Hello Cogs,

At last we come to the final manuscript preview. With this update, the entire current draft manuscript is available for Backers to download and read, before any pledges are processed or any payments collected.

We've actually had the bulk of the setting and Charms for a few weeks, plus the Martial Arts, Sorcery, and Artifacts all came to us last week. With this final section of the manuscript, we get to see all of this come together in the character write-ups of some of the movers and shakers in the world of the Alchemicals!

Chapter Eight: Quick Characters provides traits for Alchemicals, machine spirits, and gremlins, including information and templates that Storytellers can use to create their own machine spirits.

As a reminder, the developers want your feedback! These manuscript previews are of the current draft manuscript – the document in its latest, approved form. This may not be the final form after editing and any additional development, but you can consider it about 95% finished, so keep that in mind.

In fact, you can help guide the team through the next stages of development by providing feedback on these manuscript previews! The Onyx Path team has set up a special Feedback Form just for campaign backers for this very purpose: https://forms.gle/TNemGoMirkKR4h8U6

First up, it's amazingly expensive to ship, especially from Onyx Path's home base in the US. And that's as of today - we're all in the dark about how things will look in 2 years. We get that, but there's not much we can do at this time. Onyx Path is in a difficult space where the company is big enough that they're not saving money by fulfilling out of Rich's garage, but small enough that they haven't been able to set up ongoing international partners to handle portions of the fulfillment. So we are where we are - for now.

The best we can do at this point is to plan carefully, advise everyone up front that international shipping will likely be expensive (see our projections on the main page) and only charge what it costs us when the time comes. We’ll be charging for shipping in the Pledge Manager once the books are being printed and we can deal with the actual shipping charges rather than using our best-guesses this far out. If you live outside the US and aren't sure you want the hardcover or other physical items, you can pledge to the PDF tier now and upgrade your pledge in the Pledge Manager once we know the final shipping costs.

We'll have a full review of our Stretch Goal achievements over the campaign coming tomorrow (along with a new podcast link and a review of key information as we close in on our final day), but if you like the write-ups from the Quick Character chapter and want to see even more information on the Third Circle, we're getting close to another key Stretch Goal that will expand our Companion book (which will be added as a bonus reward to all backers receiving the Alchemicals PDF as part of their pledge).

At $145,000 in Funding - ALCHEMICALS COMPANION: Gods from the Machine - Expanded information on the Eight Divine Ministers, the Third Circle souls of Autochthon, as well as the Alchemical machine saints who serve the Divine Ministers in pursuit of their agendas.

Beyond that, we've got one more shoot-for-the-moon goal that may require a pretty long Backer Train to reach, but looks pretty awesome and I'd love to get there!

At $150,000 in Funding - ALCHEMICALS COMPANION: Locust Crusades and Grasshopper Diplomacy - A Storyteller guide for playing out the first contact between Autochthonia and Creation and the myriad scenarios that might unfold once the Seal of Eight Divinities has been broken.

Again, we'll go over the Stretch Goal rewards tomorrow! We've already unlocked many expansions to our bonus reward, but a few tantalizing possibilities sit within our grasp!

Remember, thanks to BackerKit magic, these download links are visible to Backers only - you must be logged in and reading this on the website to have access to the manuscript preview links. So, if you're reading this via e-mail, click that "Learn More" button on the bottom and I'll see you below this title treatment.