Relationship Web

The Relationship Web shows the connections between your world's entries as a graph: who's related to whom, who serves whom, who knows what. It's a Pro worldbuilding tool that works alongside the World Bible, the Time Weaver, the Lexicon Engine, and the Consistency Sentinel.

Focus on one entity

Open the tool, pick a world, and choose an entity in the Focus On picker. The picker has typeahead and groups options by entity type (Character, Faction, Location, and so on) so a long list of characters doesn't drown the few factions you're looking for.

The graph around your focal entity shows direct edges first: who they're related to, allied with, opposed by, or based at. Click an edge to open the relationship details.

Relationship details

Each edge has:

• A relationship type: friend, parent, sibling, member, captain, rival, and so on. Types come from your entity templates' linked-entry fields plus any relationships you've added manually.
• Notes: the things only you know. "Talim raised Sally after the storm of Year 12." Notes are private to the world owner.
• Across-time entries: timeline pins where both parties appear together. The Relationship Web reads the Time Weaver to surface every moment your focal entity met or worked with the other party, so you don't have to remember every cross-reference yourself.

You can edit notes inline without leaving the panel. Click Edit notes, type, and save. The change broadcasts to any other tab you have open on the same entity, so the World Bible Builder updates without a refresh.

Edit an entity without leaving the web

Click a dot (a node) on the graph and a panel opens with two tabs. Relationships lists every connection that entity has, with its tension if you have that turned on. Details is the entity's full record from the World Bible: its name, type fields, aliases, notes, and name profile, the same form you would use in the bible itself.

So when you spot a character on the map and realize their title is wrong, or you want to flesh out a faction you only just added, you fix it right there. Save and the graph relabels itself. No tool switch, no losing your place on the map.

On a wider screen the panel opens beside the graph; you can grow it to fill the screen for roomier editing and shrink it back when you are done. On a phone it opens as a full-screen sheet so the form has room to breathe, with a clear close button in the top corner.

How relationships change over time

A friendship sours. Allies become rivals. A marriage ends. The Relationship Web records that arc so the graph reflects the right state for any point in your world's history.

Click an edge to open its detail panel, then find the History section. The current type and intensity sit at the top, with every recorded change listed below it in order.

To log a change, click Record a change and fill in:

• A date label in your own words ("Age 5", "Year 42", "T.A. 3018"), so the entry reads the way your world keeps time.
• A sort value, a plain number that orders the change against everything else on the graph.
• The new type and intensity (1 to 5).
• What changed, an optional note for the reason behind it.

You never need a timeline for any of this. A relationship's history stands on its own, so you can map an entire arc with date labels alone and never open another tool.

Anchor a change to a timeline event

When a change lines up with a moment you already track, link it. The Link to a timeline event dropdown lists your world's events; pick one and the date label and sort value fill in from it. The change then shows up as a marker on that timeline, so the same beat reads correctly in both tools.

If the moment isn't an event yet, make it without leaving the panel. Click Create new event, give it a label and a date, and choose which timeline it belongs on. The new event saves, links to the change, and appears in the Time Weaver, all in one step.

If the world has no timeline at all, the same form lets you name a new one right there. It is created with the event, so a writer setting up a world for the first time never has to stop and configure the Time Weaver before recording history. One tool, one flow.

End a relationship

To mark a relationship as over, use Dissolve instead of Record a change. The record is kept; the relationship is flagged as ended at the date you give, and the scrubber draws it greyed out from that point on.

Travel through time with the scrubber

A scrubber sits under the graph at all times. Before you have recorded any history it waits quietly, with a note that recording a relationship change brings it to life, so you always know the feature is there waiting for you. Once a world has dated history, drag the scrubber and the whole web recomputes to show relationships as they stood at that moment: who was allied, who hadn't met yet, who had already fallen out.

Click Origin to jump to your earliest dated moment or Present to return to now. The tick marks on the rail are the points where something changed, and a small count beside them tells you how many moments you have recorded, so you can read the shape of your world's history at a glance.

When you want a specific beat rather than a careful drag, use the Jump to a moment picker beside the scrubber. Choose a recorded change by its label and the graph travels straight there. The list is capped so even a heavily tracked world stays readable.

Manage your timeline from here

The scrubber reads its moments off your world's Time Weaver, so the timeline lives right next to it. The Manage timeline button sits beside the scrubber. Open it and the full event manager comes to you: pick or create a timeline, then add, edit, or remove events with every detail the Time Weaver offers, categories, dates, linked entities, plotlines, and cause-and-effect links. Save and the scrubber updates with the new moments.

This means you can build out a world's history and its relationship arcs in one sitting, on one screen, without bouncing between tools. The Time Weaver is still there as its own tool with the full canvas view when you want it; this is the same event editing, brought to where you already are.

See the whole map

A relationship map gets crowded fast. Use the expand button in the top corner of the graph to blow the canvas up to your whole screen, which is especially welcome on a phone where the map would otherwise be small. A clearly labelled Exit fullscreen button brings you back, and the Escape key works too. You can also pinch or scroll to zoom and drag to pan at any time, in or out of fullscreen.

Clear the whole web

To start a world's relationships over, open the settings gear in the tool's header and choose Clear all relationships. It removes every edge in the world at once. Your characters, places, and other entries stay exactly where they are, since the web only holds the connections between them.

This is the closest thing the Relationship Web has to deleting it: the web is the set of connections, so clearing them all is how you wipe it. It sits behind the gear and asks you to confirm first, so you cannot clear a map by accident. Every relationship moves to Trash, so you can bring the whole web back from Manage, then Trash, until your plan's recovery window closes.

Jump to another tool

The worldbuilding tools all read the same world, so moving between them should never mean re-picking where you are. The Tools menu in the header jumps you to any sibling tool, the World Bible, the Time Weaver, the Consistency Sentinel, the Lexicon Engine, or straight to the Entity Types and Relationship Types editors, each opening in a new tab already set to the world you are in. The menu is on every worldbuilding tool, so the trip back is just as quick.

In the editor

The Relationship Web is available as a panel inside the writing editor when your piece is assigned to a world. Open it from the tools panel on the right. The same Focus On / details / edit-notes flow works there, and clicking an edge opens the related entity in a new tab so your draft stays open.

What it does not do

The Relationship Web does not invent relationships. If two entries are connected by a templated field (a character's Allegiance pointing at a faction, say) the edge appears for free. Anything else, you add by hand, and that's the point. The map is a record of what you've decided about your world; it doesn't try to guess.

See also: Entity Templates, Time Weaver, World Bible.