Ellomyr: A Few Years Pass
over 8 years ago
– Sat, Oct 21, 2017 at 08:25:56 PM
Iadace, Numenera backer—
Yesterday we unlocked the Ninth World Bestiary 3, and we’re already well on our way to the next stretch goal—a big upgrade to Slaves of the Machine God. Things are getting exciting as we head into the final week, normally a pretty crazy period for our Kickstarter campaigns. Please keep spreading the word.
Fortunately, as we prepare for a chaotic week, things in Ellomyr have been pretty peaceful.
Telen closed and locked the door of his stronglass shop. Upstairs, he could hear his family laughing and talking as they prepared dinner. He was glad Tasori and Velin had moved here from Othmar; they were a happy couple, and their joy filled the home with a gentle and sustaining warmth. Little Tothi, his first grandchild, was now nearly four years old, old enough to beg for sweets and not too old to know better.
Telen always remembered Tothi's birth year as the time the town drove away the iron wind. The mysterious crystalline devices they used to do so rested in an honored place in the Great Hall should it ever be needed again. Safe from that horrible threat, Ellomyr had doubled in size, a true city, one that celebrated its good fortune and prosperity, and honored those who gave their lives in its defense. He chuckled to himself, remembering they used to call him "Telen of Othmar," back when not being born here was unusual. In those days they were suspicious of outsiders, but people didn't come to Ellomyr to make trouble. And despite the occasional rumor about abhumans and stranger things in the nearby hills, the city was strong and safe. And home.
He touched the downstairs glowglobe, dimming it to the strength of a candle. His synth leg recognized this part of his evening routine and sped up its noises, anticipating his slow climb up the stairs to the living room. Work is done for today, it is time to rest and enjoy time with the family.
Iadace!
—Sean and the MCG Team
We Love Your Creativity!
over 8 years ago
– Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 11:16:52 PM
Hello, defenders of Ellomyr—
At a number of points during this campaign we’ve asked you to contribute your creativity, in the form of stories, artwork, and even video and audio clips, to the tale of Ellomyr. We were hoping for a fair amount of participation, but you have really blown us away—with both the huge level of participation and the high quality of the submissions. We’d like to see more, not just in the remaining days of the campaign, but for months and years to come.
Over the course of this campaign we’ve unveiled a number of items we wanted to bring to life: The deluxe books, the Player’s Kit, the Shin Set, and so on. We didn’t want to make these into stretch goals; we simply wanted them to exist, and when it seemed the campaign had reached a level that allowed it, we offered them. This new reveal is sort of like that, but with one difference: You made this happen. It’s not something we had planned or even thought of before the Kickstarter. We’re doing it in response to the great things you have brought to this campaign.
Today we’re announcing two things: A new website where Numenera fans can share their ongoing contributions to the world, and a fiction seminar hosted by Shanna and the writers here at MCG.
The Ninth Word is a website where you can post stories, images, and other creative contributions to the Ninth World—much like we’ve been doing for this campaign, but in a single, easy to navigate location. It will be a curated site, meaning we’ll approve all submissions to ensure they’re appropriate and not spam. To be clear, this is a community project, not a route toward publication. We have licensed Numenera fiction to our good friends at Angry Robot Books, so we won’t be able to approve any Numenera fiction for publication beyond this site. And there will be some terms and conditions, because that’s how things go when dealing with intellectual property. But we really want to create a place where people can continue interacting with and creating for the Ninth World the way we’ve seen happen during this campaign.
Fiction Writing with Shanna Germain will be a two-hour online seminar, offered in early 2018. The seminar will offer some of Shanna’s favorite tips and techniques for quickly and easily taking your fiction writing to the next level.
The website will be free for all Numenera fans. The seminar is available on the Kickstarter page and pledge calculator now as an add-on.
Thanks so much for all the wonderful creativity you’ve poured into this campaign so far—we hope to continue sharing it with you through the final week and, now, into the future!
Iadace!
—Charles and the MCG Team
New to Numenera 2: Discovery and Destiny? Or just want to make sure you’re up on all the info we’ve shared and the stretch goals we’ve hit in this fast-moving campaign? Here’s a quick-reference guide to the campaign so far.
Stretch goals have unlocked these new products, all of which are part of any backer level that gets all the titles.
Don’t miss these very cool add-ons, most of which are exclusive to this campaign:
And if you want a taste of some of the wonderful fiction, art, and other contributions to the Ninth World and the fate of Ellomyr from our backers, you can find a great sampling here, here, and here.
The Ninth World Bestiary 3 Is Unlocked!
over 8 years ago
– Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 11:15:33 PM
The beasts and creatures of the Ninth World are rampaging everywhere—and it's all your fault! Great job, backers—we have unlocked the Ninth World Bestiary 3! This 160-page hardcover, with something like 130 all-new weird and wild creatures of the Ninth World, is now going to become a reality.
(For a closer look at the cover image see this update.)
We’re thrilled to have hit this stretch goal, not only because it unlocks a book we’re really excited about (seriously, who can’t use more Ninth World creatures?), but also because it marks an important milestone: This campaign has now passed the original Numenera Kickstarter campaign. Hitting $517,255 on an RPG-related Kickstarter was unheard of back then, and remains a very rarified level of success. The original campaign built not just Numenera, but Monte Cook Games as a whole. This is a very meaningful achievement for us.
So, what’s next? Let’s upgrade Slaves of the Machine God. This massive adventure title is already a 120-page hardcover, but we have enough cool ideas for it that we think it should be better. So if we hit $550,000, we’ll make it a huge 144-page hardcover with a poster map.
(Notice the new cover art? When we did the first mockup, we only had placeholder art.)
Given the pace of the campaign recently, that could happen within a few days. So let’s look further down the road. Our next stretch goal will be a new Numenera novel! The first official Numenera novel, The Poison Eater, came out last year to critical and fan acclaim. The second title, The Night Clave, releases in just a few weeks. And now we’d like to add another. If we hit the stretch goal, then we’ll create Tomorrow’s Bones, a new Numenera novel written by Shanna Germain. This novel will be a deluxe hardcover as well as an ebook in all the popular formats.
And speaking of fiction, we’re going to have another pretty cool announcement later today—so be sure to check back in with the campaign!
Iadace!
—Charles and the MCG Team
The Iron Wind Reaches Ellomyr
over 8 years ago
– Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 12:45:28 AM
You have spoken! Those participating in our poll chose to value the insight provided by the strange energy creatures from yesterday’s update. Let’s see if that was a good choice.
The colors. I’ll always remember the colors.
They say that the iron wind doesn’t just move through the air, it reshapes it. Sometimes, a mass of stone or a splash of water will appear out of nowhere and crash to the ground. But mostly you just see swirls and flashes of color that fade in and out. I don’t know what causes that.
I do know that it doesn’t really seem like a wind. It’s more like a cloud—like an enormous bank of slow-moving mist—except that you don’t see the cloud or the mist. Just the effects it has on what it touches. Stones burst into flame, trees transform into cuboid shapes, insects grow to enormous size, and a million other things. You can’t see it all. It happens too fast.
Ghela and I had spent sleepless nights and frantic days in the workshop, building what we thought was a material that couldn’t be altered by the iron wind. We had thought if we could erect even a quick, makeshift barrier, it might alter the phenomenon’s course away from the town.
But our understanding paled in comparison to the wisdom that Kendri and Paro brought to Ellomyr thanks to the mysterious energy beings they encountered. Kendri wouldn’t tell us what she had to give in exchange for the location of the crystals they brought back with them, but as I studied them, I quickly realized the power and knowledge involved in shaping such things was… I don’t have a word other than “god-like.” I had always assumed that like so much else in our world, the iron wind was just a byproduct of the prior worlds—something rearing its head now to trouble the Ninth World. But the existence of these artifacts made me think that someone in a prior world must have had to cope with the iron wind too. Perhaps we need to spend more time thinking of them as a succession rather than a collective. If the scourge of the iron wind resulted from the actions of a particularly old prior world, then even those that arose after would have been forced to defend against it.
In any rate, as instructed, we arranged the crystals at key points around the city before the iron wind arrived. We knew we would lose some of the surrounding farms and small settlements, but we evacuated the people outside the walls safely behind them. It reminded those who were here at the time of the margr horde that attacked years back.
When the flashes of color and disrupted earth grew close—meaning the iron wind was about to fall upon Ellomyr itself—the crystals just flashed briefly. So brief you almost wouldn’t have noticed, in fact. But just like that, the iron wind was gone. No more strange howls. No swirls of color. No pebbles transforming into beetles. Just stillness.
Jharoch and the glaives at the gate ventured bravely out and found—nothing. Strange fires still burned, and an odd geyser erupted in a nearby field. Creatures unlike anything we’d ever seen scuttled off, many into the waters of the Angry Red River. But Ellomyr was safe. Later, we’d find even more strangeness in the areas the iron wind passed over. For my shins, the strangest was the hillock of fused, squirming flesh that was very likely once Turan’s herd of prized gallen.
But Ellomyr was safe.
Iadace!
—Monte and the MCG Team
New to Numenera 2: Discovery and Destiny? Or just want to make sure you’re up on all the info we’ve shared and the stretch goals we’ve hit in this fast-moving campaign? Here’s a quick-reference guide to the campaign so far.
Stretch goals have unlocked these new products, all of which are part of any backer level that gets all the titles.
Don’t miss these very cool add-ons, most of which are exclusive to this campaign:
And if you want a taste of some of the wonderful fiction, art, and other contributions to the Ninth World and the fate of Ellomyr from our backers, you can find a great sampling here, here, and here.
Ellomry Finds Help—Maybe
over 8 years ago
– Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 10:31:01 PM
Iadace, Numenera backer—
Thanks to you, we crushed the goal we had set for ourselves and far surpassed the backer total we were hoping for to give Ellomyr’s Wrights and Nanos some inspiration. In fact, we succeeded so well that some help from outside of Ellomyr was found after all, but this came in a much less expected form (see the fiction at the bottom of this update!).
The iron wind arrives tomorrow (Thursday the 19th). We need your advice; do we stick with the strategy our own experts developed, or do we use the insight provided by these new mysterious allies (see below)—if allies they truly are? Vote in our poll to help determine the fate of the town!
New to Numenera 2: Discovery and Destiny? Or just want to make sure you’re up on all the info we’ve shared and the stretch goals we’ve hit in this fast-moving campaign? Here’s a quick-reference guide to the campaign so far.
Stretch goals have unlocked these new products, all of which are part of any backer level that gets all the titles.
Don’t miss these very cool add-ons, most of which are exclusive to this campaign:
And if you want a taste of some of the wonderful fiction, art, and other contributions to the Ninth World and the fate of Ellomyr from our backers, you can find a great sampling here, here, and here.
The gambado gathered itself and leaped across the chasm, its winglets spread wide and shining with a sapphire light that somehow powered the vehicle. Kendri screamed in delight at the zenith, her hands pressed tightly to the buzzing control surface as the world twirled through the viewports.
When they came down on the other side, the many legs of the gambado deftly caught them. Kendri made another celebratory sound even as the cramped cabin, large enough for just a few people, pitched and rolled. Paro made a noise, too, but it was a strangled scream.
The conveyance continued its weirdly rolling gallop on the chasm’s opposite side, racing forward. Paro swallowed. He hoped Kendri hadn’t noticed his outburst. By now, he figured he’d have become acclimated to riding inside the odd piece of moving numenera. Kendri had taken to it within a few hours. For his part, Paro was apparently prone to nausea triggered by too much motion.
For the last two days, they’d been tooling around in the vehicle that Unaers, Ghela, and the other wrights had built. It was both rugged and capable of moving across nearly any terrain. That was great, but the jumping wasn’t his—
He spied a cluster of black, glass-like shards protruding from a hillside. “There!” Paro pointed through the side viewport. It was the landmark, found on an old hand-drawn map, that they’d been searching for. Supposedly a strange people lived near it, beings made of energy who were rumored to have some kind of weird power over the iron wind.
Also, he was going to be sick if they didn’t stop immediately.
Kendri spun the vehicle to the right, until she saw the same formation. “You’ve got good eyes, Paro,” she said. “I would’ve raced past. I think I’m in love with this thing.”
Paro nodded, holding one hand to his mouth.
With a deft touch on the control surface, Kendri brought the gambado to a halt. The entire cabin settled as the legs retracted. When the door irised open, Paro was first out. He staggered forward a few feet, then sank to the ground. The outside air was crisp, soothing his skin. The ground was mercifully unmoving when he pressed his palms down upon it to check.
“Are you ill?” asked Kendri, coming up behind him.
“No, not all. Just getting my, um, my ground legs back.”
“Uh, huh.” She looked skeptical.
Paro glanced away, and that’s when he saw them standing at the foot of the nearest massive shard. Three tall humanoid shadows, like holes in the air where people should be, swaddled in an aura of luminous plasma that sparked and flashed.
“We found them,” he said, directing Kendri’s attention to the newcomers. “Let’s ask if they can help us.”
“They don’t look friendly.”
“Maybe. But anything has to be better than getting back into your galloping gambado.”
—Bruce and the MCG Team
