The Origins of Ralvera

Who am I and What is This?

Hi, my name is Jack, and I'm the author of The Oasis Stone and the creator of Ralvera. This entire world started back in the early months of 2020 as a Covid project. I initially created Ralvera with the intention of running it as a homebrew D&D setting. I've been running games for ten years (seven at the start of creating Ralvera), and it's never stopped being one of my favorite hobbies. Alas, all my friends already play in a long-running D&D group that I've been hosting for years; this is great for me, but not for my new homebrew world. Getting a new game off the ground was not going to happen, so what was I to do with this world I made? It was here that the first idea of writing a book crept into my head. Having never written a book before—or much of anything, truth be told—I sat down and started typing out The Oasis Stone.

The original map I made for Ralvera.

The World of Ralvera

Ralvera is a fresh world, widely unexplored and unsettled. The apocalypse has come and gone. Approximately two-hundred and fifty years ago, the Paroxysm annihilated the land as unnatural, arcane volcanoes—known as the Vents—erupted from the earth.

The Vents divided the land. Scorch Vents burn across the center of the continent, while two gargantuan Frost Vents spew blizzards into the north and south. Only some land is hospitable now; the grasslands and forests of the Verdants, trapped between searing desert and blistering ice. While the Vents have calmed since the Paroxysm, they are not dead. Ash and snow still plume in colossal columns from their calderas, and terrifying Vent beasts still claw their way up from the depths of the earth, grotesque and ravenous.

The people of Ralvera have recovered, forming communities and cities where they can. They explore, trade, and even thrive in their unknown, broken world. However, the threat of the Vent is always looming. Their strange power warps the land around them, making living in their shadow no easy task. Everyone in Ralvera knows the Vents will erupt again, and when they do, the apocalypse will return.

The Inspiration Behind Ralvera

As I was thinking of what to put in my new world, I wanted to make something as unique as possible. I've always loved worlds like D&D's Faerun, where the entire land is filled with folks of all shapes and sizes, so I knew from the start that I wanted a plethora of races to inhabit Ralvera. However, when I started, I told myself, "No elves, no dwarves, and no dragons." I tried to stay true to that, however much a Vent beast ends up looking like a dragon.

The concept of the divided world is actually inspired by tidally-locked exoplanets, where one side of the planet always faces the sun and one side is always in shadow. The theory is that one half of the planet is scorching hot, the other is frozen solid, and there could be a strip of habitable land around the planet's equator. I really liked the idea of worldbuilding around that concept, but wanted to somehow put it into a fantasy setting rather than sci-fi. My solution? Magical volcanoes. After solidifying that as the basis for Ralvera, I had an immense amount of fun tailoring each race, each place, and each biome to respond to the grim power of these natural disasters.

Where is Ralvera Going?

As of writing this, the first book is out and available. If you haven't already, read The Oasis Stone to start the grand adventure in the world of Ralvera. The series will be at least four books long, likely stretching into five. Even after that, I think I'll be writing stories in this world for many years to come. Thanks for reading, and welcome to Ralvera!