We will definitely be breaking 3,000 backers today, I can feel it in my bones! When we do, I will announce when the day of Instagram Live Readings will be! :)
The Cover Voting
You all voted, and the results are in. The front cover will feature the 4 Seasonal Lords gathered around a table as the Gambler casts her dice over it, with the Caretaker whispering some obscene joke in her ear.
On the back cover, the Publishing Goblin, the Alleyman, and the Chronicler will be featured around the back-of-the-book-blurb!
The Keeper and the Collector
If you follow my projects, you might know by now that I make a lot of things. Card games, board games, video games, novels, poetry, tarot, dice-- but one thing I pride myself in is using the artifacts of these various things to found items in my fictional worlds. The Maiden of Winter and the Heir of Earth are actually from unique cultures I made for my game world, Solare. The Maiden is an Ithcaian-- someone who was cursed with a finite undeath as long as her mortal life. She is pale as bone, has red eyes, and must survive on raw flesh and blood, ostracizing her from the masses and typically cursed into servitude. But she killed those who cursed her and lives in an icy palace of her own making. The Heir is a Naiar, meaning People of Grass in their language. They live in harmony with the natural world, but have within them an explosive and transformative rage, where they use the pelts of animals to become them to defend themselves and their lands. The Gambler, for clue-sniffing sleuths, is from the same world as the Alleyman, mentioned in one of the podcast episodes in relation to the Secret Halls.
In this way, the Lords are pieces of my various fictional worlds, and the dice and the cards themselves are artifacts from those worlds, the same way the Alleyman's Tarot was an artifact from the world the Alleyman Podcast took place in.
The last two of the original 14 dice we have to reveal are in this same boat. The Tarot Keeper, lord of the die of suits, is an Alfira, a ratfolk, who came to love the concept of tarot that humans brought with them from their strange other world. His depiction here is abstracted from reality, as are many of the lord's illustrations, but he loves his portraiture in the card as the Tarot Keeper. He has most excitedly added the card to his vast collection of oracle decks.
The Collector of Selves, lord of the relations die, is one of my original designs. They are an Umbran, a strange, 6-armed being with a bone mask for a face. Umbrans consider it a rite of passage to break the connections of their face plating and remove the one they were born with, choosing a new one for themselves. But the Collector never could make a decision, instead rotating through an ever-growing collection of masks day to day as they find who they are in this world, as related to the world, as related to other people, and as related themselves.
If you're interested in my weird game world, be on the lookout for Confluence news in the next year. I've been working with a team of people for over a year now to finish the journey my big tabletop roleplaying game, Confluence, has taken for years and years. You can follow up on this over on twitter, soon on our instagram, tiktok, and elsewhere! https://twitter.com/CosmicMirrorRPG Or check out the old (old) playtest materials which are pay what you want over on my itch. The new mechanical system looks nothing like this now, but a fair amount of the world is still quite similar!
The Stones
Someone asked if I could share the dice from the catalogue I picked from, so here we are! It's a bit slapdash, but until I have a set made this will be the best I can share.
Actions Die (Pink w black) 58 Natural light amethyst with black ink
Alchemist (dark blue with white/green) 44 Natural Amethyst with very light green ink Autumn (Orange with black) 53 Natural Tiger Eye Color with grey ink
Element Die (Beige with black) 51 Natural Flower Green with white ink
Fate (Bone with Purple) 54 Natural Wood Grain Stone with metallic purple or red ink Majors (Black with red) 42 Natural Obsidian with red ink Mariner's (Teal with white) 43 Natural Lazurite with teal ink Metamorphosis (Purple with orange) 5 Synthetic Wood Grain Stone with Purple ink Obstacle Die (Red with black) 46 Natural Red Stone with black ink Relations (White with black) 48 Natural White Jade with black ink
Spring (green with yellow) 52 Natural Indian Agate with Yellow ink Suits (Gray with black) 41 Natural Cardinals with gray ink
Summer (yellow with red) 49 Natural Yellow Jade with Red ink
Winter (blue with white) 57 Natural Snow Stone with light blue ink
(And as good a time as any to remind people the colors and designs on the new dice are subject to change!)
Wounds 59 Natural Colored Fluorite with red ink
Kindness 39 Natural Opal with gold ink
Attention 63 Natural Flash light stone with silver ink
Longings 47 Aventurine Jade with purple ink
Goblin 56 Natural Hematite with dark green ink
Alleyman 55 Natural Picture Jasper with bronze metallic ink
