Still in the Holy Mountain (Patreon)

Dear Heroes,

A pleasure to catch your attention again.

Yesterday a cold front pushed in and temperatures dropped hour by hour. Now, the morning here, there’s a dusting of snow coming down. This winter is long. Hah.

A block is a strange thing. As my anxiety about my work on Holy Mountain Shaker mounted, it’s importance both grew and diminished in my mind. My mind convinced me that my partners disliked what I was doing. It started whispering that everybody would hate it. Of course, that made the work harder by itself. And let’s not get started on how stressed I got over emails. A rum thing, indeed.

I have to thank them and you for your support and understanding in getting through this; because it really feels like I’m through the worst of it.

In the last post I mentioned how I’m preparing a separate Holy Mountain Apocrypha. Now, I can elaborate a bit more.

This week I’m hewing down the main adventure to its core: the mountain, the earthquakes, the regions within it, and the god fish. This means ruthlessly cutting out a lot of the town, the region, and its backstory. Pages and pages of it. It also means trimming down much of the bestiary. And almost completely removing the deep histories of the various regions and underworld factions.

I’m not saying this content is useless. It’s very nice if you want to run the town of Plish, to explore unique fauna and creatures associated with the God Carp, or use the history of the mythic underworld in your game. But, it is not essential to running the adventure.

Though I rant and rail against it—how it goes against my artistic vision—I have to confess that, now that I’m cutting it down, it does make a sort of sense. And the railing doesn’t help anything get done.

So, I’m going to prepare a pretty file for all of you, of the histories of the Big Fish and the town of Plish. The backstories and the myths and the wide-ranging bestiaries and some of the art that isn’t making it into the adventure itself. I’ll release an early version early next week.

Meanwhile, the lean mean Holy Mountain Shaker should be ready, too.

Ah, sweet release.

Ironically, with this adventure stuck in my teeth, I get to completely empathise with the Holy Fish. Right down to the ranting and railing.

That’s the right use of the word ‘ironic’, right?

Stay safe and well, all!

—Luka

Yes, one region of Holy Mountain Shaker is inspired by Logan's Run.

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Post Scriptum: An Icon Bonus

You might have noticed some nifty icons on the wizardthieffighter website. Well, I’m sharing that 2020 icon bundle with you. If you end up writing, hacking, or modifying the UVG or seacat or just writing something inspired by one of my pieces, feel free to use them—or make your own with the affinity file.

Let’s call it an open hero license :)

*I know I gush about Affinity a lot, but their products are really excellent. I get no money from promoting them: they are really just worth their price for what they do and for liberating me from the Adobe Creative Cloud Monthly Blood Fee and Always Connected Data Siphon. Also they’re faster and lighter.

Post Post Scriptum: Discord

It's that romantic time of year again, when, every few months, I share the discord server link with all the heroes. Join in, chat, share art, see all of my pieces that aren't good enough to ever get coloured ... or a wider viewing.

https://discord.gg/67xKAtc8SE

Recently the connexion between patreon and discord broke down a little and some of the automated role assignments have failed. My apologies for that: if I knew how to fix it, I would.