The Shadow's Embrace | www.theshadowsembrace.com | A Wheel of Time Rolelaying Game

The Shadow's Embrace was originally founded as a MUD named As the Wheel Weaves. In the latter part of 2008 it was re-built from the ground up and assumed the name The Shadow's Embrace.

The Shadow's Embrace is a massive online roleplaying game based on Robert Jordan's best-selling Wheel of Time series. TSE boasts some of the most friendly Staff of any game on the Internet and some of the most loyal players to be found anywhere. In addition to our Staff and players, we offer a wide variety of features that can't be found on any other MUD in existence.

The Shadow's Embrace began in the Summer of 1998 as the brain-child of Eric Lowe (Dalsor) after he decided that it was time for there to be a MUD which followed Robert Jordan's examples in his excellent books. Together with a couple of friends, they set out at first simply to get all the ideas together. It took a while, but after only a couple of months, they knew what direction they wanted to head in. Soon after, more friends came along, and those friends brought other friends. It wasn't long before the fever that had taken the original few was shared by many.

Over the course of ten years, AWW developed into one of the most well-known Wheel of Time MUDs around, boasting massively complex code, and richly detailed areas, while maintaining an easy to play interface with a light-hearted atmosphere. Unlike other MUDs, which focus on player-killing, or try to enforce roleplaying upon their players, AWW left the field open for the players to decide how to enjoy themselves.

AWW existed as a salute to Robert Jordan's books. Every effort was made to follow the examples Mr. Jordan set forth for us while maintaining ease of play. On some levels, the rules were bent a bit to make game-play more interesting, such as adding additional blademaster forms besides those described by RJ, adding villages not described in the books for the sake of filling in large blank spots between cities, and even going so far as to add elements provided by the Wizards of the Coast in their WoT RPG Guide supplement to the books. These deviations were not meant to steer away from RJ's world, simply to add to it.

In late 2004, a rift occured within the AWW staff. What once was a thriving MUD split into two MUDs running the same code and areas, but under different leadership. Dalsor maintained the AWW name and began the MUD a-new with a clean slate, while the other half maintained the code, areas, and player files. As of 2005, AWW had adopted a policy of once again having only one rule: Have FUN! AWW maintained that the majority of changes to the game would come at the behest of the players themselves, and that any major changes which would affect players would be lain before them so that they could vote on whether they wanted those changes to occur. This was once the original goal of AWW, and is once again the goal with TSE.

Many of the features which existed on the original AWW codebase were integrated into the TSE codebase, while others were dropped or re-written to provide a more realistic Wheel of Time experience. A massive new world map was created to allow players to explore the entire world in a visually appealing manner. In more recent times the world map has grown even larger, encompassing not only the main continent (which includes the Great Blight and the Aiel Waste), but including the lands of Shara, the Seafolk Isles, the Seanchan continent, and the Isle of Madmen, as well.

In mid-2009, Dalsor handed over day-to-day administration of TSE to Xochitl, retiring to perform web design, building projects, and minor code updates.

In 2010 the source code and areas of AWW were given to a pair of players to handle with Dalsor and Xochitl retiring from the MUD in order to focus on family matters and raising their son. AWW has since been renamed to The Shadows Embrace.