Where story began with dice, stubborn imagination, and the spark of something too big to stay on a tabletop.
The Forge of a World
Ambervale didn’t begin as a novel.
It didn’t begin with outlines, worldbuilding spreadsheets, or a carefully shaped magic system. It began the way the best stories often do:
around a table, with friends, a few battered dice, and the kind of imagination that keeps you up too late.
The guys I played Dungeons & Dragons with back then were deep into Dragonlance.
I wasn’t — and that’s part of what made things interesting.
They brought the epic tropes and grand fantasy arcs.
I brought stubborn questions, a love of character grit, and a habit of asking what the world looked like behind the usual hero’s path.
Somewhere in the crossfire between those influences, the first version of this world took shape. Hank built a module — handcrafted, messy, brilliant — and in the end, we called it Over the Dragonwall.
Back then, it was just a campaign seed.
A setting that grew every time we rolled a natural one at the worst possible moment.
A place where we learned the kind of stories we loved — and the kind we refused to tell.
It wasn’t polished.
It wasn’t pretty.
But it was alive.
And it stayed with me.
FROM TABLETOP CHAOS TO A LIVING WORLD
Time passes faster as you get older. Memories fade. Real life tries its best to crowd out the fun and the adventure.
But I kept thinking about that wall — why it stood, who built it, what lived beyond it.
Not just dragons…
but what dragons believed, what they feared, and what civilizations they shaped.
Not just magic…
but how humans lived beside it — and why they feared their own mages more than the monsters across the border.
Slowly, everything I’d learned — the worldbuilding, the writing craft, the grit of real life, the weight of memory — began to reshape the world that started around a table.
And from that mix of nostalgia, new perspective, and hard-won experience, the world became something different.
Something deeper.
Something woven out of light and ruin, myth and history.
It became Ambervale.
And although it might sound like it was just me… it never was.
It was Hank and me.
It was the guys around the table.
It was every reader of Over the Dragonwall who tossed in an idea, cracked a joke, or asked the right question at the wrong moment.
All of them helped shape Ambervale into something more.
WHAT IS AMBERVALE?
A WORLD FORGED IN INK & ASH
Ambervale is a land caught between two truths:
the golden light the world believes in… and the darkness it refuses to face.
By day, the Dragon Lands shimmer with impossible beauty — light-drenched forests, glassy lakes, rolling hills gilded like a painter’s dream.
A paradise crafted with intention, meant to comfort, seduce, and lull the mortal mind.
But when the sun falls, the truth steps out of hiding.
Night in Ambervale is predatory.
Haunted.
Filled with movement in the treeline, whispers through the reeds, and shapes no mortal imagination would willingly claim.
The dragons built their daylight paradise to invite.
They built their night to hunt.
Ambervale stands at the crossroads of these two realities:
the gilded promise, and the shadowed cost.
A world of beauty layered over danger.
A sanctuary hiding a prison.
A peace bought with silence.
This is a realm carved by magic and memory, by ruin and light, by truth and deception.
A world truly — and irrevocably — forged in Ink and Ash.
And the story begins with a young man named Oberon — raised in a monastery, burdened with secrets he doesn’t yet understand, and stepping toward a fate tangled with runes, prophecy, and a history no living soul truly remembers.
Ambervale is built on a few core ideas that have shaped it from the very beginning:
1. Magic should be beautiful… and terrifying
Pyromancy smells like scorched spices.
Earth magic like tea leaves and citrus.
Every spell has texture, scent, consequence.
Magic isn’t fireworks or free — it is sacrifice, discipline, cost.
2. Dragons aren’t monsters — they’re a culture
Ancient. Political. Proud. Hungry.
Some want dominion.
Some seek balance.
Some crave revenge.
3. Humans fear mages more than dragons
Because magic corrupts, tempts, transforms.
Because history has been rewritten.
Because fear is the easiest thing to teach.
4. The Dragonwall is not what people think it is
A protector.
A barrier.
A warning.
A failing promise.
5. The past isn’t dead — it’s hidden
Runes.
Prophecy.
Old betrayals.
Echoes of a god who once chose humanity for reasons long forgotten.
Ambervale lives in its mysteries — and the story digs deeper with every page.
Where to Begin
If you’re new to Ambervale, these entries will help you find your footing:
Topography of Ambervale
The Land Shaped by Light and Shadow
Ambervale’s landscape is defined by contrast — golden serenity by day, haunted wilderness by night. The geography itself feels intentional, as if designed by ancient hands with purpose, beauty, and danger in mind.
Below is an overview of its major regions and how they shape life in this world.
The Dragonwall
A 1,300-year-old barrier of rune, stone, and sealed magic.
It spans the entire northern horizon like a jagged scar, impossibly tall and veined with faint golden light.
To those living inside Ambervale, it is protection.
To those who know the truth, it is containment.
Its shadow touches everything — crops grow thicker near its base, magic behaves strangely around it, and storms gather differently along its crest.
The Golden Expanse
The heartland outside of Ambervale — vast plains and warm, sun-baked fields brushed with perpetual golden light.
Gentle hills, amber grasses, and scattered groves form the agricultural core where most villages stand. It is the safest region… or appears to be.
At night, those same gentle grasses whisper with unseen movement.
The Veiled Forests
Ancient woods whose leaves shimmer green-gold at dawn and ember-red at dusk.
By day, the forests are peaceful — filled with soft wind, birdsong, and dappled light.
But at night, the treeline becomes a place people dare not enter.
Shapes move between the trunks.
Eyes reflect moonlight where no creature should be.
Travelers say the forest “remembers” who enters… and who does not return.
The Serapine Lakes
A chain of crystal-clear lakes fed by underground springs.
By day, the water is mirror-still, reflecting the sky with impossible clarity.
But beneath the surface lie old secrets — drowned ruins, forgotten offerings, and currents that shift direction without reason.
No one swims after dusk.
The Shattered Coast
Jagged cliffs along the eastern edge of Ambervale, broken by violent storms centuries ago.
The rocks still hold faint scorch marks from dragonfire, and the winds here carry a strange, low hum at twilight.
Wreckage washes ashore often — sometimes from ships no one remembers launching.
The Ruinlands
A forbidden stretch of rocky, blackened earth where nothing grows.
The ground is cracked like old pottery, still warm deep beneath the surface.
Legends claim this was once the staging ground for a battle between dragons and something older.
Even dragons speak of this place with caution.
The Dragon Lands Beyond the Wall
Though few have seen them, tales describe landscapes too vivid to be real:
- Silver-leafed forests
- Floating shelves of stone
- Rivers that glow faintly at dusk
- Hills carved by ancient wings
A paradise by day — intentionally so.
After sunset, everything changes.
The paradise twists.
The land becomes a hunting ground for creatures shaped by magic, hunger, and old draconic purpose.
The duality is the key:
Beauty designed to comfort.
Night designed to kill.
The Quiet Roads
Winding dirt paths and narrow trade routes between settlements.
In daylight, they’re safe enough for carts and travel.
By night, almost no one walks them.
The roads seem to shift, bending subtly toward the treeline or toward the ruined places where no one should go.
People say the roads “prefer company.”
The Settlements of Ambervale
Most towns are built near sunlight and safety:
- Harbor’s Rest – coastal village with cliffside watchtowers
- Goldmere – farmland hub along the Golden Expanse
- High Hollow – forest settlement built in tree-platform style
- Crosswind – trade crossroad near the Dragonwall’s base
Each has its own view of the Wall.
Each has its own folklore about the night.
The Land as a Living Warning
Ambervale’s geography isn’t passive.
It behaves like a memory:
- golden where it wants you calm
- shifting where it wants you cautious
- devouring where history demands it
Travelers often say the same phrase:
“The land is kinder by day, but honest only at night.”
A WORLD FORGED IN INK & ASH
Ambervale was born from friendship, dice, imagination, and the kind of storytelling that refuses to go quietly.
It has grown with me — through deployments, moves across states, long nights on the nursing floor, grief, humor, and the slow work of becoming a better writer.
If you’ve ever:
- rolled too many critical fails in one night
- argued about a map
- rewritten a world until it finally felt like home
- or carried a story in your chest for years…
then welcome.
This world was forged for you.
Welcome to Ambervale —
a world born around a table, sharpened by life,
and carried forward by everyone who refuses to let their stories die.
May you find wonder in its light, mystery in its shadows,
and a piece of yourself somewhere between the runes.
— Dennis D. Montoya
Stories Forged in Ink & Ash
Dennis D Montoya 