Cartomancy Round 3

Dear Heroes,

ONE

First, a welcome to all the new folks who've joined! It's a pleasure to have you here. Drop on by the stratometaship café on discord, if you're the kind who loves to see my work step by step, or if you'd just like to share some art, chat, make pizzas, and shoot the keyboard breeze.

Link: https://discord.gg/RqTUdbDzkD (this link has 25 uses and was posted in February 2025. If you're finding it later and it doesn't work, just message me ... or try another link)

TWO

Second, this is a short in-between post to harvest votes for the next map. See below. We've done the Forest of Meat and the Spectrum Palace. The question presents itself: where next? I've put a few locations up for you to vote on, but you can also suggest other / new places (maybe for a future round).

My suggestions for this round are:

• The Refracting Trees [region, UVG]

• The Last Serai [stayfast, UVG]

• The Cage Run [road map, UVG]

• Free Town of Gomilsk [baronial capital, Longwinter]

• Astral Map of the Near Void [star chart, OGA]

Vote in the poll section.

FOUR

Third, I'm in that last layout push on the Vastlands Guidebook, putting in spot art and visuals and I need to take a bit of a break. Maybe a day, maybe two. Those of you who've been here a while know I have an unfortunate tendency towards perfectionism and a desire to overproduce, which sometimes ... well, it gets dumb and I go silent as I try to make a big post to justify the long time since the last post.

I know that I initially thought I'd make the VLG just a simple book using old pieces of art to accompany the text, but ... the more work I've put into it, the more I feel neither this book, nor y'all, deserve that. So, it's getting more elaborate art. So let's dive into a few spreads. They're looking pretty nice.

I've redone the whole intro spread to wrap around the text and expand the scene. So, that's a piece I remade.

The rules section uses the piece from the Golemmafex wizard (uranium butterflies), but I've restyled and expanded it to fit. Uhh ... I have to redo the layout on some text and I'll change the scroll at right. These chapter opening spreads are turning out quite elaborate ... This piece in particular I struggled with a bit. First I redid it digitally, then I thought it looked terrible and tried to redo it in a different analog style, then I messed that up and threw it away, then I returned the next day and realized I could make it work. Finally, I added the fuzzy compulator minion.

Even various equipment spreads have been getting ... uh ... more colorful.

And besides restoring some rules from UVG 1 (the chase table) ... I've also made some new custom art to fit those pages. I really like how this piece worked out.

Next week, I'll post all the art in high res for those who want new wallpapers and screens. Particularly the full-spread pieces are enormous.

EIGHT

Thank you for reading this far!

These last few months have been quite crazy. Taking care of two children, the time just flies at breakneck pace. I wake up, take care of kids, walk the dog, write, draw, layout, take care of kids some more, walk the dog some more ... and then there's even international politics happening so fast like there's a posse of crack-addled cyber-monkeys flinging electropoop spaghetti at a wall to see what will stick.

Some time ago I realized that if I'm enjoying myself drawing and writing, the quality is better ... but with all the aforementioned, I do feel like the quantity I can produce has gone down.

I worry that I'm not delivering quite enough for y'all and can only ask for your understanding.

But, the point of this section isn't to maunder on about how hard things is.

—Noë discovers the Ge-Yao golem.

Nope, I wanted to tell y'all that ... uh ... I am also outlining my projects to follow after Our Golden Age. I think with the VLG and OGA I'll have enough big books for a while, and I'm planning a cycle of smaller adventures that link together to follow a story using premade characters (or your own PCs, with a bit of time-and-body-hopping).

I'm going to revisit some old half-finished pieces of mine, like Dark Prologue and Silver Ship Wizard, but I've also got the outlines of several new ones, like the House of Ten Million Years and the Desert Revelation Crawl, and linking with some ongoing ones like TSKNS.

You might start to see fragments of that soon ...

But for now: vote, vote, vote!

And, as always, thank you kindly, good heroes and take care and be well!

—Luka
Seoul, Feb 2025