What a D&D Paladin Taught Me About Writing Fantasy

2025 marked the start of a summer holiday tradition and, as it turned out, the beginning of the world I would spend the next year escaping into.

After a few difficult years in education, including an unexpected promotion and a growing sense of burnout, I desperately needed a break. My husband, my sister, her partner, and his brother booked a caravan in Devon. We packed board games, bodyboards, and enough activities to keep us busy for a week. My sister's partner also brought a D&D campaign called Tales of the Yawning Portal.

I needed a new character.

My first character was a female Firbolg druid. This time I wanted to play a human and, as someone who usually picks the character who runs in and beats the living daylights out of everyone, I debated between a fighter and a paladin. Paladin won out because I fancied doing some spells. I rolled my sheet and considered names, using a generator tool to inspire me. Before I knew it a name leapt out at me: Evander Drake.

My sister thought it would be fun for our characters to be siblings too, and so Elowen came to be.

This was one of the first visual interpretations I created while developing Evander. At the time he existed only as a D&D character and a handful of notes. Seeing him represented visually helped me think about who he was beyond the armour and title. I initially expected to just create my sheet and get my husband to print out a little character for me from Hero Forge. Yet I couldn’t help but ponder the kind, approachable face staring back at me and wonder: who is this man?

I looked over religions and oaths, yet all my mind seemed interested in was who he was beyond the armour. A man in his late twenties who looked far more suited to love than war. I wanted to give him a woman in world to yearn over. He looked like a man who would love deeply and yet not feel himself worthy until he’d done his duty. Serenya came to be, though it took me a while to decide upon her surname and background.

By the time we arrived at my sister and her partner’s house to have the introductory session before driving to our caravan, I came armed with information. While I waited for the others to build up their characters more I began to dig more into Evander and his core traits.

I began to consider my own feelings towards my career. I'd been elevated to a role I wasn't expecting, performed it well, applied for a permanent position and was ultimately overlooked. Teaching itself is honestly the greatest job in the world on a good day – I get to spend my day with wonderfully complex individuals who make me laugh, shake my head in despair and feel enormously proud of.

Yet, like many people who care deeply about their work, I had started to feel the strain. The profession I had devoted so much of myself to was asking more and more, while giving me less certainty in return. I found myself questioning things I had once taken for granted and wondering what service looked like when enthusiasm began to give way to exhaustion.

That feeling I understood, and so I wrote.

Evander carries doubts he keeps to himself, much like the "teacher face" I have to put on everything. His faith feels distant to him and the organisation he bled himself dry for had begun to disappoint him.

By the time the week was out I had begun to flesh out his mentor (Thalen) and his squire Kaelen, who coincidentally became a one-shot character in January 2026. Kaelen “the destroyer” was dubbed because I rolled amazingly that day. He got a stick sword, got to climb slippery rocks through a waterfall and killed some bad guys. Kaelen’s backstory built from that session too.

I left my holiday excited to begin writing properly. The trilogy had been roughly mapped out and The Dawnshield Order had begun to take shape, complete with its own religion, its own world, and the hometown where Evander and Elowen's story would begin — I changed this based on advice from my initial readers, my mother-in-law who was an English teacher before she retired.

Evander’s profile grew, his focus on duty to the detriment of himself, the desire to do good for the people in his charge – it all started falling into place when I went back to work in September and fell under some new leadership who tested my patience and ability to bite my tongue more than ever.

His kind face made me see not a man of war, but the sort who, had the world been different, would have spent his life trying to build in it rather than devote his being to protecting it. Evander fights not for glory or revenge. He fights for people and beautiful things. I love visiting historic places, I’m the lunatic that reads every plaque in a museum and wants to see every single exhibit. I love nature and music and art. I couldn’t help but pour that bit of me into Evander, which got him into trouble in the campaign, because as it turns out, unlike Kaelen he has the unluckiest rolls. He ran away from a necklace and picked up a book that created an explosion. Evander the clumsy goof was born.

By Christmas I began making mood boards and filling out a huge timeline on an old roll of newspaper. Looking back now, it's strange to think that all of this began with a character sheet and a week away in Devon. I thought I was creating a paladin for a summer campaign.

Instead, I found a character who helped me explore questions about duty, leadership, kindness, faith, disappointment, friendship, and what it means to keep serving others when the institutions around you begin to let you down.

Evander started as a game character, but he became the heart of a world.

And somewhere along the way, he taught me more about writing fantasy than any craft book ever could.