Hey friends-- Thank you so much for joining us on this campaign and supporting us and all of the other independent RPG creators in OSE Month. This community really is the best and we are so thankful to be a part of it. Emporium of the Damned is officially our most backed project ever đŸ¤˜đŸ¤˜đŸ¤˜and also our first collab. I loved this process and hope to do another one sometime in the future. I love the Emporium--Ahimsa has put so much excitement and energy into the writing and I am having an absolute blast doing the illustrations for it. I can't wait to get it out to you all and to hear what you have to say about it. We will not be doing an add-on store for this project--it's just the zine--because it will be shipping from Exalted Funeral with all of the other combined shipping projects. They plan to do the shipping in January, but we will definitely have the pdfs out to you much sooner. Thanks again for keeping the table clean and we'll be in touch.
Hello my dear fiends! (Do you know how hard it is not to make hell puns in every sentence? I'm going to try to resist but I'm having a hell of a time with it.)
(See?)
Anyway, we are entering those last couple days of the campaign and as always your support is appreciated. We have good news as well. The book was already written before we began, but it's now laid out and that we are doing final edits on it. Wind has drawn a hell of a lot of demons (I have a problem, I'm sorry!) and he's sitll drawing more. Some say he'll be drawing demons for the rest of his life.
Plus we are planning on doing printed inside covers with tables and cool stuff to provide even more content (62 actual pages). There are a lot of good projects this month, but we believe ours has as many ideas and useful bits per page as any of them!
Now we'd like to point you in the direction of some devilishly talented fiends (I think I've demon-strated my point by now!) of ours.
The Merry Mushmen, those fun guys who produced those excellent RPGs such as The Folklore Bestiary, Knock Magazine, and The Black Sword Hack, is currently Kickstarting a 276-page comic book called Xnoo #1. In the tradition of Metal Hurlant, you'll get comics from such artists as Goran Gligović, James Maliszewski, James V. West, Jason Sholtis, Joseph R. Lewis, Olivier 'Nobboc' Revenu, Sam 'Skullboy' Mameli, Stefan Poag, Tim Molloy, Trey Causey and many more. You can also expect articles about the genre(s) of sword & sorcery, interviews, short stories. The Merry Mushroom make quality books every time so you know this is going to be dope. The art is honestly as good as it gets and they have a fulfillment center in North America now so delivery will be better than ever.
Thanks for reading all the way down here! Wind & Ahimsa The Knight Owls
I wrote last week about how Bhutan influenced Emporium, but an equally big influence was Lithuania. I was on an island (well, pseudo-island) called Nida and there they have the legend of how Amber came to be.
The legend says that there were two lovers, Jūratė and Kastytis. Jūratė was the immortal sea-goddess who lived in an amber palace at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, and Kastytis was a mortal fisherman. Jūratė went to confront him about overfishing but ended up falling deeply in love. She brought him to her underwater palace, where they lived happily until the supreme thunder god, Perkūnas, discovered their forbidden romance. He destroyed the amber palace with a fatal lightning bolt, killing Kastytis. The amber that washes up on the shore is both remnants of the castle and the tears of Jūratė. I adapted this story to be more demonic and use soul amber as the main currency of the Emporium. But that was not all.
When I needed to add more Orders, I thought about the Samogitians. These were hardcore warriors that helped maintain Lithuanian's status as the last pagan country in Europe for hundreds of years. How tough were they? They fought off the Mongols, dealing them a crushing defeat, for one thing. But, eventually, assaulted by the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order, after dealing with the Golden Horde and sneaky Poland, they fell.
How is that relevant to Emporium of the Damned? Well there is an order of demon hunters (cleverly called "Samotigians") that resisted demons for centuries before falling. They can still aid PCs and teach them much about anti demon measures.
By happenstance, soon after Gavin invited us to join in on this most excellent endeavor, I ended up in a country I had always wanted to go to but never been able to.
The Land of the Thunder Dragon aka Drunk aka Bhutan. There is a long and intense history of demons in this country. Of course, lifting concepts wholesale from a foreign country is both lazy and potentially appropriative. But finding real life inspiration for an active project is a writer's great pleasure. (At least, it's this writer's great pleasure).
I'm going to share some interesting facts that I wanted to work in but did not end up using.
Newborn babies get their names at the fertility temple. These names are either related to the temple or assigned by head monk. Names in general are on property in jar There are no no inherited family names. Both are given at birth.
Black stupas of suppression built over demon bodies.
Compound fortress on confluence of two rivers. One of the temples had the founders of the country's body. Only the king, the head of religion and the caretaker are allowed to enter. But it's also where new kings and religious leaders are anointed.
Daikini - marry them in a dream and they reveal great treasure (Very D&D!)
One demoness was so strong her whole body became the land of Bhutan upon her suppression.
Okay, that last one kind of made it. The Emporium is built on the body of a Titan. Some other elements that made it are phurbas (demon slaying daggers, you might remember one from the movie The Golden Child) and an order of allies based on a fictionalized group of Bhutan demon hunters.
In the end, matching the tone of the Demonic Grimoire was the most important thing so I cut a lot of the concepts I had. Also I found once again that truth was stranger than fiction. (Bhutan's national hero is said to have defeated a host of powerful demons and demonesses with nothing more than his phallus!) Nonetheless the little bit of Bhutanese flavor makes the book richer, and isn't that just the perfect metaphor for an Emporium?
The Demonic Grimoire details 8 planes of hell, each ruled over by a mighty demon lord. We will (hopefully) have an atmospheric music track to accompany each of these abyssal dimensions! Based on how well all the projects in OSE Month do, we'll get as many as 8 new songs of dungeon synth. This is how it breaks down.
$425,000 total funding: We just reached $425,000 across all OSE Month projects, so we'll unlock an extra reward for all backers: a 4 track hellscape soundtrack! This will be a digital download made available in BackerKit when ready.
$525,000 total funding: At this funding level, we'll expand the soundtrack to a total of 6 tracks.
$625,000 total funding: And finally, at this funding level, we'll expand the soundtrack to a total of 8 tracks.
Let's hope we get there! Thanks again for your support!
I'm super excited about our first day of this project--it's our first time on BackerKit and our biggest day 1 ever! Thank you all so much for helping us make this thing happen. If you're wondering where we're at with this all, the text is 100% completely written and edited and I have already done my first pass through with layout. It'll take a few more weeks to get the layout as tight as I like it, but we're close. The map is done (as you have seen in the previews) and the artwork is about 30% done. Long story short--we're doing great! I'm always impressed with the stuff that Ahimsa writes (his maniacal mind is the main reason I love doing all this, after all), but this book is seriously the best work he's put out since Scourge of the Scorn Lords, and I can't wait to get it out to you all. Thanks again--and thanks for keeping the table clean!
Hey friends-- Thank you so much for joining us on this campaign and supporting us and all of the other independent RPG creators in OSE Month. This community really is the best and we are so thankful to be a part of it. Emporium of the Damned is officially our most backed project ever đŸ¤˜đŸ¤˜đŸ¤˜and also our first collab. I loved this process and hope to do another one sometime in the future. I love the Emporium--Ahimsa has put so much excitement and energy into the writing and I am having an absolute blast doing the illustrations for it. I can't wait to get it out to you all and to hear what you have to say about it. We will not be doing an add-on store for this project--it's just the zine--because it will be shipping from Exalted Funeral with all of the other combined shipping projects. They plan to do the shipping in January, but we will definitely have the pdfs out to you much sooner. Thanks again for keeping the table clean and we'll be in touch.
Hello my dear fiends! (Do you know how hard it is not to make hell puns in every sentence? I'm going to try to resist but I'm having a hell of a time with it.)
(See?)
Anyway, we are entering those last couple days of the campaign and as always your support is appreciated. We have good news as well. The book was already written before we began, but it's now laid out and that we are doing final edits on it. Wind has drawn a hell of a lot of demons (I have a problem, I'm sorry!) and he's sitll drawing more. Some say he'll be drawing demons for the rest of his life.
Plus we are planning on doing printed inside covers with tables and cool stuff to provide even more content (62 actual pages). There are a lot of good projects this month, but we believe ours has as many ideas and useful bits per page as any of them!
Now we'd like to point you in the direction of some devilishly talented fiends (I think I've demon-strated my point by now!) of ours.
The Merry Mushmen, those fun guys who produced those excellent RPGs such as The Folklore Bestiary, Knock Magazine, and The Black Sword Hack, is currently Kickstarting a 276-page comic book called Xnoo #1. In the tradition of Metal Hurlant, you'll get comics from such artists as Goran Gligović, James Maliszewski, James V. West, Jason Sholtis, Joseph R. Lewis, Olivier 'Nobboc' Revenu, Sam 'Skullboy' Mameli, Stefan Poag, Tim Molloy, Trey Causey and many more. You can also expect articles about the genre(s) of sword & sorcery, interviews, short stories. The Merry Mushroom make quality books every time so you know this is going to be dope. The art is honestly as good as it gets and they have a fulfillment center in North America now so delivery will be better than ever.
Thanks for reading all the way down here! Wind & Ahimsa The Knight Owls
I wrote last week about how Bhutan influenced Emporium, but an equally big influence was Lithuania. I was on an island (well, pseudo-island) called Nida and there they have the legend of how Amber came to be.
The legend says that there were two lovers, Jūratė and Kastytis. Jūratė was the immortal sea-goddess who lived in an amber palace at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, and Kastytis was a mortal fisherman. Jūratė went to confront him about overfishing but ended up falling deeply in love. She brought him to her underwater palace, where they lived happily until the supreme thunder god, Perkūnas, discovered their forbidden romance. He destroyed the amber palace with a fatal lightning bolt, killing Kastytis. The amber that washes up on the shore is both remnants of the castle and the tears of Jūratė. I adapted this story to be more demonic and use soul amber as the main currency of the Emporium. But that was not all.
When I needed to add more Orders, I thought about the Samogitians. These were hardcore warriors that helped maintain Lithuanian's status as the last pagan country in Europe for hundreds of years. How tough were they? They fought off the Mongols, dealing them a crushing defeat, for one thing. But, eventually, assaulted by the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order, after dealing with the Golden Horde and sneaky Poland, they fell.
How is that relevant to Emporium of the Damned? Well there is an order of demon hunters (cleverly called "Samotigians") that resisted demons for centuries before falling. They can still aid PCs and teach them much about anti demon measures.
By happenstance, soon after Gavin invited us to join in on this most excellent endeavor, I ended up in a country I had always wanted to go to but never been able to.
The Land of the Thunder Dragon aka Drunk aka Bhutan. There is a long and intense history of demons in this country. Of course, lifting concepts wholesale from a foreign country is both lazy and potentially appropriative. But finding real life inspiration for an active project is a writer's great pleasure. (At least, it's this writer's great pleasure).
I'm going to share some interesting facts that I wanted to work in but did not end up using.
Newborn babies get their names at the fertility temple. These names are either related to the temple or assigned by head monk. Names in general are on property in jar There are no no inherited family names. Both are given at birth.
Black stupas of suppression built over demon bodies.
Compound fortress on confluence of two rivers. One of the temples had the founders of the country's body. Only the king, the head of religion and the caretaker are allowed to enter. But it's also where new kings and religious leaders are anointed.
Daikini - marry them in a dream and they reveal great treasure (Very D&D!)
One demoness was so strong her whole body became the land of Bhutan upon her suppression.
Okay, that last one kind of made it. The Emporium is built on the body of a Titan. Some other elements that made it are phurbas (demon slaying daggers, you might remember one from the movie The Golden Child) and an order of allies based on a fictionalized group of Bhutan demon hunters.
In the end, matching the tone of the Demonic Grimoire was the most important thing so I cut a lot of the concepts I had. Also I found once again that truth was stranger than fiction. (Bhutan's national hero is said to have defeated a host of powerful demons and demonesses with nothing more than his phallus!) Nonetheless the little bit of Bhutanese flavor makes the book richer, and isn't that just the perfect metaphor for an Emporium?
The Demonic Grimoire details 8 planes of hell, each ruled over by a mighty demon lord. We will (hopefully) have an atmospheric music track to accompany each of these abyssal dimensions! Based on how well all the projects in OSE Month do, we'll get as many as 8 new songs of dungeon synth. This is how it breaks down.
$425,000 total funding: We just reached $425,000 across all OSE Month projects, so we'll unlock an extra reward for all backers: a 4 track hellscape soundtrack! This will be a digital download made available in BackerKit when ready.
$525,000 total funding: At this funding level, we'll expand the soundtrack to a total of 6 tracks.
$625,000 total funding: And finally, at this funding level, we'll expand the soundtrack to a total of 8 tracks.
Let's hope we get there! Thanks again for your support!
