— Mervyn Bunter, Clouds of Witness (1926)

Facts are the bricks of life, but they need a few licks of paint before you want to look at them. Mr Gradgrind of Hard Times said: “Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.” And he turned out to be the villain of the piece! So today I am giving you facts, but coated in glorious technicolour.

HOUSE OF LIGHT

You all know that HOUSE OF LIGHT is launching on Steam and GOG on Thursday 26th September at 6PM BST. I can now confirm that it will cost $14.99 / £12.99 / €13.99 with a 10% launch discount in the first week of sale (except if you’re a Perpetual Edition owner, in which case it’s free). We’ll also be adding a new BOOK OF HOURS: Anthology Edition bundle, just like Cultist Simulator, which includes the base game, the soundtrack and HOUSE OF LIGHT with a 15%-off-everything discount (making it about $43.32 / £35.67 / €41.21 in total). This should make it easy for first-time buyers to get the definitive edition of the game with one click, and for existing fans to force gentle occult librarianship on all their friends by buying it as a gift for someone else.

AK has already mentioned this in a few places, but it’s worth reiterating that HOUSE OF LIGHT is roughly comparable in size to all Cultist‘s DLCs wrapped up in one. Cultist had lots of smaller expansions, but we tried something different with BOOK OF HOURS and spent much longer making one really chunky expansion rather than lots of little pieces. So just in case anyone was worried about the value of Perpetual Edition dropping, it hasn’t! It’s all just coming at once this time.

Depending on how HOUSE OF LIGHT goes, and how pre-production on our Mysterious Game Three goes, we’ll make a decision in the first half of 2025 about whether we come back to BOOK OF HOURS and release additional expansions like HOUSE OF HUES. More on that as/when we have updates.

Now, for some long-awaited news…

The Lucid Tarot

It finally has a release date! That release date is:

🎴🎃🦇 HALLOWEEN 🦇🎃🎴

(Thursday 31st October 2024)

We’ll be releasing it on our Etsy shop at 6PM GMT, it’ll cost £70 + shipping, and we’ll be starting with 500 signed, limited edition copies. Every deck comes with a velvet tarot bag and quick start guide, but the first 500 decks will also contain a certificate of authenticity, signed and numbered by ‘the artist’. Once these are gone, they’re gone – so if the Tarot of the Hours and the Lady Afterwards launches are anything to go by, I’d suggest camping out on the Etsy shop at this time on Halloween and grabbing a copy while they’re still there.

If you miss out on the first 500, don’t worry. Like we did with the Tarot of the Hours – to make sure everyone in all time zones had a fair chance of getting a deck – we’ll release another 500 Lucid Tarots over November / December. If we sell out, we’ll restock for 2025. So everyone who wants a deck will be able to get one – we just have to take it slow so I (and my mum and dad, who have been unceremoniously roped in for packing duty) can manage demand.

Right. See you on the other side of Simplified Chinese and Russian release, which is happening next week on Thursday 29th August. Wish us luck!

Each item in the basket is individually sculpted. There are two hidden compartments. And see if you can count how many Secret Histories references Nicola has managed to work into the piece…

Aficionados of the Secret Histories may recall that Blaine was killed in a duel. There were no duels in the British Isles after the middle of the nineteenth century, so Blaine’s information is probably at least one feasting-hall out of date. If it was ever true to begin with. Although when I was fact-checking dates just now I learnt that the most recent non-fatal duel was apparently 1994, when a lutenist by the name of Salfield fought another gentlemen with antique cavalry swords over ‘an insult made to a lady’.

The only source given for this is ‘Radio Cornwall’, no details or audio, so it’s not clear whether (a) Salfield was avenging or upholding the insult (b) someone made the whole thing up. It happened in the town of Battle, which as UK-dwellers will know is a real place, though the name is suspiciously appropriate. It’s been widely assumed that Battle is not far from Kerisham, which might I suppose be relevant.

The moral I draw from this: it’s easy to overlook things. 2021 was a chaotic year for us as for everyone, and all our plans were repeatedly upset as yours probably were too. But we got a lot of stuff done. Here’s a quick roundup:

• Cultist Simulator rewrite. This took up an appalling amount of my time and is the least interesting thing on this list. I needed it to address some horrible issues left over from the game’s breakneck development in 2018, to add some QOL features, to support more modding, and to provide a solid base for Book of Hours. The rewrite’s on the beta branch now and I’m damned well going to get it live before January ends.
• Book of Hours. Yup, we’re still making it. Coming 2023.
• Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations. A good-sized collection of the essays and columns I’ve written elsewhere.
• The Snare of the Tree, and Other Perilous Delusions. A new very long essay or very short book about game design and its dangers. It’s about the size of one of those reworked Orwells or collections of uplifting cat poetry that you buy on impulse at a bookshop till.
• The Lady Afterwards. Lottie’s first project as creative lead: a luxury boxed TRPG experience not quite like anything else I’ve ever seen. You can’t buy it at the moment. The first run of 100 copies sold out in literally a minute, the preorder run of 500 copies sold out a few days later, but we’ll probably do another run this year.
• The Lady Afterwards digital edition. First time a TRPG’s been sold on Steam, which has confounded some buyers who thought they were getting DLC, thank gawd for refunds, eh.
• A whole nother season of our Skeleton Songs podcast.
• The Weather Factory Catalogue. It’s ongoing.

That’s a longer list than I realised when I started writing it, honestly. What we plan for 2022 is a lot more focused.

• Book of Hours limited preview release. It’s not early access, we’re not calling it a paid beta, it’s the Secret Historian’s Pack. More on this soon.
• My third book.
• The Lucid Tarot. Lottie: “… a world-first: we’re making a stained-glass-window-inspired deck, opaquely printed on transparent PVC. This means light (candlelight; moonlight; King Crucible) shines through some parts of each card, but they have an opaque back so you can’t see the image on the other side.”

• And the Locksmith’s Dream, but we’re working with a partner on this one, so Lottie and I really are focusing on three projects between us this time around.

And I’m back on to that as soon as I’ve posted this and trudged through two weeks of support emails. See you in the feast-halls of the Hours.

Hope you’re hanging in there, everyone! I come with good tidings.

Next sprint is Cultist‘s second birthday! There’ll be a bunch of fun stuff going on around the end of May to celebrate Cultist turning two, as well as the ultimate Mansus-inspired party: two Hours tearing themselves limb from symbolist limb while you and a bunch of other semi-magical antiheroes weave dangerous webs below. Or EXILE, to its friends.

We’ve kept our cards uncharacteristically close to our chest about EXILE, mostly because we weren’t quite sure what its final form would be. Now it’s nearly complete – and, by the way, almost as large as the whole of Cultist Simulator was at launch – I can finally share full deets with you.

EXILE BASICS

• Releasing on Wednesday 27th May at 6PM BST / 10AM PDT

• Available on Steam, GOG and Humble

• It’ll cost £7.99 / $9.99 / €8.99. It’s really big.

• If you’re a Perpetual Edition owner, it’s ✨ FREE ✨

• Only English at launch – did we mention it’s really big? Simplified Chinese and Russian loc coming ASAP!

• Will be coming to mobile, but no release date yet!

This sprint Alexis put a profound REVEAL at the heart of EXILE that I can’t tell you about. You’ll know it when you see it. There are lots of less secret lore drops, of course…

“On a hill above the city where the wind blows keen and fierce, a decaying wooden church stands in a bleak grove of leafless oak trees. Yitzchok tells me there’s something in there I’ll find useful, but he warns me: ‘I looked in all my books for this St Marzanna. Where did I find her? Nowhere.'”

Or perhaps…

“The eyes of the owls in the hawthorn tree glimmer pale gold. There’s a flare of light, too, beneath the tree. A tall man in a snakeskin jacket has just lit a cigarette. In the match-light, his face is lean, dark, and familiar. ‘Hello again,’ he says. ‘This is a surprise. I suppose the Double-Edged brought you here to make a point? She won’t want any new Edge dyads in the world… do you have something to show me?'”

And even a reference to BOOK OF HOURS, if you know where to look. 🤫

I, meanwhile, have been posting articles on how great streamers and Lucas Pope are, I’ve been hard at work on art. Can you tell what the below represent? Some art part of a series; some are show particular real-world locations; some are the two faces of a contradictory coin.

Next week we’ll also have a big batch of new art from the excellent Clockwork Cuckoo team, so look forward to that!

One final art update for you. At school, my two worst subjects were history and geography. I was immature, and those teachers weren’t the best, and learning all the world capitals by rote or the particular five-point plan some historian had decided was responsible for that particular revolution over there just didn’t do it for me. So as karmic comeuppance, Alexis decided what EXILE really needed was an interactive, hand-drawn, geographically and historically accurate map of 1920s Europe.

For those of you whose historical cartography is similarly weak, let me tell you that Europe during the 1920s was doing a constant jitterbug where everybody took a jump to the left and then a step to the right and redrew their borders and/or renamed themselves basically every year.

You probably knew all that but I didn’t. Now, at least, I do. Isn’t learning fun?

In other news, we’re holding off on Skeleton Songs until EXILE’s out, and Iris pins are back in stock on the Church o’ Merch. Restocked notebooks are also on their way, and later today I’m releasing more Tarots of the Hours. Sign up to the tarot mailing list if you’d like a ping! They’ll be snapped up in around an hour, so you gotta be quick. But I’m working on a plan for future tarot-selling that doesn’t require quite as much of a frenzy, so watch this space.

Wish us luck in the final countdown to EXILE, Believers! I think this one’s gonna be good.

 

 

Appropriately named sprint, eh? It makes me a little worried that our upcoming sprints are IMMORALITY and JUSTICE but May #2 is KING ARTHUR so here’s hoping.

The big news this sprint is we moved house! 😱 Alexis has started a sourdough culture he refers to only as “The Bred Möther”, and inspired by our current work on Exile, Sulochana has started an eternal feud with Big Ken whom she bites until I spray lemon at her.

I, meanwhile, bought a huge orange velvet sofa because I *laugh* in the face of my overdraft. No don’t go away Barclays Bank I need you

Anyway, Exile!

After a delay to the start of the beta (everyone will have keys today! SORRY!), Alexis asked people who live in fun places we don’t to tell us something about their city. If we use any of your anecdata we’ll give you a ‘special thanks’ mention in the credits.

Alexis has been working his butt off writing snippets for, by my count, forty-two cities, so Exile has turned into a sort of occult travel blog written by Carmen Sandiego.

“No reckoner is ever foolish enough to pass into the higher levels of the Mansus. To draw the attention of the true Long – or their masters – would invite annihilation. But my Foe certainly knew something of the invisible arts. Perhaps I should, too.”

More info on Exile details next time – when we’ve had some time in beta.

Now, I have a bit of merch news. Firstly: THE TAROT OF THE HOURS IS BACK IN STOCK! These aren’t hand-numbered, but otherwise they’re exactly the same as the original decks. If you missed out originally, now’s your chance!

One thing to note. The surge of orders last time threw me into disarray, so I’m going to cap stock to 200 decks at any one time. Don’t worry – we have 1,000 to sell! This is just to make sure I can post everyone’s deck in a timely fashion and not e.g. crumble under the pressure like a gingerbread girl in a kiln.

Meanwhile, our Iris pin (and, consequently, the Adept’s Bequest) are out of stock, but they’ll be back on the market in a month or so. In the meantime I’m announcing some NEW items!

Firstly, pins! Meet the Marinette, Hint, Lunatic and Maid pins, which may or may not experiment with different finishes like gold plating and GLITTER. I’ll sell them individually, in case you particularly identify with one of them, but they’ll also go into a six-pin bundle along with Iris and the glitter witch pin. Hold your breath for the Beach-Crow’s Treasures, coming ASAP.

Secondly, I’ve been thinking about things that might be nice during this stupid pandemic. And then I thought:

“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.“

– E. M. Forster, Howards End

What Forster meant, of course, is when people are lonely in 2020 in a coronavirus lockdown we should all send each other postcards. Ideally glossy, outré postcards you can use to cast subtle judgement on recipients with the particular Hour you choose.

We’ll sell these as a collection of seven different postcards, randomly selected, which in no way will involve me spilling them all on the floor, smooshing them around and then picking up seven cards and tying them together with string. This is a professional operation.

The postcard bundle will go live next week, so watch this space!

Anyway, hope you’re all keeping safe. Not too long until Exile’s launch on Wednesday 27th May, so we’ll be back at the end of the month with lots more art, design and lore. ‘Til then, Believers!

Sooooo. Everyone really likes tarot decks.

We sold all of our 500 decks within 36 hours. Thank you so much if you ordered one! My phone makes a cash register cha-ching noise every time we sell something on Etsy so it was the closest I’ll ever get to

BUT. We seriously underestimated how many people would want this tarot. Coronavirus means some people don’t have the money right now, or that they don’t want physical packages coming through the post. The decks went so quickly and it’s such a difficult time that we feel it’s unfair to disappoint people because I simply underestimated demand. So: we’re going to extend the Tarot of the Hours by another 1,000 decks.

To keep the exclusivity of that first batch, we’re not going to number the decks anymore. Only the first 500 are officially part of the limited edition. But we do want to make sure people have an opportunity to buy this deck, regardless of situation or job security or COVID-19 nonsense. MAY THE HOURS PROTECT YOU.

The new batch is in production now. I’ll announce their restock (in probably a couple of weeks…?) on Twitter, Facebook and reddit. View the ~ secret ~ delisted Etsy store page in the meantime! Delight in currently unattainable occultism! The real-world equivalent of not being able to enter the Mansus ’cause you don’t have the right goddamn card. 🤘

10,000 boos to COVID-19

The games industry is in a fortunate position. Many of us are naturally unsocial creatures who work on digital products that aren’t affected by real-world supply chains currently being severed by COVID-19. We’re a two-person family business who work from home, anyway.

Alexis and I wanted to do something useful in this crisis to pass on that good fortune. For the next three months, we’re going to give 10% of our total monthly profits to charities who can help. This includes everything on our digital stores (Steam, GOG, Humble and itch.io) and all our physical merchandise in the Etsy store. For the avoidance of doubt, this includes the tarot deck!

We’ll share the amount we’ve raised at the end of every month, so we can all feel good for having helped. Yay!

National Emergencies Trust

They step in whenever there’s a major national crisis in the UK. Working with the noble British Red Cross, they’ve launched a major coronavirus appeal.

Medecins Sans Frontieres

Also known as Doctors Without Borders and very dear to Alexis’s heart. An international and life-changing charity getting medical aid wherever it’s needed the most.

The Trussell Trust

A British food bank charity making sure the poorest and most vulnerable people are cared for. Coronavirus must be bloody awful for people who were already struggling financially.

We may extend this initiative for longer than three months. It depends on what the hell happens with COVID-19. Here’s hoping we don’t have to.

The long-awaited Tarot of the Hours is finally available in the Church o’ Merch! For £30 + shipping you can get your probably not entirely innocent hands on your very own hand-numbered tarot deck, granting you ultimate insight into the House without Walls.

Thanks for being patient while I sorted ’em. <3

Speaking of patience, you may have seen some of the Exile teasers Alexis has been tweeting. It’s not actually very long to wait now – just until the end of May! But I have a smol, non-alarming update for you, because here’s a transcript of every day at Weather Factory:

LOTTIE: Wow it’s so great that we have everything planned for the next six months

ALEXIS: Er

LOTTIE: Isn’t it just wonderful having a clear production schedule we can rely on

ALEXIS: Um

LOTTIE: How stressful would it be if you were to turn around and tell me suddenly all the plans we’d agreed on were changing, ha ha

ALEXIS: * reaches for the gin *

Alexis has some really fun ideas that break the mould of the rest of Cultist Sim, so we wanted to spend some extra time and lean into Exile as our largest bit of DLC to date. He’s been totally reworking the mechanics so all you adepts with 200 hours in the game will be faced with learning the rules ALL OVER AGAIN.

There are several different victories, some much easier than others. The hardest are as punishing as New Game+, but… this is Edge, right?

The above doesn’t change our release date, but we’re going to set its price point higher than £2.50 – exact price TBC. So, to summarise:

• Exile will launch on Weds 27th May at 6PM GMT / 10AM PDT
• It’ll release in English, simplified Chinese and Russian at the same time
• It’ll cost more than other DLCs, though we haven’t confirmed how much yet
• Perpetual Edition owners get it FREE

More info ASAP!

The fact that we’re spending more time on Exile than planned does mean I now expect BOOK OF HOURS to launch in 2022 rather than 2021. When we get into production proper on that game and have a clearer scope I’ll confirm either way. But a heads up that my producerly senses are tingling. Wishlist it for now, anyway!

Here’s some new Exile art to make all that production more palatable. Can you figure the DLC out from these…?

Last but not least, we’re on sale currently in GOG’s spring sale, so if anyone you know is, for example, stuck at home for an indeterminate amount of time, there’s a slightly cheery-uppy deal available right now.

‘Til next month, Believers!

Happy grimmest month of the year, Beloveds! I have an announcement that might cheer you up. I’m not going to go into detail, but I *am* going to confirm that we’re working on some ✨ NEW CULTIST CONTENT ✨ that I’ll be able to talk more about next sprint. For now, I’ll leave you only with its working title:

EXILE.

Stay tuned.

This sprint Alexis released a loooooooooooong post about the State of the Factory: Year 2, which goes through all the ins and outs of Weather Factory in 2019. If you’ve interest in the realities of being a smol indie dev and you’re not afraid of data, it’s for you! If you’re less about numbers and more about words, you can always check out Alexis’s mega-reading list of his major influences instead.

We also released our second episode of Skeleton Songs, this time on all manner of weird mythological beasts from legend and literature. Alexis talks a lot about eagles and Christian metaphor and rubbish unicorns and I talk about last sprint’s Blatant Beast and wendigoes. You can listen to it on all the usual podcast-y places (Spotify, Apple, Google, Stitcher, iHeartRadio…), all of which you can find handy-dandily linked here. Enjoy!

There’s actually a lot more intelligent stuff in there than there is about excrement, but I understand social media revolves around ‘humour’ and ‘fun’ so I’m just trying to fit in.

This sprint I can also share a first look at our new direction for BOOK OF HOURS. I’m not a proper concept artist, but this should give you a good idea of what we’re thinking. A side-on cross-section view of Hush House, where you control and interact with your Librarian and their Assistants and your Visitors as you delve deeper and deeper into the belly of rock beneath you. Call it a gentle sim with an occult twist. It’s still going to be narrative-driven and text-based, of course, but we’ve moved away from Cultist‘s minimalist tabletop.

Coding’s going really well.

More on this later down the line. For now, we’ve paused BOOK OF HOURS‘ prototyping so we can work on EXILE, and will get back to it in a couple of months. BOOK OF HOURS will then be our main focus moving forward.

This sprint also marked the arrival of an unusual new member of the Weather Factory family. By ‘new member’ I mean dystopian overlord from the future and by ‘family’ I mean cult. Meet: GLOMETHEUS! He who brings lasers to mankind.

He is, of course, a class-four 3D laser-printer technically called a Glowforge, but he’s just Glommy to us. We’re experimenting with laser-printing for new merch and already have some pretty interesting ideas. Let us know if you have any suggestions!

Speaking of merch, I’d like to put some concerns to rest about our upcoming tarot deck. I saw some fears on Reddit that we might have quietly axed the project. WE HAVEN’T! It turns out it’s really hard to print and cut coloured images on black backgrounds – I could bore you with the physical realities of die-cutting white card that’s been coloured black, but I love you too much – so the TLDR is I’m shopping around for a new producer who can make ’em look nice.

To make up for the delay, here’s the whole deck as a 78-card premium tarot of the Hours. SOON.

I leave you with news that I’m trialling some themes in our monthly newsletter. This month’s theme, being cold and grey and miserable, is love. So if you fancy a quiz which’ll definitively, scientifically tell you whom you should romance next in Cultist Simulator… make sure you’re signed up.

‘Til next time! 😘

First, that it explains with more clarity than usual the purpose and abilities of the Librarian of Hush House.

Second, that the ‘secrets of inks’ are discussed with the candour of assured destruction.

Third, that the letter was evidently not destroyed, leaving one to wonder what that meant for F., Christopher, and the unwelcome attentions of the ‘Fine-Takers’.

But we cannot speculate with any accuracy. There are many Histories, and in each one, always a sea and a tide.

‘The Sweet Bones’, Brancrug
June 28th, 1929

My dear Christopher,

I am so sorry. I would very much like to help, but I deeply regret that I cannot – and I’m afraid in any case that you’ve been terribly misled. The matter is a complex one, but I know how your heart must ache, so I wanted to begin by making it clear at once that I cannot do what you ask of me. Now I will explain why.

I know the ink that you describe. It exists. I shouldn’t tell you even that, and for the sake of our friendship I ask you to burn this letter after reading. The ink is called here encaustum terminale and it is a great treasure of the House. Its making is a closely guarded secret. Its use by any but the Librarian is punished without mercy. When we become aware of delinquencies or abuse, we despatch the Fine-Takers in their ultimate mode. Even I could not frivolously lay hands upon a sample without suffering the severest consequences.

But more importantly, the encaustum is not what you have come to believe. Yes, it is used to curate the Histories, which is why it is so carefully guarded. But it has no power in itself. It cannot change the past. I do not think it is even possible to change the past, not in the sense you mean.

There are many Histories, as you yourself have written. The Hours of the Mansus determine what events are considered a History, and which Histories are braided into the future – the future in which you will read (and burn!) this letter.

But the Hours are not all-knowing, nor infallible. I do not think it is even accurate to call them gods, although we so often revert to that convention. (I do not believe – and for this I am grateful – that there are such things as gods.) They do not take direction, but they have been known to take advice.

You may know that Hush House lies under the hand of certain Hours. I have no wish to draw their attention, so I will not name them, but they are most of them those who seek to preserve the world as it is. In our smaller way, that is also the goal of our Curia. The Librarian of the House is provided with texts that qualify as Material, the unintersticed elements of proto-History, and they make their curations and determinations upon it. When they make those curations and determinations in the encaustum terminale, the Hours take note, and they value the Librarian’s opinion… if the Librarian is of sufficient significance.

So that is all the encaustum can do. When it is used the right way by the right person in the right circumstances, it can draw the attention of the Hours. And that is a very considerable thing! But it is not something you could use, and if it were, it would not have the effect you desire.

I am sorry, my friend. She is lost to you. I can offer you only this slender comfort – one that you love has that for which she so dearly wished, and you had your reasons not to follow, and those reasons, I think, are very noble. You cannot change the choices you have made. None of us can. But I earnestly believe that you both made choices you should not regret. The sea does not regret the tide, and after the tide withdraws, something always remains, which we call memory.

In very deep affection,
your friend,
F.

P.S. I know I can be an old bore, but for a third time, I must beg you to burn this letter.

For now, a tarot update! I have learned a great deal about DIE CUTTING (goth) and BLACK CARD (goth) and 350GSM ZANTA GAME BOARD (………………post-goth). The short version is our test deck showed me I needed to pay more for a black-card deck, lest the edges of our glorious set look like they’ve been nibbled by Worms when they’re still brand new.

I can at least start confirming some of the correct guesses I’ve seen about our suits and face cards. I’ve only seen two correct guesses so far, so if you think you can work out any of the below, leave a comment and I’ll update the chart!

Finally, a pre-Christmas treat for the last production update of 2019. Some of you may remember a certain Serena Blackwood from the last letter to cross my path from Hush House. Well, an official missive from Serena herself has come to light. Read the original below, or a transcript at the bottom of this update. Click for larger versions.

Thank you to everyone who’s been supportive over these last few months. I can’t tell you how much it’s appreciated. Take care, Beloveds, and see you on the other side. ♥

OFFICE OF THE CURIA
Hush House, Brancrug
June 22nd, 1924

Detective-Ostiary Pender –

Thank you for your time last week, and for your patience. I’ve reviewed your requests for limitation. Most are acceptable to the Curia. Some are not. In this letter, I’ve outlined our objections. I hope that we can find common ground, and an acceptable compromise.

Nix Abolix. You marked as ‘Suppress’. No arguments here. Quite frankly, I don’t know how it ever made it to the main collection. We don’t need any more Worms in the world. I mention this only to say that we do, despite our differences, appreciate the Bureau’s efforts and contributions.

On the other hand, My Most Violent Enterprise. You marked as ‘Restrict’. That’s a little extreme. I really don’t think it even merits an ‘Advise’. The contents are certainly pretty despicable, but if Enterprise is limited, we are going to have to revise classification for a great many other equally despicable items. The function of Hush House is not to protect, but to preserve.

The Almanac of Entrances. You marked as ‘Suppress’. I can see the risks, but I don’t believe suppression is merited. We’ll agree to ‘Restrict’.

OGHKOR OGHKOR TISSILAK OGHKOR. You marked as ‘Restrict’. I understand your concerns, but the author has not been witnessed abroad in the world for at least two centuries, and can reasonably be considered defunct. I’ll allow ‘Advise’, and we’ll revise to ‘Restrict’ if the author is ever verifiably reported active again.

A Child’s Treasury of Golden Afternoons. You marked as ‘Expunge’. This is a proposal we would consider only in the most extreme circumstances. The text is already categorised ‘Contain’. I’ve discussed with the Librarian and we are confident that the theoplasmic contamination – which is, I grant, quite advanced – can be purged. If it can’t, then we will consider the ‘Expunge’.

Codex Acephali. You marked as ‘Contain’. I agree that this is a reasonable request, and once again, I wanted to thank you for drawing it to our attention. As a matter of fact, the contamination has also reached the neighbouring texts (The Radical Measure and In the Malleary) and we’re going to mark those ‘Contain’ too, pending review.

The History of Inks. You marked as ‘Suppress’. Now this is not the first nor indeed the second time that the Suppression Bureau has taken issue with this book, and I do see your point, some of the inks are extremely significant, but with all due respect, Hush House has its purpose, as you must know, and the Suppression Bureau’s place is not to question that purpose. Your Suppression request is denied. My patience is wearing thin. If I see another such request for the History in future years, I’ll take up the matter with our patrons.

The Kerisham Portolan. ‘Suppress’. I don’t think so.

Blackwood’s Magazine, January 1922. ‘Restrict’. I assume this is some sort of joke. I must assure you that no-one in the Curia is laughing.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Serena Blackwood, D.D., O.F.S.B.

Yes! This should really be called ‘NOV #1: WESTENRA’, but this producer is Off The Rails. You can’t stop me. I’m naming this sprint update after the rather curious case of D and The History of Inks, written to a Dr. Serena Blackwood at the Office of the Curia.

Click to read photographs of the original letter, long now lost to a fire. Or if you struggle to read D’s handwriting – well, she should have delegated to Propsy, now, shouldn’t she? You can scroll down to the bottom of this post for a transcription in plain text, anyway.

This sprint I’ve also been hard at work with some new merch. I announced what that was to the select few of you who follow me on Twitter: a 78-card, full-colour, totally illicit TAROT OF THE HOURS.

(The dark background detail on the card backs / box are quite hard to see if your monitor isn’t set to ‘Mental Artist’, so if all you see are white lines on black, TRUST ME THERE’S MORE THERE.)

I’m waiting to receive a test print of the whole thing, to check all the art looks nice. Then it’s a matter of buying a tonne and making a new listing on the Church of Merch.

The question in the meantime is: who are the Pages, Knights, Queens and Kings of each suit? And which Principles correspond to Swords, Wands, Cups and Pentacles? Try your luck in the comments below, and I’ll reveal any of the correct cards in next sprint’s update…

The rest of this sprint was devoted to, oh, you know, launching our Russian beta on Steam and participating in this year’s Singles’ Day, which you probably all know is a manufactured celebration of both being single and being in a relationship which Alibaba co-opted to sell stuff, but hey, it’s 2019, and it makes me feel all Blade Runner-y to put Chinese text on my designs.

Any Russian speakers waiting until the beta’s complete have only another WEEK to wait until Russian’s live in the main game on Steam, GOG and Humble: that update’s coming on Monday 25th November. So yay, my drugis, which is the only pseudo-Russian I know from reading A Clockwork Orange when I was sixteen.

Enjoy your weekends, Believers.

“VIENNA
January 15th-ish, 1906

Dear Serena –

Got your book. Pretty good condition, too. Bit blurred round the edges, but the little fellow’s taken good care of it. Not what I expected, though, rum business all round. Tell you how it was.

Trail in Venice long cold, obviously. They still tell stories about old Hokobald, say the place is cursed now, but it’s mostly cursed with rising damp. Don’t know how anyone lives there. Anyway, no trace, so I thought, all right, D., my girl, get your head down, get seventy-seven winks, see if the Sage-Knight’s entertaining, he’ll know what’s what.

You’re reading this and thinking, come on, D., you know better than that, Sage-Knight’s a bit high in the Mansus to be talking to Raw Prophets, what? But here’s the thing, Sage-Knight knows the odd Ivory, Ivories know the odd Thirstly, Thirstlies know Raw Prophets. So I’ll put the word out.

Sage-Knight’s in a helpful sort of mood, so we both have a cup of that wine of his and then another cup and then another cup and we get to gossiping. He’s all right for a Name. Shame he doesn’t keep proper port, even dream-port, but he’s all right for a Name. And I wake up and I pop out for a dawn smoke and a bit of the old practice and when I get back inside there’s an address written on the mirror. Not bad for a Name at all.

Address is in Vienna. Now you know how I feel about Vienna, never quite comfy there since all that with the Club, but I think, Serena’s a good sort, owe her a favour or two, not so far on the train. Off I pop.

Vienna, two days on. Find the address, have a snout about, you know, see what’s what. Nasty little den, full of the wrong sort of the wrong sort, and they’ve got their own little shrine for the Raw Prophet. (Sage-Knight gave me its name, I tried to write its name, won’t fit in this alphabet. Let’s call him Propsy.) Little cult for Propsy. Now you know me, Serena, live and let live, all sorts, but a shrine to something like Propsy, I always thought it’s like building a shrine to a lamb chop. You’ve seen Prophets, haven’t you? They look like a horse stepped on a starfish. But bigger.

But, dashed odd thing… Propsy’s not a bad sort. Can’t talk, of course, but the little feller can write. And I don’t just mean write like I’m writing this letter, express itself, put its point of view, sort of thing. I mean it’s a calligrapher. Dashed good calligrapher. Every one of those little tentacle things, good as a Japanese paint-brush. Where does it get the ink, you’re wondering, aren’t you, Serena? Be glad I’m not telling you.

Long story short, Propsy reckons it wrote the ‘History of Inks’, reckons it was stolen, reckons all sorts of the worst about H.H. (Sorry, Serena.) So we had a good old chat, and I did knock it about a little bit, but we agreed in the end, and it gave me the book back, but it wanted paying. Seemed fair enough. And I’ve added a line to my bill for that. Bit of a sum, I’m afraid, try not to kick. Sure you won’t, know you’re a good sort.

So here you go, bill, book, all we’re missing is a candle, ha ha! I’ll be by again for the Equinox. Could use your help on a thing with the Mausoleum. And the Club, actually. Bit of a business, there.

Pip pip
D.

PS! Propsy wants proper attribution. Name in the catalogue. Course, can’t write its name here. Won’t fit in this alphabet. Hope you can sort that out. Might cause a bit of a stink if not. Leave it with you. Best of luck. D.“

The big aim for this sprint was to get us ready for the EXPLORER’S BUILD, releasing on Monday! For which, I am delighted to say, we NOW ARE READY! Full patch notes and a lot of flag waving will occur on the day, so I’ll gloss over the details for now. Suffice to say, you’ll find expeditions, a smorgasbord of locations to explore, some unimpressed guardians of said locations, new tomes, and… what was it again? Oh yeah. THE HOUSE.

AK’s spent the majority of this sprint writing and designing the new content in the Explorer’s Build, so more on that tomorrow. The headline update here is really that functional Mansus (???), into which you can Dream yourself if you have lots of bravery and little sense. Let it be noted that due to half of Weather Factory’s intense arachnophobia, anyone entering the House through the Spider Door will be sent straight to the cupboard.

We put a bunch of new art in the game this sprint from Clockwork Cuckoo, Sarah and myself. We updated our cultist icons, added placeholder and some unique location icons ready for the Explorer’s Build,  new scrolls and tomes, some additional ingredients, and revamped the way we depict foreign language and translated books. We also f ~ i ~ n ~ a ~ l ~ l ~ y revamped our three legacy icons, so look out for new Aspirant, BYT and Physician icons, too.

(Because this is my blog and I can, I also want to give a special shout-out to the new Guardian aspect icon. He is so tuff but also so smol. ♥)

Earlier this week we posted some updated visuals from AK’s in-fiction text: Hoare’s Hints to Travellers in Italy, fragments from the notebooks of ‘Parsival’, and Teresa’s letter to her beloved, from the remote port of Noon. Take a look here! Sarah, meanwhile, finished off two new Hours cards for us: the ELEGIAST and the HORNED-AXE. AK is particularly partial to the ELEGIAST; I am particularly moved by the AXE. Believers, CHOOSE YOUR SIDE!

This sprint we’ve also been prepping for a number of talks in the near future. BECAUSE MAKING A GAME WAS NOT HARD ENOUGH. We’re demoing at EGX Rezzed next weekend (Friday – Sunday, at the Tentacle Collective! Look out for gigantic waving green things), and AK’s giving a talk on the Sunday at 1PM about Apocalypse and Yearning. The weekend after that, we’re both off to Dubrovnik to speak at Reboot Develop. And then, at last, we have a ‘weekend’.

The main point of this obviously is that I got to spend some money on stickers. So come find us at Rezzed to Choose Ur Cult, be up for a chance to win an Orchid Transfiguration USB with a Perpetual Edition Steam key on it (another one, if you’re a Disciple-level backer or higher), eat colour-coded bon-bons, and marvel at our prestigious Cultist Simulator/Weather Factory branded hoodies, designed by someone with little understanding of colour, e.g. me.

Something I’m really excited about that we did this sprint – apart from, y’know, getting ourselves ready for our final large content drop, which is a feat for BABIES – is that we finished our launch trailer! Working with the delightful Vanessa Williams who made our original ‘Bring the Dawn’ announce trailer, we’ve come up with 1:10s of timer-orientated mystery, intrigue and a great drum section at 40s in. The trailer should be published places from Wednesday onwards, so look out for it then. Coax and/or threaten your acquaintances to watch it for an improved % chance not to spawn into the Mansus on the Ascent of Knives.

I leave you with news that I’ve been picked as one of Code First: Girl’s ‘Ones to Watch’ (?), and that Sonja will be receiving a surprise Weather Factory hoodie of her own when they arrive, so you may expect exuberant eight-year-old photos next sprint blog. This is the sort of #premium #content you’re all here for, right?

Now, tick tock until the Explorer’s release…

But one of the things I like about working with concept artists is that they’ll often have good ideas I haven’t thought of, that I can then incorporate back into the lore. This is how the Moth’s barber-affiliations first came about, although it’s core lore now; and it happens again below.

Here’s our conversations about the Mother of Ants card. SPOILERS!

SARAH: Mother Of Ants. What we’re looking at: a be-wimpled, ostensibly female, quite possibly pregnant figure with six limbs and somewhat insectoid eyes, holding a ring of keys, surrounded by a cityscape of drawers and windows. Severed hands are hanging above her, red lanterns at her feet. the dots you see will be ants swarming up her bloodied skirts (I think). Along with the keys clasped to her belly, she’s currently holding five snakes – was trying to figure out a gorgon reference… I don’t think this looks right, so will have a think about something else she could be holding. Lots of options. Was also considering giving her a couple of wounds, but wasn’t sure if that would be a bit too grim for this one (hanging severed limbs may get this aspect across anyway).

Colours Probably need a bit of a tweak.. we don’t have anything in the spreadsheet about that right now, so if you have an idea about where she should be on the spectrum do let me know, otherwise I’ll intuit something.

AK: Colours! Let’s go with rich imperial purple, to match the colour we’re associating with Knock in the game (the purple shade in the spreadie) with red accents. Purple eyes would work well.

I’d definitely like to make her definitely not pregnant, specifically because birth and pregnancy are the prerogative of the Grail, and I don’t want to mix the attributions up. (She’s called the Mother of Ants because [REDACTED]; I can immediately see why that was misleading!) I’d like her to be thin, strikingly so, to suggest snakes and ill health.

I like the hands, I like the lamps. Wounds: if in doubt, always go grim on this project. 🙂 What I had in mind with this Hour was the Gothic trope of unsanctioned penetration of an interface: where there is a sense of ‘should not’ because the things on either side are very different, because it is gory, because it is queasily sexual, because it is the result of harm or an accident, or all the above.

So how about this? tell me if it won’t work compositionally:

The Mother has cut a deep wound in her own neck, so that it’s almost severed. She’s holding her head at a forty-five degree angle in one hand, and she’s obviously still conscious and looking at the player. I like the zero-shit-taken expression on her face in your sketch: it reminds me of a gif I just showed to Lottie, here: https://imgur.com/gallery/o0RWXp1. In her other hand she should be holding a knife or cleaver, to make it absolutely clear that this is a self-inflicted in-control thing. Where the blood spills on the ground, snakes should spring from the blood: this gives us our Gorgon reference (Medusa’s blood [REDACTED], depending on who you listen to).

I also like the idea of a snake pushing its head out of her half-severed neck, for an extra grotesquerie and a suggestion that she’s opened the way. Lottie has pointed out that this may (a) distract from her expression and (b) suggest ‘lady snake pinata’. Please use your judgement and/or provide a couple of alternatives: I’m now undecided.

And finally, can we 1920s her appearance up? I like the idea of giving her a 1920s bob – partly because of that hat check girl gif, but it would be a nice incongruity, and I’m not sure how the severed neck would work with the wimple. All these cards immediately become less fantasy and more unusual when they have more period details, so generally I would push you in the more 1920s direction as well as the grimmer direction. (I think you’re responding to the Sumer reference in the row, in the original composition. Generally that’s there for historical / lore detail for my reference, and usually I wouldn’t need you to go to the Hour’s origin.)

Sarah: Changes made mostly to order. Tried having one of the snakes crawling out of her neck and it just seemed to confuse everything up there in a bad way. So am instead suggesting maybe having smoke rising out of her parted lips and her neck wound (am sure you know that girls with bobs smoking cigarettes was considered very sexy/kind of lesbian – doubly so if the smoker with the bob was also a mermaid). There’s also a bloody snake winding up her leg below her skirt. Hopefully a bit on the queasily sexual side. Too vulgar? I don’t know. Let me know. This may take a bit of tuning in before I get the level with this sort of stuff right. 

The Thunderskin is the Heart Relentless, who does not permit conclusion.  With the Mother of Ants, he is among the chiefest Gods-from-flesh.  He cannot be stilled; he demands the dance; he is beaten, like a drum. Red and blue are his colours. He is heard in the Wood below the world.

The Hours are the secret gods of the Cultist Simulator setting. Their true nature is too primal to be depicted, so the game kindly provides an alternate Tarot card with the traditional symbols of each Hour.

If you’d like to see more of the Hours, there’s a Kickstarter for Cultist Simulator coming in September. Please lend your social media powers to the cause here:

The Sun-in-Rags concludes endings beautifully.  He is usually reckoned one of the Gods-from-Light; but Julian Coseley (the seventeenth-century magus and reputed immortal) has indicated he should in fact be numbered among the Gods-from-blood.  He burns; he is distant; he is not as he was. He wears gold and red.

The Hours are the secret gods of the Cultist Simulator setting. Their true nature is too primal to be depicted, so the game kindly provides an alternate Tarot card with the traditional symbols of each Hour.

If you’d like to see more of the Hours, there’s a Kickstarter for Cultist Simulator coming in September. Please lend your social media powers to the cause here:

The Witch-and-Sister unites what is at rest. She is sought at the water’s edge and beneath the moon. She cannot be touched; she cannot be separated; she is pearl, coral, amber.

The Hours are the secret gods of the Cultist Simulator setting. Their true nature is too primal to be depicted, so the game kindly provides an alternate Tarot card with the traditional symbols of each Hour.

If you’d like to see more of these, and if you’d like to lend your social media powers to the Kickstarter, please sign up below.

The Watchman is the Door in the Eye. He opens the way for the willing and for the unwilling. He is often the first Hour that we supplicate. He is always in white.

The Hours are the secret gods of the Cultist Simulator setting. Their true nature is too primal to be depicted, so the game kindly provides an alternate Tarot card with the traditional symbols of each Hour.

If you’d like to see more of these, sign up below.