Atlavium. On the first read it maybe sounds a little unfamiliar. It was the same for me. By now I have said the word often enough, written it on sticky notes, and put it on my coworkers so many times that it feels quite natural. That was not the case with the roughly fifty names before it.
Shortly after the release of version 1.0 the project gets a new name after years. That is not ideal; I could have thought about it right away during all the reworking of the last months. But the longer I thought about it, the clearer it became: if I want to take this step, then better now than after more years, more articles, and an even bigger collection of things that carry the old name.
From NovDoc to a whole platform
This project has several lives behind it anyway. It started as a local document search, was a desktop application, ended up as a single-user web version behind a password, and went through at least two serious attempts as a cloud application. Across four different repositories alone I tried out new architectures, threw them away, and thought them through from scratch again.
One important reason for that was data storage. A local application sounds pleasantly independent, but for people who do not maintain databases and development environments every day, it quickly brings extra complexity. Especially when you want to rely on database technologies that go beyond what is possible locally. For a long time I looked for a solution that runs locally just as reliably and simply as a hosted service. Maybe there is a perfect approach for that. I have not found it, at least none that I would set up for all kinds of gaming groups with a clear conscience.
The first name was sober to match: NovDoc. That was a document search for Novalis, a republic in the world of my Dungeon Master. I wanted to help him find again, in his many texts, what we already knew about places, people, and events. In the beginning it was not meant to be more than that.
By the summer of 2024, NovDoc had long become too small. Out of the search, a tool for whole role-playing worlds had grown. I looked for a more open name, checked "Chronicle Keeper", found no direct overlap back then with what I was building, registered the domain, and set up a GitHub organization. I knew similar names like LegendKeeper. In the world of role-playing tools, chronicles, legends, archives, and keepers simply seemed to belong to the usual vocabulary.
A surprisingly full drawer of names
Then came version 1.0. After years of work, several rebuilds, and a lot of helpful, occasionally painful feedback, registration was finally open. And shortly after, I noticed how many projects now use the same or a very similar name. Even domains and GitHub projects suddenly sat surprisingly close together.
My first thought really was: what a coincidence. My second was less comfortable. Had I really made a good decision with such an obvious name?
I cannot blame anyone for using words like Realm, Chronicle, Lore, Legend, Archive, or Forge. I had picked a name that comes from exactly that drawer myself. That several tools meet there is not misconduct, but rather quite predictable. It was just that this predictability had not been important enough to me on the first attempt.
The old name had gained weight anyway. I had developed a logo, reworked the color system several times, and thought for a long time about who or what this Keeper actually is. Should Waldemar stand in the foreground as a somewhat arrogant strategist? Or a Keeper without a big name of his own, who guards the library aboard an airship? In the end the second idea won. To this day it carries a large part of the visual identity.
Giving up a familiar name therefore does not only mean swapping out a string of characters in the header. It feels a little like unscrewing the sign from a workshop you have worked in for years.
Searching for a name with an involuntary committee
By now my coworkers could sing a song about the search. Most of them do not play pen-and-paper role-playing games themselves and probably still do not fully understand why I put my free time into a system for fictional calendars, quests, and contradictory sources. But they knew very well that a new made-up word could be thrown into the room at any moment.
I did not want a complicated artificial name that you have to spell three times. It should be pronounceable, stay roughly in memory after hearing it once, and not already be tied to a long list of other products. Above all, it should fit the existing imagery. I did not want to lose the airship, the desert library, and Keeper. Too much of what this project means to me now hangs on them.
Of all things, terms around flying turned out to be especially crowded. Almost every halfway usable combination of Latin, English, French, or freely invented aviation sound was already taken somewhere. Sober software development and finding a name remain different disciplines after all. Luckily I had not been to the hairdresser in a while; there was plenty of material to pull my hair out.
Why Atlavium stayed
The breakthrough came with Atlavium. One of my colleagues immediately connected it with a story from his past, something with a roller coaster that was actually called something else. The decisive thing was not the accuracy of that association. It was the first time that nobody looked at me completely clueless. The word could be repeated. You could roughly guess how it is spelled. And after a few days it was still there.
Atlavium is deliberately not a term with a narrow dictionary definition. For me it holds something of Atlas, navigation, departure, and a place that can carry many worlds. That fits surprisingly well with the image that had long been there: an airship as a wandering library, safe above the desert, while Keeper aboard tries to keep order between maps, sources, and the notes of a chaotic gaming group.
At the same time, Atlavium is not the name of a single Realm. Atlavium is the roof under which many separate Realms can live. Every Realm has its own Compendium. In it you keep sources, people, places, quests, sessions, and the Canon that, in the end, is still your responsibility. Keeper remains the librarian who helps with searching and connecting. He does not suddenly become the all-knowing captain, and he does not decide which story is true.
So the name does not change the core of the project. It only gives it a more self-contained frame.
The transition begins now
The marketing page and all new publications will be called Atlavium from now on. Historical articles and changelogs keep their titles from back then, so that a release does not retroactively appear under a name that did not exist yet at that point. A short note will explain the transition. The app address, too, stays reachable under the familiar subdomain for now. A rebranding has enough moving parts; I do not have to throw them all out of the airship at once.
Of course the new name does not feel familiar everywhere yet. But it is allowed to become that. The more often I see it together with the Compendium, the Realms, and Keeper, the better it fits the place I wanted to build all along.
What do you think about the name? Is it easy to pronounce? Does something of it stick? Feel free to write to me on Discord, honest feedback is what got this project this far in the first place.
I have stored my Compendium safely aboard the Atlavium. Welcome aboard.