Meet the Team
The Iron Realms Entertainment team consists of worldbuilders, storytellers, coders, and builders from across the globe, including North America, Canada, The UK, New Zealand, and Australia. Our game worlds have thrived over 20 years thanks to the hard work, endless creativity, and dedication of both our paid and volunteers teams. Get to know some of our leadership below:
Iron Realms Entertainment
Jeremy Saunders
Jeremy Saunders is the CEO of Iron Realms Entertainment, the studio behind genre-defining text-based MMORPGs like Achaea, Aetolia, and Starmourn. He focuses on growing and modernizing live, community-driven worlds by improving onboarding and retention, strengthening player storytelling and conflict, and helping more people discover what makes MUDs special. Outside of games, Jeremy is usually training in combat sports or planning his next trip, and he brings that same love of challenge, craft, and new perspectives to the worlds IRE builds.
Achaea, Dreams of the Divine Land
Sam (Ictinus), Producer
Unapologetically Welsh, Sam joined Iron Realms in 2017 as Head Builder for Achaea, eventually spending two years as Aetolia's Producer before returning to Achaea in 2024. As a MUD veteran of almost twenty years, Sam's admin and development expertise combine with a decade of competitive experience as a player. Responsible for such projects as the Yggdrasil Expansion, the Second War of Night, Forays, the Underworld, and much more, Sam is driven by a passion for immersive storytelling, demanding combat, thrilling conflicts, rewarding roleplay, and challenging PvE. Outside of MUDs, Sam is a hall of fame raider in World of Warcraft and an obsessive fan of the Wheel of Time, occasionally taking inspiration from both. Alongside Makarios, he now captains Achaea as Lead Producer as a new millennium dawns on Iron Realms' flagship world...
Charles Russell, Producer
A veteran of all the IRE games in one fashion or another, Charlie's reputation in Achaea is legendary, his prowess on the battlefield still talked about a dozen years after joining the Garden. That expertise remains to this day and as Achaea's Head Coder and Combat Lead, Achaea's finely tuned balance, class design, and all things major systems owe their existence to Charlie's dutiful hand. His accomplishments are too many to list, but include the Elemental Lords, Spiritlore, the Pariah and Psion classes, Zeal, Depthswalker, and more. He swears that each new class will be the last, but nevertheless, he persists, joining Ictinus as the game's co-Lead Producer.
Aetolia, The Midnight Age
Michael Duncan (Razmael): Lead Producer
Razmael joined the team in January 2012 and has been a titan of the Iron Realms coding staff for over ten years. Having recently returned as Lead Producer after some years, he is responsible for some of the game's most popular and ambitious additions such as mining, hardcore mode, and the inquisition arena game - though these are just the tip of the iceberg. Razmael is also Aetolia's resident lorekeeper, and the mastermind behind many of the game's major story events.
Luke Moore (Keroc): Producer, Engineer & Head of Combat
Keroc joined the team in October 2015 and in that time has singlehandedly wrestled with the never-ending pursuit that is combat balance - something he's doggedly dedicated to even in the face of terrible ideas from the rest of the staff! His skills as a class designer are represented in the major update to Zealot and the entire Bard class - Aetolia's most recent neutral class released in 2022. Beyond that, Keroc is also responsible for keeping all of our conflict systems fresh and up to date, having recently made major updates to every single one of them!
Micheal Schwan (Emellan): Producer, Content Creation
Our newest producer, Emellan joined the team in December 2022. With a great amount of Iron Realms player experience under their belt, Emellan's primary role involves content creation - from quest making and area building to script writing and everything in between. In the short time they've been here, they've spearheaded much of the "Will of the Helm" story event, built a large expansion to the Mannaseh Swamp, and toiled away at countless other things behind the scenes!
Derek Deska (Watson): Engineer
The newest addition to the staff, Watson joined the team in March of 2024. No stranger to Aetolia, he was a member of the volunteer team for almost four years following his time as a player in Aetolia of over a decade. Watson's role involves a little bit of everything, but he is most often found making new content or giving older content a helping hand with typos, bug fixes, and a new coat of paint where necessary. While his work stretches across the game in innumerable facets, his most well-known works include the single-player dungeon instance 'The Vaults of Glandor' and the content within the area of Aetolia's world known as the 'Red Quarter' of Albedos.
Lusternia, Age of Ascension
Joanna (Uilani), Producer
Joanna got into MUDs in 2001 entirely on accident. While looking for an online RPG experience, she stumbled onto MUDs and it was love at first sight. No MMO could compare to the scope for imagination that MUDs offered and it has been a constant source of inspiration and an outlet for her creativity. She found her way to her first Iron Realms game, Lusternia, in 2006 and it has been her digital home ever since. In 2011 she joined the team as a volunteer administrator and in 2021 assumed the role of Lusternia's Producer.
Starmourn
Argus, Producer
Argus got into MUDs in 2015 by playing Achaea for the purpose of proving to a friend that text-based games were lame. Instead he proved himself wrong and, a few adventures and 11 years later, he is now a Producer of Starmourn and deeply in love with the sci-fi worlds this legacy game team continues to create. His specialty is area development, as highlighted in a recent project to completely rebuild the newbie tutorial experience and his first ever project "Paperweight" which led to the development of a whole new player race. Inside Starmourn, he is simply a tiny kitten scampering about in your imagination. Outside MUDs he is a prolific coffee enthusiast, hiker-explorer, and against-all-odds crafter.
Marra, Producer
With nearly 20 years of experience writing, roleplaying and building for MUDs, Marra has cultivated a deep love of dynamic and immersive worlds, environmental storytelling, and the Damoclesean rule of player agency, and endeavours to keep these at the forefront of her writing here at Starmourn. From the depravity of Ishvana Facilities to the splendor of the Glittering Shores and the wintry warmth of Paperweight, she's at her best when curating content that explores the world and the fascinating cultures within it. At home, Marra is a garden-variety nerd, enjoying gaming, reading, and writing, loving best anything that gives her a chance to share them with friends.