The Abandoned Sweet Works and Pale Echoes

Check out this amazing new piece of art by Dharia Khlebnikova that just came in!

Well, the Kickstarter for Through Ultan's Door 3 is off to a strong start. While of course I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to people who purchased the early issues and expressed the enthusiasm in the past that's kept me going, one of the things that makes me the happiest is that about half of all pledges are from people who are picking up the back issues as well, i.e. people who have never experienced (at least the print versions of) Through Ultan's Door. We have blown through a huge number of stretch goals. I wanted to tell you a little bit about what's to come. So far we've unlocked three sets of stretch goals that I'm super-excited about. 

#1 Expanded Maladies and Afflictions

Through Ultan's Door 3 presents a rules-light system for maladies and afflictions that includes ways of tracking the progress of a malady and its mechanical and narratival effects. In the zine I present six exquisite maladies and afflictions of Zyan, from furniture pox to shadow blight. The first set of stretch goals will produce an illustrated, folded pamphlet (also PDF) with the full Through Ultan's Door house dressing and printed on French Paper Co. paper. It doubles the number of afflictions covered in the zine from 6 to 12. Although this is subject to change if more ideas occur to me, right now the additional afflictions include: onoma ague, penury blindness, spin worms, ruinous anomie, tempest catalepsy, and speculo obsession. The good news is that I already have this 2/3 written since some of these were cut from the original zine for reasons of space. 

#2 Increasing the Pay of Artists and Graphic Designers

For the second set of stretch, I am increasing the pay of all seven artists and the graphic designer for this project. 

#3 The Abandoned Sweet Works

I expect that this will be the stretch goal people backers are most excited about. Through Ultan's Door 3 presents a sewer crawl that connections the dungeons of issues 1 and 2 with 7 other locations. For the third set of stretch goals, which just funded, I am collaborating with Gus to create an 8th sewer location in the form of a one-page dungeon. He will do the cartography and layout, and collaborate on the keying of this location, which we dreamed up together. It will be printed on French Paper Co. paper and included in all print copy pledge levels (also as a PDF). I want to share the capsule write-up of the location, which I jsut finished:

In Zyan, confectionery jostles poetry and opera for the title of highest art. From the tumblers and molds, the sugar torches and glazing racks of the candy works, pour traditional favorites, from elegant drop candies in flavors of horeshound or lilac brandy, to candied orchis, or the jellied meats in Zyanese delights, and rosewindows of stained sugar glass. The Sweet Works was an underground workshop that once poured its sugared waste into the sewer river. Its sunken garden provided the narcotic white honey for their once famous cough drops. Long abandoned, the garden has grown wild among the ruined works, drawing to it honey ghuls from Zyan, where gangs deal white honey to addicts. Having lost the manners and customs of humanity, the honey ghuls are now jealous slaves to the hive. 

Possible #4 Elspeth's Letter and Pale Echoes

But the truth is that I'm just as excited about what comes next--if we manage to unlock the next set of stretch goals. The next set presents an alternate frame for a mini-series or campaign set in Wishery. Instead of traveling through Ultan's door, the party receives an inheritance from a former dreamer that includes the recipe for potions of penumbral transmigration. These potions allow them to use the memories of the dead dreamer to fashion priaducts that take them through the Oneiric Sea to different locations in Wishery. 

If this set of stretch goals are unlocked, this will be only the beginning. For the last stretch goal (at present, more may be added) involves a commitment to work on a new, episodically released, zine called Pale Echoes. It takes its name from the term that the Zyanese use for the drab waking world, which they call derisively "Pale Echo". 

Pale Echoes will be a zine taking you the other way through Ultan's door to explore different campaign frames and premises for the waking world of your game. In addition to numerous different "campaign starters" and house rules that will connect Pale Echo with Wishery, I hope in its pages to present the waking world from own home campaign, i.e. the city-state of Rastingdrung, where Ultan's door first appeared in my own campaign. 

To be clear, even if we hit this stretch goal, this zine will not be included in the Kickstarter. This is rather a long-term commitment I will make, on the basis of the interest expressed in the Kickstarter, to launch this zine in the future.

So if you're thinking about jumping on board the Kickstarter, now is a good time! You can find it here.  Feel free to share it with those you think might find it interesting. If we continue blowing through these stretch goals, who knows what else might lie beyond the veil of sleep!

I'm going to do my first Twitch stream!

 

In a first ever for me, I'm going to be taking Plus One Exp's crew through Ultan's Door to the sewers of Zyan on this Saturday, 1/30, at 730pm EST. Get a sneak peak of what's between the covers of the forthcoming Issue 3! You can follow the stream here: ttrpg.link/sewersofdreamland.

Through Ultan's Door 3 is an open-ended pointcrawl, so I faced the problem of how to get the players quickly in into it for a one shot. I didn't want them coming through Ultan's Door, since that would put them straight into the Ruins of the Inquisitor's Theater from issue 1, and I wanted to preview newer material. While I can't quite spill the beans, here's the premise I came up with and emailed to the players:

Elspeth was your godmother. She was a colorful character, a known adventurer, and renowned duelist in her youth. When you were a child, she brought wondrous gifts from her travels--exquisite moving dolls, gorgeous and frightening masks, a set of paints in remarkable hues--that she claimed were from Wishery, a land "beyond the veil of sleep", about which she told you many tales. Your mother told you the stories were just fairy tales, but you like to imagine they were true. After a falling out with your family, you lost touch with her, and were sad to learn that she had died. Curiously, there was no funeral held for her. But a sealed letter did arrive for you, in her unmistakable script, with cryptic instructions. It says that if you are receiving this, it is because she has died, and she wants you to know that she is proud that you have made yourself an adventurer. Her last wish is that you are to gather a party of your companions, outfitted for an expedition, and to come as quickly as you can to her house in the countryside.

I'm nervous for sure, but I think it'll be a lot of fun. I'm excited to play with Diogo Nogueira, who is one of the players who will be stepping through Ultan's door with me. Come if you want to catch a glimpse of the new opium dreamer class, or if you're curious what a potion of penumbral transmigration does, or if you want to meet the sewer wyrm Cephaia, Prophetess of the Muddle Waters. Or if you just want to see my grinning mug DM a session in the dreamlands. 

(Boring mandatory mention: if you want to follow the project and receive a notification when it launches, click here. Also, I now have a Facebook page for Through Ultan's Door Press that you can see here.)

Through Ultan's Door Does ZineQuest 3!

 

I will be launching Through Ultan's Door Issue 3 on Kickstarter for ZineQuest 3. 

I know this has been a long time coming. This new issue is more ambitious than the previous issues. I hope it's worth the wait. Through Ultan's Door 3 presents a pointcrawl along the Great Sewer River that winds its way beneath Zyan, flying city of the dreamlands. The pointcrawl connects the dungeons from issues 1 & 2 with 7 other locations. 

It introduces an entire settlement, the Sanitarium of the Benefactors, and numerous factions including the the sewer wyrm Cephaia, Prophetess of the Muddled Waters; her rival the Cranemay, melancholy fey witch; the Regulators of the Black Hand, dread sewer pirates; the Sons and Daughters of the Vigilant Watchers, ancient sewer mercenaries; and, best of all, the Lurid Toads, ominously polite cannibalistic parasites. It has a big sewer encounter table that brings the otherworldly sewer-of-the-dreamlands vibe hard. It even has rules for playing an opium dreaming wizard. 

Through Ultan's Door 3 was just too much Zyan to contain in one zine. So it's a double issue, with a Part I and a Part II. Each of these parts is its own 28 page zine, with a detachable cover with a map printed on its interior like an old school module, and a separate encounter card, so you can have the map, key, and encounters all open simultaneously at the table without any extra printing when you run. 

This extra room has also allowed me to commission more exquisite art for the zine than ever before. Through Ultan's Door 1 had two artists, Huargo and Gus. Through Ultan's Door 2, had five artists, Russ Nicholson, Huargo, Gus, Jeremy Duncan, and Orphicss. Through Ultan's Door 3 has no less than seven artists (!) who are creating the best art the zine has ever had. I'll introduce them in another post, but suffice it to say that Nicholson, Huargo, Gus, and Orphicss are back along with 3 amazing artists new to the zine. 

As if all this weren't enough, Gus has written an entire companion adventure to Through Ultan's Door 3, titled Beneath the Moss Courts. It picks up one of the hidden locations from the sewer point crawl, the wreck of the Verdant Purveyor, the base of operations for the Regulators of the Black Circle, dread sewer pirates, and expands it into an entire siege adventures that also reaches up into the law offices of Zyan Above. It contains the first published glimpse of the city that sits atop the dungeons and sewers of issues 1-3. This adventure is also being printed as a 40 page zine, with its own detachable cover, encounter card, and a second map insert with notes on running a siege adventure. So that's three separate zines with a total of 96 pages of the dreamlands. 

I will also be reprinting Through Ultan's Door 1 & 2 for the Kickstarter. So if you missed physical copies the first time around you'll have the chance to get them. Together, the first three issues are enough to launch your own campaign in the dreamlands and sustain maybe the first 30 sessions of lucid dreaming sandbox play.

The good news is that layout on Through Ultan's Door 3 & Beneath the Moss Courts is done. All the remaining art pieces have been commissioned, and all should be in hand by the end of February. What the Kickstarter will allow me to do is scale up the printing, so that I can print large quantities of all three issues of the zine, including the first two back issues, and Gus' companion adventure. I'm also going to pay to have the local printer I work with assemble the zines this time around. 

Don't worry about the physical quality of the zine. I'll still be using my fancy French Paper Co. paper, a full pallet of which arrive not long ago. The printing technique and quality of the images will be the same as previous issues. The only difference will be that they are folded, stapled, and trimmed by professionals with the proper tools to do it at scale. In other words, each issue will just contain a little bit less of my sweat and tears. I don't think they make the zine taste any sweeter.    

In case you are wondering, this is what a pallet of paper looks like

I will be shipping the zines worldwide, bagged, and in cardboard boxes as USPS first class packages, hopefully with tracking. (Given the zine specs I can't use media mail, or mail them as letters, or even flats.) Shipping prices being what they are at the moment, shipping won't be cheap, which I hate. I also understand there may be some of you who would like to buy the zine but are unable to do so on Kickstarter. Don't fret. Right after I ship out the zines to backers, I will put it on sale on my normal big cartel webstore, and upload the PDFs to DriveThruRPG and itch.io. 

So anyway, look for a Through Ultan's Door Kickstarter on ZineQuest 3 in the first week of February! Although I will admit to having had a couple of stress dreams about running my first Kickstarter, I'm getting excited.