Dankstory

Family trees for fiction

Fantasy family tree maker, with peoples that age differently

Give each race or people a lifespan and an age of adulthood; the check judges every parent by their own people's clock. Houses with crests, free, no sign-up.

Start your world's family tree, or load three rival houses of two peoples first.

For genealogy programs (.ged files):

The whole tree is fitted to one page, with its name as the title. Large trees print small; the SVG keeps every detail.

Houses

A house gives its members' boxes one colour and a crest beside their names. Choose each person's house, and the house they were born into, in their edit sheet.

Check dates and loops

Reads the year number in each Born and Died box. Tap a line to go to that person. Checking never changes your tree.

    Your world's tree, peoples included, is kept in this browser only, apart from the plain family tree page's. Clearing site data deletes it; save a file to keep it or move it to another device.

    How to use it for your world

    1. Tap Peoples above the chart, then New people. Give it a name, a typical lifespan in years and an age of adulthood: the youngest age at which one of them can be a birth parent. Either number can stay blank.
    2. Tap a person on the chart and choose their People in the edit sheet. If their two parents are of different peoples, the sheet names both; pick either one, any other people, or tap Add or edit peoples in the sheet to make a new one just for them.
    3. Write births and deaths as years in one calendar ("Year 1205", "1205 AR"), so the page can count ages. Text without a year number is kept as you wrote it but cannot be checked.
    4. Tap Check. A birth parent younger at the birth than their own people's age of adulthood is listed; tap the line to go to them. Someone with no people is held to the age in the Check panel (12 unless you change it), exactly as on the plain family tree page.
    5. Open someone who has died: under the People select, the sheet shows their age at death against their people's lifespan, for example "Age at death: 612 (old for the Ondrevai, whose typical lifespan is 500)".
    6. Tap Houses to give each house a colour and one of twelve crests, then Save file to keep the world, or Export a PNG, an SVG or a printable PDF with the crests and the peoples on it.

    Why lifespans matter to the check

    Take one parent who was 40 when their child was born. If their people come of age at 16, that is unremarkable and nothing is listed. If they come of age at 100, the same 40-year-old is a child themselves, and Check lists it: "… was 40 when … was born; among the [people], adulthood is 100." One minimum age for everyone cannot get both right: set it low and long-lived parents who are still children pass, set it high and every short-lived parent is flagged.

    The example world

    Three rival houses of the Saltmarch: Orlesk (a moon on purple), Cauldmere (a tower on red) and Pellowmar (a wave on blue), and two peoples: the Ondrevai, adult at 90 and living about 500 years, and the Tarrowen, adult at 15 and living about 70.

    Ysolde Orlesk died at 612, so her sheet says she was old even for the Ondrevai. Her daughter Thalassine had her son Sorrel at 110, just past the Ondrevai age of adulthood, and Marit Cauldmere had her first child at 19, a grown woman among the Tarrowen, so Check finds nothing wrong with either; change Sorrel's birth to 834 and it lists Thalassine as 74, too young for her people. Edrevan Orlesk (Ondrevai) married Wenna, born a Cauldmere (Tarrowen); their daughter Ilsabet is counted Ondrevai and their son Corrin Tarrowen, and Corrin died of old age at 59 while his sister, at 63, was still not of age by her people's reckoning. Odile Varn has no people, so the ordinary rule applies to her. Every name, house and people here was made up for this page.

    What it cannot do

    A people is one name and two numbers: no sub-peoples, no fractions of heritage (a mixed-heritage child counts as one people), no ageing curve, and no check that someone outlived their people's lifespan by too much; the sheet only says they were old for it. It does not invent names, peoples or lore for you.

    No account and no upload: nothing you type or pick leaves your device. A picture you add to someone's box is shrunk to 256 px in this browser and kept in the tree, so it counts toward the browser's 5 MB or so for the site (the page warns when that is nearly full). Clearing site data deletes the tree kept in this browser, so use Save file to keep a copy; the file, peoples and pictures included, also opens on the plain family tree page, which then shows the Peoples panel too.

    Reading the chart

    • married
    • partners, not married
    • separated
    • child by birth
    • adopted child
    • fostered child
    • inner border: the house a person was born into
    • other parent unknown (the "?" box)