(And Bluesky does not lend itself to long-form storytelling).

Ed took Volo and expanded out his name in Greenwoodian fashion. The artist Clyde Caldwell was the model for the covers of the books. And Volo bounced around a lot in the Realms, to everyone’s amusement.

And that’s … the rest of the story.

When TSR wanted to produce digest-sized guides to the various locations in the Realms, I volunteered the name.

And Volo’s personality and being an unreliable narrator meant he had to move around a lot. Hence the various Volo’s Guides.

So, in a shared D&D campaign, we had a mapmaker who hired the player character to go out and explore and bring information back. Which he promptly published and put his name on (like Amerigo Vespucci).

And now … the REST of the story.

Volo is a small town on the Wisconsin/Illinois border. In the 80s it was on the road from Lake Geneva to Chicago, so we passed through it a lot. And it was the home of Volo Bog. And the Volo Auto Museum. And a lot of other local businesses, all branded “Volo”.

Huh. The two Blizzard books I wrote for Simon & Schuster are listed as being published by the World Wrestling Federation.

Wrong Jeff Grubb. You should be taunting @grubb.wtf

Are you sure you have the right Jeff Grubb, seeing how I'm in Seattle.

Go for it!

Matt did the first draft, I did the second pass. He gets top billing.

The two other books in the series are Edge of Destiny by Rob King, which deals with how the original heroes met and Sea of Sorrows by Ree Soesbee, which is founding of Lion's Arch.