Dear travelers, hellow-mellow, this is your author, Luka. Our golden atom train has pulled out and we’re rolling on the right road. It looks like the Proud Marigold will keep on turning. Our backer train hit 1.6 kilobackers at one point and we ... we clocked right through all the achievements? We did, right? Yeah, the team says we did. For some reason I thought the 10th achievement was $225k.

Ok, enough mixed metaphors and terrible puns, they’re barely good enough for me, and I’m pretty sleep-deprived. It’s been an enervating few days and these last 24 hours? Phew.

We’re gonna make the whole thing! Every, single, last thing in the gold* box.

This makes me really happy. We have some ideas for other achievements we could add, but our number one priority now is to make sure we delivered everything we promised and you signed up for. It’s a big project and there’s a temptation to add more and more, so with that in mind we’re going to take our time to figure out what we can deliver without compromising anything. 

For example, making an extra zine that updates all 100 remaining spells from my (unpublished) Uranium Butterflies book wouldn’t be too hard, but it would certainly add up to an extra month with editing, layout, proofreading and production, then increase shipping and production costs — on the other hand, a PDF version might be more doable but less exciting. It could slot in after the existing books are all in production and before they ship.

On the other hand, an extra achievement like an alternate dice color, would be take very little time to produce, but we’d have to carefully weigh production and shipping costs and how they would fit in the box.

What do you think? This is a good time for ideas and comments. Especially because round the time this update goes live, I’ll be asleep and the Exalted Funeral crew will have to field all your questions, haha! (cracks metamorphical whip)

But let’s loop back again. EVERYTHING achieved.

The books, sure, but also the map and the cards and the travel journal and the bestiary ... eh ... humanary ... ah, pananthropy. Super coo. Super coo.

Ok, I’m going to get to work putting the cover and glossary into the Vastlands Guidebook so y’all excellent travelers can get it in your hands as soon as possible. Maybe once you get to hold it you’ll be tempted to invite your friends to the atom train as well. All safe. No zones of alienation here!

Take care and remember, this is the best of all possible words.
—Luka “Pangloss” Rejec

*not actual gold, terms and condiments apply.