Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen Updates, $89,755 and Counting

Ceres Games’ Kickstarter campaign for their turn-based RPG Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen is nearing its initial goal of roughly $115,000, having already gathered $89,755. With ten more days to go, it certainly looks like the game will get funded, so let’s check out the recent campaign updates, shall we?

Update #7 reveals a new stretch goal and reward tier. Update #8 announces a demon-naming contest. And update #9 introduces us to numerous locations of the game’s Cormac region with the help of a lengthy cultist pamphlet. Here’s an excerpt from the latter:

The gods are dead. Peace upon their virtues.

I was present when Rethgard burned and ash suffocated all cries for help. I witnessed the fall of Caer Pedryvan, long before it fell to the besiegers’ assaults. I listened to prayers lost in the wind, until hunger forced the godsforsaken to feast on their dead. I called to freedom all those doomed souls incarcerated by fear in Eastgate’s walls, hoping the fortress’s stone would keep the disease at bay that crawled out of the Dustmoor as Midlandshire’s righteous scourge. Do you hear the wailing? And the curses of those who had faith in your virtues? The day will come on which “The Black Hand” shall tear down the decrepit fortress and tear out the throats of those who put spoiled corn and rotten meat in the bowls of their brothers and sisters. Hear the wailings arise from Eastgate, while they joyfully watch martial games in Medcaut! They feast above the corpses of those slain for the audience’s enjoyment. Hear the jubilations of those who call the swords of the faithful to swing without rest! They who forge to lively song the chains that force once-proud Tharsians into Kvenland’s bondage. Men and women they wish to break like the trunks of the proud trees they cut down in the north and then ferry down to their stark lands, so they may be fashioned into lances to be shattered against comrades’ breasts. To their grave carry the virtues!

But what weighs such trivial bloodthirst compared to the blistering boil of Waystead, rampantly growing on a mountain of bones! I saw it fester like an ulcer and surround itself with walls upon walls, which cannot manage to keep out the worm that feeds from its putrid flesh. Greed erects its own citadel on Waystead’s hill and stares down upon a city that drowns in it. Do you see the poor lost souls? They are driven through taverns into the voracious arms of the many whorehouses, and declare their love towards ever new piles of useless junk, peddled by crooks and swindlers. At night the great horn resounds to announce the closing of the gates whose hinges creak like the rusted doors within forgotten dungeons. In truth, these districts are the prisons of the destitute! Do you still believe the tale that these walls keep out the foes? They are for you! You are their prisoners! You lie and betray. You defile all who enter your abodes without restraint. And how skilled you are at murdering each other… your ingenuity finds many paths. And the bastard child of your cruelty is torture that causes pain without death, so sweet release may not come to your suffering victims. And you call yourselves the keepers of the virtues? Carry to the grave their legacy!