I'm Ardil the Traveller, also sometimes known as Air Pirate Ris. I write on Archive of Our Own as Ardil the Traveller, as expanded readership is always a good thing. You can also now follow me on Mastodon, @Ardil@, where I will post the odd status update and a variety of miscellaneous thoughts!

I'm a writer and physicist, and I'm interested in just about every aspect of how this amazing universe of ours actually works, a fascination that carries over into my stories, where I try as hard as I can to ensure that everything makes sense, at least within the rules of the story. I can be calm, sensible, and even philosophical, or alternatively completely hyper and crazy, but I keep that side of myself away from my stories, where I'd far rather be taken seriously. I also enjoy drawing, and a few of the results can be found here.

Until recently, most of my fanfic writing was focused on Project Blur: the big Sonic project my friend Sparky and I are working on under the pen name Chaotic Alliance. Fundamentally, the premise is this: the games up to Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were amazing, and then a lot of rather strange and terrible things happened - but inside each of those often rather awful games is a nugget of something that can be nurtured back to life as, we hope, a story worth reading. We love Sonic far too much to just give up on him and his friends over a few sucky games!

Currently, I appear to be on a massive Zelda kick. I'm kind of amazed I never got around to posting any of my Zelda stuff before! In my current project, Sword of the Goddess, there are / will be four interlinked stories: The Sword Reforged; Out of Time; A Hunger to Swallow the World; and To Drift from Grace. (Yes, in that order. There is a complex optimal reading order which is currently partially constructed, and which will prompt you at the beginning and end of relevant chapters.)

Many thanks to all those who are still reading the old stories! I don't know how you find them at this point, but wow, thank you!

I hope you enjoy my work!

"The future is like a dubious sausage - it's best not to ask what's in it!"

Companion art

Only in Death (black and white)

Please note: If you would like to PM me, you're welcome to, but please be sure to use correct grammar, spelling, capitalisation, and punctuation. It's very disrespectful not to do so where I'm from. If it's not worth saying properly, it's not worth saying at all, so don't waste both our time.