About the Authors

Behind the dragons, questionable decisions, unlikely heroes, and general mayhem of the World of Aldaria are two people who have been telling stories together for a very long time.

Brenda Varian

Writer • Artist • Worldbuilder

Brenda Varian is a writer, artist, lifelong gamer, and the original architect of the World of Aldaria. Originally from Prince George’s County, Maryland, in the shadow of the nation’s capital, she now lives in Virginia.

A lifelong lover of fantasy, history, folklore, and anything with dragons in it, she has never been particularly good at having only one creative outlet. Writing shares space with painting model horses and miniatures, crochet, historical rabbit holes, and whatever new project seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea five minutes ago.

She approaches storytelling much the same way she approaches most creative things: learn the rules, figure out why they work, and then decide which ones would be more interesting broken.

Her stories tend to favor complicated characters over perfect heroes, humor in places it probably shouldn’t be, and found families built from people who might never have chosen one another under saner circumstances.

She lives in Virginia with her husband and writing partner, Jim, and a household in which the line between creative project and lifestyle choice disappeared a long time ago.

Basil “Jim” Varian

Writer • Gamer • Worldbuilder

Basil “Jim” Varian is a U.S. Army veteran, retired corrections officer, and longtime storyteller originally from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, now living in Virginia.

He has been writing for nearly fifty years, with stories shaped by a lifelong love of fantasy, adventure, and the strange places imagination can lead.

His previous work includes The Advent of Darkness and Strange Days.

Jim is a co-creator of the World of Aldaria, helping shape its characters, stories, history, and mythology over decades of storytelling. Magnes Magnessun began as one of his characters during the original tabletop adventures and has been causing trouble ever since.

His creative influences include fantasy in many forms, especially Slayers and the wonderfully destructive Lina Inverse, along with Bill Willingham’s Ironwood.

From the Table to Aldaria

The World of Aldaria began around a Dungeons & Dragons table in the early 2000s, when Brenda started the campaign that would eventually grow into something far beyond the game itself.

From the beginning, we put our own spin on D&D, playing it to our own tastes. Humor was always part of the adventure, and we happily leaned into the familiar tropes of fantasy, sometimes playing them straight, sometimes turning them on their heels, and sometimes seeing just how much trouble our characters could get into with them.

What began as characters, adventures, inside jokes, and stories created over years of play gradually became something much larger. The characters developed lives beyond the game. The world grew its own history, cultures, mythology, conflicts, and legends.

Eventually, there were stories we wanted to tell that no longer belonged only at the gaming table.

Aldaria became a world of its own.

The novels and short stories set here have evolved far beyond those original campaigns, but their roots are still there: friendship, ridiculous decisions, unexpected consequences, found family, a love of the fantasy genre and its traditions, and that particular kind of magic that happens when people create a story together.