The Earl of Aderyn and sketches
almost 7 years ago – Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 10:37:44 AM

Hey all,
Just wanted to do a quick check in with all of you. Since our last update, writers are working hard on their assignments and their deadline is June 30th, to which I'll be reviewing the submitted content, so I should be able to do an update shortly covering some of the ancillary characters.

The Earl Aderyn 

The Earl hails from, a distant country of rocky wastes, where the strongest warriors prove their worth in the ongoing battles against the great beasts who originally inhabited the land. She was banished from Aderyn to avert a prophecy and so with reluctance, she took her family’s heirloom scimitar and mask and left in search of adventure. Upon hearing tales of Aderyn’s wealth and prosperity in her absence, she longed for home. That longing soon turned to bitterness, anger, and resentment, and Cliodhna began to crave revenge. 
She sought out dark sorcery and blasphemous rituals, coaxing the spark of anger that lived in her heart into an inferno, embracing her destiny as a destroyer and swearing to bring about the downfall of Aderyn. Cliodhna heard of the unique properties of the Realm of Embers, and so she sought it out, planning to obtain new power for herself.

This is what Brought the Earl of Aderyn to our Kingdom.

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Early Sketch Work

Also, love the art that Vincent has done for us, but very rarely does early work ever get shown, so I just wanted to show off some very early project sketches of what was call at the time, "corrupted firekeeper", and the bottom right was a scandanavian-style Manus. We ended up going a completely different direction and later ended up with with a hybrid, creating Ceidwen. 

 
Until the next update!
And thanks for being patient with us.

Andreas

May Update
almost 7 years ago – Sat, May 20, 2017 at 06:18:50 PM

Hey everyone,
I apologize for being bad at these updates. There is no excuse for being late on these and I apologize.  
The start of this project has been quite a rough patch, and we're just getting out of it. 
Just for some background, when I first launched this I anticipated it to be something like the Baby Bestiary but a little more narrative. The thing about the Baby Bestiary is that it's completely modular, with each creature being independent from the rest of the entries. This modular nature made writing assignments between authors really easy to manage. 

After the Embers project funded, I began to coordinate with the writers about the individual character narratives, we had the core concept for Brennin, and were hoping to approach it like the modular nature of the Baby Bestiary. The problem I encountered was that, in order to replicate the narrative complexity of Dark Souls we had to have a lot more up-front planning of the character narratives, in order to provide insightful direction to our authors. 
This is where we brought in Ben (someone more experienced in making these sort of products) to help plan it out. With his help, we ironed out the base narrative (expanding our core Brennin story arch into a background story).  
In the Backbone we decided to focus on the "Core Characters", 

• Brennan- The King of Embers
• Ceidwen -The Fire of Fate
• Cliodhna - The Earl of Aderyn
• Maeve - The Fairy Queen 

These core characters were developed from Brennin's backbone and then defined by each author, keeping them all unique. The plan is to have each location and sub-character be assigned to each core character, in addition the other core characters can be referenced because they have already been fleshed out.

Currently we're still waiting on one of the core character concepts. A number of the writers I've been working with have had a number of family crisis which has caused some difficulty in planning. 
So honestly we are behind my intended schedule, but I will keep pushing through. I want this product to be done right, rather than quickly, and I apologize it being delayed. As we continue I'll share more about each of the characters to keep you all in the loop on whats been developing.
Thank you, and I'm sorry.
Andreas

 Close up of the current TOC

April Updates
about 7 years ago – Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 09:22:19 PM

The lord of the land, Brennin, heir to the kingdom of old, inherited the power of the Urd Signet. This ring allows it’s wearer to link potential fates to this reality, but in consequence destroys another potential fate. With this power one could remove a variety of calamities and change the course of fate, however, there are always drawbacks. With with each use, it forces the fate in a particular direction, leaving those affected Fatebound, unable to change the course their own fate.

Brennin, in attempt to remove his family from their Fatebound destiny, ordered the construction of a phylactery to spare their souls. Before the phylactery was completed his family had already succumbed to their pre-destined fate. With no other apparent option left, or perhaps as an act of desperation, Brennin thrust his own powerful soul inside the phylactery, a place outside of time and fate.

This action, (As he is linked to the ring and thus the regions fate) trapped the kingdom, not in time, but in it’s current cycle of fate. When the cycle resets the souls who died are returned to their corpses. Some lost their sanity, leaving only a mindless husk trapped in an animated corpse, other souls became so lost that the souls never returned to it’s body. Stronger, more powerful souls may last longer, but that does not protect them from the wear of time; at some point their fortitude will fail.

As your players emerge into the forlorn and the forgotten, they encounter a number of characters each with different goals and motivations, it is for you to decide the fate of the forgotten kingdom; Embrace the cycle, release the cycle or...something else entirely.

**********            ***********          **************              ***********
Ceidwen has stolen the ring and shunted it out of the city 
Aderyn wishes to acquire the ring, for herself and her lord
Caddell wants revenge upon his assassin (his father)
Mayern wants to be released from her eternal summer form
Gorwedd faithful as ever serves to protect Brennin
Twyleth seeks to steal his queens power

These are few of the tales the players will find upon emerging the forgotten kingdom.

 Art of the fairy queen
amazing work by Vincent Yau

Ill be holding more updates and streaming design as the writing comes in, it took a little longer than I hoped but we're still on track of the printing schedule to get books by August. (and core PDF by June)

March Update
about 7 years ago – Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 02:35:04 PM

Hey Backers!
It has been an interesting month, and to be honest this project has been different from any other project that I have done. 

Firstly, I am creating a tribute to a beloved franchise, of which I am fearful it will not do proper justice (creators paranoia). Secondly, is that by the nature of the Souls series, it is far more interconnected that my other projects.

I've been going through iterations and , Kahn Academy's Pixar in a Box, explains this process very well (TL;DR its long repetitive process of refinement).

How the writing stands
Currenlty, I still don't feel comfortable handing it off to the core writing team, but I am meeting with Ben Woener next week. He's an industry professional, producer of a number of the 7th Seas Books and developer of the 7th Seas: Pirate Nations book. What I value most from his involvement is his knowledge and expertise and master of asian mythology, specifically Japanese (which gave me a number of revelations about the core foundations of the Dark Souls mythos. (as it's a Japanese mythology with an western skin upon it)
  For instance, in Taoist belief there is a dualism of the 'soul' Hun and Po. Hun is the ethereal soul (much like the souls you gather for experience), and Po is the tangible soul, which remains after death (much like humanity).There are also a number of rituals which note the use of fire as a method of purification.

Ben is going to help me figure out our core narrative arcs and story outlines to which we should begin official writing very soon. I will provide that outline in my next update, so stay tuned. 
In addition I have begun writing the introductory sections of the book, as these are a reflection of my analysis of the souls series and I hope will be interesting and insightful to you guys.

And finally, two weeks ago I completed my first playthrough of Dark Souls 2, prior, I was a largely a player of DS 1. What I found interesting is that Dark Souls 2 is far more accessible in the sense of tabletop conversions. 
As DS1 is largely concerend about the mythology of the world, it makes it difficult to place inside an existing tabletop game/world. Dark Souls 2 on the other hand, tells the tale of a King who tried put an end to the curse, and sought to not seek the throne due to a disovery (not going to leave spoilers). Lest to be said, the playthrough of Dark Souls 2 has a big influence in the design for Embers.

Ill be sharing more soon (once I've met with Ben)
Thanks for the support everyone!!
Andreas

Late Jan Update (Opinion Needed)
about 7 years ago – Fri, Feb 03, 2017 at 09:57:11 PM

Hey Backers
I apologize for the delay on an update, as many of you are eager to what happens in our world. I was working on getting our Metal Weave Games newsletter up and running and was going to do the update after, but the newsletter was taking longer than I had anticipated.

 Anyways, time for an update.
Honestly I lost a little bit of time durring mid Janruary amidst many things and due to holidays and events writing was slow. Now, and far more refocused, ive been wrangling the cats and doing the narrative compilations and starting to dole out the bigger writing assignments.  (I've been watching a bunch of creative project management talks to help out as well, to ensure the vision of this project stays intact).

in the design-layout department, i havent done too much extra work here, as our focus is more on getting the narrative to flow properly.

Opinion needed

As you know Dark Souls is known for its well designed Narrative Gaps (information missing in the sequence which forces us to try and fill in the gaps), 

• Do you want us to present the entire story and tell you how to include narrative gaps in your game?
  or 
• should we present the information with narrative gaps and tell you how to maximize storytelling with the narrative gaps?

Would love to hear your thoughts and will be active in the post comments