Hello backers, a quick update to say that while I was away in my camper for a couple of days (short review: refreshing; - cold, wet, hailing Scotland, but still refreshing) the Tuesday Knight Games team launched the Mega Pledge Manager.
You should have a link to the survey in your inbox somewhere. There you can confirm your orders and add other projects that you like the look of. There's a lot going on!
I think everything looks good from a Hippocrene POV but if you see anything (or more importantly if any product looks to be missing from your order) let me know and I can flag with the TKG team. Its been a beast to organise and they folks at Backerkit have been responsive in sorting any errors that have been caught.
Also, got some test prints of Hippocrene through, which look great. There's various colour tests and spreads inside (with lorem ipsum text) too, which give an excellent idea of how the book will look. It's going to be colourful internally with each section themed with a CMYK colour (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). I think probably the only debate I've got is whether or not to go for some kind of matt lamination on the cover vs uncoated (the current version below), as this would be a bit more hard wearing. Always love the look of uncoated though!
Drink From The Hippocrene. Hand : model's own.
Short and sweet, that's it for now!
*For posterity's sake I'm going to keep the update titled by month, just see how out of sync the time in my head is vs the time IRL.
Hello backers, Hope yer all good!
Update to let you know where we’re at / that I’m still alive:
Writing - continues! I’d probably say I'm a bit behind on this now, but this is generally part of my process: get behind / create undue pressure / blurt stuff out. It routinely makes things that should be fun less enjoyable, but that’s just the way it is. We’ll get there though!
Test print - While I hold up layout somewhat, I had a good call with Lone Archivist a couple of weeks ago to run through what needs doing, and to keep things ticking along I've ordered a test print of the zine - featuring image assets and page layouts we have so far, and dummy text - so we can assess things like colours and paper thickness are to our liking. That should be with me next week.
Production - The patches have been made in the USA (its v expensive here in the UK as far as I've found, plus tariffs etc), but I've elected to print everything else here in the UK and ship from here to the two TKG warehouses. It allows us to send shipments at the correct time for delivery to warehouses, allows us to make test prints quickly and just a whole bunch of other stuff that makes me feel more in control of things 😬
Oh, and the patches have already been made and have shipped to the USA warehouse already, below is a pic of one of them, taken by someone at the warehouse. It's quite odd creating a product I probably won’t see IRL here in the UK!
Stickers - hoping to get these printed this month, below is some designs for these:
Rimwise Wanderer - I’ve also been pulling together the copy for the additional Rimwise Wanderer player facing zine, featuring ‘100 things to do on the Dream’; that’s been a fun diversion from the more serious work of making the Hippocrene make sense.
Small start-of-the-year update as we come to the end of the longest most hellish January of all time.
Basically writing is ongoing still, I have a deadline of getting my draft over to Chris Airaiu on February 9th for editing. Then hoping to get into layout vibes towards the end of February.
The first of the zine spot art has landed and is looking great. Here's some NPC portraits from Malachi Ward:
Logan Wolftraxx - self-styled ‘District Governor’ of Malvolio. Was rich but rapidly pumping all his money into making the district a success.
Bortheen - owner of Malvolio's extremely exclusive and secretive bordello.
Aros Mains - legendary fashionista, his flagship store is in Malvolio and clothing manufacturing in the wider Dream.
Some other bits of Mothership interest:
Chris Airaiu and Waco Matrixo - two of my MoshMo speed dials - have projects launching early next week for zine month. You should definitely take a look at these:
BLAME!/Halflife inspired shifting megastructures in Twisting Unseen.
Your players are parasitic worms vying for control of a scientist host in Cain Sun.
I also love the sound of this collection of worms-based horror from Terry Herc - I read The Troop last year and it made me think there's not enough worms-based horror in Mosh, so good to see both Waco and Terry taking steps to address this.
That's been a month already since the end of Moshmo25, during which time I've managed to get down from Inverness to Dragonmeet in London, meet a bunch of folks I've only previously met online and catch a brutal con-flu which I'm only just getting over now.
The update on Hippocrene is fairly short this month as it's mostly:
Finishing the script which sits squarely with me. After a lot of stop-start breaks I've got most of the day today and a full day tomorrow on this now, which I'm really excited about.
Art briefing is in progress. I've got layout templates from Lone Archivist that will work for most of the key spreads in the zone, and will be using these to put in my artwork brief to Malachi Ward for the spot art in the zine. I'm very excited to see what we get back here since he did such an amazing job with the cover art.
Patches have been ordered/paid for but not finalised yet. These are getting produced in the USA and I want to stall that order a bit until we're allowed to ship our goods to the TKG warehouse.
The Bonus Pamphlet stretch goal is ticking along well too. I've had the initial script for this through from DG Chapman, which looks like it'll be a fun 'who's got the diamond' jewellery heist in Hotel Mi Casa, one of the locations in the Malvolio district, the setting for Hippocrene.
I think that'll do for now.
Have a bangin' festive holiday when it comes, I'll catch you in January.
We're into the final day and a bit of Mothership Month 2025.
This one has really pinged by for me.
Last year I fired out these updates at least once a week, bright-eyed and full of sci-fi pith and vinegar. There was cheeky, choose-your-own-adventure style polls, hidden backer-only sections; the lot. This time I've felt more like a wizened vet, chewing on some kind of matchstick thing at the back of the room while others get the buzz of crowdfunding for the first time. A Backerkit version of that fisherman in Jaws, but not as useful.
I'll keep some more in depth updates on what's going into the module for my monthly(ish) updates as we go through development. This will be things like the workings of the Cult of the Hippocrene (think Eyes Wide Shut crossed with Needful Things), or more about the 4 individual modules that you can weave into a rollicking conspiracy.
Some bits of news:
Stretch Goals
Today we hit the 17k stretch of a FREE digital pamphlet for all backers, written by DG Chapman (Haunting of Ypsilon 14), and we've got one more left - 19K will net all physical backers a print version of the pamphlet. So tell your friends about the Hippocrene, or gift your mum a copy for Christmas (2026).
(Fun unofficial stretch goal: if we hit 20K I should be able to fix the hole in my roof that had rainwater pouring in through my office ceiling this morning.)
Cross collab
The other way to squeeze as much out of this project is to also back Waco Matrixo's Prospero Protocols, which Hippocrene is cross-collab'd with. Cross-collab is a cool feature from Backerkit, where if you get exclusive rewards if you back both projects. In our case, it's going to be a pdf pamphlet about the hunt for a cryptid in the area that will go on to become the Malvolio District, the setting for Drink From The Hippocrene.
It's not a competition by any means, but we've got 56% of our backers backing both projects:
So that's pretty cool - I think the zines fit together well and grabbing both will get you a bunch of cool stuff to run at your table. Waco wrote Decagone, so 'nuff said really.
That's it really.
Thank you all for your support as always; it is still pretty mind-blowing for me to get to be able to work on something as exciting and creative as this, and I really will try my hardest to make Drink From The Hippocrene the best zine about greedy, obsessive, rich cultists slowly descending into destructive madness that you have in your Mothership collection.
Cheers, Andrew
Angus is like 'my guy shuuuut uuuup wake me up when Overtime is over.'
