One of the first things you’ll notice is that, at its foundational level, the Tellest World Anvil is a place first.  That is to say that while you can build a World Anvil of your own in a lot of ways, we have the world of Tellest as the backdrop of sorts, and we’ve placed our people, and treasures, and cities and everything on top of it.  When you first go to the Tellest World Anvil, you’ll see a lot of maps that you can venture into.  For our example, we’ve used Draconis, as its the continent that we’ve spent the most time developing.  Right from the get-go, you’ll be able to see things like landmarks and cities right there for you to peruse.

Now, we’re always looking for new ways to try and expand what we have, but Tellest is a great, big world.  Sometimes we have some of the basics in place, but are still working our way toward developing the world further.  For the most part, any time you see a city sigil, that means that we’ve identified where that city is.  But writing an entire article about it takes a bit of time more, so you might only see a brief snippet about it, such as its name.  Rest assured, we are working toward putting together additional information all the time, and before long, that city with merely a tag will be expanded on, and you can see how you might use it in your games, learn more about how it applies to the entire tapestry of Tellest stories, and more!

Let’s move onto the next interesting bit.  In the top right corner of the screen, you’ll notice that there is a layer selector button.  When you click this, you get to see a lot of different options, some which are dependent on what kind of subscriber you are to Tellest content.  Two of the most popular layers you’ll see below are the Artifacts and Characters layers.

Everybody has a favorite Tellest character, and enabling the character layer will show all of the characters who we currently have art for, and you’ll see them show up on the map where they would most closely align.  As Kaiyonani is a kaja from Saveon, you would not see her on the Draconis map, for instance.  But you would see Adelia Kreegan, and you can see her below.  The below information screen that you see for Adelia gives you some basic details, but you can see her entire profile by clicking the button under her name.  It’s a cool way to go down the Tellest rabbit hole, and move from one section of the Tellest universe to the next.  We’re always working on ways to link one entry in the Tellest World Bible to the next, and this is one way to accomplish that.

By the way, you might have noticed that above the individual layers on the bottom, there are some adjustments that you can make to the overall appearance of the map as well.  Typically this is something like showing you the influence that a kingdom has over its associated continent, but every now and then we have another special thing that we add as well.

Speaking of special things, we have something very special that is available only to Tellest Patrons at the Scholar level and higher.  You’ll notice below that we have something called the Character Portrait Map.  This collects information for a humongous chunk of our characters who we’ve had art commissioned for over the years.  These will also link back to character profiles so you can get a bit more information on all the Tellest characters.

It also gives you information right from the profile pop-up, so you can see what sort of powers characters have, and how you might be able to identify them.  We’re adding characters all the time, thanks to our collaborations with great artists, so be sure to check back often.  We’ll have a new page up before you know it!

I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek of the Tellest World Anvil.  We’re always working on trying to enrich the world of Tellest, and the World Anvil offers us some very interesting ways to do that!

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This next month-and-a-half is definitely going to be a busy one for us. Let’s get the most awesome news out of the way first.  Rhianna and I are getting marriedon Saturday!  In a lot of ways, Tellest brought us together, so I thought that this was a fair place to announce the happy occasion.  We’ve got some wedding-related goodies that we’ll be posting on the site in the next few weeks as well, but other than that, we’ll probably be a little quiet until we’re back from sunny Florida.

Luckily, I’m leaving you with a decent amount of news as well!

First off, I’d like to formally announce my first ever entry into NaNoWriMo.  For those who don’t know what it is, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month.  It’s a challenge for authors to write at least 50,000 words in the 30 days of November.  Those of you who have been following Tellest for a while are probably well aware that it is a real challenge for me.  The Fall took me almost half a year to write, and it didn’t even have 50,000 words in it by the time it was complete.  I’m committed to the attempt though, and I’m going to give it my all.  In November, I’ll give you more information about the story I’m writing, and give you previews and excerpts so that you can join in on the fun as well!

We’ve also got some very cool collaboration news to talk about.  Earlier this year I began working with some fine folks at Worldspinner.  Their Kickstarter absolutely crushed it last September, and they’ve been making great strides to bring a wonderful product to the world.  It’s a worldbuilding tool that both gamers and authors can use to help with that process.  It’s an amazing tool with a lot of potential to make your tabletop games, your world lore and your stories in general exponentially more robust.  I’m just freelancing at the moment, proofreading and offering up some smaller plots that may randomly show up, but I feel incredibly blessed to be a part of their huge story!

Last but not least, I’d like to direct your attention to Bear Mountain Books.  They’ve graciously decided to take the cover for Mageborn and poll their readers about it.  So far, it seems that the cover image itself is appreciated, but the font and even the logo may be a little confusing.  I love what Bear Mountain Books and Maria Schneider are doing for authors (and for readers) and I encourage you to give the site a gander.  And you might as well like theirFacebook page as well—you’ll be the first to know about deals, reviews and book cover polls like the one running for Mageborn.

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While I was gone, the very first secondary story was released.  Fallen takes place so far out of the way compared to the events of the Child of the Stars trilogy.  That was the wonderful thing about it though.  It was simple, it was isolated, and I feel like I told a lot in under 1500 words.

As I said before though, Tellest is not, and cannot just be me.  Within the next two to three weeks, I’m hopeful that we’ll get the first official story released that’s not written by me.  Becoming a Man will be released on Kindle for .99, and will showcase some of the established characters that we’ve already seen, but from someone with a much different perspective.

This past week also heralded the last of the “classic” encyclopedia entries.  We’re going to take at least this week to start working on making the encyclopedia have more of a wikipedia-like feeling.  You’ll be able to move from Kaja to Kobold to Romus Youngblood via hyperlink, and it should make the world of Tellest feel more connected.  After that, we’ll be back into the regular swing of things, releasing an encyclopedia entry every week for the foreseeable future.  I’d also like to try and find some way to give the readers the opportunity to decide what order the encyclopedia entries are released.

It may be a little preemptive,  but I think we’re going to start making our first big push over the next few weeks. We’re going to start looking for additional talent to lend their hands to Tellest, and it may very well be you we’re looking for. Keep an eye out!

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