New ways to listen and a look behind the scenes (Patreon)

Hi folks,

Wishing you the very best for the coming week from everyone at Rusty Towers!

Firstly, some good news – after this month-long hiatus, The Magnus Protocol officially returns next week, with early access supporters being able to listen to the episode on 9th July, and the public release on 11th July. Episode 21 is the beginning of the third and final act of season one. It has been six months since we launched The Magnus Protocol, but it has gone by so fast. Thank you for your support, your comments, and enthusiasm for the show. We hope you enjoy the final ten episodes of the horrors!

In more good news, you can now listen to Rusty Quill Patreon-exclusive audio content, including ad-free episodes, on Spotify! To get this set up, you need to link your Patreon and Spotify accounts: you can find out how to do so using this Patreon guide. Once connected, you’ll be able to access all audio content that’s accessible to the tier you’re subscribed to. Of course, you can still listen to our Patreon content on Patreon itself or using the private RSS feed as well, which you can find under the Membership tab on our page.

A huge thank you to all of you for your well wishes to our team and to friend-of-RQ, James Ross. We’re disappointed to have had to cancel Rusty Towers Presents at such short notice and we have issued refunds to everyone who bought tickets. If you have had any issues with the refund, please email events@rustyquill.com.

Next up, we have been exploring some new ways fans can support us. With this in mind, we’re introducing some affiliate codes for you to use if you would like to. We’ll be sharing these in the shownotes for episodes, but here’s a little preview:

• Get 15% off tickets to Phantom Peak, a London based interactive event. Use code RUSTY or click this link to Phantom Peak’s website. Phantom Peak is a fully immersive, open world steampunk experience where you can explore a town where mystery lurks in every corner. Part escape room, part immersive theatre, part real-life video game!

• DriveThruRPG – Online Market Place for TTRPGS DriveThruRPG.com - The Largest RPG Download Store!

Finally, we thought it would be interesting to share a little more behind-the-scenes information on some of our merchandise partners. As you know, while we have our Teepublic and Redbubble stores available for on-demand items, we have been working hard with small businesses in the UK and around the world to produce limited edition, bespoke items that are truly special. One of these incredible teams is Harps Corp, a UK-based TTRPG accessory company, who we have worked with to create beautiful bespoke, wooden dice towers, dice boxes and coasters. We often interview other podcasters and members of the RQ Network to find out more about their shows, so we thought it’d be interesting to interview other creative folks too about their work.

(Image description: Three photographs of Harps Corps Rusty Quill collection. From left to right: Two dice boxes, with designs inspired by The Magnus Protocol and featuring the OIAR logo. One is open, showing compartments for dice; a hexagonal coaster, featuring the RQ logo made of layers of wood; a group photo of some of the items from the collection featuring the RQ logo and designs inspired by The Magnus Archives. They include dice boxes, dice towers and coasters.)

Tell us about Harps Corp!

We are Harps Corp, founded in 2015. We are two brothers with a passion for all things geeky and wanted to craft premium gaming accessories for TTRPGs and other games, being inspired to start playing D&D after watching the very first couple of live episodes of Critical Role all the way back on Geek and Sundry's Twitch streams. 

We wanted to get out of the jobs we were in and our skills complemented each other enough that we thought we would give things a go. Here we are nearly 10 years later, bigger and better than ever! We pride ourselves on using exclusively hardwoods throughout our gaming accessories like our Chroniclers and Dice Towers, all the way to our GM Screens. Along with this we wanted to produce accessories that had form and function, the GM screens for example can act as a carry case for books, as well as being a Screen.

What was it like working on the Rusty Quill and Magnus collections?

It has been a pleasure to work with Rusty Quill, there is such a rich lore to The Magnus Archives and now the ever-growing Magnus Protocol, that it provided a wealth of ideas for us to work through and come up with the designs we settled on.

(Image description: Some behind the scenes photos of the creation of Rusty Quill Harps Corp collection. Three photos, from left to right: a photo of cutting different layers for one of the coaster designs; a photo of several finished dice boxes, featuring an Ex Altiora inspired design; a photo of a large collection of different dice boxes made from different types of woods.)

What's next for Harps Corp?

We have just come back from MCM London Comic Con and the UK Games Expo, we are busy finishing up the final waves of this Rusty Quill production run, we do have more ideas for the future.......But I can't talk about that just yet.

We do have a new range of Hollow metal dice that are exclusive to us, along with our new buildable lamp range - DLights. Which have been a big hit at the last couple of shows.

You can check out Harps Corps collaboration with us on the Harps Corp website!

Have a good week all!

The Rusty Quill team