Monsters of the fog
over 4 years ago – Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 12:54:44 AM

Greetings, Minerva agents.

Today’s update is less heavy on the lore of our world. Instead,  make sure you understand the creatures you’ll be facing in your missions. Never take them anything else than seriously.

Boreal

Far in the northernmost reaches of the Lost Continent, where the cold is seemingly endless, our reports have detailed a creature we know here simply as the Boreal. The spikes on its body are not for terror purposes, but seemingly a growth mechanism. A few reports insist on seeing their peers stuck in the spikes, as if being swallowed by the body.

The Legged

Legged are strange creatures. An understatement, we’re sure, but this is not a strangeness of appearance, but one of emotion. They’re generally peaceful creatures, roaming around, aimlessly; however, if one were to sense fear nearby it, it will go in for the attack. Be wary of your emotions, agents. The Miasma will use them against you.

Core Rulebook progress

• Writing: Complete.
• Editing: Lore chapters have been under editing for the past 2 weeks; we expect to receive the edited text by the end of June. Rules and Game system chapters are fully edited.
• Graphic Layout: This weekend we will review the graphic layout progress for the first half of the book (rules & game system).
• Art: For the past months we have been producing an average of 2 daily briefs. We are working with artists to create art as fast as possible. 

We will be back in the coming weeks with more art and lore updates for you to enjoy and make the wait more entertaining. Thanks again for your support and sharing the excitement for Eldritch Century!

Nisshoku Teikoku
over 4 years ago – Thu, Jun 04, 2020 at 08:45:37 PM

Greetings, Minerva agents!

We hope you and yours are safe and healthy in these trying times. In the meantime, we’d like to share some more of Eldritch Century progress.

Nisshoku Teikoku

It is our first interest that people have fun and interesting adventures. This is kind of hard when we've unintentionally offended them. Since we're working with a very real world in a very different scenario, we saw a deep need in getting cultural consultancy. One of the most changed factions was the once known as Shogunate of the Eclipse. Here's a few of the key changes in our setting.

• The name has changed into Empire of the Eclipse. This allows for historical accuracy, Japan never had an American intervention and pressure after a second world war. Additionally, there was no real relationship with Germany because the second world war never happened. It also changes the way we see this empire: not a feudal one, but a modern one with a new focus.
• The relationship between people and the kami remains, but the objective has changed. The Empire of the Eclipse has heard the kami's message: “This Earth is done for. We must escape.” Now, they scour the earth looking for resources and oil fuels, seeking to perfect their space program.
• Since there's no more feudalism, we had to shake up the concept of samurai and shinobi. They serve no lord, for lords have given way to history. Instead, they've become the masters of all sorts of industry. Shizoku serve their families now and Shinobi have formed an intelligence organization.
• The Mashin process has opened a door to a new Path: Kaizo. As developed by our remote writers and named by us. These are people who have lost limbs either by accident or on purpose in order to become one. Their prosthesis, as is customary to the Empire, have been intervened by kami.

Here’s an excerpt of the faction’s development, as written by Hiromi Cota and team:

Life in the Empire of the Eclipse

Thanks to the widespread usage of the Mashin process, every citizen of the Empire of the Eclipse enjoys a superior standard of living compared to their contemporary counterparts. Education is not only among the best in the world, but also strongly encouraged. The Empire boasts the highest educational attainment of any of the modern nations, with a near 100% high school completion rate and over 60% of the nation holding a college degree of some sort, mostly in technical or spiritual studies.

Thanks partly to the strict policies on religious orthodoxy dating back to the Meiji Era, Shintō and Buddhist practices have been separate for nearly a century, with most of the population holding distinctly Shintō beliefs, a significant shift from a hundred years ago when the two religions were equal in popularity and many people observed both religions. This widespread practice of Shintoism has led to a huge number of citizens who are capable of directly communicating with Kami and Yōkai, a boon in a society that’s partnered with the spiritual world.

Life among the Kami is second nature to many of the people of Empire. The existence and proximity of supernatural world has been a simple fact of life for the entirety of Japanese history. This reality led to Shintoism becoming the dominant religion. After the surge in Kami activity in 1946, personal encounters with Kami went from something someone would experience perhaps once a year to a routine occurrence.

Kaizō

Technically, the name of this cultural phenomenon is Kaizō Ningen, translated loosely as “reformed human,” but after a decade in the public consciousness, the name has shrunk to Kaizō. The most commonly known and politically active subset of these cyborgs are the Diesel Mermaids. When most citizens of the Empire think of Kaizō, the Mermaids are the first name on their tongue; the two terms not interchangeable, however. Kaizō exist as a wider cultural phenomenon within the Empire. Many Kaizō join the Mermaids, and the organization has led the way in acceptance and advocacy for this form of accessibility, healing, and health advocacy. However, the practice of swapping in nemurenai parts for stumps and disabled organs has spread far past their numbers.

When Uchiyama Robyn began the process of developing her nemurenai tail after an accident left her confined to her bed (and liberated from that bed by a heavily modified wheelchair), others found inspiration in her work. After the founding of the Diesel Mermaids in the early 1970s, several other, smaller groups arose. Far from hoarding the secrets of the process to herself, Robyn encouraged others to take up the cause of adapting their bodies with nemurenai, freely sharing her knowledge with anyone who sought to further the world’s knowledge of self-improvement. This open-door attitude has largely prevented the sort of financial gatekeeping which often accompanies the development of mobility aids and disability abatement methods; the Mermaids have a policy of teaching literally anyone who asks, in order to avoid these techniques being locked up away from someone who might need them.

We are currently developing the full render characters for the Paths sections.

The book lore section is still in editing stage and layout is in progress. 

Next update will include more art sneak peeks. Until then!

Axumite Federation
over 4 years ago – Thu, May 21, 2020 at 01:00:45 AM

Hello Minerva Agents!

We hope you safe and healthy! We come back to share more about Eldritch Century; this time we want to share more about the Axumite Federation.

Axumite Federation

The backbone of the Axumite Federation relies on the power of Zohar, which is made from distilling huge quantities of the Miasma into its purest form. It produces clean energy by itself, and a range of forceful mutations when introduced to biological material.

Depending on the process used, this form can be either gaseous or a viscous liquid. The liquid form can be crystallized into hard, glowing shards of energy or forced into a crystalline film when put under vast pressure. Either of these can be applied to living things to trigger mutations, or embedded into materials and technology to give them new and powerful properties.

As you might expect, the process of converting Miasma into Zohar is incredibly time-consuming and requires a number of delicate machines and several attentive scientists. A hundred pounds of Miasma mist produces only a pound of Zohar gas or liquid, so there is no room for mistakes.

The Miasma is mostly found in the mainland of Europe, but a large portion of it has also covered areas of what used to be Morocco. This is the Federation’s main source for the Miasma, which they suck out using enormous pipes, but the amount gathered can fluctuate wildly from day to day. There is a permanent base of scientists and soldiers there (though the individuals rotate in and out, since it’s a risky posting to have) to monitor the extraction of the Miasma, ensure that the massive pipes are always in good repair, and defend the base from anyone - or anything - that might attack.  

There has recently been talk of extending the pipes across the Strait of Gibraltar to gain access to the Miasma covering Spain and Portugal. The pros and cons of this are hotly debated even amongst the royal family, with Tsehai and Menelik in favour and Bezabish opposing.  

The core world building for the Axumite Federation was written by Jerry D. Grayson and his team. Helen Gould was our guest writer to develop and expand from that content to the lore found in the core rulebook. All factions had cultural consultancy with James Mendez. We want to thank them all for helping us direct this faction to the proper creative direction.

Ophanim

The Gift has awarded the Axumites with the ultimate warrior: the Dread Angel. Among these, the most perplexing, perhaps, is the Ophanim. The mind and overall “spirit” of a person is hooked to a full-head mask detailed and boosted by Zohar, linked to a couple of Zohar-engineered arms. The Mask is then worn by a subject, any person chosen by the Zohar Engineers and the mask themselves, whose duty it is to be the vessel for the host.

  The spirit pilots the subject, who enters a half-trance which allows the process. The limbs and processes of the subject are the spirit's playground, as well as is the voice. In return, both the spirit and the subject are known to be in constant communication. Many Axumites jump at the opportunity to become Ophanim due to the incomparable wisdom and experience shared to them by their hosts.

   Originally, Ophanim were set to be a floating mask in control of a couple of tendrils. The idea of redesigning the Path came from a production and aesthetic necessity. Making minis of floating things is quite hard without magic… unfortunately. Narratively, we saw the opportunity to make a lot of roleplaying conflict in a Path. People who choose the Ophanim path take on two identities, that of the mask and that of the subject.

Progress on the book

This week we sent out the second half of the book to editing. This part deals with lore not only for GM’s but also a bit for players. We know we can’t stop you from reading the material we’ve worked so hard on, but we did set up a spoiler alert halfway through the book. It’s been a long and trying process, but after showing our work to cultural consultants and leaving the factions on the hands of amazing writers, we’ve got a lore of which we can be proud. Additionally, the first part, the one regarding rules, is already in editorial layout design.

 Meanwhile, artists all over are helping us build all the amazing things you’ll be able to see in the book and in our world. From concept arts to blueprints to full renders of scenes and powers. We can only imagine how excited you’ll be considering how excited we are whenever we get that notification on the workplace.

All of this art along with the written lore and rules will allow us to post updates in a regular way with relevant content!

Character sheet 

 Our design team has been making the proper adjustments to the character sheet now that all the system rules have been edited.

Other Rewards  

STL Files 

We are thankful for your patience on this. Our team at LAIR is still working in the deploy for digital distribution of files, we expect this to be ready in a couple of weeks. We will let you know in an update whenever they are sent out so you don't miss any email.  

Minerva Adventure / Short Comic 

Now that the book's written content is finished and editing at 50%, we will start designing this adventure in-house and resume our work with the comic script before making art requests.  

New RPG collaboration  

Detestable Games is a board game design & playtesting team which is part of Draco Studios. Their project Dodos Riding Dinos for the Creature Kingdoms universe has been live on Kickstarter and it has 1 day left. 

Since all their stretch goals have been unlocked and our team working on Eldritch Century is about to finish the in-house work in a couple of months (after the Minerva adventure and Comic are done), we thought about designing a one-shot standalone RPG adventure for that light-hearted universe if their stretch goal is reached. 

We plan to introduce some subtle crossover from Eldritch Century in the RPG adventure. If you are in for a light RPG experience with goofy minis, take a look at the project which has 24hrs left on Kickstarter.  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/detestablegames/dodos-riding-dinos?ref=1og69l

Add-ons and shipping fee charged
over 4 years ago – Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 07:51:39 PM

Hello Minerva Agents!

We hope all of you and your loved ones are staying safe and healthy. We are still at editing stage with the core rulebook but the first steps of layout (basic overview for the whole book) has begun, we are still working on art briefs and art commissions as well. 

This is a very quick update to share some important info for backers who included add-ons, are expecting physical rewards or STL files; next update will have more lore and images.

Add-ons and shipping fees have been charged

• We just made the charge for Backerkit which includes any add-ons (optional buys) you may have included as well as shipping fees for physical rewards. 

As indicated in the campaign, shipping fees would be charged in the pledge manager.

You can still make changes to your shipping address

• If for any reason you want to change your shipping address, you can still do so by logging into your Backerkit survey. 
• Alternatively you can send us an email to [email protected] indicating us your full new address and we will be happy to help you change it on our end.

Once manufacture ends, we will send a 48hr final-notice to lock addresses along with the ETA of fulfillment.

STL files for 3D printing will be sent in late April/early May

• Whether you are expecting the STL files for Eldritch Century or any optional buys for Dragons of the Red Moon or War for Chicken Island STL files, you can expect us to send a link to your files in a couple of weeks.
• You will receive an e-mail with a personal link to access and store your files in LAIR, our dedicated platform for tabletop 3D printing.
• In a couple of months, you will be able to find 3D printing services near your area (or offer them if you own a 3D printer and want to join our community of 3D printing partners).

LAIR has a live campaign for Legendary Dragons STL files. and you can still pledge (final days). If you are into 3D printing or fantasy RPG, these models are an absolute must-have . For just $25 you get 16+ epic dragon STL files but you can also get the RPG book from Jetpack7 and other goodies. In future campaigns by LAIR, you can expect to get loyalty rewards for returning backers.

48hrs left to answer your survey!
over 4 years ago – Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 08:43:27 PM

Hello Minerva Agents!!

We hope you and all your loved ones are staying safe and healthy. Everyone in the team has been working remotely since a month ago for our staff safety. Please take care and don't take any risks.

Locking surveys in 48hrs

Thanks to everyone who answered their surveys with such celerity! In 48hrs your surveys will be locked so we can finish item-count. (You might get a reminder from Backerkit within the next hours). You will still be able to modify your shipping address until we send a final-notice for that in some months. You just have to access your survey to change your address.

About 13% (101 backers) haven't answered the survey. If you have lost your survey, click here and please proceed to answer it as soon as possible.

Add-ons and Shipping fees will be charged in April 15th (unless you paid in your Backerkit survey using PayPal).

Core Rule Book progress

• The first half of the system has been successfully edited and restructured after a few weeks of revisions between the team and the editor. 
• A few more remote playtests have taken place to make sure the game is balanced and enjoyable. We've fought monsters, unearthed secrets and come up with some really good ideas for adventures in the future! 

We hope you have as much fun as we have during this stage; perhaps even more. The next step is to edit the second half of our system and throw our lore text to the editing floor.

Here's something new we added to the setting that spices up the game:

Miasmic Bursts

As far as we're concerned, the Miasma remains constant. After twenty some years of its last expansion it has remained glued to Europe, but to grow confident would be a mistake. Ever since its third expansion it has shown a couple of new behaviors... For one, humans can now delve and return, forever wary of the creatures within. Alas, its hand strikes an instant after giving a rotten flower.
    Miasmic Bursts are random surges from the main fog. We never know where it may land, but we do know that whichever land is unfortunate will be stuck in 24 to 72 hours of sheer horror and corruption. This is the only presentation of the Miasma that eventually dissipates, yet its casualties, be it in the form of people or land are massive. Bursts bring with them monsters and the common corruption that adventurers have reported to their authorities. The worst part is, to many, that there is no way to predict them.
    Some have indicated certain signs of an incoming burst, but their similarities to the common storm leave us stranded in square one. The factions all have security measures, of course, but they are never enough.

Sino-Siberian Mandate

Here's a little more of the lore by Ed Turner

Secretary General Yermak

Yermak is a larger-than-life figure. To the citizens of the Sino-Siberian Mandate, he’s not just the leader of the Communist Party, he is a folk hero: the man who strode out of the Siberian woods one day and single-handedly re-built the USSR. He’s as strong as ten big men, he knows every citizen by name, and once killed a bear with nothing more than a hard look. He’s Yermak! 

Yermak’s public persona is carefully crafted: the stories that are told about his life and accomplishments have loose bearing with reality, but are exaggerated to emphasize his abilities. But the stories aren’t entirely false; Yermak is a powerful man, and even if he had the backing of Teslatronic Gestalt armor, his fight to reclaim the fallen USSR came from his physical strength, imposing character, and boundless confidence. With his easy charm and abilities as a storyteller, he commands attention at speeches and rallies, and has become the face of the Sino-Siberian Mandate.

As a leader, Yermak is direct—he isn’t stupid, and it is not wise to underestimate him, but he is unfailingly transparent in his dealings. If he wants something, he sends soldiers to get it and if he’s mad at a political opponent, he’ll insult them publicly. As happy as he is to exaggerate the truth, he does not care for outright spycraft and subterfuge. His impatience and unwillingness to compromise have also caused tension within the Mandate—the bureaucracy of running a country is tedious, so he will often make bold public pronouncements without running them past the Central Committee or the Council of Commissars, who then must either hold to those pronouncements or challenge the authority of their leader.

Yermak is only called Yermak. During a speech railing against dynastic pursuits, he made the impromptu decision to disavow his own patronymic and family name. The move has proven surprisingly popular, and many younger citizens have followed Yermak’s lead and go only by one name.

Legendary Dragons 3D and RPG book

As you may know, Draco Studios was founded when different tabletop gaming enterprises joined forces to develop Eldritch Century. Today Draco Studios has different teams working on different projects – Eldritch Century, Dragonbond, Creature Kingdoms and now, LAIR.

Since August 2019, Draco Studios has been consolidating a new group of skilled programmers with passion for tabletop games and 3D printing. The team has been working on LAIR, a dedicated space focused on tabletop 3D printing.

Partnering with Jetpack7, creators of Legendary Dragons 5e RPG book, Lair has created amazing Dragon models digital sculpts for 3D printers, the Kickstarter campaign is currently live and we think many of you might be interested in the 3D STL files or in the RPG Hard cover or PDF book for these amazing dragons.

The campaign is at the exact mid point with over $50.000 USD and 1000 backers. The STL bundle ($25 USD) includes 13 models and counting. Plus, if you are not into 3D printing, you will be able to connect with users or workshops who can offer 3D printing services near your area and ship your printed minis.

Take a look at these majestic and huge dragons.

Thanks again for your support and patience, in the next update we will tell you more about the Axumite Federation. Stay safe!