What in the world is "Dark•Heritage" supposed to mean, anyway? People ask me that all the time. Well, actually nobody has ever asked me that, but I imagine that anyone who happened to stumble across this blog, if anyone ever were to, would think it was a pretty doofus name that doesn't describe anything at all with what this blog is about.
Well...
Hmmm...
Actually, that's a fair comment. The genesis of the name was in a campaign setting that I developed both for a short-lived, yet fun, RPG that I ran a number of years ago, and also some fiction ventures that seem perpetually stalled and abortive, but about which I remain optimistic that I'll actually finish someday anyway. The name came from 1) some elements of backstory, the "secret history" of the setting, which was unpleasant, and therefore implicated a "dark heritage" for the characters in the setting, and 2) a more specific dark heritage of one of the main, iconic characters who is a point of view character in the fiction work.
Whether or not the title has any relevence to the setting anymore or not is debateable; as time goes by and my tastes gradually evolve, some of the specific elements that indicated a "dark heritage" have been removed and replaced with other elements. Also; it's even less clear what this campaign setting name has to do with this blog. For that, I can only say that I was casting around for a name, and not coming up with one, and this is what I picked. I think that at the time I created the blog, I had in my mind the idea that it would focus on the setting as it developed. This has not happened, but the name stuck.
In fact, Dark•Heritage is just my catch-all name for almost any home on the internet now; I've got a wiki named after it (two actually) which is a wiki for the setting (both the obsolete version and the new, improved, and... so far empty second version), I've got another website that has the setting at a point in time (prior to the wiki) and I've got an in process set of house rules; a personal SRD if you will of how I run the game, since I've discovered that regardless of setting, I prefer the same fixes repeatedly.
In any case, Dark•Heritage lives on as a slightly anachronistic title; one who's relation to the various bodies of work that bear it is dubious at best. But, the graphical look of the blog still bears some hints of the Dark•Heritage heritage; the banner and bricks, for example, are supposed to evoke the dark, urban, slightly steampunkish flair of the setting.
For the best encapsulation of the setting, although one that's now out of date, check out my series of "Dungeoncraft" articles that describe it right here. Although don't make an attempt to get to those messageboards. They've been dead for years. You'll note that, like many of my online endeavors, this one stopped before it was completely done, but it is sufficiently complete to be useable nonetheless.
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