View From the Pelgrane’s Nest – March 2021

NEW RELEASE: Crown of Axis

New this month is Wade Rockett’s long-awaited Crown of Axis, an introductory scenario for 1st level 13th Age heroes who come to Axis, the capital of the Dragon Empire, to find fortune, fame and adventure. But when they pick up work investigating the mysterious deaths of workers in the tunnels under the old gladiatorial arena, the PCs discover that any blade drawn, spell cast, or gold piece stolen in the imperial capital might cause ripples that spread in unexpected ways—maybe even as far as the palaces of the Emperor. Run this adventure as a stand-alone one-shot, or use it as an embarkation point for a 13th Age campaign, customising it for your players’ individual icon relationships.

Work in progress update: A Poison Tree

At the start of the year, I caught up with the writers about the Trail of Cthulhu campaign A Poison Tree. This project has proven especially tricky to write, given the epic scope, the interconnected nature of the segments, and the sheer breadth of research and history involved, not to mention integrating the writers’ disparate chapters into a cohesive single campaign and, of course, the horror that was 2020. We’ve got final drafts of roughly two-thirds of the book from the writers now, and we’re hoping to get the remaining work before the end of March. We’ve agreed with the writers that, in the interests of getting the book out, we’ll collate all the work the writers have done on it at the start of April, and anything missing at that point, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan will pitch it on to get finished. As a result, I’m hoping to have the first chapters available for playtesting in the April or May See Page XX, and aiming for a Christmas or early 2022 release.

Work in progress update: Fearful Symmetries

I played in long-time Pelgranista and Top Londoner Steve Dempsey’s Fearful Symmetries campaign, which has directly influenced the text, so I know first-hand how compelling this William Blake-inspired magickal supplement for Trail of Cthulhu is in play. As well as introducing a range of new magick-using character options, Fearful Symmetries approaches Blake’s poetry as a roadmap for designing a sandbox campaign where player characters work together as a coven to recreate the glories of magickal Albion. It’s a great Trail setting, and Steve’s knowledge of occult England is second only to his wife Paula’s (see below).

Sadly, this this has been another difficult project to bring to publication, as Steve been fighting medical battles over the last few years, and hasn’t been physically well enough to do the final developmental edits of the manuscript. We’ve got a cool cover from Jerome (see left), Steve’s passed over a bunch of art references (Blake is an interesting artist…) and cartography outlines, and he’s passed over the manuscript to us to develop and edit, so we’ll be starting work on that later this month, and aiming for a Dragonmeet 2021 release.

Work in progress update: The Book of the New Jerusalem

The companion volume to Fearful Symmetries, The Book of the New Jerusalem sees author Paula Dempsey revisit the structure of her Gold ENnie-winning The Book of the Smoke and expand it to cover the entirety of England. Travelling county by county, Paula reveals the occult history of Blake’s green and pleasant land, in an engaging volume replete with contacts, rumours and clues for your Fearful Symmetries or other folk horror game, or enjoyable in its own right as an arcane guide to England. We’ve once more paired Paula’s words with Sarah Wroot (The Book of the Smoke)‘s inimitable layout and art direction, and we’ve got a first layout draft awaiting final edits, so this will be released simultaneously with Fearful Symmetries.

Work in progress update: Even Death Can Die

After feedback from customers about poor editing of the GUMSHOE One-2-One books, I’ve decided to do another editing pass on Even Death Can Die, the Cthulhu Confidential adventure collection. I’ve passed the final layout to editor extraordinaire Trisha DeFoggi, inducting her into the ways of the GUMSHOE. She sent back the first chapter checking whether she was doing it right, as she’d already identified eighty edits…? :/ So, clearly, an additional post-layout edit was badly needed to get it to the standard we want it to be at. Trisha’ll finish her edits at the end of March, at which point it’ll be back over to Christian to make the final edits, and off to the printer.