Hey all,

The last week I've been busy writing the locations and filling out the gaps in my draft. I'm nearing the finish line for the first draft and if everything goes right I'll be able to send a rough version to Ava for editing soon! So I'll try to keep it short this week so I can get back to working on it :)

This week I'll go over the major factions featured in the first issue and briefly go over the small updates to the playtest rules. 

Major Factions

These factions all have an influence on the surface of Orn which extends beyond a single region. The first zine will not feature any mechanics for running these factions but will introduce them and their goals. These major factions are far from the only factions featured in the zine, but they are the ones with more than just a regional influence.

The major factions include:

• The Blind Bank - A large organisation that lends money to all of the other factions and has a seemingly endless supply of ink.
• House Nalu - The oldest of the three great Merchant Houses. A venerable House of cunning diplomats.
• House Ker Onar - The favourite House of most inkseekers. They're trying to get a monopoly on ink tech.
• House Uvri - A House that has turned more and more militaristic and is gearing up to fight the Order of Ilsaar for control of their ancestral city.
• The Order of Ilsaar - An order of wardens desperately trying to contain an ancient threat from destroying all life on Orn.
• The Mycelium Consciousness - An ancient fungal hivemind contained in secret by the Order of Ilsaar. Has agents all over Orn slowly preparing for its eventual escape.
• The Children of the Crimson Moon - A semi-religious group that believes that the Elders did not abandon Orn completely but have retreated to Orn’s moon as a test for humanity. They preach anti-warlock dogma and revere elder artefacts as relics.
• The Twin-Souled Emperor - Two fugitive spirits from the Realm Beyond who, with the help of a Nollish sculptor, have conned the largest city in the world into believing they are a demi-god.

Each of these factions will be described in a little more detail in the final zine :) 

Playtest Rules 0.5 changes

Now I'll quickly go over some small changes I made to the playtest rules in the new 0.5 update:

• Agility no longer influences combat order. If you want to do anything besides using a weapon, you roll with a new default Speed of 5. 
  • This is because my original vision for the attributes of the game was that they wouldn't directly interact with the combat system. This is to keep certain stats from becoming "combat stats" and making them the default attribute investment when leveling up. Agility slipped through and got tied to combat initiative, making it the only attribute folks would have a mechanical incentive for to increase. So this fix rectifies this issue.
• The odds of dying while on Death's Door are increased from 2-in-6 to 3-in-6.
• AV is now explicitly capped at 6. Even if you find ways to increase it to a higher number, six is now the maximum amount of AV that gets subtracted from incoming damage.
  
• To prevent Fixer from completely bypassing the pretty important restriction to having lots of AV, having reduced Speed, by mastering the "Swift" skill. The skill has been slightly expanded to include a clause that stops it from working with shields or heavy armor. This will prevent Fixers with the Swift mastery to turn into a lightning-quick 6 AV tank, with only basic equipment. 

That's it for now. I'll see you all next week!

Cheer!

Emiel