A reference and toolkit for myth, folklore and invented worlds
Explore ancient mythologies, discover legendary creatures, uncover forgotten stories, and create worlds of your own.
Start here
I The traditions
Begin with a tradition, then follow it back to the texts that preserve it. Eight are indexed here.
Browse all traditions
Norse myth is known mostly through two Icelandic sources set down in the thirteenth century: Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, a handbook for poets, and the anonymous poems of the Poetic Edda. Together they describe nine worlds held in the branches and roots of the ash Yggdrasil, gods who are told how their own story ends, and Ragnarök, the final battle after which the world is born again.
Gods who quarrel, bargain and fall in love, told by poets who disagreed with one another.
A cosmos kept in balance by ma'at, and a judgment of the dead that weighs the heart.
Islands formed from brine dripping off a spear, and a sun goddess who hides in a cave.
A people who withdrew into the hills, and a hero who held a province against an army.
A king who goes looking for immortality, and a goddess who descends to the underworld.
Cycles of creation and dissolution, and epics that are still retold and performed.
Hero twins who outwit the lords of Xibalba, and people shaped from maize.
II The bestiary
Every tradition keeps its monsters, and each one records what its storytellers feared, respected or hoped for. Four are shown here. The Creature Finder below searches all thirteen in the index.
European dragons such as Fáfnir hoard treasure and guard it to the death. The Chinese lóng governs rain and waters, and is usually a benevolent power. Same word in translation, nearly opposite creatures.
Read about dragons
A fox spirit that gains tails and power with age, up to nine. Kitsune appear as tricksters, as lovers in disguise and as messengers of the god Inari.
Read about kitsune
A bird that burns and is reborn. Herodotus describes it in connection with Heliopolis, where the related Egyptian bennu bird was linked to the sun.
Read about the phoenix
A sea monster said to rise beneath ships off Norway and Iceland. Erik Pontoppidan described it in 1752, and Tennyson's poem on the subject followed in 1830.
Read about the krakenNarrow the bestiary by where a creature lives and how it treats people. Temperament is a rough guide: many creatures are helpful in one story and dangerous in the next.
III Stories worth retelling
Myths belong to gods and cosmos; folklore belongs to villages, roads and kitchens. Both change with every telling.
The gods raised the wolf Fenrir among them, and only Týr dared to feed him. As Fenrir grew, so did their dread, for it had been foretold that he would one day bring harm to Odin. They decided to bind him.
Twice they set heavy chains before him and called it a contest of strength. Twice he broke them. So Odin sent a messenger to the dwarfs, who made a fetter as smooth and soft as a silk ribbon. Its name was Gleipnir.
Fenrir was suspicious. A ribbon so slight must hide a trick, he said, and he would allow himself to be bound only if one of the gods placed a hand in his mouth as a pledge of good faith. None of the gods would, until Týr stepped forward.
The more Fenrir struggled, the tighter Gleipnir held. The gods laughed, all except Týr, who lost his hand. Fenrir stays bound until Ragnarök, and the story is still remembered less as a victory than as a lesson in what a broken promise costs.
Snorri adds that this is why such things cannot be found in the world.
IV Make your own
A world needs names, a map and a reason for its gods to quarrel. These tools offer starting points; they do not write the world for you. Everything runs in your browser, and nothing is saved or sent.
Names built from sound patterns. The styles describe how a name sounds, not any real culture.
Roll a four-part premise for a realm. Keep the parts you like and reroll the rest.
V Study and test
Myths are texts before they are stories: someone wrote them down, in a language, for a reason. Learn the sources and the vocabulary, then test what stuck.
Many myths reach us through later writers with their own aims. Snorri, for instance, was writing a poetry handbook for Christian-era Icelanders.
Translators and ancient authors often add explanations. Notice which lines tell the tale and which lines interpret it.
Variants are the norm, not errors. Compare tellings before deciding what a myth “really” says.
VI At the table
Two tools for the table: a dice roller that takes full expressions, and an initiative tracker that keeps the round in order. Both are system-neutral.
Examples: 1d20, 2d6+3, 4d8-1, 1d10+1d4+2. Up to 100 dice of up to 1000 sides.
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Roll to see the result.
No rolls yet.
No combatants yet. Add a name and an initiative total to begin.
VII From the editorial desk
Essays and guides on sources, creatures and the craft of building worlds.
The fetter that holds Fenrir is built from things nobody can gather. What the list says about binding, trust and the limits of strength in Norse storytelling.
From shrine messenger to treacherous bride: how one fox spirit carries opposite meanings in Japanese stories.
Tablet XI of Gilgamesh retells a flood story that also appears in the earlier Atrahasis epic. Comparing them shows how the poets reshaped what they inherited.
Domains, rivalries and shared myths: practical ways to give a campaign's gods enough overlap to cause trouble.
Poems, chronicles, temple texts, folk collections: what each kind of source can and cannot tell you.
Development note: article pages are pending implementation. Each link above opens a status page until the article is published.