The Blades of Gixa: A #dungeon23 Megadungeon by Quadra

🐐 The dualistic ecclesiastical goat-folk urbancrawl setting of your dreams, probably
18 days ago – Thu, May 21, 2026 at 12:10:11 PM

For this seventh video update to The Blades of Gixa, we venture into the fourth level of the megadungeon, the hallowed Halls of Ibexa, the goat-folk metropolis and see of the Kabmut Pontiff:

So what happened when I was making this level IIRC is I drew that first day (the goat statue in the thumbnail with the reflection of a sheep) more or less on a whim, and then basically extrapolated a whole belief system from that drawing, connecting it to stuff I was reading at the time (about Cathars!) That belief system informed the rest of the level, and led to an entire goat-folk city with strict social stratification headed by an all-powerful ecclesiarch: Ibexa!

Which I think was very in line with the ethos of #dungeon23: the only way to complete that challenge was to just get stuff down on paper consistently and keep going no matter what. We really couldn't worry too much about making sure everything fit together perfectly.

The whole point of this, as I understood it, was to break out of the trap of thinking you need to start with a fully-formed Idea before you can make something. I think it's very easy, especially for young artists & people who don't do much creative work, to believe that making art starts with having a brilliant idea, and the rest is just having the skill to render it. That the goal of the artist is to render their initial idea as accurately as possible, that the whole point is to turn Idea into Product. (There's a whole digression I could make here about how deeply "AI" creation tools and their boosters are enmeshed in this product-brained idea...)

Ultimately so much of making things is discovering what you're making in the process of making it. This project, for example, never would have looked like this or contained so many weird & disparate things had I planned it out in advance. In a weird way, The Blades of Gixa is my diary of 2023, and now that I'm circling back through it, fleshing it out and refining it, I'm getting to reconnect to ideas I had back then, find links between them that I hadn't seen before, and weave them all into a more interesting tapestry for you all to ultimately explore and connect to.

One thing I love about tabletop RPGs is that the process of playing them is in itself creative & collaborative, usually done without any final "product" in mind. Maybe it can be a bit of an antidote to product-brain.

🐸 Level 3 of the Megadungeon
about 2 months ago – Thu, Apr 16, 2026 at 11:56:37 AM

The Blades of Gixa is a wet dungeon.

It's a theme I started to notice around the time I was first drawing the third level,the Elvish-Frog Grottoes (& the Luminous Undersea). The first level, the Ancient Baths, has water running through it of course, but I think it was really the Grottoes that cemented water & wetness as major themes I would carry not just throughout the dungeon, but also into the overworld above.

This is, in its own way, a Dying Earth-style setting, a diluvian world drowning under endless rain and rising tides. But even as the water poses a dire threat, it remains essential to all life, even deep underground.

The idea of an underground sea excited me, but I didn't want it to just be pitch-black and terrifying — this is only level 3 of 12, after all, and there's plenty of space to ramp up the tension & horror. So, reminded of camping on PNW beaches & dancing in glowing waves at night, I infused this undersea with bioluminescent plankton, giving much of the level an ethereal blue-green glow. There are still threats here, of course, dangerous creatures and warring factions, but after making the 2nd level (a claustrophobic crypt filled with undead), a more beautiful & open setting seemed called for.

Here's a video all about it, on YouTube and ad-free on Paradiso (available for free members, must be signed in):

Watch ad-free on Paradiso! (must be signed in)

🪦 Level 2 of the Megadungeon
3 months ago – Wed, Mar 11, 2026 at 02:19:13 PM

New video update! Here I'm showcasing the second level of the megadungeon, which has lots of weird little guys (mana leeches and their leech-witch caretaker, an undead kobold pigment-alchemist, a giant frog aesthete, an insane chimeric "healer" and his sinister flesh-eating tree, a labyrinth of skulls with a skeletal minotaur, some crypts and puzzles, flooded rooms, a chapel...there's a lot going on in this level):

(If this video isn't showing up for you, try watching it on youtube!)

And I'm happy to report that the next few spreads are also underway — the next Gixa update will be about level 3, the Elvish-Frog Grottoes, featuring a bioluminescent underground sea, a society of giant frogs, and lots of crazed cave elves. After that, it's the Halls of Ibexa, the goatfolk city ruled by the Kabmut Ecclesiarchy...

A new megadungeoneer!

Also, I was excited to come across this video by Nina Nomori — it's lovely to see somebody else doing a daily dungeon in the calendar style! She's doing an amazing job of it too. Check it out and give her a follow:

(If this video isn't showing up for you, try watching it on youtube!)

'til next time,

🖤 Quadra

🛁 Level 1 of the Megadungeon
5 months ago – Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 10:16:41 AM

Hi everyone, and happy new year! Here's another video update for you:

This delves into the first level of the megadungeon proper, the Ancient Baths, which I've completed, scanned, and am currently cleaning up digitally. I've been making progress on other levels and spreads as well, such as factions and tables. (Those are not shown in the video as they are still very much works in progress.)

All 12 levels of the dungeon are getting this treatment: cleanup, revision, expanded keying, tables, etc., all in service of making the levels playable, legible, and at least somewhat thematically coherent :)

It's been pretty wild to go all the way back to the beginning, which I created with no idea of what this would become, and make these additions. I'm trying to honor the original art and improvised ideas as much as possible while connecting them to the world that developed as the dungeon expanded.

🖤 Quadra

📝 Surveys are coming!
7 months ago – Mon, Nov 24, 2025 at 04:51:21 PM

Hi everyone, just a quick update about surveys today. I'd held off on sending out pledge manager surveys (handled by BackerKit) because I didn't want to ask for your information before I knew what shipping prices were going to be. We're still quite a ways out from finishing, printing, and manufacturing the project, much less shipping.

However! I'm also trying to use BackerKit to provide digital downloads to backers (of tat, etc.), but it looks like those emails aren't actually going out until I've sent surveys and opened up the pledge manager. Additionally, I've gotten a lot of people asking for access to the pledge manager to upgrade from digital to physical pledges in response to the last few video updates.

So: I've decided to send out surveys this week, for everyone's convenience, and I will be sending out shipping costs when we're closer to the actual ship date. Shipping will be charged later, when we are preparing to ship everything. I will share updated shipping costs before charging anyone.

I just sent out a test run of surveys to a random sampling of backers today. (If you got a survey, let me know if you have any issues at [email protected].) If all goes well, I'll be sending the surveys to everyone on Wednesday. Emails with download links for tat should go out on Wednesday as well.

About paying with PayPal: I want to provide more payment options for folks who don't use credit cards, but PayPal has quite strict requirements that goods be shipped within 30 days of payment. Failure to do so could get the Paradiso PayPal account suspended, so you can see why this is not a good fit for preorders! PayPal will be available as a payment option when we start shipping next year, and we will be printing many books and posters beyond what was backed and pre-ordered, so they will be available then as well. We will also be talking with various online retailers about stocking Gixa, so if you have shops you like to order RPG materials from, do let me know in the comments or via the email above, and I'll get in touch with them about carrying stock. They will of course also be available directly from the Paradiso Works shop.

I'll post another update when the rest of the surveys go out. See you then :)

🖤 Quadra