Hi everybody,
With 48 hours left on the campaign, we wanted to send an update out to thank everyone for helping fund Devil’s Due, as well as every other Mothership Month project. We are still just stunned by how many of you want to bring our space pirate planet to your Mother...
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Jet McFin
15 days ago
The Special Thanks Special Update
Jet McFin has stolen the comms again!
I've locked the cockpit and I've only got a few minutes before "they" break down the door and put me back in the cage, so I'll...
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JayEmBosch
15 days ago
Cross-Collab, New Artist, and New Art!
Cross-Collab with Not Enough Scoundrels
We’re happy to announce we’re getting in on the BackerKit Cross-Collab fun this Mothership Month by par...
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JayEmBosch
18 days ago
Actual Play: Iron Hearth Harvest
One of our contributors wearing many hats, Chris Airiau, will be running a one-shot version of his mission from Devil’s Due, “Iron Hearth Harvest” on the Weekly Scroll this Sunday, Nov. 24 at 1pm EST on Twitch!
The Iron Hearth is a TYKA corporate town. The space station speci...
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Kyle Tam
20 days ago
Art Reveal: Nes Aveda of Double or Nothing, and a Live Interview
What a first week of our campaign! We still can’t believe that we’re 348% funded, thank you all so very much for the excitement around Devil’s Due! We...
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Columbary TTRPG
26 days ago
An interview with Carson Brown
Hi folks,
I'm Ben King AKA ColumbaryTTRPG, and I'm one of the writing and illustration contributors to Devil's Due. I interviewed Carson on Discord last week about his work writing and helping to manage the production of the Devil's Due space pirate anthology. Come learn abou...
With 48 hours left on the campaign, we wanted to send an update out to thank everyone for helping fund Devil’s Due, as well as every other Mothership Month project. We are still just stunned by how many of you want to bring our space pirate planet to your Mothership games. Thank you all so much for backing!
As a reminder, here’s everything you’re getting. Everyone at every pledge level gets:
10 unique pirate factions, each with a detailed captain, crew, and ship
7 missions across the city, planet, and system
2 frameworks you can drop into any mission for a unique twist
10 city locations, a hexcrawl through the wilds, plenty of shops, clinics, bars, and spots to lay low
Radio broadcast MP3s for each pirate faction and mission to use at your table
Image assets to use in a VTT and handouts during play
Physical tiers get:
Devil’s Due in hardcover
A unique patch, in addition to the patch for all first-48 hour pledges
Temporary tattoos to help make the trip memorable for your players
Backers of Devil’s Due and Not Enough Scoundrels also get a die-cut sticker sheet of the Venetian-style masks worn by members of The Dark Arcana.
We are also super pumped to bring you new full-spread art for each mission now that we’ve just crossed our last achievement goal of 400% funding! We’ll have more to share about the artists creating this work over the coming weeks.
Really and truly, thanks so much for backing our project and bringing it to life!
We’re happy to announce we’re getting in on the BackerKit Cross-Collab fun this Mothership Month by partnering with another project from one of our many contributors: Chris Airiau’s Not Enough Scoundrels from 5 Million Worlds Press. Backing bothDevil’s Due and Not Enough Scoundrels at any physical pledge level will get you another patch from 5MW Press and 10 stickers from us!
Dark Arcana Mask Stickers
The android crew Dark Arcana, also written by Chris, use masks to conceal their identities and to mark their rank, with the most-coveted Venetian-style masks going to the Major Arcana officers.
Algernon Aeronautics Patch
Manufacturers of somewhat novelty ship types, Algernon Aeronautics created The Six-Shooter, the six-barreled ship stolen by the Ragtag Rustlers, and The Big Top, a ship now, fittingly, controlled by the Big Top Bandits. They also produce the Pelican X2 Trade Scout ship type, Raquelle Winz’s Just Pelican, OK? from Not Enough Scoundrels.
So if you're a backer of Devil's Due but haven't checked out Not Enough Scoundrels yet, get on over to their page and take a look!
New Artist: Amanda Lee Franck
We’re even more excited to announce that we’ve added another artist to the book: the wonderful Amanda Lee Franck! She will be providing a few pirate captain portraits as well as a map diagram. Look forward to her work when you get this tome into your hands.
New Art Reveal: Capt. Dog-Head
Speaking of art, we had to tease you all a little more by showing off another portrait from the book. This time it's Capt. Dog-Head, the leader of the Sykopomp Pack, also by Scragend.
I've locked the cockpit and I've only got a few minutes before "they" break down the door and put me back in the cage, so I'll try to make this quick.
Some of us are American, and around this time of year we Yankees get together with friends and family and celebrate the stuff we're thankful for by eating and drinking a bunch.
A tuxedo with tails is customary American attire on Thanksgiving. This is the dance we do in order to assure the turkey that it is safe among us so that we won't have 6 more weeks of winter.
And on the topic of thanks, and to be very serious, the Azimuth Gang would like to extend a very special thanks to a few crew members who helped especially make this project a success:
First on deck is Reece Carter ("Scarius" on the Mothership Discord), Pirate King and Project Originator. He started this idea with a simple message on Discord that went something like: "Hey, I want to do a 1600s Golden Age of Piracy, but in space. Respond if you're down." Author and contributor to a large number of official and 3rd party Mothership projects, including: Chromatic Transference, Dead in the Water, Orbital Debris, The Hand that Feeds, and more. His work on Mothership is vast, his influence staggering. For Devil's Due, aside from being the project's progenitor, he wrote a large portion of the lore bones and fundamentals, which were later fleshed out by other writers. He worked with the community to create this group-owned project so that everyone who wanted to contribute felt welcomed. Without Reece, this project literally would never have started.
Owen O'Donnell ("Am I Cool Yet?" on the Mothership Discord), a fellow perpetually returning video tapes. Also known as that dude what wrote The Year of the Rat. After Reece's call to make a module, a bunch of us jumped on a voice chat to start hashing out the primordial ooze, Owen among the early founders. He was an influential part of the early lore and general content framework, spitballing many great ideas while yes-and-ing other contributors' ideas. Owen helped move the ball and start building the lore.
Next, SL Perry ("Bunnygum" on the Mothership Discord). Author of the visually pleasing and thoroughly funded QA. Also an early contributor to lore, framework, and general infrastructure of the project. SL Perry reached right down into the guts of the project for Devil's Due management processes. A stalwart beacon and principled writer, SL Perry pushed the project forward well into the writing and development phase and has fingerprints throughout.
If you will indulge me a cliche, last but certainly not least: DN Wilkie ("Anxiety Wizard" on the Mothership Discord). If I could summarize his TTRPG career, it would be: Renaissance Man. Layout, art direction, project management, designing, writing, consulting; name it, AW has done it. He works directly on official Mothership projects as well as 3rd-party products, including: the Mothership 1st Edition boxed set, Dissident Whispers, Rogue Brood, and the Rimwise dispatches. He's also worked on legendary TTRPG products, such as The Stygian Library (a personal favorite of mine). He's been on-scene since the beginning of Mothership and continues to deliver. When he came aboard Devil's Due, he took the project by the horns and laid the foundations of management processes, itemizing priority areas to focus upon in order to ensure project completion. He directed and advised on the technical nitty-gritty of running a project, and provided tools by which the project would be carried through to completion.
These are our comrades and crew members to whom we are eternally thankful. Their work and contributions cannot be overstated.
I backed both Not Enough Scoundrels and Devil’s Due and it says "You've unlocked FREE collab rewards".
Has that been decided, announced, etc, or planned to be a secret?
What a first week of our campaign! We still can’t believe that we’re 348% funded, thank you all so very much for the excitement around Devil’s Due! We’ve got a packed update today, read on for an art reveal, an upcoming interview, and our next stretch goal / achievement that we’re only 13% away from!
Nes Aveda
Hi everybody, I’m Kyle Tam, one of the writers on the Devil’s Due team and the author of the adventure framework Double or Nothing, our focus for today’s update. Let’s talk about the creation of a mysterious figure on the planet, and the central character of that piece.
It began with the mechanic: High risk, high reward—tacking on extra conditions in order for you to achieve a better payday, or to lose big if you can’t fulfill them. Double or worse. But why would you make life harder for yourself than necessary? The answer I arrived at was twofold. Either you were cocky, or you were desperate. The mechanic itself wasn’t enticing enough to be more than a footnote. So I thought a little bit bigger: a den of desperation, a god of two faces, and a prophet.
When you think of prophets, it’s easy to think of stoic men in robes or bedraggled hermits sitting atop stone pillars and mountains. But this is fiction—we have license to make our prophets hew more closely to the vision of their gods. And a god of two faces must then be represented by a prophet with layers upon layers.
Nes Aveda, illustrated by Strega Wolf van den Berg
I wanted Nes’s art to suggest secrets, to give off the impression that this is somebody with a lot to hide. So in the art notes, I deliberately gave a design briefing that would be hidden by a large poncho. Enough that there are strange edges and bits that are only suggested by Nes’ silhouette. A little bit of early General Grievous for you.
The mask was inspired not by regular masks or even robots, but specifically by wearers of digital masks. The most prominent of these is Rina Tennoji from Love Live Nijigasaki, who utilizes drawings and her own masks to express the emotions her physical face cannot. Then there is the protagonist of Neon Revenge, the cutest expression on his digital mask underscoring and contrasting the brutality of his actions.
Now, you might be asking yourself, why these secrets? Why these features? Naturally, the god Tavado is a god of reward… and risk. To pledge yourself to his service, to even partake in his wagers, means to be willing to take and receive. So when you look at Nes, the question is—what have they lost? What have they gained? And how proficient have they become, now that the player has become the dealer?
This character’s depth and recondite background felt naturally suited to Strega Wolf van den Berg’s artistic style. Strega Wolf has a number of illustrations across Devil’s Due, and we can’t wait to share more. They had this to say on the creative process of bringing Nes Aveda to the page:
To create Nes Aveda (and all my work), I use photobashing of publicly available photos to create a character. Then, I draw on top of that photobashed layer to create the final image. For Nes specifically, I wanted to create a dark figure that was lost in the folds of their cloak, with the mask contrasting that by being brighter and more happy looking.
We’re excited to bring another piece of Devil’s Due to you in our next Art Reveal update. Let us know in the comments what mission or pirate crew you’d like to hear about next!
Live Interview
Later today, November 21, at 5pm PT / 8pm ET / 1am GMT Carson Brown will join Cameron Strittmatter on The Panic Table. He's going to discuss all things Devil's Due and answer live questions as part of Bark After Dark.
Next Achievement
We’re only 13% away from our next big achievement, adding full, two-page illustrations for each of our missions! With more art, we can bring much stronger visuals to an already illustration-packed book. Every mission, pirate crew, mechanic, and roll table has illustrations to bring more of Devil’s Due to life, and this puts a cherry on top of the already tasty sundae.
