Talespinner's Tapestry
Introduction
The world of Merillon is a fictitious land that was once to bethe backdrop for a role-playing game I was working on. Although the game has been abandoned, the world has evolved into a rich and colourful setting, with many interesting places and characters. The world is pre-industrial, but does not seek to emulate any one period in Earth's history. Various elements in the world have their inspiration in real or fictitious elements of Earth's past, especially medieval Europe and ancient Rome.
The main purpose of this site is to give a glimpse into the background of Merillon, as well as provide a place for new stories to be created.
The Evolution of Imagination
The world, history, and peoples of Merillon are constantly changing, as I add more details, and change elements to make the world fit its changing purpose. Even the name of the world has not stayed constant. Although it is constantly evolving, the world has gone through at least two distinct phases, distinguished by changes in geography, races, and even the naming of the world.
At first, the world was rather unimaginatively called "the Thirteen Lands" and was nothing more than a setting for a story I was writing. The story began in the Valley of Torqueil, and was heavily influenced by the PC game Hero's Quest, which I had played not long before beginning to write. As I tried to take the story away from the game, the world expanded beyond the valley, into a collection of different territories, of which the valley was only a small part. The Thirteen Lands were not only distinct geographical regions, but were also characterised by different races. These races bear little resemblance to the races which populate Merillon now. The geography of the world has also changed since that time, with some regions being moved, and others removed completely. The Thirteen Lands were inhabited by Elves, Dwarves, and several varieties of Human. The northern reaches of the Lands were populated by barbarian tribes which were heavily influenced by the tribes of the Dragonlance novels. The Elves and Dwarves were similar to those of Tolkein, or Dungeons and Dragons. The story itself, is perhaps the only thing that has survived mostly intact from that stage of development. However, like most of the stories I write, it was never finished, and sat neglected for years.
The second major stage of development came when I began developing my own MUD. The MUD needed a world, and rather than develop a new one from scratch, I decided to use the setting of the Thirteen Lands. I wanted unique races in this world though, so the Elves, Dwarves, and Humans were set aside, and the new races were introduced. The races are loosely based on players or characters from another MUD I played, taking basic traits, and warping and generalizing them into basic racial tendencies. One race however, has very different origins. The Drakyri are not of my invention. They come from a highly detailed MUD area that has been widely distributed. The level of detail in the area's descriptions, and the rich society of the Drakyri made it something that I wanted to include in my world, and hopefully expand upon. The geography of the land also underwent some changes at this time, as I tried to work in areas that I had already made for the MUD and give the new races suitable homelands. The story also changed slightly at this time, and the geography changed to reflect that. At this time, the world was given the name Merillon. Unfortunately, the world was again left in neglect for some time, as I returned to school, and had little time to devote to working on the (still unfinished) MUD.
The third, and current, state of development combines the story from the orignal work with the richer setting of the MUD world. The stories are still being written, but now they have a much fuller backdrop to stand against. Some of the names still need changing, as they are still somewhat unoriginal, but the basic ideas are all there now, just waiting to be woven together into the Tapestry.