How Demeo’s Lore Came To Be

There’s a master doc I’ve written for Demeo containing all of the lore for the game.

It’s 130 pages long. I know that’s a lot. It’s almost like this massive beast that feels a bit daunting once you meet it the first time.

There’s a guide on the second page, with links to where you can find what you are looking for, still, it is a lot of information. Within those 130 pages there is all the obvious stuff, like the backstory for the heroes and different groups and factions. Also, within that document, the entire world of Gilmerra sprouted. Before the Gilmerra map was added to the master doc, it lived (very unpolished) within one of my Resolution Game notebooks. 

That’s the obvious stuff, but while working on the document, I got asked excellent questions by two concept artists working on Demeo.

They asked, “What about the philosophy of the elves?”

I hadn’t thought about that but I knew players would start to wonder the same thing, so I added it. One might argue that it only made the monster of a doc even more uncontrollable, but now it’s in there, and I’m glad my colleagues asked that question.

Why this document, then?

When I started here at Resolution, there was no master document, and there was no fully-fleshed-out world. So I began writing.

World-building is fun, and that makes it easy—as long as you keep all the moving bits and pieces in mind. If you change the name of a dragon, you have to change the name of that sword named after that dragon—those kinds of things.

Now back to me (the main character), writing a lot.

There are two ways (roughly put) that one can go about when building a world. Either use a “zoom in” or a “zoom out” approach. When you “zoom out,” you create one small village and not much around it. Then, as you need something more, you “zoom out” and create a neighboring forest or maybe a cave.

As you “zoom in,” you’ve already created the entire world. Then you place an adventure in a small village, and you “zoom in” to explore it further.

These two approaches to world-building are more commonly called “extensive” and “minimal,” and I assume you can guess which one is which.

I’m all for the “zoom in” approach—I want a whole world to play around with!

With that in mind, 130 pages is short—real short. Especially if you look at all the things needed when creating a world: belief systems, how magic works, backstory for everything, names, and why a prince did what he did. Compared to other lore bibles; it comes off as a post-it note. But for Demeo, on this scale, it was extensive.

So, why, then? Why write 130 pages after the game had been released in May 2021? To flesh it out is one answer, the other is to make me and my colleagues’ lives easier.

With that much lore already jotted down, it’s easy to connect the dots, build expansions, tie characters together, and do whatever one might think of. Being the writer for Demeo, my goal has been to add as much lore as possible in the game, whether it’s in the info about cosmetics or maybe a social media post.

Some examples, when Thygolian Steel is mentioned in cosmetics, that stems from a character named Thygo Ashiloman—a dwarven king who built Castle Hollowmark that got destroyed during the Dragon Wars many, many years ago. The city of Tholton is named after Therric Tholton, a name that pops up here and there, and even the cheese vendor Gohm Hertag has a tiny bit of backstory and comes from a town called Ingher Port, which is where Zedokar fled to as he left The Circle where his father Aton held a spot as an Elder. Aton, in turn, aided Lo Surmáhl with some inventions; he’s the ingenious designer of all lamps found throughout Gilmerra. Even flora and fauna play a role, as the mane of a Jhunn horse is excellent to use for the string for a bow.

Do you get my point?

Everything ties to something. The world is not lacking flesh anymore. But, with that said, there are always things to keep adding. So pay attention because a small snippet of lore mentioned by an NPC might tie to a warlord who ruled over a 1,000 years ago.

The world of Gilmerra will continue to grow; if so, just amongst those 130 pages that might turn into 150, then 200, then who knows! There are almost endless possibilities for the world of Gilmerra to grow within Demeo’s lore

The document is a beast, yes, but actually rather tame, and within is juicy goodness.

Interested in learning more about Demeo’s lore? You can download our lore books here.