Hail, everyone!

We have a very good update this month: Mörktastic Beasts is on schedule, the stretch goal art is basically complete, and the Pledge Manager is ready to open soon. We are still targeting October fulfillment, and nothing has changed that expectation.

The Pledge Manager has been approved and is ready to go, but we made the decision to hold it for just a little longer while The Black Spire Pact finishes the live phase of its campaign. That campaign ends in 8 days so you can expect the Pledge Manager survey for this project to go out in the next coupe of weeks.

The new creature art is in excellent shape. All of the stretch goal art is now in from Caustic, Johan Nohr, and Saprophial—and Justine Jones is on track to deliver her final pieces by Monday.

That means the visual side of the new material is very nearly complete. Once Justine’s final pieces are in, I’ll be moving deeper into the lore-writing stage for each new creature, with Max following on stats and mechanics.

We also used this stage of the project as an opportunity to bring one more piece fully into the world of Mörktastic Beasts.

One of the original contributors to Ekphrastic Beasts, Ellie Livingston, created an illustration for the old Blazing Worlds Patreon after the original book was published—which I absolutely loved. I wanted commissioned Ellie to revisit and redo that piece for this expanded edition.

Here is the new Rot Golem:

It makes me happy that we get to fold this piece back into the larger project. Mörktastic Beasts is not just a conversion of the original 5e book into the world of MÖRK BORG. It is also a chance to gather up the strange little spores and fragments that grew around Ekphrastic Beasts after publication and give them a proper home.

We’ll share another finished beast as a backer-only preview in the next update.

Right now:

That’s the update for now. This project continues to be a genuine pleasure to make: fast-moving, visually deranged, and full of the exact kind of creature logic that made us want to return to Ekphrastic Beasts in the first place.

Thank you again for helping us make it bigger, stranger, and more doomed.

More soon!

By Night,
Janaka

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