Issue 48: New Year 2023
EDITORIAL
Welcome back to Updates from the Forge for another year of creative geekery! In this issue, we'll cover things that happened around the Exilian Community in the last quarter of 2022, giving you a flavour of what we're all up to and maybe sparking some fresh ideas for 2023.
The last quarter of 2022 saw several announcements for Exilian. We've moved our Mastodon account to indiepocalypse.social, which has given us a much smoother user experience and from where we've managed to make some great new contacts for the community in recent weeks. Thanks to the InPoc-Social admin, Tamitha, and the Indiepocalypse local community for the welcome we've had there.
Two big upcoming/ongoing events have also been announced: the later one is that Coding Medieval Worlds 3 will be happening in February, run by Jubal again as convenor. We have some spaces free still so please do get in touch if you'd like to attend. More immediately, our Winter Creative Competition is ongoing so please do get your entries in by the end of January! This year the competition is on the theme Snowstorm, and our wonderful guest judges are modern folk artist Lucy Wright and historian and game developer Katrina Keefer.
On top of all that, we've got plenty of creative projects to tell you about. In this issue, we have everything from Cyberpunk sounds to English folklore, fantasy taverns to futuristic space crashes, and poetry to tabletop RPG projects. Read on for more...
CONTENTS:
- Editorial
- Game Development
- Turnings and Tables - New Worldbuilding in Kavis
- Shewstone Kickstarter Success
- No Armor Required in Innkeep!
- Arts & Writing
- The Revenge of Tyrants continues: New Infinitas Stories
- Jubal's Poems: Music, Wine, and Solitude
- Miscellany
- Cyberpunk Tracks from Eric Matyas
- Non-Fiction - What've You Been Reading?
GAME DEV
Turnings and Tables - New Worldbuilding in KavisWhat places might you find in the wilds and whispering woods of Kavis? We’ve had more updates on Jubal’s Kavis setting over the second half of this year, fleshing out more aspects of this early medieval fantasy world and potentially providing inspiration and ideas for your own fantasy settings. Kavis is a multi-continent spanning fantasy world that focuses on folklore and history as inspirations: rather than epic armies of orcs or earth-shattering interplanar magic, this is a world where magic is wrapped into the spinning thread of cottage-wives, sung by fey creatures in the rocks and reeds, and mixed in pots by wise gnomes and very unwise goblins. It’s a changing world where little is certain – there are myriad faiths, creeds, and understandings of how the world works, and everyone from mad holy men to venerable philosophers to peasants to kings may have their own idiosyncrasies in their ideas.
Many of the recent Kavis updates have focused on aspects of beliefs in the setting, including a recent post on midwinter festivals across the world that introduces festivities such as the wild dancing and music of Watermasque in the Heirophancy, the chaos of Jack O'Deer's festival of misrule in the Serraty fens, and the bright blazes of Chith's coalbitings around which people gather in Alasia. We've also had notes on the Table Societies, semi-secretive sworn brotherhoods of mutual aid that underpin life across the Heirophancy.
New posts are often being updated and old ones expanded and updated in the Kavis forum: why not take a look and see if you can find some inspiration and ideas for your own work?
Shewstone Kickstarter Success
Images from the bestiary: by Steven Bachan, Angela Taylor, and Colin Throm. We're delighted to be able to report that new Exilian member Shewstone Publishing, who came here to promote his kickstarter for A Bestiary of Enchanted England, has successfully funded the project with quaduple the minimum success level achieved! The bestiary will feature a wide range of lesser known mythic and folkloric creatures from around the British Isles, including the clack-toothed Hobyah, the portentous Merchicken of Portland, the weird Questing Beast, and Milcha, Queen of the Enchanted Isle, snubbed by the Bard himself... dare you discover this diversity of creatures?
Whilst the Kickstarter campaign is over, the book will eventually be available for general purchase - aiming to reach the Indie Press Revolution booth at Gen Con 2023. The system it goes with, Magonomia, focuses on Renaissance and Elizabethan tales and is already out and available from Shewstone. They have several new projects in the works, too, including a system-agnostic fantasy setting called the World of Drintera, so there's plenty exciting to see out there. Why not take a look?
No Armor Required in Innkeep!
The new trailer for long-time Exilian member danieloburke's Innkeep, a game about a vagrant who accidentally becomes an 'honest gent' with a fine [citation needed] tavern to look after, arrived in November! Entitled No Armor Required, this preview shows a range of key mechanics and story beats in the game. Unique groups of guests will visit the inn as you progress through the game: by eavesdropping, stealing, serving them, um, interesting and excessively fresh local produce, and via numerous other interactions, you will be able to maximise your advantages and survive in a harsh world.
Why not take a look at the latest updates on the Innkeep Exilian thread, or the IndieDB page for the game which includes a range of design articles?
ARTS AND WRITING
The Revenge of Tyrants continues: New Infinitas Stories
Exilian's BagaturKhan (A. Krokhmal) has been sharing more translations of his epic science fiction tales from the Infinitas setting with us here on Exilian. Three new stories in the Revenge of Tyrants continuity have been published: in Storm of Souls, the corruption of an officer brings disaster; in Dragon's Destiny, a prequel tale, a heroic draconid officer begins to learn of the name Marfur-Niari and the terror that it can bring; and in Not A Lucky Adventure, the story of Dragon's Destiny continues and the hero encounters an enemy known as Phantom 13, whose powers can even extend into people's minds...
These tales are twisting, turning reads about a very wide-ranging science fantasy universe, drawing on a huge variety of cultures from across and beyond our world in fast-paced, high-threat futuristic worlds. If you have your own stories and worlds to share, do come and let the Exilian community know about them in our writing area, and
Jubal's Poems: Music, Wine, and Solitude
Bring me down -
The eagle sky-clad soaring to the sodden ground
When the loneliness of empty air
Too much to bear
Becomes weight on shattered wings
That turn and fall
Featherless
Recent poems by Jubal include the lyrics to the musical pun extravaganza Where Is My Capo?, Bring Me Down, a twisting, turning poem of metaphors on solitude and loneliness, and the chorus song Blackberry Wine which focuses on the difficulties of balancing grief, activism, and rest through a folk ballad style.
Jubal's inspirations include not fantasy literature, world history and folklore, traditional British folk music, and writers from Clive James to JRR Tolkien to WB Yeats, leading to a deep repertoire of lyric and metaphor that underpins his songs and poetry. His output nonetheless includes the profoundly silly, with animal humour or wordplay poems sitting alongside fantasy epics or more serious pieces. You can read all these and more on his ongoing thread, which contains a great number of his works from 2008 onwards, nearly fifteen years of songs and lyrics:
MISCELLANY
Cyberpunk Tracks from Eric Matyas
Long-standing Exilian member and free music king Eric Matyas has been producing more music and soundtracks that can be used in your games, videos, audios and other creative projects. All of Eric's tracks are free to use in both commercial and non-commercial projects, with licenses available where non-attribution is needed and the possibility for custom work as well.
His recent pieces include "Endless Robot Runner" an upbeat cyberpunky techno-futuristic track that could work well in a game level, and "Cyber City Dreams", a more synthy piece that could work well as menu or calmer background music for a futuristic or sci-fi setting. If you're doing any sort of game dev or creative work that includes audio, his background tracks are well worth checking out.
Non-Fiction - What've You Been Reading?
One new thread there we'd like to highlight for this Updates from the Forge is that we've opened a What have you been reading? thread. We've long had one of these in our writing and stories area, the Storytellers' Hall, which has let people discuss the fictions and fantasies they've been recently diving into. Now we have a parallel thread for the non-fiction, where Exilian users can discuss what they've been looking at recently. Our first entry is a discussion of James Boyce's Imperial Mud, on the history of the east of England fens and the resistance to their drainage within the context of the ideology and contests that shaped the British Empire.
What have you been reading recently and would you recommend it? Do let us know.
Thanks once again - or for the first time, if you're new here - for reading Updates from the Forge. We hope this will be just the start of an exciting creative year here across our community, and we've got more announcements coming soon that will help make that a reality. Do keep making and sharing your creativity: whether you're taking tentative steps or composing a masterpiece, we'd love to hear from and support you. Until next time!
