You're A Worldbuilder

The time I realized what everyone else already knew.

In my mind, I live here

In the beginning...

It feels strange writing a journal entry that other human beings might actually read. I’ve never kept journals for an audience — honestly, I haven’t kept them for myself since I was a teen — but if I’m opening the door to the strange little workshop inside my skull, I might as well start with the moment the lightbulb flickered on.

One of my lifelong favorite series is The Dark Elf Trilogy (yes, specifically those three; Drizzt is great, but I’m not committing to thirty-nine extended-universe volumes). I devoured them at thirteen or fourteen years old. I’d already made it through The Lord of the Rings, so nothing felt too intimidating. I fell in love with the Underdark long before I knew anything about its real-world origins. “Wizards of the Coast” sounded like in-universe lore, not… an actual company. I figured authors just shared a universe.

Skip a few...

Jump ahead a few years. I was working at a national bookstore — basically my dream job — and my manager, Steve, was one of those rare genuinely good humans who actually saw his employees.

Around that time, I’d started looking into D&D. My entire understanding was: it takes hours, involves dice, and vaguely reminded me of Tales of the Arabian Nights, which is a board game that's tragically out of print and deserves a resurrection.

Then one day the regional supervisor visited. Great guy. He asked about my favorite book, and I said The Dark Elf Trilogy without hesitation. Steve immediately said, “I didn’t know you played D&D!”

I didn’t. Not yet. So I just stood there like, “What secret knowledge do you possess, Steve?”

Cue the revelation: as I learned more about D&D, everything felt familiar. The races, the cities, the geography — I already knew them. I had accidentally been a D&D nerd since middle school without realizing I was in the fandom. I had been recommending those books without realizing I was making a nerd army.

It all clicked...

I reread the trilogy as an adult and kept thinking how rich that setting was… and how bizarre it was that the one official 5e Underdark adventure didn’t actually let you live in it.

So I spent a year writing my own Underdark campaign. I paused my novel, rolled up my sleeves, and built a homebrew from the bones of a place I’d loved for decades.

I found a group, and we started playing. It was the first time I’d ever shared something I created with real humans. Terrifying is the honest word. I try to prep for everything. I’ve named more NPCs than I can currently remember. Every shopkeeper has a name, just in case my players ask. My players like sandbox chaos; I like structure. They knew that going in.

While they were reading my house rules, one of them grinned and said, “Oh, you’re a worldbuilder!”

And for the first time, it hit me: they were right.

I didn’t create Faerûn or the Underdark, but I did create Gilded Helix. That world lived in my head long before I typed a sentence. It was where I went when reality got too sharp — a place to slip into someone else’s skin, someone else’s trouble, someone else’s victory. A place that wasn’t here.

Realizing that felt like cracking open a door I didn’t know I’d locked. I had made a world. A society. I had walked with characters I genuinely love. I’d carried an entire universe around behind my eyes long before I dared to share it.

And now I’m opening the cosmic door and inviting you in.

Unlike Faerûn, this world was born from me — from bruises, from the tiny refuges carved out in the dark. The stars in this universe are tears I shed. I bled pieces of myself into the ink. If the characters seem caught between hurt and redemption, it’s because that’s where they were born.

But above all, I built this world to hold hope

People talk about Pandora’s box like the hope at the bottom is obvious and easy to believe in, but some days the box feels suspiciously empty. Sometimes we need an entirely different world to remind us what hope even looks like.

It's my greatest wish that this story does that. That this world does that.

Even a creature of the Underdark — like me — can learn to appreciate a little light.