On behalf of us at Lost Pilgrims Studio, we would like to thank all the fantastic women in our lives and by extension, commend all women everywhere. Keep on rocking, ladies!

- The Lost Pilgrims Team

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We are happy to report that after a long, drawn-out battle with boxes, wrappers, and the employees of the postal services, we managed to send out all the physical rewards we could. All that remains are a handful of rewards where some information is missing (we did not receive a name or an address from the customer) or that wasn't picked up. But the vast majority of the rewards are on their way - if not at their destinations already.

The artbook of Vagrus is finally here (well, technically it is also on its way to everyone who ordered it) and holding it in our hands is indeed fantastic.

Admittedly, putting the book together was quite rough. Some of us thought that pulling it together from already existing artwork and writing texts around the art is going to take a couple of weeks. Turns out, compiling and writing something this big for physical publishing takes a handful of months, more like. All this in spite of doing a sort of a dry run previously with the smaller (A5) art booklet that went into the Collectors' Editions, albeit that had no texts accompanying the images. 

Tarkian Mercenaries are versatile fighters effective both in melee and from range, so they can be commonly seen in mercenary or outlaw rosters in different setups. They are quite tough with high Block values and good Initiative but light armor. All of this relegates them to a support role, which their Skills reinforce:

Necromancy is the arcane art of manipulating life-force, allowing practitioners to communicate with the dead and animate Undead minions. In most of the Riven Realms, this school of magic is associated with the Priests of Ahskul - worshipers of the God of Death - and Necromancers. The majority of the latter either belong to the Church, too, or are otherwise licensed by the Empire. Thus in Vagrus, Necromancer enemies almost always strengthen Imperial rosters, although you can come across some rogue practitioners, too.

There are a large number of settlements (cities, towns, villages, outposts, encampments) that you can visit in Vagrus, all of them unique locations even though they share some characteristics and features. For a long while now, we have planned a rework for the original UI - as we usually do with all UI elements, really.

'I heard that your son's birthday was late last moon. What did he get from you, my friend?'

'An army of his own. It is time for him to become a man and begin his own hegemony.'

- A conversation between the Trade Princes Tufael Rashad and Faisal Khamravi

Handjari are a caste in Tarkian society that has its power base in their great cities, wealth accumulated from trade, and ties to the priesthood of Inubis, the moon- and night-god of that desert realm. Professional soldiers organized into armies and warbands that were raised, trained, and employed by the Trade Princes are also called Handjari. These warriors are famous for being organized but also being able to take the initiative by themselves - specialist in skirmishing, light cavalry, and archery. Because of the close ties between the Empire and the Handjari Trade Princes, these soldiers can often be found attached to Imperial legions or garrisons.

'Kindly Sister' is a euphemism that has become a colloquialism throughout the long and bloody centuries of the Fourth Age, denoting the common members of Nosferatis Sisterhood, a coven of furtive dark sorceresses and witches. The religious organization has secretive goals revolving around magical research but beyond that the Sisters support Imperial agenda all over the Realms.

'While looking into the etymology of these remarkable, albeit quite belligerent, creatures, I was surprised to learn that not only does the Draconic tongue attribute a negative connotation to the base 'Ifrean' but also does so for some ancient, undisclosed reason that most contemporary speakers of the language do not know about. What or who this 'Ifrean' was to cast such a long shadow is something we will probably never know unless the Dragonlords themselves reveal the knowledge to me. However, it seems that the bad reputation of these reptiles is acknowledged even in the naming of their kind.'

The greatest thing about running open development is receiving amazing feedback from players that helps improving your game. The hardest thing about open development is identifying what the actual problem is that your players are having an issue with.

The perfect example of all this is Crew Combat in Vagrus, which is an aspect of the game that players complained about fairly regularly. After adding the Flee/Appease option, it got slightly better but not as much as we had hoped. While digging for the reasons, we came to some interesting realizations. Whenever we heard someone getting irked about how they bled out against a much stronger enemy, we asked whether they tried appeasing them and they pretty much all said "No, 'Flee' implied losing big time".