✍️ Progress on the surface, history, music, and bags, plus a new craft video
about 1 year ago
– Sat, May 10, 2025 at 03:15:47 PM
✍️ Blades of Gixa Status
Hi everyone! Here's the May 2025 status update:
Surface Spread
I've drawn most of a spread covering the surface immediately over the dungeon, featuring a small village, ruins, a lake, a cliff, and more. The spread also features an inlay of the island that the whole thing takes place on/underneath. I'm still working on inking it and figuring out what text, tables, etc. I can fit on it.
History
I've finished a rough version of the complete history of the dungeon and surface world, and am now working on compressing that history into a single rather intricate spread. This has proven to be a fascinating information design puzzle, and I think I've more or less cracked it. I have each of the 12 levels + the surface on one axis and time on the other, with events presented as a kind of flowchart. The history will give DMs an overview and understanding of how each location came to be in its current state, and of the major figures of history and legend that shaped them. The timeline leading up to the "present day" has 4 parts (still working on the names):
- Age of Caradel: A golden era long past, existing now only in myth, when the great continent of Caradel was home to a multitude of peoples, the lamiæ, children of the great sky-serpent, still roamed the world, and the low elves were banished from the light of the sun for daring to seek the secrets of life and death.
- The Life Of Gixa: A time of heroic deeds and terrible villainy, the stuff legends are made of. Gixa and Dorukh, twin high elf sisters, become adventurers, perform heroic deeds, all the while seeking out the long-lost low elves and their discoveries. They change the world forever, then disappear.
- The Era Of Sorrows: An unending rain begins to fall on the world, slowly flooding the continent of Caradel, ushering in a long era of migration, tumult, and strife. Below the surface, power shifts and the first undead awaken. Legends of Gixa and her followers spread, and they come to be revered as gods and mythic heroes. Tales of the Blades of Gixa, implements of life and death, spread far and wide.
- The Long Drowning: The current age. The rain continues, the waters rise, and Caradel is reduced to scattered archipelagos where there were once mountain ranges. The population has contracted and dispersed, and most have become seafaring folk. It is a time of relative peace: people mostly live small lives and watch the world slowly end—but some hear the legends of old and are inspired: to find the truth of the goddesses' fate, to find a way to save their world, to find ultimate power in the great lost artifacts.
(I should note here that while the history as written implies an entire setting, you can insert Caradel in your own world as a lost continent and keep everything described localized to that region. Or, you know, just make it a plane of its own.)
Layout
There are going to be 16 "core" spreads in the book, which will be reproduced on the posters: 12 for the floors, 1 for the surface, 1 for the history, 1 for details of people, species, and factions, and 1...we will see. Very possibly additional tables and procedures, depending how everything else shakes out.
There will be additional pages in the book (and PDFs), with guidance for adapting to different systems, notebook pages, line art, etc.
Music
I've provided Galen with a bunch of descriptions of each level, and he has been putting together sketches for tracks for each area. They are very cool, and I'm excited to share them with you when they're further along.
Bag
Glass Embroidery has put together two prototypes of the bag to test out sizing, construction, and materials, which I've reviewed and provided notes on. We'll keep iterating until we land on a design that hits the mark on aesthetics and functionality, then get to manufacturing!
🤖 New Paradiso Craft video
In other news, I have a new Paradiso Craft video out! It's about making a biomechanical monstrosity (and all its little friends) for Bill Making Stuff's Big Bot Bash, and it has a fun story to boot!
🖤 Quadra
