Dunes Stretch Adventures Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

The holiday period was naturally a bit of a bear (pun not intended) for the Slumbering Ursine Dunes production crew. While we got the main adventure out before deadline for the PDF and just on deadline for the print, I spent an ungodly amount of time troubleshooting Print-on-Demand issues with Lulu and DriveThru.

January was slower than anticipated but we made progress, so fortunately this isn't leading up to a slew of the usual Kickstarter excuses and nervous shuffling. In fact I feel rather proud of the fact that we have pushed the stretch adventures up from small 20-page mini-adventure affairs to four separate full-length adventures—Fever Dreaming Marlinko, The Misty Isles of the Eld, Anthony's California Dunes and What Ho, Frog Demons-- that will be close or as long as the main adventure. (All four will also be available in both PDF and print form on DriveThru.)

Which all leads up to the actual point of this post. Each adventure is developing a highly-distinct look with a single artist devoted to each. I've found myself getting caught in a “dialectic” in which I see these magnificent pieces and get inspired to do more writing—Luka's illustrations spawning several new additions to my weighty bestiary section in the Misty Isles already.

Similarly seeing some finished work by Jeremy Duncan (who as a player in the campaign made a number of character sketches that will forever be what I see in my mind's eye) for Marlinko. This grotty piece shows the sparagmos rite in the catacombs of the bizarre alien cult Church of the Blood Jesus. So lovely.