Plots & Palaces, Dogs & Dentists (Patreon)

Dear Heroes,

Allow me to ... interrupt ... the regular series of posts on Uranium Butterflies and Synthetic Dreams Wholesale (i.e. Seacat) with a bit of a breather post.

First, some art.

Six pine trees sung into a pavillion anchoring a beacon statolith above the village of Belna (Brezim, cf. Longwinter).

Hollowbear, Part 2 ...

After a two-month break, I published the second part of the adventures of Flavio and the Komdt over on the Xenon Elasmotherium substack. As part of my drive to make my work a little more accessible, I'm splitting out the fiction more clearly from the game work. It's free to enjoy, but it ties in with the Longwinter setting (available on itch.io, Exalted Funeral ... or somewhere upstream on this patreon. Search function).

... and Short Adventures

Eventually this fiction will also tie in with a 16-page adventure, similar to Let Us In, but explicitly set in Longwinter. My hope is to eventually have 12 small, 16-page adventures, one for each month of the year. The adventure doesn't have a fixed title yet, but it's going to feature a cozy valley, a bear, and some other things ... clues in the story.

Another 16-page adventure that I've outlined also doesn't have a solid title yet, but it's going to get it's first test soon. It's an exploration of defeat and vengeance, along with some classic sci fi like On the Beach. Or, alternatively, much like Rrypo gives the heroes a flying head, this will give them a cool living vessel. Haven't named it yet.

Billing Changes

Today I activated the annual option for the Stratometaship. It's 8% off the monthly rate, because I felt it was cooler to have a subscription go up to 11 (months out of 12) rather than up to 10 (months out of 12).

Coming soon now, in 4 days, is the cool palindrome timestamp: 2022.02.22 20:22;02 ... ok, honestly, all kinds of cool palindromes are possible on Tuesday, depending on how you write your dates.

Anyway, I'm marking that date and all the inflation we're experiencing, by adjusting the tiers for new heroes joining after that date. Everyone who's already in, your tiers are saved by Chronos. You're safe :)

I'm going to aim to make the switch at exactly 22 minutes past 8 in the evening, but odds are I'll be off by a bit. After all, 01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100010 01101111 01110100 .

And the Anti-Kanon Zine

I've spent some time over the last couple of weeks figuring out how to add a zine to the UVG without blowing out all my gaskets. I've eventually decided to do a test of limited scope: make a single 32 page zine.

(There we go, the structure of the A5 zine, all laid out on an A5 page.)

However, it works, it has to have something cool and coherent around it, so I figured out a first iteration of an overall structure for the Anti-Kanon Zine series too.

• Six A5 zines of 32 pages each.
• Released every 6 months (or less).
• The zines covering a coherent conceptual arc (so they can fit into an omnibus at the end).
• A focus on minimal mechanics, maximum content (so, a bit like Let Us In). Ideally, the zine should be enjoyable to read even without playing it as a game -- we'll see if I manage to pull that off! I know White Dwarf did once upon a time (at least for 15-y.o. me). Maybe? Chi sa.
• Designed collaboratively - I'm going to experiment with a digital (remote working) writer's room.
• Using a license I'm currently cooking and testing with the contributors based on what I would like as a writer and what I would like as a publisher. Bit of squaring of circles there. If this works out, I'll share a boilerplate version of it for other small publishers to play with.
• Each featuring an artist I like very much (and some of my own work to plug gaps).
• Each featuring 4 contributing writers (and some of my own work, too)
• Each edited by a cool editor.
• Each laid out by a cool designer.
• Each sold for $4.95 on the itch and the dtrpg, but also available here on the stratometaship. Physicals printed and distributed by EF.

Oh, that title art for this post? Just some visual testing of ideas for the title of the first zine. I've got 4 writers and an editor nominally signed up, now just need to snare the graphic designer. I can snag an artist after that, surely. Right?

Here was an initial cover concept.

And here was a second concept.

Neither of these concepts will be the final cover, but I thought it would be fun to share. Design wise I'm hoping to anchor it in a cross-breed of Bauhaus stylings and retro-futurist science fantasy.

I will probably fail in some ridiculous way, but ... one must try!

Thank you for your patience!

And remember, this whole post was probably just a way for me to share the second part of the Longwinter story, the Hollowbear.

And share a work in progress shot of the SDW cover art. Ink over pencil. Once the inks are done, I'll digitise it and colour it in procreate. Enjoy!

Peace and health, everyone.

—Luka