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Hello, Trailblazers of the Unknown,
the day of the final duel has come! Our artist Mirko prepared concept art (we cannot really call them “sketches” any more!) of the two new scouts you voted. Let’s go!
The Half-Light has been proposed by Phil Szczpinski. Let’s learn the story of this mysterious individual…
As a biochemist of the Engineer’s Caste, The Half-Light would have worn a standard-issue environmental suit and face helmet. These lab uniforms, featuring thinner plating but extra technological utilities, were designed to keep the harsh chemicals and bio-hazardous materials commonly found in the laboratories of the Citadel from contaminating the body, rather than offer any serious defense against the rending attacks of a shadow creature. The Half-Light, always thinking ahead, and sensing the danger to his life coming from the requests of zealous luminary monks and nobles, modified and adapted his personal environmental suit and face helmet to be compatible with Lux technology and fled into the eternal night.
Now, in his current state, The Half-Light retains his former laboratory uniform, or rather what’s left of it after years of ragged wear and tear from experimentation, self-modification and survival in the darkness as an exile. The environmental suit has been patched in many places and thickened in others, using bits of scavenged tech, material debris and bone remnants, giving it a wild and almost medieval look. The various segments of plating are held together by a jet black sealant or glue that fills in all the gaps. On closer inspection, however, the black substance appears to writhe and mist outwards, as if trying to escape from underneath the armor plating. It is an all too familiar and dreadful substance, barely contained by a suit once designed to keep dangers out. Ironic, isn’t it?
Should he lose control and give in to the corrupting darkness completely, the black substance sealing the plating of The Half-Light’s armor begins to writhe and twist faster, expanding outwards until it weeps from between the segments of the environmental suit like the weeping of the moon that preceded humanity’s last breath. The Half-Light’s body swells in size and strength, his armor bulging and shifting to accommodate the transformation with the help of the gaseous/liquid nature of the shadow substance infused into his own body through countless experiments. When this happens, The Half-Light takes the shape a large, black avian beast, seething and surging with shadow substance, and uses talons he created from bone, debris and leftover technology to rip and tear his opponents.
We cannot wait to see how our writer Gabriele will further develop the Half-Light to fully fit it in the world and mechanics of Sheol. He is already thinking of the corrupted version and the card abilities…
This character, suggested by Stanley Chang, is very original.
A pair of identical twin, male and female. Both has been corrupted by the shadow, but their darker nature is suppressed by the presence of each other. Both wear a visor with a slit that faintly glows with red. Robes cover them from their neck to their feet, leaving their shoulders and arms exposed. The robe has warning signs wrapped around them because they reached the highest level as research and surveillance specialists.
If separated for a prolong period of time, they will both turn feral, greatly increasing their combat abilities but at the same time slowly inching towards being lost forever.
Also, Stanley proposed some mechanics for the Gemini that we found very interesting:
Both miniatures move and take actions as if they were a single model. Player may choose to separate them and they gain independent actions but still share a single Lux track. If they are separated (not on the same square), flip their character sheet to the corrupted side, and put a marker on their Lux Vial board at the start of EACH activation (one for male and one for female). If the marker reaches X amount, they’ve become lost. The Gemini is immune to the effect of corruption while travelling on squares without light stream.
We have to evaluate them and develop the concept to be balanced, but they are a very nice suggestion!
Now it’s your turn again to decide which one of these characters will be included in Sheol. And when we say “included” we don’t refer only to the miniature. We will include the character miniature, the standee, the dedicated board, the original weapon and lantern, the extractor markers, 13 dedicated skills (lightshield cards) and finally a specific character mission (Phew! *_*)
We will prepare 2 posts on our Facebook page, one per character. To vote, you have to share the post on Facebook of the character you prefer. The post that, before Saturday, May 30th at 14:59 UTC, gets more shares, will be the winner!
In today’s unlock, we add 2 more items in the shop! During a mission, players can buy goods from the game shop using Umbra extracted from lands or acquired by events or destroying shadows. Items can be “buffs” that last for one turn like Reflex sight (Increase weapon range by 2 until the end of the turn) or instant weapons like the L-Granade (Pay 1 action, do 2 damages in a 2×2 cells at distance 2).
Many of you are asking to know more about Sheol mechanics: starting tomorrow, we will delve into our game systems: the shadows, the heralds, the outer lords, the movement and combat system. Follow the next updates to find out more about the exciting gameplay of Sheol!
We have 135 shares already on social media, out of 150 we need to achieve our next social goal!
To unlock the game components required to play a new herald, The Mindblower, you must share this link on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram:
> > > https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/292099/sheol <<<
with any image of SHEOL you want and telling your friends about us – and remember to use the hashtag #preservethelight to help us keep track of the goal!
This morning, Roberto (from Ares Games) made a comment on the Comments page which we think should be read by all our backers – so, here it is!
I would like to chime in on the subject of “will the campaign fund” and “is the funding goal really a honest one” and “we don’t unlock stretch goals, so I don’t care”. I will do that once, because I do not think this kind of “technical” conversation adds a lot of value to the Comments page.
What I can say, based on my experience (18 KS campaign run, including 12 with Ares and 6 collaborations like this one – 17 for games and one to restore a historical chapel) the campaign CAN fund. The final 2-3 days’ stretch is usually worth as much as the initial one, PLUS we have 10 more of the “slow” days in-between to add. So this means we can be about 75-80% funded before the 48h marks, and become funded, and more, during the last 3 days.
HOWEVER – Kickstarter is a breeding ground for emotions. So I say, if you like SHEOL, you embrace what LOS is trying to do (with our help) – stay with us. We will fight together until the last day. If we fund, it will be a GREAT victory for all of us. If we do not fund- you have nothing to lose. Your card won’t be charged by Kickstarter. We will try again, and we will win next time.
– The 300K goal IS a honest one. There is a solid business plan behind it. As you can see, there ARE stretch goals. but they were never supposed to be anything crazy like other projects do (and then, maybe, making you wait for years to get them, while the game is at retail in the meantime). They are just there to keep the campaign interesting, with new little surprises. But as LOS said, 90% of what the game is, is there from the beginning, and you will get it if we fund.
On the other hand, if you are only interested in a proect if it delivers a metric cube of stuff (I did that myself a few times, you know, and most of that I never played with…), and you don’t find value in what SHEOL is offering you now – go. Whether we fund or not, this game will not benefit from adding a ton more of minis, or making 24 more “unique” heroes only different because of the hairstyle (sorry if I am exaggerating, but you know what I mean).
As all plans, the plan has some flexibiility of course. At the bare minimum of fuinding, SHEOL will be created, anyway, More funds will give more potential for reinvestment (e. g. on the retail launch of the game) and some profit for 2 years’ hard work of LOS.
– One last word about add-ons. Since the preview, LOS said that there are three optional buys, 29 Euros each, and an all-in option at 199 Euros, I don’t know how it is possible to be more transparent than this. THESE ARE OPTIONAL BUYS. You can pledge for them, that’s great. You cannot, you can still add them in the pledge manager (if we fund, of course). We ARE discussing about the possibility of turning some components which were the “final stretch goals” of the campaign into a fourth add-on. But IF we do that, (and will only do that if we see those goals cannot surely be achieved) they will STILL be part of the 199 all-in pledge.
Sorry for the long rant, As a final word. again: If you like SHEOL, please stay until the end, and help us to tell the world why you support this project, and celebrate with us when we fund. If you are not interested, you are not convinced of this or that so much – go in peace. We’ll meet again on some future projects we support together.
Thank you so much, explorers of the night! Stay with us for the next updates.
Preserve the Light!