A rock can just be a rock. Or it can be the odd green stone your character found tucked into the pocket of a coat they bought from a traveling merchant. A mushroom can just be something growing beside the trail, or it can be the reason you spend twenty minutes crouched in the dirt trying to identify it, go home, fall down a small internet rabbit hole, and eventually draw a tiny wizard who lives underneath one.

I think I’ve always liked that second version of things.

I like things that make me curious: birds I don’t recognize, interesting rocks, old books, mushrooms growing somewhere it seems like they shouldn’t be, tiny objects tucked into drawers at antique shops, plants with strange names, little bits of folklore, dice, trinkets and anything else that makes me stop and wonder about it for a minute. There’s something wonderful about learning what something actually is and then asking what else it could be.

✧ We’re Already Pretty Weird

One of the things I love most about nature is that it really doesn’t need much help from us to be magical: birds can navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field, fungi create enormous networks beneath our feet, stones form over periods of time that are almost impossible to comprehend while you’re holding one in your hand, there are plants that eat insects and creatures that glow in the dark. The natural world is full of things that would sound completely made up if we hadn’t already accepted them as normal.

Fantasy has griffons and manticores, sure, but have you looked at Leafy Seadragon?

The real world is wonderfully, spectacularly weird, and the more I learn about it, the more ideas I seem to have. Sometimes those ideas become illustrations. Sometimes they become D&D characters, creatures, places or adventure hooks, or a page in one of my books. Sometimes they sit in my notes app for six months under a title that makes absolutely no sense when I eventually find it again. That’s part of the fun.

✧ What If?

I think “what if?” might be one of my favourite questions.

What if this little object belonged to someone?

What if this forest had a secret?

What if there were tiny houses underneath those mushrooms?

What if that bird was delivering something?

What if the strange stone you found wasn’t valuable at all, but someone desperately wanted it back?

You don’t need to write a novel or run a D&D campaign to play with ideas like these. Imagination doesn’t always have to produce something useful or become a finished project. Sometimes it’s just fun to make the world a little bigger than it was five minutes ago.

That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot while figuring out what I want Storm Cat Studios to become upon re-opening. Storm Cat has gone through a few versions over the years. I’ve made art, character sheets, keychains, books, clip art, game resources and all sorts of other little things, and for a while I struggled with how all of those things were supposed to fit together. Eventually I realized the connection wasn’t necessarily what I was making. It was why I liked making it.

I love creating things that give someone a little spark of an idea. An illustration that makes you imagine a character or strange trinket that becomes part of a story. I want to help inspire ideas about what your party might find in a forgotten room. I want to encourage us to look beyond the ordinary.

Image a old coin that isn’t just petty cash anymore because now it’s imbued with magic from a dragon’s hoard, a fey-themed curiosity shop or the pocket of an eccentric wizard. I like creating a starting point and then leaving enough room for someone else’s imagination to take over.

That’s the direction I’m taking Storm Cat now. There will still be art. There will still be books, strange little treasures and probably an unreasonable number of mushrooms. But more and more, I want the things I make to invite you to do something with them. Tell a story, build a character, ask a question, learn something weird, go outside, make something, notice something you would normally walk past. Or… just wonder.

✧ Believing in Magic

I don’t think finding magic in ordinary things requires believing they’re actually magical. I love crystals and gemstones because they’re beautiful pieces of our planet with ridiculous histories. I love folklore even when I don’t believe the stories literally happened. I love fantasy because it lets us look at familiar things differently, and I love learning why something happens just as much as I love imagining a completely impossible explanation for it.

Those things don’t cancel each other out. Knowing how a rainbow forms doesn’t make a rainbow less beautiful. Identifying what kind of mushroom you’re looking at doesn’t stop you from imagining a tiny apothecary underneath it. Understanding that the shiny stone sitting on your desk is simply a mineral doesn’t mean it can’t become an ancient relic the next time you sit down to play D&D.

We get to understand the world and wonder about it.

I think adulthood encourages us to stop doing that sometimes. We walk past things without really looking at them. We’ve seen that bird before. It’s just a rock. It’s just a weed. It’s just an old button. It’s just a silly little idea. Curiosity makes ordinary things interesting again, and I think that’s a habit worth holding onto.

So pick up the weird rock. Look up the bird you don’t recognize. Photograph the mushroom. Read about the folklore. Make the character. Roll the dice. Follow the completely unnecessary rabbit hole that somehow ends with you knowing far too much about medieval beekeeping.

Every once in a while, ask yourself what if?

You might find something magical there.