It's the second day of the campaign and we're trying to catch our breath. More than 1700 backers doubled our initial goal in the first twenty-four hours, which puts us well on track to unlock all of the stretch goals that we have planned for our campaign.

First of all, congrats on unlocking the 9"x12" Art of Heralds of Valdemar book, which will be included with the three Deluxe Heralds pledge levels. We're thrilled to add this to your pledges at no extra cost to you! (And yes, the page count will go up as we continue to add more art.)

Secondly, you've unlocked another full-color art plate in both books. The original piece, originally a digital download bonus for pre-launch followers, is now also added to the physical rewards! The Arrow Code is under development in close consultation with Misty, based on its use in the Arrows trilogy. And yes, you'll be able to use it to decode the endpapers!

Next up, at $225,000, is the second stretch goal book in our campaign, the Heralds Circuit Journal. Designed to feel like an in-world artifact (although perhaps with better mass-manufacturing than you would find in in Velgarth), this notebook can be used to record your own circuit journeys, as a roleplaying campaign journal, a daily planner, a walking or bicycling log, or a place to develop your own stories. Depending on how the campaign progresses, we may be able to add additional stretch goals to upgrade this volume as well!

The circuit journal design is still in progress, but we'll 1) have more to share soon, and 2) would love to hear your ideas for the interior in the comments.

You'll learn more about how this book came about and why it's included when we discuss the New Packaging stretch goal, which brings the entire vision together.

Since we've had a few questions about the materials used in our books, we thought it would be fun to share the exact specs from the manufacturer. It's the same materials that we used for Grandmaster, which turned out beautifully.

Worth especial note is that yes, we are using sewn binding with traditional 16pp signatures for the pages of Deluxe Heralds. These leatherbound books are designed to last for decades and a simple glued binding wouldn't meet our quality expectations.

The other design choice we made early on, after much research and discussion with the manufacturer, was to proceed with woodfree paper. Used for fine art and archival books, this paper is more resistant to yellowing and aging. While all paper comes with deforestation risks, the company providing ours has a sustainability track record and promises sourcing from legal and managed sources.

What a wild <checks watch> 3 hours and 24 minutes it's been!

You all blasted through our $100,000 goal in record time. We're all immensely thankful for your support.

Welcome back to returning backers, hello to first-timers, thank you to everyone who reserved their spot ahead of time, and a special acknowledgement to the scholarship applicants. With 45 scholarships funded already, we're hopeful that everyone who is currently experiencing need will be able to receive this fan-funded gift.

Those of you who joined us for Grandmaster probably remember the large-format art book that we included with the campaign. It's coming for Deluxe Heralds as well, but with so many extra bits that we had to turn it into the stretch goal to fund everything!

So here's the vision for stretch goals:

We'll share more information about each stretch goal as we approach it (unless you're all too fast for us).

In the meantime, here's your guide to what's coming up!