The Blades of Gixa: A #dungeon23 Megadungeon by Quadra
Created by Paradiso
Delve deep into the weird underworld to find the fabled Blades of Gixa, legendary tools of the goddess of life and death!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
⏳ Making History for the Megadungeon
about 1 year ago
– Mon, Jun 02, 2025 at 09:53:46 AM
Hi everyone! I've been working on crafting the history of the megadungeon & some intricate information design to convey it. Here's a video all about it, plus a text update:
📚 About the history
The history of the dungeon is contained in a 2-page flowchart spread, with time on one axis and place on the other. Time is split up into 5 eras: The Age of Caradel, The Life & Times of Gixa, The Age of Sorrows, The Long Drowning, and Now. The place axis is spread across the surface and all 12 levels of the dungeon. Each event in the history is contained in a box, and you can follow arrows connecting the boxes to see the sequences of events. Each major character is introduced with a symbol to help you track them through the history.
If you go from left to right you can follow all the major events that happened in a particular location. If you look below the banners along the top, you can see all the events that happened in a particular era. And if you follow a particular character's symbol, you can trace their path through the history.
Additionally, each era doubles as a table you can roll on, with each event as an entry. Players can find information in books, paintings, rumors, etc. across the dungeon that will be keyed simply as referencing a particular era. As the referee/DM, to work out specifically what it says, you roll on that era and draw from the event that comes up, using context to determine what you convey. So rolling the same event for an elvish history book, a goat-folk religious tapestry, or a giant frog bedtime story might yield rather different perspectives!
See the video for a deeper dive into the history!
✍️ Other Blades Of Gixa updates
The next big spread to tackle is the surface, which I have laid out but still have some inking and plenty of keying to do. Other spreads include character/faction information, tables, and guidelines for running & adapting the book to different systems (what system would you plan on running this with?).
Galen has been working on the soundtrack -- you can hear some of the music sketches in the video!
I've been working with Glass Embroidery on the bag & hat designs, and they're coming along nicely :)
💯 HUNDREDS goes platinum!
An extra bit of fun news: HUNDREDS, my 1-cent-per-entry big book of tables for Mothership, just became a Platinum best seller on DriveThruRPG! It has even more tables coming soon, so if you're interested in getting a copy, now's a great time before the price goes up!
🖤 Quadra
✍️ 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
✍️ Drawing Tino Video, Pre-Order Shop, Project Status
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Apr 04, 2025 at 04:29:18 PM
✍️ Drawing Tino Video
As promised in the stretch goals, some of these updates will come with videos about the project! This is the first, with a short video about drawing Tino, the campaign's little kobold mascot:
Kickstarter has finished charging everyone and is transferring the funds to Paradiso. If your payment didn't go through and you weren't able to update your info in time, don't worry, because...
I'm setting up BackerKit as the project's pledge manager and you'll be able to update payment info, add on more items, etc. on there in the future. It'll be a quite a while before backer surveys go out though, as there's still plenty to do on the project!
I'm working on the Overworld spread and fleshing out the early game hooks, rumors, overworld environment, etc. Once this is done, I'll be kicking off some playtesting internally as I continue to flesh out the rest of the module.
Tote bag prototyping is underway, with a couple experiments done already. We're adjusting the size of the bags to ensure they fit a few books comfortably, and working on a nice clean upper assembly so they'll hang nicely.
⚔️ That's a wrap on the campaign!
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 05:39:45 PM
Hi everyone, & thanks for backing! In the end, we hit 684% funded, which is pretty amazing! Late backers are now enabled (for the retail prices — you campaign backers got a discount!), so if you have friends who missed the campaign, you can still send them here to make late pledges!
I'll be posting at least 1 update/month here until the project ships, and per one of our stretch goals, some of those updates will include videos! I don't want to overwhelm your inboxes, so I'll keep them reasonably spaced out now that the campaign's done.
OK, thank you again! I'm gonna take a nap.
🖤 Quadra
P.S. If you do want extra info from me about this and my other projects, you can sign up for my newsletter at https://paradiso.zone! It's free, plus there are paid membership tiers if you want rad rewards like digital RPG materials, members-only videos, store discounts, video credits...
🙇 600% Funded, < 24 hours left to go, Cubes video!
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 01:35:06 PM
We're getting a little end-of-campaign boost right now and have surpassed $30k (600% funded)! No more stretch goals here, but the more we raise, the more I can focus on this project in the coming year, and the sooner I can get it out to all of you! We're within 1 day of the campaign's end, so if you have any pals who might like to get in on it, now's the time :)
In other news, I just released a new Paradiso Craft video about modular magnetic cube terrain (and dwarves) that you might enjoy:
