Become a Chronomancer

Whenever we create a new feature for World Anvil, our goal is to ensure that the feature offers a new and exciting way to elevate your world building. With Chronicles, we believe we’ve achieved that (and more!)

Chronicles took the core features of our Interactive Maps tool, and our Timelines tools, and merged them into an interface that allows you to manage maps and timelines at the same time (there’s a Polymerization joke here). Due to this, we’ve dubbed Chronicles our Chronomancy tool, giving you ultimate power over time and space. Now we’re just trying to figure out how to get more than 24 hours in a day… (In real life, I mean. This is very easy to do within Chronicles)

We asked Stephan (Xuroth, developer of Chronicles) what he loved about developing the tool.

“…it was complicated and involved a bit of stress, it was invigorating to know we’d end up with a powerful tool that helps empower authors to convey their history in an engaging way.” He also added: “My favorite aspect of Chronicles is the versatility. It may be intended to show a historical record of events, but it can be used for parallel timelines, plotting stories, as an educational tool for teachers, etc. I love that I made something that will enrich people’s experiences!”

What can we expect to see from Chronicles in the future? We caught up with Stephan regarding that too. “We’ve been watching the stats and listening to our community beans, and we’ve begun planning the next couple updates. We’ve got some much-requested features and improvements coming in the next weeks and months!”

They say that one of the greatest tools in storytelling is show, don’t tell, and it would be amiss for us to talk about how great Chronicles is, without at least showing you a little something that it can do. So we’ve created some Chronicles internally that we’d love to share with you!

The History of the Roman Empire – by Dimitris

To recount the entire history of the Roman Empire is no small task. Dimitris has invited other Anvilities to join the project, and together they’re building something amazing!

The Chronicle makes use of the multiple timelines feature to simultaneously display the histories of the Roman Empire, the Greek States and the Kingdom of Macedon. The Chronicle also uses the map markers and interactive map portion of Chronicles to allow readers to view the locations of historical events and battles.

But why describe it to you when we can show you instead? One of the great features of Chronicles is that you can share your work with just a single link, as long as it’s set to public!

If you’d like to check out Dimitris’ History of the Roman Empire – you can do so here.

A Modern History of Frasfu – by Ondo (Roc)

You may already be aware of Ondo and Black Light. They recently joined World Anvil as a full-time Team Member (after recently graduating!) but have been part of the community for a while now.

Frasfu is one of the worlds that feature prominently within Ondo’s Black Light, their main world on World Anvil. Ondo describes Frasfu as:

“Frasfu is a medieval fantasy planet that is part of the science fantasy universe of Black Light. It’s the most diverse planet in terms of species, with nine different sapient species. Magic in this world is known as Selenurgy, and it’s all about using magical moonlight-activated stones.”

Ondo’s Chronicle focuses on the originally intended use for the feature, focusing on retelling the history of your own world. They make excellent use of the map marker feature, connecting multiple timeline events to one marker, to represent the different events that have happened in the same place, as well as embedding their articles for curious readers to learn more!

All of this is connected to an absolutely gorgeous map that really displays the creative mind behind Black Light.

You can explore Frasfu for yourself by clicking this link.

Old School Runescape Quests – Ayydam (Adam)

It might be of no surprise to most of you, but the majority of us on the World Anvil team absolutely love Runescape. Some of the team even still play Old School Runescape! (We’re old, okay?)

You may have seen our integration with J1mmy, on his By Release series in which he completes every Runescape quest in the order that they were released. You may even see World Anvil pop up on some other Runescape creators in the coming months…

The integration inspired Adam, one of the World Anvil team, to create a Chronicle that featured the abundance of quests that appear across the world of Old School Runescape.

This Chronicle uses the timeline feature to display the date in which the quest was released, then uses the maps feature to display where in the world these quests can be started. However, some Runescape quests do not begin in the overworld. This is where another great feature from Chronicles comes into play – the ability to have multiple maps. 

By clicking on a quest that begins in a location that isn’t the overworld, Chronicles can immediately take the reader to the correct map. 

But don’t just take our word for it. Take a look at the history of Old School Runescape Quests here.

Get Started on Your Journey to Chronomancy!

Have these Chronicles inspired you to create your own? We certainly hope so! Chronicles is available for all Master+ Guild Members, so if you’re not already a Master, but you’re itching to create your own Chronicle – upgrade now!

We also don’t want to leave you out to dry, so we’ve created some varying materials for Chronicle, to help all you different types of learners out there!

Take a look at our video tutorial here:

Or if you prefer to learn via reading, we also have our Codex page here.