Good humans, behold (see header image with volume of glass and water for scale).
That’s a wrist brace.
I’d been experiencing some pain with certain motions of my left hand for some time and went to the doctor yesterday. After a physical exam he suspected a torn tendon, but after an X-ray and ultrasound, he figured out that I had torn the ligaments between my left ulna (the bone that sticks out on the outside of the arm, where it attaches to the wrist) and the triquetrum (the t...
2025-08-06 06:41:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear Heroes!
Patient humans! Watchful. Kind. Gentle. Of so many varieties. They dwell about the Hollow House.
Oh, you thought I meant you? No, no. It's the second Our Golden Age adventure for the book.
I'm building this whole section about the PCs getting their hands on a manor, house, omniapt, or other human habitation machine. Y'know, an HQ. So, I wrote about half of the rules on running it last year, but then ~waves hands~ life ... and now I finally wrote the opening adve...
2025-07-25 06:01:16 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear heroes,
That one picture took nearly 10 days. And I haven't even started labelling it. That will have to wait for another week, or I will lose it, haha.
Step 1: sketch the castle.
Step 2: draw the castle.
I ... don't really have anything to add. I'm going to turn it into a brochure (poster) ...
2025-07-04 05:48:50 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear Heroes,
It's back to Our Golden Age. At last. And what better way to do that, than to give proper attention to a picture that I'd ... mmm ... taken a shortcut on. The opening adventure skeleton in the book (Summons, Unexpected) is a bit of co-creative fun and games to get the referee and the players figuring out their characters and their world together.
It really kicks off when the players reach the "Castle" (which is not really a castle) to find their Contact, who summoned ...
2025-06-27 06:40:33 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear Heroes,
Thanks to your patience and understanding, the Vastlands Guidebook has become something a lot more unique than what I had initially planned—a compilation of the rules from UVG 1E, 2E and SDM:ERK + a retrospective of some of my older art pieces. Instead, it is now graced with roughly 150 pieces of art, a lot of it tailored just to the book, most of it full color, and a layout to match the OGA and UVG.
Phew.
I still have to finish the Index and Inspiration appen...
2025-06-17 04:03:48 +0000 UTC
View Post
Heroes, folks, everyone ...
We had our little holiday. Two days of waking up exactly when I wanted, not when the children demanded. Which is to say at 06:30 a.m. because that's what my body is used to now. So it goes.
As soon as we came back, both the toddler and the baby got sick again. If I'm lucky, I won't catch this round. So it goes.
Ok, back to the Book(s)!
I'...
2025-05-26 03:15:02 +0000 UTC
View Post
Greeting
Good heroes, hello!
I must say, it feels like the last 4-6 months were two years long. The baby has become a toddler and started her creche and is now running around and talking. A newborn joined us and has become a little human. Something resembling sleeping through (most) of the night has returned to our household. And, thanks to the toddler in the creche, I have gone through more different cold viruses in the last months than I would usually go through...
2025-05-15 07:40:21 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear Heroes,
It's been a while! Shortly after the last post, the Good Eggy brought a virus (virus, virus) home from the creche, and though she was well enough quite swiftly, it laid me low with fatigue and ill-feeling for the better part of two weeks.
So, of a sudden, here we are in mid-April and I don't have the full Yellow Land for you yet.
I've elaborated a spread for the factions:
2025-04-18 07:49:29 +0000 UTC
View Post
Good heroes, good evening (local time)!
This is just a really short post (teaser!) on the Yellow Land. With the Vastlands Guidebook squared away (mostly, hah, indexing goes on), I've returned my attention (at last, at last) to the Golden Age.
And the first thing I saw was that ... I want to rework the frontpiece to better capture the Yellow Land and that the map was lacking.
So I a...
2025-03-28 14:48:44 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hello good heroes!
Because of course it's already March. I confess, I did not appreciate the speed of time once one has children rather than child. It feels like it moves thrice as fast as before.
February was marked by ... well, finishing up the VLG. Spot art season.
I revisited the lucent amphibian from the Uranium Butterflies. It'll be nice to release that once VLG is done-...
2025-03-04 06:40:03 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear Heroes,
ONE
First, a welcome to all the new folks who've joined! It's a pleasure to have you here. Drop on by the stratometaship café on discord, if you're the kind who loves to see my work step by step, or if you'd just like to share some art, chat, make pizzas, and shoot the keyboard breeze.
Link: https://discord.gg/RqTUdbDzkD (this link has 25 uses and was posted in February 2025. If you're find...
2025-02-20 08:36:22 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear Heroes,
I have to say, weeks fly like rockets now that I've got two rather than one little childrens. I've done plenty of work on the VLG, lots of pieces of art and all sorts, but I wanted to share something different first, not just peppering you with art as we go. I'll post those shortly, and if you want to see them day by day—join the stratometaship discord: https://discord.gg/vRvxyEHstn...
2025-02-14 05:16:42 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear Heroes and Friendly Visitors,
Having a fresh newborn is a ride. I definitely recommend trying it out. You'll find reservoirs of strength and resistance to sleep-deprivation you never knew you had!
It took my wife and I a couple of weeks to find a pattern of cooperation, where the children remain fed and (mostly) abed and I can also prepare art and gamestuff for the stratometaship (and the OGA crowdfund). But, fortunately (and more thanks to my wife than me), we did.
2025-01-22 09:00:52 +0000 UTC
View Post
Good Heroes,
Few things go right the first time, many things take longer than expected, but as long as we're willing to keep talking and rolling dice, the journey should be fun nonetheless.
Thank y'all for coming along on this ride. To many more years of the stratometaship!
Love and rainbows and beetles,
--Luka
PS - about not getting things right. Note how I ...
2025-01-01 00:06:38 +0000 UTC
View Post
Recently, the voyageur decant Kett received back into his supernumeral polity the dividual drone become cartomancer Kett Baba. Though there was some kerfuffle about "maintaining an adrift existence, separate from the [burbling mind-mass] joyous unity of Kett", the other dividual drones of Kett reabsorbed Kett Baba until he was only Kett once more.
Some disturbing leftovers, not suitable for the peace-of-existence of the Kett unity were given over to the [servant-rat-venerable-cockroach]...
2024-12-30 07:27:40 +0000 UTC
View Post
Good Heroes!
What happened to this December?! Here we are, halfway through the gates of Yulehålla, past the Mass of Christ and closing on the Eve of Saint Sylvester.
Well, over here, my second daughter was born just two weeks ago and my life has been largely upturn'd with incorporating this new human into this jolly world. It's a joy and a chaos and a lot of autopilot and definite gaps in my memory caused by the occasional lack of sleep. I do seem to recall First Daughter enjoyin...
2024-12-27 09:00:29 +0000 UTC
View Post
The wall approaches, infinite, rising, turning, a mountain of water reaching from glistering ice to glimmering fire.
—Hold on. We journey to the Geyser.
—The currents grow swifter.
—Its pull is mighty. It must be. It makes the clouds and the rains and the roiling atmosphere.
—Where does it lead?
—To the Middle World.
I see peop...
2024-12-17 05:17:50 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear Heroes & Welcome Watchers,
I'd planned to have the next location of TSKNS ready today, but ... this week, dangit, this week.
First, I hope you enjoy the little scenes that are going to do the work of footer corner art in the Vastlands Guidebook. Each chapter is going to suffer the indignity of a different illustration, giving the reader (you, I hope) a quick way to figure out where they is at [sic]. They're pretty fun and relaxing to do, but ... well, I think they're goin...
2024-12-06 07:39:30 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear Heroes, New and Old,
The Equipment Chapter. Final content form and nearly final layout. This is the format that's going to the editor ... uh ... next week. I've:
Translated the entire section from lists to tables for easier scanning.
Completed the customization and hallmark sections.
Added quite a few new pieces of art.
Tightened up the layout.
Oh, and added chapter-specific footer art.
I mean...
2024-11-26 17:00:55 +0000 UTC
View Post
The wanderer, guided by aetherial spirits, sails elsewhere. Here, blood crickets sing and feed birds unused to the footfall of human or porc.
While working on the Our Golden Age books, I'm taking a bit of time to keep my imagination free-running as we hex-crawl in a less familiar land wit...
2024-11-09 05:47:12 +0000 UTC
View Post
It Certainly Feels Like A Journey
The waters purple, the sky whitens. Do waves chase each other there in heaven’s vault? A luminous aether hazes that convex expanse.
—That’s no aether, those are the clouds of a Middle World..
—I gaze at a world in the world?
—A world in a world. There are many. This is yours.
—Mine?
—Assigned, not owned. Yo...
2024-11-08 03:19:33 +0000 UTC
View Post
Fru eroés!
It is with an abundance of pleasure, some measure of sweat, a few tears, some nerves, and a small serving of vegetable elves that I present the last-but-one of the Lands of the Rainbowlands.
The Green Land.
For a while I'd wondered which would want to be finished first. In the end, it was this one.
I thought it would be swifter (is it not always so?) — but I wanted to also test a final layout on this one, which meant putting a lot of list...
2024-11-05 08:48:45 +0000 UTC
View Post
Wait, Is It A Journey?
Bob away. The waking mind is a liar. It promises comprehension. It promises a tether to ...
—*static. Second sight. Vision: hairless apes scrape and bow before a neon god they made. A sign flashes out its warning. The words of the Profit are written on your soul of silence.
... senseless flashes. Picket fences. Chrome wheels. Levitating plates ...
2024-10-28 08:20:36 +0000 UTC
View Post
What Could This Be?
I awake. Ayawake. Ïawacce. Ïacce.
Light burns away the inner voice.
—blip. pop. Daemon friend. Second mind. Second mind.
—Away, inner voice. Outer world calls.
I turn my <sense organs>. Senses? I have them. I experience ... wavelengths. Coalesce. Focus. Focus.
—Window: porthole. Motion: bobbing. Liquid: water?...
2024-10-21 08:43:08 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hello, heroes!
How was everyone's week? Weeks? It's been a busy, busy few on my end.
In the aftermath of the backerkit campaign we're working to get the pledge manager completely set up and ... it's a bit fiddly I hear ... which has put a bit of a crimp in my comms schedule. You know that picture from the Little Prince?
The one with the lizard eating the cargo package with the phon...
2024-10-18 22:46:19 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear heroes!
I'm back! Well, I've been back all week, but I wanted to have something to show for it.
The holiday away from writing and drawing was very useful. Initially I thought, maybe I'll take the offline peace and quiet and use it to finish up the last pieces of the OGA! But then after a few days I realized my wife was right and I needed a holiday.
So I finally tidied up the house after moving, threw away a lot of stuff, reorganized other things, took the baby for some ...
2024-09-27 22:29:13 +0000 UTC
View Post
Hello good heroes!
Goodness ... that was an August. Well, I've gone on at length about that, so this time back to something a little more classic. Finishing up the Our Golden Age book!
One thing I've struggled with a bit in the past is to figure out how exactly to break down the parts of the book that are setting and the parts that are adventure and the part that are mechanics.
...
2024-09-08 06:56:52 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear heroes and travelers,
!o, behold, the Vastlands Guidebook bootleg beta PDF is released!
50-odd hours left on the backerkit campaign for the physical version!
(scroll down for the attached file)
---///---BOOK DESCRIPTION---///---
Rules loose, psychedelic metal roleplay in the Vastlands at th...
2024-08-28 22:00:42 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear heroes,
My apologies for being somewhat absent this month. I wanted to prepare more updates for you from the book, the art, behind the scenes, but running the campaign is intense and full-on. We've hit $425,000 and still have four days to go. It's exciting to exceed our expectations and yet manage to not go completely overboard, creating ...
2024-08-27 08:58:39 +0000 UTC
View Post
Dear heroes,
I hardly have words. Thank you all for making this possible. Your support over the years, understanding over the last months, and immense turnout over the last few days.
I feel incredibly grateful and humbled. Also, to be honest, exhausted and sleep-deprived.
All the stretch goals, achievements, are reached and breached. I’ll admit, in the heady first 24 hours, I thought of additional things I could do, but while changing my daughter’s d...
2024-08-02 07:56:54 +0000 UTC
View Post
