EDITORIAL & COMMUNITY NEWS

Welcome to Updates from the Forge 61, for Spring 2026! We're a mere five days after the theoretical line this time, which is an improvement, and we've got a very solid set of updates coming up for you.

As for community announcements, we've as ever had our birthday on March 18, our Cyril & Methodius Day celebration on February 14, and we're delighted to be able to congratulate all of our committee on choosing to stand again and being re-elected to run Exilian during 2026.

In the updates there's something of a dissolute theme to this edition: our games and stories feature drunks, wastrels, and conniving tavernkeepers across a wide array of different worlds and facing problems from giant goblins and fish-worshipping kobolds to needing to rob their tavern guests or even fool the Emperor of Japan. If you want some busier work, though, we've also got industrious yarn-spinning, books to read, and our yearly academic workshop to report on.

With all that and more - on to the updates!

CONTENTS:

• Editorial & Community News
  
• Game Development
  
  • Legion: Arcane Origins
  • A Tale of Tails
  • Design Updates from Innkeep!
• Arts & Writing
  
  • Spinning with the Seamstress!
  • Genesis Lacrima
  • Thurazur's Further Field Notes
• Miscellany
  
  • What are you reading now?
  • Coding Medieval Worlds videos
  • Jubal's Budapest Travelogue

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New Exilian member Goury has arrived with a new game - Legion: Arcane Origins, an anime dungeon crawler in which you explore ever further through a forest maze battling goblins and other enemies. As you progress you'll find new enemies, characters to unlock, and weapons to make your journey smoother... though the number and power of enemies will increase as you go too.

If you liked fast-paced, room-by-room games like Son of a Witch, this might offer some similar action-packed fun, offering a similar sort of roguelite style gameplay, some silly light plot starting with your character being a slightly hung over amnesiac, and a diverse array of different enemies to get the hang of and fight.

A demo is now available on Steam, so you can check that out, and it's a great time to give early feedback to the developer and shape the sort of game you want it to become!

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As part of Coding Medieval Worlds VI, Jubal, along with Adam 'Ludohistory' Bierstedt and narrative designer Finn Taylor, came up with a new little text adventure game! A Tale of Tails follows the progress of a wastrel from a noble family in Japan in 1000AD who instead of making his way in the world fell in with a kitsune, a fox-spirit, some time ago. Unfortunately, he now needs to find some way to make ends meet, and ideally get recognition from the Emperor - but how? Well, by trickery, it turns out...

The game is thus focused on your efforts to pass, with several different sorts of courtier you can try to purport to be as long as you can find the right clothes and accoutrements to have some idea of what's going on. The adventure is text-only and is played with classic text adventure commands - GO, BUY, TAKE, TALK, and do other activities along with a range of characters including the Emperor of Japan, a drunken ronin, a court wizard, a priest, and other folks besides!

It's a short game experience, but there's possible scope for the game to be enlarged in future, so if you play it and like it then do leave some feedback!

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BeerDrinkingBurke's game Innkeep is developing apace, with blogposts looking at developing different core mechanics for theft and cooking on the game's website turning up recently. For thieving and inventories, we hear how shifting from a conventional inventory system to a more 'open bag' structure might provide an alternative to more conventional grid-style inventories and how this helps the feel of the theft systems he wants to build for the game. As for cooking, he discusses how part of Innkeep's core design philosophy is to make things feel tactile, dragging around actual items rather than moving them into abstracted inventory boxes, and how that affected the menus and setups for cooking stew, including where a slot-based menu section was nonetheless needed to keep order.

Innkeep follows the tale of a light-fingered vagabond who becomes the proprietor of a rural inn after the untimely death of its previous owner, and finds that he not only needs to make ends meet in potentially very dubious ways but might need to engage with things very far beyond his pay grade because there's more going on around this particular than meets the eye. If you've not done so yet, you can wishlist it on Steam and get updates via BeerDrinkingBurke's email list!

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The Seamstress has recently been updating her crafting thread with new adventures in, well... thread! Or adding a new yarn about yarn, that might be happening too.

She's recently been adding to her crafting accomplishments by learning how to use a spinning wheel. There's much dispute about when the first spinning wheels arose, probably in some part of early medieval or late antique Asia, though the spindle and distaff that in most places preceded them as the main weaving method were often still in use as the late 18th century in parts of Europe. Wheels significantly speed up thread-making, meaning they're an important factor in being able given most people nowadays prefer to have lifestyles that don't require them to reserve one hand for a drop-spindle pretty much their whole waking life.

But that's all theory and history, and there's practical experience to be had as well, so do head over and find out some notes on types of wool, lengths of fibre, and the practical issues faced when spinning gets mechanical:

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Science fiction writer BagaturKhan has posted the thread to open a new work in his huge Infinitas. There are few details yet about the new book, other than the title Genesis Lacrima - or, written in more literal terms, the birth of tears (lachrymose is a good word to remember for those of you who). BagaturKhan has also hinted that the new book may be part of a rewrite of the wider history and mythos of the Infinitas setting, which spreads across many thousands of years of galactic space and time with tales of the deeds and folly of the numerous wars that tear worlds after worlds apart.

You can read many of BagaturKhan's writings already on Infinitas' dedicated Exilian subforum: if grand space opera is your thing, why not go take a look?

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We opened the chest. Inside we found a collection of exciting finds; a greatsword which seemed to smoke which Grugnog wasted no time in taking, an interesting hat which seemed to shift form as you look at it from different angles, a wand which Cynthia tells me contains a daily charge of a heal spell, and some potions. The most interesting finds however were right at the bottom. There was a letter written in a kobold script which none of us could make out, an old map seemingly of some kind of castle, and the rest of the egg which we'd been finding pieces of all the way down.

Gently I picked up the egg, which was a mottled, mossy green colour, and quite thick and solid to touch. I ran my fingers over its rough surface, and suddenly the dawning realisation burst into a full understanding. I've seen pictures of such eggs in books before, but I never expected to see one in person. None have been seen in these parts for generations. I looked at the others, my face pale...

We've had more recent updates from Son of the King's post-game writeup of the pathfinder 2e starter game - incidentally run by fellow Exilian member Othko97. Written in the form of field notes, we only find things out fairly obliquely about Thurazur, our narrator, as after all he knows who he is - but we find out rather more about a large band of angry unemployed kobolds, a fish deity, and when to use "but we need the bottle" as an important excuse for some much-needed day drinking.

If that sort of bouncy fantasy storytelling sounds like your kind of thing, do head over and read about Thurazur's latest escapades (along with those of the holy Sister Cynthia, the mighty Grugnog the Orc. and the... Clive, who is a Clive). You could also share your own tabletop adventures in our storytelling forums if you have any to write down - we'd love to read them!

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We've had several recent little book reviews posted in Exilian's What Are You Reading? thread, as members across the forum let us know what they've been reading recently. We have recent recommendations for Umberto Eco's Baudolino, a classic tale of an unhappy knight and unreliable narrator who tells Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates of his travels and prompts many discussions on the nature of fact, memory and truth; Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana, a struggle for a soul of a province whose very name and memory have been suppressed by tyranny; and Finn Longman's The Wolf and His King, a queer retelling of a medieval werewolf tale deeply steeped in the folkloric and medieval-romance storytelling styles of the text it's drawn from.

As much as sites like Goodreads haul everything into aggregated profiles, it can be good to recommend books and discuss them in a more shared collective space, and that's what our What Are You Reading discussion offers. If you've read anything good recently or have a particular recommendation for our community, do head over and check out out!

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As ever, February saw Coding Medieval Worlds, our workshop series for historians and game developers. The theme this year for our sixth even was Manuscripts and Mechanics, looking at historical source material and the processes we can use to go between our sources and game-worlds whether that's directly using historical texts in-game, representing the things they say mechanically, or transferring ideas to the player about the historic past in general.

This year's Coding Medieval Worlds videos include an exciting panel on research for games comparing the different experiences and ideas of medievalist and game studies scholar Rob Houghton,  Monster Man podcast host and TTRPG developer James Holloway, and Maxime Durand, developer of the Assassins' Creed: Valhalla discovery tour and expert on public-facing heritage gaming. There's also a great discussion with Caves of Qud developers Jason Grinblat and Brian Bucklew and historian and game scholar Yahuai Lu, discussing, and one with developer Steven Anastasoff and historian Vinicius Marino Carvalho discussing different ways to mechanise dynamics in the medieval Celtic world and its stories. With these and more to discover, do check the videos out and catch up on the great CMW discussions!

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As the world turns its eyes to Hungary in the coming fortnight, you might be keen to get some new viewpoints on the place and how it's developed over time. Well, Jubal has some thoughts for you on the city at the heart of it all and the ways that Budapest relates to power and nation. In his newly completed travelogue, entitled Capital Projects, we get a 2024 snapshot of modern Budapest, its museums and building sites, its food and feel, and the ways that it got to where it is today.

Along the way, we visit synagogues, restaurants, and 19th century follies, and we meet a medieval princess who did not want to be married off, the father of Israeli nationalism, and some hybrid ducks whose parents probably needed to be given a little more space. Find out about all that and more in this travelogue, and keep your eyes peeled because our ever-growing travel writing index has much to offer for discovering the world!

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And that's all the updates for this spring! We'll see you in summer for another round of Updates from the Forge - until then, take care, stay safe, and keep creating.

Yep, this forum is now eighteen years of age, having been started on March 18 2008. Thanks as ever to everyone who's joined us and contributed to this community in that time, and we look forward to another year of creative geekery ahead. Hope you're all staying well!

All the best,

The Exilian Team

That's right, it's Cyril and Methodius Day, February 14 - the day each year when we celebrate language and learning for everyone around the world to take part in!

It's an excellent day to tell the linguists in your life that you appreciate them, to learn a language, read a book, recommend one to a friend, invent an alphabet, or more things besides. We hope you'll join us for some of that - and do let anyone else know who might be interested. Have a brilliant and learned day!

Election Results

The regular annual Exilian elections for core volunteer staff positions have happened, and our new committee has been duly elected as follows.

Regularly Elected Staff

Jubal (FIF) re-elected unopposed as Basileus, 7 votes to 0 with 1 abstention
Tusky (Ind) re-elected unopposed as Sebastokrator, 7 votes to 0 with 1 abstention
The Seamstress elected unopposed as Spatharios, 8 votes to 0 with 0 abstentions
Spritelady (Ind) re-elected unopposed as Tribounos, 7 votes to 0 with 1 abstention

Ratification of Permanent Staff

Jubal (FIF) ratified as Megadux, 8 votes to 0 with 0 abstentions
Glaurung (Ind) ratified as Sakellarios, 7 votes to 0 with 1 abstention

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Thanks to everyone who voted and to all our staff: the next regular elections will be in January 2027. There are still vacancies for staff members, for both content creation and technical matters, and we welcome volunteers for these posts.

EDITORIAL & COMMUNITY NEWS

Welcome to Updates from the Forge 60, for Winter/New Year 2026!

We've had plenty happening across the community as ever. Besides regular events like our monthly online meetups, we also had a new article out in our articles section with Jubal interviewing Matthew James Jones, author of the brutal fantasy-realism Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures which draws on the author's own experiences to give a surreal viewpoint on the rise of drone warfare in Afghanistan. There's also still time to sign up for Coding Medieval Worlds, our annual workshop on game dev and medieval history, so do check that out too.

As usual, thanks for bearing with us with the perennial lateness of these issues. We run Exilian with a very small group of volunteers, and that inevitably leads to certain elements of our work slowing down when people face unexpected challenges or need to catch up with things. Some of the things we'd often cover in a winter issue are also delayed at present, but do keep an eye out for news of our winter competition and election results in the next week or two. We'll also hopefully soon be doing some new calls for volunteers, so if you could help out a community like ours, stay tuned for that.

And now, onto the updates!

CONTENTS:

• Editorial & Community News
  
• Game Development
  
  • Minerva Labyrinth Released
  • Resonance
  • Updates from Kavis
• Arts & Writing
  
  • Space Dragons Kickstarter Success
  • The Earthwitch Returns
  • The Boar of the Gods
• Miscellany
  
  • Painting with SOTK
  • Stardews and Seamstresses

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In our first headline of this last quarter, Minerva Labyrinth by Midnight Spire Games has been released! The game gives the player a group of protagonists who must work as a team to face down the strange horror known as the Hate. In a mid-sized city in the southeastern USA, a few decades from now, your magical-girl style transforming warriors must enter into increasingly strange and twisted labyrinthine environments to battle the terrors that lie within. The game is graphically 2D, and built in Godot.

The gameplay focuses on a tactical, turn-based combat system, with a six-person party and a two-row formation system that gives the player a wide range of possible tactical configurations and options to try out throughout the game. Classic pixel-style graphics and palettes, along with a driving, computer-feel original soundtrack all give a certain retro-futuristic feel to the affair, with bold enemy designs that play into the possibilities of a more stylised medium.

You can get the game on Steam or Itch and test yourself against the labyrinths within - why not take a look?

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Jubal has started a new modding project! Resonance is his first foray into making mods for Skyrim, and promises a new story based around the location of Deep Folk Crossing, placed in the far western reaches of Skyrim where it borders the province of High Rock. Skyrim is well known for its highly flexible, albeit sometimes bug-riddled and awkward, set of modding possibilities, and these will be very much on display in this new quest mod.

When the Dragonborn crosses an ancient Dwemer bridge, they encounter an odd sight: besides a single solitary plinth and a couple of ancient arches, there is a small lean-to in which a soft-spoken, bearded man sits, contemplating but not quite daring to touch the ruins around him. Some may pass him by, or leave him to his cold existence. Others, though might be led on by his curiosity to discover more about the past of Deep Folk Crossing, of the Dwemer themselves, and of the recent past and sacrifices that brought a bard out to this existence on the farthest parts of the Reach. The magic of the dwemer and the music of the bards may resonate in ways nobody had predicted - or remembered.

If you'd like to find out more, check out the development thread in the links below and let Jubal know what you think!

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Another Jubal update to round out this section, but this time from the TTRPG development side - Jubal has been running more test games in his world of Kavis, an early-medieval folkloric fantasy setting that has played host to several of his tabletop and computer game projects in the past. For the last year or so, Jubal has pivoted to focusing on the "Heart of the World" - areas of the that bear more resemblance to the Eastern Mediterranean, Iran, east Africa, or India, rather than the sort of Europeana more traditional in medieval settings. His recent game tests have explored more of those areas, with a somewhat hapless group of adventurers facing Gerfaunts, Dusk-cats and poisonous intrigue on the coast of Dulshan, and another group caught between two armes as the Murtec kingdom in Palictara attempts to expand its borders at the expense of the hill peoples to its northwest.

He's also continuing to slowly release notes and information about the world, most recently including some details on the sorts of heroes that figures in the Heirophancy, the old empire at the centre of the map, might tell tales about or refer to in speaking and writing. From the monster-killer Zard to the founding rulers of their realm and the peasant heroine Curimae, there's a wide array of ancient figures there who one might discover relics of or end up stumbling across legacies or tales of on quests in those parts. You can find all that and more at Exilian's Kavis forum:

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Friend of Exilian Veo Corva has successfully run the kickstarter for Cosmic Survivors, the second book in their Space Dragons book series. In this sequel tale Lux, the eponymous Space Dragon at the centre of the books, finds themself on the wrong side of the mighty protectors of the galaxy, the Cosmic Defenders - the heroes who save travellers from the Void Horrors beyond. That said, there aren't a lot of Void Horrors these days, and there are a lot of Cosmic Defenders still, and what was once a saviour's weapon might increasingly be being turned inwards as an iron fist. To avoid it, or even to get through loaded but inane interrogations, Lux must rebuild alliances and friendships and work things out with their crew.

Veo describes Space Dragons: Cosmic Survivors as being a tale for people unsure how to trust again, for people who crave both independence and belonging, and for people who think Space Dragons are fun. If you want a blanket-and-tea on a cold day book this winter that takes you out into the wilds space and possibility, then this might be the read you're after...

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She half-climbed, half-stumbled back to the rock where she had left her coat and bent over, her body heaving. Mina and Roy climbed off their rock and cautiously followed. The clattering of the staff as Roy negotiated the rocks echoed around the lake. By the time they reached Idil she had coughed and spat several times, and her breathing was more controlled.

"Thank you," she gasped, "Thank you, children. Thank you."

"Why did it attack you?" demanded Roy.

"It was testing me," she replied, "But it is satisfied."

We've recently had the third part of Indiekid's ongoing story The Earthwitch. In this tale, two wandering children in circumstances of desperation are saved and then adopted by a mysterious magical figure, Idril, whose task it is to bring the spirits of the earth into calm and balance despite their frequent rage and pain at the destruction caused by mankind. The two children's skills and personalities develop differently through the tale, giving a range of possibilities and tensions alike.

In part three, Idril is forced to confront the fact that, in choosing between the demands of vengeful spirits and the children, she is increasingly emotionally bound to protecting the latter. The three wanderers travel to confront a great spirit of the hill lakes, exploring their powers of direction, over animals, and in engaging with the spirits themselves. However, reckoning with their own past and the way they met may be lurking as an even greater danger thereafter.

If that sounds of interest to you, or you'd like to help the tale along by providing some more feedback, do check it out!

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The fantasy webseries Ren: The Girl With The Mark will return for its third season later in 2026, and over Christmas some of the team's patreon posts were made public to show fans what they might be getting if they sign up for paid updates from the production team. As well as behind-the-scenes footage, the Patreon offerings include a wealth of short stories, expanding the world in a variety of ways and giving additional depth or angles on the characters and legends of Alathia.

One such short story now available for public viewing is Jubal's The Boar of the Gods, set before the show's first season: in this tale, Ren's mentor, the mysterious woodsman Karn, tells his young protégé one of the myths of the god Legart, the trickster of the old gods who was instrumental to ultimately bringing about their downfall and the rise of the twin deities Nirith and Nardaeth. This story of boar-hunting makes use of the actual relationship between boars and robins in our own world - the little birds often follow boar herds in places where both are present, in order to pick up worms that the boar disturb rootling in and overturning the soil - and gives it a certain mythic twist. Both the ancient myth and the story of our two heroes hearing and telling it give us some more insights into Ren and her world in advance of the next season of her story.

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It's been a little while since we last had a flurry of miniatures painting going on among forum members, but SOTK has recently contributed this very pretty Warhammer paint job of a Dark Elven knight. Despite the Dark Elf background of this Cold One Rider, he's ditched the commonly used black armour and red-purple cloth sections and instead gone for a bright silver and blue colour scheme more reminiscent of Ulthuan's High Elves. It's really interesting how much this changes the whole tone of the model, from the brooding menace the typical paint jobs seek to evoke to someone who might be a differently equipped but more complex character. And who still has a cool dinosaur to ride. Whether this is an evildoer who refuses to dress stereotypically, or a more heroic take on what someone can do with a lance and a cool dinosaur, we're very much here for it.

If you do any sort of miniatures gaming, please do share your latest paint jobs and kit-bashes with us in the game room - we'd love to see them, whatever game system or model-making setup you have going.

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We've had a range of gaming updates, especially from The Seamstress who in October shared many of her adventures with the famed cosy farming sim Stardew Valley. Unutterably large blue melons, ostrich farming, a bear who likes syrup, and a family of raccoons living in a tree-stump with an actual door and a fire all seem to be things she's found in the game, which may or may not be an entirely accurate portrayal of rural life.

Who is the mysterious Mr. Qi who The Seamstress has been doing quests for? Is there a purpose to giant blue melons? Should we be worried about who gave raccoons the secret of fire? What other games have people on Exilian been playing, and do any of them have fire raccoons or unusually friendly bears? (Baldur's Gate 3 players, yes, we see you, please sit down now). Find the answers to all or at least some of these questions in The Arcade, our general gaming forum:

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And that's winter's updates from the Exilian community! Whether you're approaching your next round of curiosity and creativity with a notebook, a pile of python code, a paintbrush, crochet hooks, or something else entirely, we'd love to know about it and feature it next time, so do get busy and do let us know if we can help. Community, creativity, curiosity and kindness have rarely felt more needed out there, we're hugely glad to be able to play our part in helping you all build those things - there'll no doubt be much more to come in the weeks and months ahead. As for our newsletters, though, we'll see you in early April for the next set of Updates from the Forge!