Release: Chthonic Codex, Pergamino Barocco Paperback Edition

Today it’s the release date for Chthonic Codex – volume 1: Cryptic Creatures. and  Pergamino Barocco, paperback edition. The PDFs will be shipped from 9PM GMT tonight (4PM EST), the print copies from next week onwards. Due to the approaching festive season, the sooner you place orders, the sooner you will receive the books. Do it too late, wait for January. Mind you, I need to process all orders by hand, so ordering a PDF means having to wait a bit.

Chthonic Codex – volume 1: Cryptic Creatures: the first volume counts 64 pages of fragments from the recently recovered Chthonic Codex, the monstrosities illustrated by Christopher Stanley. It’s the monster manual of the Chthonic Codex setting, as well as being a stand alone monster book for Swords & Wizardry and other retroclones and Adventure Fantasy Game. It will be followed by two more volumes (Academia Apocripha and Mysteries & Mystagogues). It comes in PDF, Print + PDF and three limited editions: Boxed Set + PDF, Codex Edition and Boxed plus Codex Edition.

Note: the limited editions will be shipped in early 2014 and include all the content from the three books. Plus more. I’ll try something different in the development process and will share drafts with who opts for a preorder. Updated versions of the PDFs will be distributed as they are developed.

Codex in the wild: the cover by Claire Maclean is something I’m extremely proud of.

Also, tangentially related: printing by hand is effing awesome.

Pergamino Barocco, paperback edition: PDF or Print and PDF!

The Pergamino is a bit of a weird beast.

And it’s going to be printed in two different paperback editions, depending on supply.

Delivered to you in a variety of covers, bindings and paper.

If you need more details about all the released products, have a gander at the Lost Pages website. Comments below or on Plus.

Preorders open: Chthonic Codex vol I: Cryptic Creatures, Pergamino Barocco Paperback

Hey you all,

Two products are prereleased today, and are available for preorders:

First, Chthonic Codex – volume 1: Cryptic Creatures. It comes in PDF, Print + PDF and three limited editions: Boxed Set + PDF, Codex Edition and Boxed plus Codex Edition.  The fancy limited edition will be shipped next year, while the rest should be shipped within the next 2 weeks. It’s the monster manual of the Chthonic Codex setting, as well as being a stand alone monster book for Swords & Wizardry and other retroclones and Adventure Fantasy Game.

Second, the Pergamino Barocco, paperback edition! PDF or Print and PDF! This cover might not be final, but it’s going to be reasonably close to the final version.

And, last, here’s the new Lost Pages website. I’ll keep all my product information there.

This is the Bear Company

This is the Bear Company. Yes, I spent hours in the LEGO Shop at the build-your-won-minifig-station to build them.

First row, the spellcasters: Macross the Gatekeeper (a student in the College of Gatekeepers in the Hypogea of the Valley of Fire, temporarily on leave, temporarily also a statue of glass) Caster 3; Malan the Witch (secretly a worshipper of the Mistress of the Hopping Dragons, an hellish Demon-God) in her pre-arm-amputation attire, now her left arm is replaced by a reptilian-draconic arm after a secret ritual that might or might have not have involved sacrifices of some kind of possibly intelligent life forms done in secret from the rest of the goody-two-shoes party, Caster 4; Brian the Healer (previously Robert “Bobby” Bardson the Necromancer, now with a new identity to avoid “debit collectors” due to a possibly unfair sale of war bonds to some merchant in Lakeend to finance their Baarhof Hinterrhoden invasion), rides an undead horse called Bobby (called Brian before his master’s name change, Brian the Undead Horse was a mare in life but for some reason the gender changed on the transition to undead) Caster 4.

Second row, the fighters: Yuri von Unterväld, wearing the traditional dapper Unterväldian hat and awesome facial hair, being a reliable tough line-fighter dude as always, Fighter 4/Expert 1 (First Aid/Surgery); Timmy the Eight-Years-Old-Orphan, initially hired as torchbearer, gun and crossbow reloader and grenade lobber for amputee Malan, Fighter 2; Zën Jhoneberg, third of the Jhoneberg brothers to first join the Bear Company and then horribly die, is somehow not dead yet. The Jhoneberg family is famous for his exploits and skirmish tactics that can only be described as “reckless” and “raving mad”, but now are seen as normal by the rest of the Bear Company. This went a bit too far, and now Jhonebergian Tactics are considered “what the Bear Company does”.

You can see the party here during a proper murderhobo-style home invasion of the lair of cephalopods (the dice are giant cuttlefishes). They got there finding a stair in an underground pyramid in the Wood of the Gnoles, then going down the unbelievably long stairs, turning north-west at a crossroad of corridors, finding a shattered glass statue of something vaguely humanoid, then a tentacled horror that transform people into glass with its laser-eyes. The pencil sharpener is Macross’s Traveling Trunk, an animated box carrying its master glass statue. Yes, Macross failed the save.

Some cephalopod-murder later, the party arrives at some kind of gaol, proceeds to kill most guards, then a Horror of the Deep (the one in the AFG handbook? yes) breaks out of the cage, more squid arrive, one of them knocks off half of the group by reading some kind of court record. The dice below are think-shelled nautiloid guards (being horribly mauled by the Horror of the Deep), the purples are squids holding lances, the pink is holding the record.

Next round Malan opens a Hellgate into the room and with everybody’s gleee avoids rolling 4 sixes, toasting everybody except the horror, which gets to flail ineffectively at Yuri until it dies a death by two-handed sword and dragonclaw. In the meantime more guards arrive, but the stunned half of the group recovers in time to fight them off with guns, bows and axes to the nearest exit.