UVG is 725% Funded (Patreon)

We did it. I'm beyond grateful to all of you heroes, without whom none of this would have been possible in any shape or form.

I would also like to welcome all the new heroes aboard the stratometaship—I'll make sure to greet all of you personally in a couple of days, and send out a discord invite again.

It's a deep pleasure to have everyone aboard.

For the last two months it feels like I've been living half my life online, from 7 a.m. to 11 pm., checking status, updating, sharing, and more. It's been exhilarating but also quite tiring, so I'm having a few days off before diving back into layout and writing and coloring.

I'll be back with more UVG and more Longwinter and more Red Sky soon, though.

With sincere and heartfelt salutations,
-Luka

Meanwhile, something completely different

(This is an excerpt from a bronze age game-and-story or story-and-game I've been writing quietly in the background. Some of you might have already seen it ... all typos and errors my own.)

... 

Our god Váal Kamin had broken its word too many times.

The ancestors tell us so.

The cows sickened in the field last autumn. Great blisters grew upon their bone-stick frames. We prayed to Váal and the omens were good. We gave the fresh wine and the pickled olive and the well-cured cheese. The red dragonfly landed on the highest stone of the three, and we rejoiced.

The blisters burst and great fanged leaches squirmed out of the ruined flesh of our cows. They lowed in desperate agony as the foul parasites finished without the feast they had begun within.

Tarq and the red-browed heroes took spears and nets and scythes and slew the things. Where their blood gushed, the grass died. After that we called the field poison.

Our god Váal Kamin had sent the good signs. Had accepted our offerings. Still, it had not saved us.

The ancestors tell us this happens sometimes.

The dry wind blew last winter. It blew and blew. For five days we stayed hidden in our dugouts as shingles flew in the gusts. It did not stop.

On the sixth day Maqda, our medicine woman, was possessed by the dry wind and she ran out into the winter. 

On the eight day Qall, the fleet trapper, found her dessicated body, frozen and withered. Mummified in days where the rituals usually take months. Qall brought her back to the village of the spirit walkers, and they they smoked the flowers of the sky-climbing vine to meet her in the land of bridges. Maqda was not there, the dry wind had blown her soul away. We grew afraid then, and went to the Cave of Red and White.

The elders and the young clustered close, the spirit walkers wailed their inhuman songs, the ancestors nodded in the firelight. Qatalina, whose voice is like the web of the golden spider, sang a prayer to Váal Kamin that our god might spare us from the dry wind. Sang to guide Maqda’s soul back to her body, to join her ancestors.

The earth rumbled, like a belly laugh, and we knew Váal Kamin heard us. The blind yellow salamanders with their great soft frills swam up from the nothingness of the deep below to bask upon the shore of the sacred spring. Their regard was benevolent, and we rejoiced.

Five more days the dry wind blew and still Maqda’s soul had not returned. On the thirteenth day of the dry wind, the sun grew red and we gasped to gaze upon it. As our attention was averted, jackals came and tore the flesh from Maqda’s mummified body, mutilating her. We wailed in horror, but worse was to come.

Another two days the dry wind blew and three of the spirit walkers who had searched for Maqda, Ariaq of the bold eyes, Lira of the finest hair, and Vostoq two-hearted, felt the touch of possession upon them. They slew themselves upon biers of preserving herbs that the dry wind could not steal their souls.

Our god Váal Kamin had rumbled with gentle laughter, like a pleased parent when it heard the prayers of Qatalina, whose voice moved the wood trolls to weep tears of silver. Still, it had not delivered us.

The ancestors tell us this is unusual.

The yellow frost came upon our orchards this spring. The buds grew numerous and filled with promise. Promise of harvests to come, of preserves and compotes, of fig brandies and plum jellies. Then a strange frost came.

The first morning a yellow rime coated the thatched roofs and the prayer poles by the shores of the Sea of Dreams. We were curious. The second morning the tufty ice stretched as far as the village with the seven fish ponds and the old forest where the big man had gone to sleep. We were nervous. The third morning the vile rime coated our lands, from pebbled shore to the highest pear orchard on the flanks of great Váal mountain. Buds withered under the cold, young leaves curled from the assault. We quailed.

We took up the finest young lambs and built pyres of sweet-smelling cedar wood. While the elders and the ancestors and the hunters and the fishers and the farmers and the weavers and the spirit talkers and the ancestors all watched, the innocent children of the villages led the lambs to the pyres. They sang songs of praise and prayers to the awe that is Váal Kamin. They offered the innocence of their first sacrifice to the god.

As the first lamb’s blood drenched the first pyre, wisps of curious cloud formed at the head of great Váal mountain. As the second and the third, the fourth and the fifth were offered, the cloud grew magnificent and shining white.

We were pleased, for it was a good omen. Our god, Váal Kamin, who had delivered us from the fish people and struck down the wolf people and bound to us the ibis people, was paying attention.

As the kindling took and the fire crept along the dry cubits of the precious cedar wood, arranged spokes and circles to celebrate the turning heavens of Váal Kamin, we felt a comforting breeze come from the sea, that would waft the spirit of the sacrifice to the halls of our god upon the great Váal mountain. Ilqa, mother of four heroes, was so overcome by the clemency of the omen that she fell to the fresh grass in a faint.

When the flames took the lambs and the smell of pure flesh given freely rose on the breeze, lightning rippled from the great cloud, and divided the sky in halves and thirds. We cried out in awe and joy. Váal Kamin was pleased and sent his thundering messengers out to receive our sacrifice.

Yosha and Eqsey, the twins with copper hands, were possessed to dance the whirling dance of the heavens, and soon all the people were dancing in gratitude to our god.

The fourth day the yellow frost was back again and dull yellow cloud obscured the sun. As the day progressed, the sky grew darker. As the sky grew darker, the day grew colder. As the cold grew deeper, the frost grew sharper. By sunset glistening flakes of frost, like daggers to our lives, floated on the cruel breeze.

On the fifth day the frost was gone and the buds and shoots began to rot. It would be a hungry year.

Our god Váal Kamin had sent his flashing messengers and accepted the sacrifice of our lambs with open arms. Still, it had denied us respite.

The ancestors tell us this is not the way things should be.

The thorn-legged locusts came this summer. It started on the day we celebrated the ascenscion of our first mother. We were gathered in the great meadow above the village of the spirit walkers, by the smooth impregnable rock that glistens with the words of our mute forebears trapped forever in veins of ivory and coral ...

Catch you again soon!