Entities and articles

Entities are the core building blocks of a Skryrún world. Every NPC, location, faction, artifact, and plot point lives as an entity with its own article, metadata, and place in your knowledge graph.

Entity types

Skryrún supports 15 entity types. Each type has the same underlying structure but signals intent and affects how the entity is displayed and filtered.

Type	Use it for
Location	Cities, dungeons, regions, buildings, planes
NPC	Named characters, recurring monsters, historical figures
Faction	Organizations, guilds, governments, cults
Deity	Gods, demigods, patron spirits
Monster	Stat-tracked creatures and encounter subjects
Item	Artifacts, weapons, vehicles, relics
Spell	Homebrew spells, rituals, magical phenomena
Event	Battles, disasters, founding moments, prophecies
Session	Individual play sessions and their summaries
House Rule	Rule modifications specific to your campaign
Encounter	Structured combat or scene setups
Hook	Adventure seeds and player-facing plot hooks
Secret	Information known only to certain parties
Clue	Physical or spoken evidence players can find
Custom	Anything that doesn't fit the above

Creating an entity

Open your world and click + New in the sidebar, or press N.
Select an entity type from the picker.
Enter a title — this becomes the entity's display name and is used in wikilinks.
Click Create. The entity opens immediately in the article editor.

You can also create entities inline from any article by typing [[Entity Name]]. If no entity with that name exists, Skryrún creates a stub and links to it. See Wikilinks and the graph.

/help/screenshots/entities/01-entity-editor.gif

An NPC entity open in the article editor, showing the toolbar, article body with a wikilink, and the metadata sidebar.

Record: open an NPC entity with a written article — show the toolbar, type [[ to trigger the wikilink picker, then pan to show the metadata sidebar with visibility badge and relationship panel

The article editor

Each entity has a rich text article powered by TipTap. The toolbar gives you:

Headings — H1, H2, H3 for structuring long articles
Inline formatting — bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code
Lists — bullet and numbered
Images — upload or paste directly into the editor; images are stored per-world
Wikilinks — type [[ to open entity search and link to any entity in your world
Code blocks — useful for stat blocks, tables, or hex-formatted content
Dividers — horizontal rules to separate sections

💡Tip

Use H2 headings to create scannable sections in long NPC or location articles. During Session Mode, the article preview respects heading structure, making it faster to find what you need mid-session.

Blocks

In addition to the article, each entity supports blocks — structured data panels that sit alongside the article. Block types include:

Personality / Quirk — NPC traits, motivations, secrets
Equipment — gear lists and item references
Hook — plot hooks connected to this entity
Secret — GM-only information that can be revealed selectively
Stat Block — structured combat stats
Custom — freeform key/value or text blocks

Add blocks from the Add Block button in the entity sidebar. Blocks are ordered by drag-and-drop and each has its own visibility setting independent of the parent entity.

Entity metadata

Each entity has a metadata panel below or beside the editor (depending on screen width):

Tags — freeform labels for filtering and visibility rules (e.g., villain, capital, quest-item)
Cover image — displayed at the top of the entity page and on cards in the entity browser
Portrait — for NPCs; displayed as a circular avatar. See Portrait Vault
Visibility — controls who can see this entity. See Visibility and secrets
Subtype — a freeform label for more specific categorization within a type (e.g., NPC subtype: Merchant, Location subtype: Ruin)

Entity hierarchy

Entities can be nested as parent and child. This is useful for organizing locations (dungeon → dungeon level → room) or factions (kingdom → noble house → family member).

To set a parent:

Drag and drop — in the entity browser sidebar, drag an entity onto another to nest it
Parent field — in the entity metadata panel, use the Parent field to search and select any entity as the parent

Child entities appear indented under their parent in the sidebar browser. Parent inheritance can also apply to visibility — see Visibility and secrets.

Entity slugs and URLs

Every entity has a slug — a URL-safe identifier derived from the entity's title at creation time. The slug is used in the entity's URL:

/world/[world-slug]/entity/[entity-slug]

For example, an entity titled "The Ashen Throne" gets the slug the-ashen-throne. Its URL becomes /world/my-world/entity/the-ashen-throne.

You can edit the slug from the entity metadata panel. Changing a slug updates the entity's URL, but existing wikilinks continue to work — they resolve by entity ID, not slug, so internal links never break.

📝Note

Slugs must be unique within a world. If you try to create an entity with the same name as an existing one, Skryrún appends a numeric suffix to the slug (e.g., thornwall-2). You can rename the slug manually afterward.

Navigating entities

Sidebar browser — entities are grouped by type. Collapse or expand each type group. The count badge shows how many entities of that type exist.

Search — press ⌘K (Mac) or Ctrl+K (Windows/Linux) to open global search. Results include entity name, type, and a content snippet.

Graph — click Graph in the sidebar to see all entities as nodes in a network visualization. Click any node to open the entity. See Wikilinks and the graph.

Mini-graph — on any entity page, the mini-graph panel shows that entity's immediate connections: entities it links to, entities that link to it, and explicit relationships.

📝Note

Entities deleted from the sidebar move to Trash and can be restored within 30 days. Wikilinks pointing to a deleted entity become ghost links until you restore or re-create the entity.

Troubleshooting

I can't find an entity I know I created. Check that the entity's type group is expanded in the sidebar — each type collapses independently. Also try global search (⌘K) which searches across all types regardless of sidebar state. If the entity was recently deleted, check Sidebar → Trash.

Two entities have the same name and I can't tell them apart. Skryrún appends a numeric suffix to the slug (e.g., thornwall-2) but keeps the display title identical. Open both entities and check the URL to distinguish them, then rename one to be more specific — e.g., "Thornwall (Ruins)" vs "Thornwall (City)".

A wikilink I typed is showing as plain text rather than a clickable link. Either no entity with that exact name exists (check capitalisation — wikilinks are case-insensitive but spacing matters), or the linked entity was deleted and the link is now a ghost. Type [[ and re-pick the entity from the search popover to restore the link.

I uploaded an image to an entity article but it's not showing up. Images in the article editor are stored per-world and typically appear within a few seconds. If the placeholder is still showing after 10 seconds, the upload may have failed — try uploading again. Check your browser console for any upload errors if it fails repeatedly.