Echos of Eldritch Development (Antediluvian Awakening)Journal #2

Well Met, Travelers,

Welcome to the second iteration of our campaign development journal. There have been several major changes to the campaign setting that have occurred since our last post. Let's dive in:

First and Foremost, the Name

After some serious consideration and discussion. The team and I decided that Echos does not play a significant enough role in Antediluvian's history outside of the prehistoric times. We have opted to adopt the new name: "Antediluvian Awakening". There were several reasons for this newly selected name:

1. Alliteration, Yum (Just kidding, while I like alliteration, it played no role in this decision.)

2. The Age of Rebirth: Antediluvian is a world in its renaissance, and what is a renaissance but an awakening and rebirth of culture and society. So we thought the use of awakening would be perfect to help evoke the feeling of the world. (Fun Fact: the original name of the Age of Rebirth was the Age of Awakening)

3. Double Meanings: While Antediluvian is in its renaissance, it is also facing another awakening. As the Eldritch Sphere continues to collide with Antediluvian, the Eldritch Breaches into Antediluvian and become more common and severe. Alongside this, the Giants have begun to return to the world, a reawakening of threats from the myths of the past.

   From this point forward, these development journals will use the updated name.

The Maps

There have been some breakthroughs in the map-making process. CWG has decided that our maps will be produced in a black and white lineart format in a similar format to historical maps. As previously mentioned, Antediluvian is in its renaissance, and we want our maps, and all of our art, to help evoke that feeling.

To that end, we have turned to Gimp, a free photoshop alternative, to develop the outlines we already have. To assist in marking the map with landforms and icons, we discovered a free set of Photoshop brushes by K.M. Alexander. These brushes are

Check out K.M. Alexander's Brushes Here

amazing! There are brushes built from real 14th-18th century maps. To add on to these beautiful brushes is the fact that they are free to use both personally and commercially. K.M. Alexander has published these under a CC0 license, so technically, we don't need to tell you about it, but the #NoBadMaps project is too cool not to share.

Our maps are in early days, but the test map of Blalthagon we are working on is very promising.

The Writing Process

Crazy Weasel is entering into a slow period at work and has put significant effort into the book the last few weeks. He is quickly churning through the Gazetteer, and is nearly finished. The timeline of Antediluvian is pretty much finished, only a few minor changes are needed, but there is a plan to give detailed entries for a few of the major events on the timeline. The next step is to put the finishing touches on the lineages to ensure that everything is in line with the governments in the gazetteer and other sections of the book. This will probably be the longest section to need work.

The other major writing goal will be to work on integrating the Cypher System mechanics into one version of the book. We plan on releasing this setting as both a system agnostic and Cypher System product. The CS version is going to require the development of descriptors and foci, as well as mechanics for things like the titan words of power and drawing magic from leylines. We will keep you updated as this develops.

Outro

Whoo, I was a little longer-winded than I intended for this post, but as I said, a lot is going on with Antediluvian Awakening. We are very optomistic of reaching our goal of finishing the setting information by the end of the year! Stay tuned for more.

Farewell and Stay Safe, Travelers,

~Crazy Weasel