn't my partner's forte.

Finish all your unfinished articles.

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This bingo block is barbaric.
  All of my unfinished articles are character blocks that I don't want to make public yet. Most of them are mere names and some basic info.

Read a book.

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My most recent reads this month are:
  The Last Hour of Gann by R. Lee Smith
  Saga by Brian Vaughn

FREE SPACE

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Free spot - please enjoy this photo of my cat after I had to sneak him into a hotel room and give him a shower.

Prepare visual elements.

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More Mood Boards!

Make a list of stubs to expand.

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Brinelis9

  Drakara Prime

  Earth

  Kelu-Vaar 3

  Kithari

  Nith'kaa

 

Plan your worldbuilding playlist.

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Make a list of articles to write.

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I'm going to be very vague here: New systems, planets, cities, city stations, and city ships.

Plan your writing schedule.

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On weekdays I typically write very late at night. On weekends or days off, I steal my partner's laptop and I'll go to town, sit in a specific pub that has $10 espresso martinis, and write there until the last bus. :D

What are the people in your world like?

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This is too broad of a question to answer, technically. Because I have a space setting, I have groups of people from every segment of the spectrum, from pure & good to horrendous & evil. Throw a dart, I've got a people for you.

Do some pre-writing research/

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Boy howdy, some of the stuff I've researched lately includes the effects of space on dead bodies, and live bodies, when near a sun and when a sun is absent. It's very creepy... And cool.
  I've also learned a lot about exactly how vast our galaxy is, how many other galaxies exist around us, and more astronomy than I thought I needed to know - which, in the grand scheme of things, still isn't that much.

Re-read your core articles.

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How dare you. I hate writing my own work - but I did it anyway. No comment.

Join the Community

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I'm on Discord! My profile username is BellaNacht, but I'm in the WorldAnvil server as JaxonLeeRose.

Review your world's visual appearance.

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I'm not the best coder and very much a novice with CSS, but I buckled down for a few days (hyperfocus) and styled my world. I did use ChatGPT to help me create snippets for the quote boxes and special effects. I think it could use tweaking to really make it be more dynamic and pop, but that's outside of my skillset.

Go for a walk.

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I live in Queenstown, NZ! Which has so many trails, I can't even begin to find them all. I actually clock myself a minimum of 8k steps a day, but I typically hit 12-15k per day and I do *a lot* of brainstorming during these times. Through the mountains and by the river... I pet a lot of cats and dogs along the way.