Welcome to our Monday Coffee. Every Monday is set aside for musings and considerations around the Twinverse, the Tales, and the writing craft as a whole. We will occasionally discuss sources of inspiration for the Twinverse, share some text from existing or upcoming books, discuss the history of the Twinverse's development, and how roleplaying games have contributed to fleshing out the world. We may even look at some of the original documentation on the Twinverse, at its very beginning. Happy Monday!
This Monday Coffee will be slightly different. First of all, I would like to apologize for the lack of updates on the site over the last few weeks, but a series of events have forced me to focus my attention elsewhere, and only now am I able to return to maintaining this blog. Rest assured, however, that this has not impacted the revisions of Ghostblood and Leaves, and both books are still proceeding apace.
That being said, this Monday I would like to focus on a topic that underpins most, if not all of the work I've done on the cosmos of the Twin Worlds. The continuing inspiration, if you will, which has not only helped me build the world, but also brought me to see the stories in it - stories like North Star, Ghostblood, Leaves, and many others. I have mentioned the source of this inspiration in the acknowledgements of North Star and I have touched upon it in several blog posts, but I feel it's important to highlight it. The Twin Worlds wouldn't exist, nor would they be where they are now, without being the setting, the backdrop of a series of roleplaying campaigns over two decades of play, counting more than thirty players.
It probably shouldn't be a surprise that the Twin Worlds were initially created as the setting for part of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign I played with a small group of friends during my university years. Back then, I didn't realize how big, complex and important this setting would become, and I kept a lonely Word file listing all the elements I had created for the world. Topics such as the Trienorn, the Ledhrorn, and how the betrayal of the former on the part of the latter had led to the lost history of the Twin Worlds. The Reflection played a huge role in that game, which depicted the entirety of the War of Saints, and its immediate aftermath. Later on, a final leg of the campaign with the same characters briefly explored how the world had changed, a century after the War.
From that moment, I led at least five other groups through campaigns set in the Twin Worlds, and each campaign added enormous amounts of details to the world. After the first one - cryptically titled "Crown of Secret Fates". Shortly afterwards, I moved to Germany, where I ran "Shadows of Sorrow" and, briefly, "Flowers of Amaranth". The former, among other things, inspired the creation of the Knights of the Ashes, briefly featured in North Star, and set the stage for the Brightland Civil War (we'll learn more about it later on). It also introduced characters that would become important for some later campaigns. The latter, in the meantime, became the first campaign to explore a new continent - the first Azranian continent I designed, Garvanth, and set up the concept of the amaranth flower as a symbol of immortality. More on this will come up at a later time, too.
I then moved to the United States, where I ran "An Ashen Lantern", a campaign based around the Knights of the Ashes and their discovery a chunk of lost history of the Twin Worlds. It unveiled the lost kingdom of Gaer Arythal, and heavily involved the Saelvir. taking place almost entirely in the realm of Ailund. Once this campaign finished, once again I delved into an entire new continent, Malgaria, with "On Iron Strands" and "Crucible of Qismet". Both were sandbox campaigns, designed to encourage exploration and emergent storylines. The latter introduced Kolvaar, a character that would become fundamental later on.
In 2017 I returned to Italy, and shortly afterwards reconnected with my very first roleplaying groups. We had last played together when we were teenagers, but we soon reconnected and started a new game, "Shadows of Kings", which we completed in 2020. The campaign took elements from the previous two, expanded them and built upon them. Kolvaar revealed his importance here, and a big step towards the prophesied end of the Seventh Age was taken. We are now deep into our second campaign, "Hands of Darkness", which explores yet another continent - Y'aquande - and advances the historical clock of the Twin Worlds by 250 years.
As I said, each campaign added complexity and depth to the world. And out of that depth rose stories that, while not suitable for gaming campaigns, would fit perfectly as books and novellas. North Star, Leaves and Ghostblood all fit the bill, with more to come. Among them is the story of Kolvaar, whom I mentioned before, and his companions, as well as the true meaning behind the amaranth flower.
The Twin Worlds have a wealth of stories to tell, and more come to light through gaming as well. I hope you will join us on this ride!
As a final side note - I don't know if I will ever commit any of the stories of those campaigns to paper. While it would be exciting to do so, those stories were collectively built over hundreds of hours of play, and I don't know if I could ever recapture that fully on the page. Perhaps one day I will try - certainly "An Ashen Lantern" and elements of "Shadows of Kings" would merit the attempt. I might adapt "On Iron Strands", since the campaign was left incomplete. But only time will tell. In the meantime, however, I plan to host retrospectives on these campaigns for the next few Monday Coffees, and hope you'll join me on this journey down memory lane.
Thank you again for being here, and I'll see you soon!
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