The History of Saleh'Alire
How it came to be, and what inspired me
Growing up, Dungeons and Dragons had been a huge part of my teenage years, spending summers several cities over with my friends; I started playing when I was roughly 12 or 13 years old- but I fell out of playing when I fell out with the friend group who introduced me to it around 2010 ... When Critical Role aired (supposedly in 2015), however, I started playing again. My Husband, however, had a conservative upbringing and so had very minimal exposure to the game in his youth (by which I mean he was exposed to it exactly once, and by way of a wholly negative and stereotypical experience). When I started playing again he was intriqued, but had no idea what I found so interesting about it; without any other way to explain it, in 2017 I finally made him watch Critical Role- explaining everything the best I could as the episodes went on. He was hooked the second he saw Travis Willingham playing, and decided he wanted to play himself after writing it off for so long... With extreme social anxiety, however, he didn't feel comfortable playing alone with people he didn't know. So we started looking for games that we could play in together as a couple on Role 20. Sadly we were unsuccessful in finding one that not only fit for us, but also worked with our incredibly limited time schedule; we either didn't care for the groups themselves, or the story they were telling. After nearly six months with no luck (and one failed campaign)... In a minor fit of madness brought on purely by the love I have for my Husband... I decided to DM a game for him instead. Thus Saleh'Alire was born... Sort of.
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First Iteration
[/container]Saleh'Alire in its first and most original form, initially began as just a simple homebrew of the world of Exandria- the world created by Matt Mercer for the Critical Role campaign I'd introduced my husband to Dungeons and Dragons through; he'd fallen in love, and really wanted to play. It made sense at the time to try and play within the setting he'd fallen in love with.
In order to understand where in the world my campaign would take place, I searched high and low for a map- finally finding a screenshot from one of the episodes (Campaign 1, episode 103, to be exact). From there I created a rudimentary map and even got feeback from Matt Mercer himself about where he envisioned the various areas being... After that, I began the work of adding my own continents. In the beginning, Saleh'Alire was actually a single continent named Demora that I inserted beneath Tal'Dori, and separated by a string of islands called The Shards. Later I went on to add another continent (Asecia) that my players could visit- though I kept the worldbuilding minimal, as I didn't expect them to be visiting any time soon; just a few kingdoms and a general sense of what was "over there". For the most part I used Google Docs and One Note to host all of my world information. But I found the systems cumbersome and annoying overall; they were fare too simplistic and didn't give me the kind of organization or formatting that I needed in order to really have an organized world that I could quickly access information through.; it's at this point that I started really looking for something better to host the world on.
Second Iteration
Saleh'Alire 2.0 went from being a footnote in the world of Exandria, with all of the bells and whistles of the world Matt Mercer had created for Critical Role.... To a single continent: Tolara. It was still heavily influenced by Critical Role, of course, as that's what my Husband wanted from our campaign in the first place. But it was no longer a part of the world of Exandria itself. Instead it existed in its own world, divorced from the lore of Critical Role in the grander sense- now incorporating only what I chose to, and allowing my a much greater freedom for modification. The original iteration of Tolara had six unique kingdoms, an in depth (and slightly overly complicated) guild system, and was originally meant to be the only continent that my players could even experience. This was intended to give me time to worldbuild the rest of the setting. This quickly changed, however, when I began actively recruiting additional players and decided to allow them to be from any continent in the world. Of course, allowing players to be from any continent means they immediately want to know about their homelands... So needless to say 2.0 didn't last very long; suddenly I had to actually make at least some basic version of all the places they had chosen to be from.
Third Iteration
It's at this point that Saleh'Alire is truly born: An amalgamation of the creativity of so many people who've influenced the setting in a number of ways- both known and unknown ... Though many elements of its original iterations still exist. For instance, Tolara is still the primary continent, and the continent on which both of my campaigns have taken place. But instead of being the well developed continent that it was in the second iteration, it is now only a recent discovery of the world; A strange new land found when The Golden Duchess shipwrecked on what is now the region of Gwyn Tira'Kie on its western coast. Likewise, the heavy influence of Critical Role is still present within the setting... Though much of it is now primarily contained to the continent kingdom of Castrillis. Other inspirational sources have also joined the fray, such as The Witcher games that my Husband loves so much- and the Elder Scrolls games whose lore I've always enjoyed.
Whatever Saleh'Alire is and wherever the inspiration comes from, it's truly a labor of love- and one of the greatest love letters I have ever written ... Dedicated entirely to my wonderful Husband and the amazing players that have joined him; I am both blessed to have created it for him, and later them- and honored to share it with the World Anvil community (and, perhaps, the world at large).
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