My studies in archaeology gave me a particular interest in ancient legends—not just the stories themselves, but how they survive, mutate, and fragment over centuries. When building the world of Andolin, I wanted the history to feel as deep and mysterious as the artifacts we dig from the earth in our own world.
The apocalyptic lore woven into the story was partly based on the legends of Atlantis's sinking. In our world, the story of Atlantis comes primarily from the dialogues of Plato, Timaeus and Critias, written around 360 B.C. Plato described an advanced civilization that, in a single day and night of misfortune, sank beneath the waves. This concept of a catastrophic geological event erasing a culture is echoed in the Andolinian prophecy of the "Twelve Calamities," specifically the "sundering of the lands." Just as Atlantis was lost, the Campos itself faces the threat of collapsing into the sea, a terrifying reality that erupts violently in The Fall of Valenna when the very land crumbles into the dark waters.
In the real world, legends rarely have a single, tidy trajectory. There is no one "ultimate" version of a Greek myth; they vary by playwright, city-state, and era. I applied this same principle to the Legends of Andolin. The characters in the books often grapple with these inconsistencies. As Prince Matei notes in The Fall of Valenna, "The tales of Leveret and the Heartstone have diverged over time, but, like all stories, they carry pieces of the truth within." Some legends say the Heartstone was a star, others say it came from a serpent. The "Codex" that Adella studies is a "patched-together work" of translations and ancient glyphs, reflecting the messy, layered nature of true history.
Central to this lore is the legend of Leveret. "Leveret" was a word I made up from my imagination, simply because I liked the sound of it. However, I had the surprise and pleasure of discovering later that it was a real word—one that meant "young hare." This happy accident in turn inspired the visual language of the books; in Adella of the Campos, a tapestry in the Sornian palace depicts the ancient hero as a brown hare, alongside his love Paloma, the dove. With Leveret tales set a thousand years ago in the book series, they are meant to evoke the sense of a long timeline and ancient culture, much as our medieval legends, like those of King Arthur, do today.
Of course, no world lore is complete without the terrors of the deep. The sea serpents in the story are inspired by sailors' tales of sea monsters from our own world—the creatures drawn on the edges of maps with the warning, "here be monsters." In Andolin, these are the Pelkimund (Sea Wolf) and the Haramund (Sea Horse). They are not just mindless beasts, but ancient creatures returning to reclaim the waters.
I had named the vast plains central to my story The Campos quite simply from the Latin word campus, meaning "field." However, I was delighted to then discover that the word also refers to a "sea monster" or "sea creature" when written in its Greek form, kámpos. In mythology, this term is intrinsically linked to the hippokampos (or hippocampus), the mythical creature with a horse’s head and a fish-like tail that pulled Poseidon’s chariot. This happy accident fits the lore of Andolin perfectly, as the Haramund—the "Sea Horse" of Old Andolinian legend—plays a significant role in the series, appearing both in the ancient texts Adella studies and in the flesh within the pages of the third novel. It also serves as a bit of a dark pun: the "fields" of the Campos ultimately fall beneath the waves to become the domain of sea monsters.
You may have noticed that I very pointedly do not use the word "pirate" in the books. Instead, I use the term "reaver" for the lawless raiders, and "privateer" for those with a royal commission. This was a deliberate choice to avoid the "Arr matey," peg-leg stereotype invented by Stevenson in Treasure Island, which he created out of nostalgia for a time long past rather than a desire to accurately represent real-world history, and then subsequently carried into the popular stereotypes by the books it inspired. Using those tropes would make the setting feel too much in our own world, rather than lending it the otherworldly quality I was going for.
And yet, such tales have always been a favorite of mine. I just wanted to make it my own and expand the scope. I published the first book at the forefront of the recent wave of pirate-story popularity, fueled by nostalgia for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and currently buoyed by newer media like the Sandokan TV series, which I find to be good fun. While my stories are partly inspired by such adventurous sea-faring tales, they're also something altogether new. Just like naval powers were a product of the mainland empires they bolstered, the world I invented goes far beyond the shoreline, into rocky highlands and marshy plains, soaring palaces and remote frontier towns. The world of Andolin is my own creation. I hope you enjoy it.
Thanks for reading,
Audra