Creator's Note
World creator · author · sole developer
The Shattering of Aethelgard did not begin as a plan to create an entire universe. It began with a much simpler idea: to build the kind of game my wife and I wanted to play together.
The Beginning
Outside Aethelgard, I work as a chemical and biological engineer. Games, however, have been part of my life since I was very young. I have always been especially drawn to strategy, life simulation, resource management and city-building games — worlds where places grow, resources matter and the player's choices shape what happens next.
After I met my wife, I found someone who loved many of the same kinds of games. Over the years, we often found ourselves having the same conversation: one game might have a system we loved, while another offered a feature we wished existed in the first. We enjoyed many different games, but the particular combination of freedom, depth and ideas we wanted always seemed to be spread across several of them rather than found in one place.
Eventually, instead of waiting for that game, I decided to begin building one for the two of us.
What began as a game needed a setting. The setting needed a past. That past created cultures, settlements, conflicts, different ages and people whose choices left consequences behind them. Gradually, the background stopped feeling like background at all. It became a world large enough to hold games, novels and recorded history as different parts of the same continuing canon.
That world became The Shattering of Aethelgard.
For a long time, Aethelgard was something I was creating for myself and for my wife, with whom the original idea began. As the world continued to grow, I realised that I wanted other people to be able to enter it too. The games, the novels and the Living Archive became different doors into the same world — and this website is where I have chosen to begin opening those doors to you.
A Systems Mindset
Engineering and fantasy occupy very different parts of my life, but the way I think naturally carries from one into the other. I tend to see things as connected systems — resources, constraints, trade-offs, causes and consequences. In Aethelgard, that way of thinking shapes settlements, economies, technologies, magical rules and histories, where a decision made in one age can continue to matter centuries later.
Built Independently
I create Aethelgard independently and develop it part-time alongside my full-time career in chemical and biological engineering. Its games, fiction, history, worldbuilding and Living Archive all belong to the same world and are shaped under one connected creative direction.
Creative Process
I use AI openly as part of Aethelgard's production. It assists me with areas including visual asset creation, coding, technical development and iteration. I do not present Aethelgard as an AI-free project, and I have no intention of hiding the tools I use to build it.
The creative foundation of Aethelgard is my own. Its world, history, cultures, characters, magic, settings, stories and overall direction come from my ideas and decisions. The games also grew from years of playing together with my wife — from systems we loved, features we wished could exist together, and the kind of experience we repeatedly looked for across different games but never quite found in one place.
AI is part of the production process, not the source of Aethelgard's identity. I decide what belongs in this world, what is changed, what is rejected and what ultimately becomes part of the finished work.
I understand that some people prefer not to support creative work that uses AI. If that is important to you, Aethelgard may simply not be the right project for you.
The archive remains open.
Return to the Living Archive