About

Once Upon a Time

Evindale has been a work in progress since the late 70s/early 80s,
when I taped together sheets of hex paper, picked up colored pencils,
and started drawing the northwestern shores of Iviria.

To name the cities and countries, I either made them up or spun a globe
and planted a finger blindly. Places like Karak in Moab made it onto
the map because, as a 14-year-old, I had no idea this world would one
day become a reality.

Over the next few years, I detailed a world that felt like home.
Cities were added and detailed on other pieces of paper. Every shop
and inhabitant of the Grand City of Cultrek was documented. By the
time I started high school, I had four filing cabinet drawers full
of details, maps, and character sheets.

Then “The Purge” happened.

Most of what I had written, drawn, noted, and mapped was destroyed
during the great D&D scare of the 80s. To this day, I only have
one interior shop map, the world map, and two pages of city shop
details.

I’m sure they’ll make their way into a supplement. I’ll put a symbol
near the map or something. Only you and I will know what it means. 😉

After The Purge, a creative funk took hold. I stopped playing D&D
for many years, though I carried the world map with me whenever I moved.

In 1990–’92, I co-owned a company with 2,200 square feet of gaming
space. There I met some of my greatest friends. Geof Davis became
the Art Director for a gaming newsletter I was publishing.

After hours, the World of Evindale opened back up, and the
Principalities of Mütvia, Dmitri Vladescu—played by Geof—Aleksandr
Dracovich, today an NPC, and more came to life.

Evindale was reborn.

Over the years, I added small details here and there. Around 2009,
I scanned the worn paper map I had carried through many moves and
started rebuilding it digitally.

As old paper hexes were covered by electronic pixels, stories of the
lands came to mind, and names were changed on the fly. The world started
to speak to me again.

Unfortunately, the original paper map has been lost as of this writing.

In 2025, Evindale became Ævyndal. The old name had been with the world
for decades, but the world itself had long since grown beyond the name
I gave it as a kid.

Ævyndal marked that change—not a new world, but the same one, carried
forward under a name that finally felt like it belonged to what it
had become.

This work has been over 40 years in the making, and I sincerely hope
you love it as much as I have enjoyed dreaming of it.