WAWA 2026 Entries

For Your Consideration...

“I don’t claim it’s the finest tale ever told. It’s just one we’ve kept alive. If it lingers with you a little after the fire dies down, then I suppose it did its job.”

— Waltis Kalind, Duchy Ranger Corp, Lyanmar

I wasn’t going to do one of these. Hub articles always felt a little too tidy for a world that started as scattered notes, late night ideas, and me stubbornly refusing to let something cool die. But people seem to enjoy them, and honestly, I get it. It’s nice to have a place where everything lives in one spot.

This marks my second full year on World Anvil, which still feels strange to say out loud. I’ve met some genuinely great people here. I’ve made friends. I’ve wandered through worlds built by strangers who somehow feel less like strangers the more you read their work. That part’s been a real surprise, in the best way. I’m not going anywhere. Unknown Shores isn’t either.

Behind the scenes, the creative team’s growing. We’ve had new additions bring in fresh energy and new perspectives, and we’ve had some old friends circle back around. It’s bigger than it was, louder in a good way, and more focused. There are a lot of voices shaping this thing now, and that’s exactly how it should be.

We’re also serious about building this beyond just World Anvil. This page is home base, but it’s not the ceiling. We’re working toward professional RPG products, more consistent and expanded content on Twitch, and animated shorts over on YouTube. The goal’s simple. Build the world wide, build it deep, and keep inviting more people to step onto the shores of Aerith.

Best World

Unknown Shores is a world shaped by catastrophe and stubborn recovery. The Shattering didn’t just knock over towers and dim a few spellbooks. It tore the foundation out from under civilization and forced people to relearn how to survive without the arcane crutches they’d depended on for generations. What exists now isn’t a polished golden age. It’s a rebuilt world, scarred, practical, and aware of what it lost. Magic came back changed. Borders shifted. Old myths got sharper. The past isn’t buried here. It lingers, and people live with it.
Unknown Shores treats the world like a character, not a stage. Politics have consequences. Myths influence behavior. Professions exist because the world demands them. Cultures developed in response to geography, scarcity, conflict, and survival. It is not a playground waiting for heroes to wander through it. It pushes back. It remembers what happened. It keeps moving whether anyone is watching or not. That is the standard I hold it to, and that is why I entered it.

Additional Articles

Trick of the Light: Prologue

The Dragons of Aerith

Corvyn Seinrill

Archaeomancer

Best Article

For Best Article, I entered the epilogue from Trick of the Light. It’s not a lore dump or a big worldbuilding showcase. It’s quiet. It’s two people on a deck at night trying to figure out what the end of a story actually means. That felt honest.
The piece leans into something I care about in Unknown Shores. The idea that legends, airships, crusades, and grand adventures don’t mean much if the people at the center of them aren’t real. Dartimen wrestling with whether his life is just a stack of paper, Cassandra refusing to let him reduce himself to that, the stone blowing off the manuscript at the end. That’s the heart of the setting to me. Not the spectacle. The people who survive it and keep going.

Heart & Minds Award

For Hearts and Minds, Andrielle Seinrill is the pick because she is not just a character. She is a pressure point. Her life is the hinge the whole emotional weight of Areeott swings on, and her absence is still shaping decisions centuries later. The article makes that clear without needing a bunch of side explanation. It is grief, devotion, duty, betrayal, and love turned into a national scar, and it shows how a person can become a legend without ever being allowed to be remembered out loud.
I also entered her because the piece is built around the kind of human pain that actually sticks with readers. It does not rely on spectacle. It makes the emotional stakes feel personal and unfair in the right way. She is intelligent, kind, stubborn, and exhausted by what the world asks of her, and then the story takes her anyway. You do not have to know every part of the setting to feel what Corvyn loses or why Areeott ends up the way it does, and that is exactly what Hearts and Minds should do.

Rise of Nations Award

For Rise of Nations, I chose the Arin Elves because their story is not about conquest. It is about survival turning into belonging. They did not found Areeott, and they did not dominate it. They arrived in the middle of collapse, fought when it mattered, and then chose entanglement over isolation. That shift from mercenaries and refugees to citizens woven into the courts, guilds, and guard of the barons is the kind of nation building that feels earned rather than declared.
What makes them fit the category is that their rise is cultural as much as political. They reshaped the cities without taking them over. Their enclaves sit inside Areeott rather than apart from it, and over generations their values, aesthetics, and codes have influenced the kingdom itself. They brought memory, craft, and discipline into a land defined by fracture. They did not reclaim Iorill. They built something new in its shadow. That transformation, from displaced survivors to a people inseparable from the fate of the realm, is exactly what a rise of a nation looks like in Unknown Shores.

Wondrous Nature Award

For Wondrous Nature, I went with The Great Umbra because it is the kind of phenomenon that makes the setting feel bigger than the map. It is not a creature you can hunt or a landmark you can build around. It is a scar in reality that shows up when it feels like it, and when you see it you understand, immediately, that the world has edges and those edges are frayed.
I like it for this category because it is pure atmosphere with consequences. It changes the sea, the sky, the rules, and the people standing there staring at it, without needing to explain itself. It is beautiful in a way that is hard to be comfortable with, and it fits Unknown Shores because it turns wonder into a dare. If you want to chase it, you can. If you want to pretend it is just a sailor story, you cannot anymore.

Strength & Honor Award

For Strength and Honor, I entered Cassandra Silvernight because she embodies both without ever having to announce it. Her strength was never about spectacle or dominance. It was about endurance. It was about walking through centuries of grief, expectation, secrecy, and fear without letting any of it hollow her out. She carried power quietly, chose restraint when force would have been easier, and had the courage to walk away from a legacy that would have crushed someone weaker.
Her honor is even more important to me. It is not blind loyalty or obedience to a banner. It is the choice to protect the vulnerable, to refuse cruelty even when cruelty would have been convenient, and to build a life defined by love instead of inherited darkness. Cassandra is not flawless. She doubts. She hesitates. She feels everything deeply. But when it matters, she stands her ground. That is strength. And choosing kindness after surviving that kind of life is, to me, the truest form of honor.

Pillars of Progress Award

For Pillars of Progress, I entered the Arin Chokuto because progress in Unknown Shores is not always loud or industrial. Sometimes it is refinement. Sometimes it is generations of quiet iteration turning a simple tool into something perfected. The chokuto did not appear fully formed. It evolved from shepherd knives and mountain staffs into a concealed weapon engineered with discipline and restraint. Its locking mechanisms, balance calibration, alloy refinement, and seamless integration into daily life all reflect a people who improve what they have instead of chasing spectacle.
What makes it fit the category is that it represents cultural advancement as much as technical craft. The Arin did not build sprawling war machines or massive foundries to prove they were moving forward. They refined metallurgy, concealment engineering, and martial philosophy until the result became indistinguishable from instinct. The chokuto shows how a society adapts to terrain, threat, and history without losing its identity. That kind of progress does not announce itself. It endures.

Myths & Legends Award

The New Moon Bard is one of those stories that refuses to fade no matter how many winters pass. It is not loud. It is not dramatic. It is a quiet presence that shows up on the darkest night of the month, plays a tune no one wants to hear twice, and leaves a tavern full of grown people staring into their drinks. The glass at the end of the bar, set out whether anyone admits to believing or not, says more about Areeott than any sermon ever could.
At its heart, it is a story about betrayal, love, and the kind of regret that does not loosen its grip just because time moves on. The myth shifts from tavern to tavern because no one wants to claim it, and that movement is part of what keeps it alive. It is not about proving whether the Bard exists. It is about how people act as if he does, and what that says about a land that understands some wounds do not close, they echo.

“It isn’t grand. It isn’t heroic. It’s just ours. And if you can hear the wind shift when someone starts that story, then you understand why we still tell it.”

— Therrin Holt, woodcutter on the western spur