The new campaign wiki is live and you're looking at it. Same address as the old one, so nothing changes on your end — you'll just find it considerably better organized.
The navigation breaks down into broad categories that lead to index pages, and from there either into sub-categories or a chronological list of articles depending on where you are. The home page will always link to the most recent articles so you can find what's new without digging. There's also an Archive section that lists every page on the wiki chronologically.
Everything from the old wiki made the move, and there's already a lot of new content that wasn't there before.
One final note: this is a wiki, which means anyone can contribute to it. If you want to add something — session recaps, character notes, theories, lore you've pieced together — I would genuinely love that. Just let me know you're interested and I'll get you an account.
Last week I released the official map of Venturia and I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's not a tactical tool. It's not going to tell you which alley to duck into or how far the market district is from the harbor — but it will give you a sense of the whole city at a glance. What's where, how the districts relate to each other, what this place actually looks like from above.
There are more maps coming. More practical ones, more specific ones. But when you just want to hold the whole city in your head, that map is the one.
While I was building it I realized I had never produced a proper campaign framework — something that explains in plain terms what this campaign is, structurally and thematically, for anyone who wants that kind of orientation. So I made one: The Valley of Shadows Framework.
Thank you for showing up for the level-up and practice session. I mean that. That will be the last time we get together and don't actually play — I'm done asking for your patience on the prep side.
Character questions are going on the back burner. You have all been far more patient with me than I had any right to expect, and it's time to stop developing and start doing.
I'll keep releasing lore regularly. Read what you can, skip what you can't. I told you at the start that the plan was for you to learn this world through osmosis, and I meant it. Some of your characters would naturally know things the others don't. Some of you will read articles others never get to. I like that. I like the idea of you needing each other to complete the picture rather than any one person having the whole thing. Producing content the way I do is intentional — I don't expect everyone to read everything, and honestly I don't want that either.
All of that is prologue to this: it's time to play.
Our next in-person session is a one-shot called The Last Toll — a standalone story set in a pirate haven at the edge of the known world, on a night when the known world decides to change. It's designed to be a complete experience on its own, and it's also our first real chance to sit down together and find out how we play now that we all know each other a bit better.
A new self-indulgent bi-weekly column.
There is a concept in Japanese aesthetics called Ma. It resists clean translation, but the closest English approximation is something like "negative space" — the pause between notes, the silence between words, the empty room that gives the occupied room its meaning.
There's a scene in Seven Samurai where the samurai and the villagers sit together in the rain the night before a battle they may not survive. Nothing is decided. Nothing is explained. Kurosawa just holds on it — the rain, the fire, the silence between people who have run out of words. The audience fills in everything else.
I've been thinking about it because The Last Toll is our first Ma moment — the pause between all the preparation and the real start of the pre-amble to the campaign itself, and the space where we figure out how we play together.
You have all been extraordinary through months of preparation — reading lore, building characters, showing up for early sessions, answering questions about people who didn't exist yet. That's not nothing. But prep is the notes. It's time to play the music.
So here's what's been on my mind as I build it.
Most of us have learned to play D&D like a point-and-click adventure game. You examine the object. The DM tells you what it means. You examine the next object. Eventually you have enough information to proceed. The DM is the answer machine and your job is to ask the right questions in the right order.
That's a fine way to play. But it's not how I want it to work for this campaign.
When I finish a description, I think the most interesting thing that can happen next is not a question directed at me. It's you turning to the person next to you and saying what do you make of that — and meaning it. Because their character grew up in this world and maybe yours didn't. They may know what a ship formation in the outer moorings means to someone who has sailed these waters for three years.
I'm just the narrator. You're the ones who live here.
Most of what you notice will never become plot-relevant. Some of what you ignore might matter enormously later. I genuinely cannot tell you which is which — not because I'm being coy, but because that depends entirely on what you do.
If something feels significant to your character, it is significant. If your character would have an opinion, have it out loud. If two of you would disagree about what the empty stool means, disagree. That disagreement is the Ma. Not the silence after I stop talking, but what happens at the table before anyone decides what to do next — the moment someone says I have a bad feeling about this and someone else says then let's go find out why.
Kurosawa holds on the rain because the rain is the scene. I'll hold on those moments too. They're not filler between plot points. They're the whole point.
See you at the table.