I was able to finish out the Economy category with the trade routes, and then I got all of the artifacts and letters in and the bulk of the Essence Weave content.

Like the materials category, I’m deeply unhappy with the trade routes and artifacts. While they add a bit of context and technically add to the lore, they feel cheap and shallow. There isn’t much to them. There is no benefit or emotional weight that the reader knows what sunstone is or why the Longsword of Alkelf is important. The artifacts also sound like generic D&D or MMO items. I’m leaving them as part of the lore mostly as a placeholder at this point – maybe they’ll provide context for phrases such as “By Berane’eq’s chalice!” but I’m not sure. Worst case scenario, I never touch those categories again and its just a tiny section with worthless information. I feel similarly about the trade and black market routes, but I do plan on expanding those significantly and including them in historical letters and events. In contrast, the letters provide rich first-person accounts of the historical events. While the events themselves are described, the letters give more emotional weight – you aren’t just reading about the last stand against the end of the world, you’re reading about someone’s final thoughts before their success or failure in that last stand.

The Essence Weave and Magic articles are entered, but I’m not sure on the formatting and I would like to add more context/explanation to them. I think there is enough context provided when reading other articles, but it’d be nice to have it also explained fully in one place. The only thing left there is the arcane entities and the gods. I’ll probably group the gods as part of the Essence Weave and a religion category.

Up next is going to be the arcane entities and the regular mortal creatures. I’m hoping to get those entered over the next few days – the entries are incredibly short, but they have images and saving and uploading gets tedious really quickly. Once they are entered, only the historical events, races, gods, and religious texts will remain. The historical events might take some to type up, and the races and gods will be annoying just like the creatures and arcane entities.

I still haven’t figured out how I will format the religious texts – they all have books, chapters, and verses and I would like them to be organized as neatly as I have them in the word document. All in all though, I don’t see me taking more than another ~2 weeks to get all of the content imported. Hopefully I will add the hyperlinks within that timeframe as well, but depending on how easy it is and how motivated I am, that could take up much of August.

Once I get into September, I guess I will have to start working on some actual new lore. I’ve been toying with some ideas for the Unknown Wastelands as well as the snowy region near Icehaven and Fort Frosthold, but I’m not sure I should actually explore them – especially the Unknown Wastelands. Once they’re known, that mystery is gone. I don’t want to say “this is happening over there” and change my mind and retcon/delete it as if it never happened. Major retcons drive me crazy. There isn’t a lot of lore to them, but unlike the artifacts and materials, the mere reference to an unexplored chunk of land adds an ominous and adventurous depth in the background. But who knows – maybe theres an underwater kingdom off its coast (something I had originally planned to do five years ago and then forgot about) or a nomadic people that wander within site of passing ships and some limited trade starts. Every time I add more “stuff” to the age of Rekindling, I push the “present day” back a little further each time and events that were originally recent developments become decades old – something that bothers me to an extent. I suppose that is a living reflection of me writing the lore over the course of half a decade.