Aglitall
Project Type
Fantasy Worldbuilding & Setting Development
Tagline
An original fantasy world built outward from place, where geography, mythology, history, and story grow through connection.
Role
Writer · Worldbuilder
Skills
Worldbuilding, Setting Development, Fantasy Lore, Mythology Development, Magic Systems, Cultural Worldbuilding, Environmental Storytelling, Character Development, Narrative Development
Overview
Project Overview
Aglitall is an original fantasy world that began with a map.
The earliest idea behind the setting appeared in 2024 as a much smaller story about a mysterious archer who traveled through an imagined world from the shelter of the treetops. In January 2025, while creating a fantasy map alongside a homeschool mapmaking unit, that unnamed world began to take shape. As regions were drawn onto the map, each new place raised another question: who lived there, what had happened there, what did its people believe, and how might its history affect the places surrounding it?
Those questions gradually transformed a simple setting into an interconnected world of distinct regions, cultures, characters, conflicts, mythology, magical forces, artifacts, and histories. The original archer evolved alongside it, eventually becoming Peigin, while characters and storylines began emerging from the places being developed around her. Aglitall ultimately grew large enough to support an outlined fantasy trilogy, with most of its first novel drafted.
The world was later revisited and adapted for Bound by the Bow, a serialized dark-folklore fantasy that condenses and reimagines the original narrative while preserving the larger world and mythology that developed around it. Aglitall remains an ongoing setting, capable of supporting stories beyond the narrative that first brought it into existence.
Creative Approach
Creative Approach
Aglitall was built outward from place. Rather than developing the world from a predetermined list of cultures, histories, or systems, I allowed the geography of the original map to generate questions. A forest, mountain range, isolated settlement, or divided region became an invitation to ask what might exist there, why it had developed that way, and how living there would shape the people who called it home.
As those questions were answered, the world began developing through connection. Geography influenced culture; culture created beliefs and traditions; history shaped relationships between regions; mythology became entangled with political and personal conflict. Magical forces and artifacts were developed not as isolated pieces of lore, but as elements with histories, consequences, and relationships to the people and places surrounding them.
Characters developed through this same process. Rather than existing independently of the setting, many emerged from the circumstances of the world itself—their identities, loyalties, conflicts, and choices shaped by where they came from and what had happened there before them. In turn, those characters revealed parts of the world that had not yet been explored, creating an ongoing exchange between setting and story.
This approach allows Aglitall to remain expandable without requiring every part of the world to be defined in advance. New locations and stories can be developed by following the connections already present: asking what came before, what exists nearby, what people believe, what has been forgotten, and what consequences might travel beyond the place where they began.
Status
Ongoing
Year
2024
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