Hello Mercenaries, 

TL;DR: We have the first preview of the Core Book! Oh, we also have a new game on Kickstarter. 

I can finally share a preview from the Valraven Core Book: the first three chapters, totaling 48 pages. These include the full introduction and the entire system chapter, giving you a solid look at the mechanics that drive the game.

Character creation, setting, and Gifts will be covered in the next release—but for now, this is your chance to dive into the core engine of Valraven and see what makes it tick.

You will get an email with a download link from Backerkit. Please check your SPAM folder before reaching out. Feel free to share your thoughts on our Discord Server. 

The Book of Eclipse is practically complete. The only remaining elements are a dedicated sheet for playing the solo mode with the full mercenary Company, along with some final layout tasks—namely the credits and the table of contents.

As previously mentioned, I’m a bit behind on the Core Book, but progress is steady and I’m catching up quickly. Here’s a snapshot of the current situation:

I believe it’s realistic to have the final PDFs ready before summer, and to move into print production during the summer. That timeline gives us some flexibility as we continue to monitor the ongoing U.S. tariff situation, which could significantly impact where we choose to print.

According to Rascal, books should be exempt, but other components—such as dice, playbooks, and accessories—may be subject to new tariffs. Unfortunately, the current U.S. administration has proven erratic, with a tendency toward sudden policy shifts that complicate long-term planning. Production and fulfillment are multi-week processes, and at this stage, we have no reliable way to forecast how the situation will evolve.

In that sense, taking a bit more time to finish everything might work in our favor. We’ll continue to monitor developments closely and update you as soon as we have clearer information—or at least a well-informed direction.

It’s already funded and we’ve started to unlock stretch goals. 

Bitter Chalice is a dark fantasy adventure TTRPG that drops you into the Blighted Lands—a cursed region around the fallen city of Vathan, where people live with constant thirst, hunger, and creeping madness. Unlike your typical TTRPG, this isn’t a toolkit—it’s a complete, handcrafted campaign in the vein of Elden Ring, Hollow Knight, Bloodborne, and the Dark Souls series. 

The game comes in a beautifully designed box set with three full volumes, featuring a complete ruleset, the game campaign, an intro campaign, several thematic classes to pick from, places of origin, a solo mode and much more. The game revolves around a huge map filled with mysterious locations to uncover. When you find one, you add a sticker to the map. Exploration is sandbox-style, so you can go wherever you want. Each location has different events, items, and NPCs, and your actions in one area affect what happens in others. There's a lot more to it, like managing resources and time (things change according to the time of day, and finding non-infected food is part of the gameplay to escape either hunger or madness, etc.).

On the Kickstarter page you also find the link for a 40+ pages overview, free to download.

Hope to see you there too!