H.J. Arcanum

Outside Arqenuvam, I work as a chemical and biological engineer. Games, however, have been part of my life since I was very young. I have always been especially drawn to strategy, life simulation, resource management and city-building games — worlds where places grow, resources matter and the player's choices shape what happens next.

After I met my wife, I found someone who loved many of the same kinds of games. Over the years, we often found ourselves having the same conversation: one game might have a system we loved, while another offered a feature we wished existed in the first. We enjoyed many different games, but the particular combination of freedom, depth and ideas we wanted always seemed to be spread across several of them rather than found in one place.

Eventually, instead of waiting for that game, I decided to begin building one for the two of us.

What began as a game needed a setting. The setting needed a past. That past created cultures, settlements, conflicts, different ages and people whose choices left consequences behind them. Gradually, the background stopped feeling like background at all. It became a world large enough to hold games, novels and recorded history as different parts of the same continuing canon.

That world became The Shattering of Arqenuvam.

For a long time, Arqenuvam was something I was creating for myself and for my wife, with whom the original idea began. As the world continued to grow, I realised that I wanted other people to be able to enter it too. The games, the novels and the Living Archive became different doors into the same world — and this website is where I have chosen to begin opening those doors to you.