'Worry not, general. Their right flank won't be able to cross the gullies to press your lines. I and my apprentices will make sure that the enemy is flooded in corpus vile. Worry not about squandering resources, either. Those same soldiers in the gully will provide the reinforcements.'

'You can say a lot of nastiness about the Imperials but one thing is for sure: they know how to build stuff. Take Fort Larius, for instance. They constructed it over seven hundred years ago. It survived the war against the Dragons and the Orcish invasion! The fools abandoned it and the ages gnawed at its walls and turrets incessantly until it became a hollow ruin. And yet, the towers and walls still stand, only awaiting someone to occupy the place and make use of it.'

'Day 54 - Another week goes by and the vile horde broke again on the wall of our scuta today like the fierce tidal waves break on the rocks of Anurao Bay, the place of my birth. Most of the day after dawn devolved into a cruel dance in the mud and gore - one of pushing and pulling and stabbing at the rhythm dictated by the roar of our foes and the bone whistle of our centurion. Yet nobody complains; no true legionnaire would. The green-skinned bastards have to be stopped here. For our families. For our Empire. For the Emperor, too, though I would rather pray to Old Hand Marcus than to the distant, slumbering God-King in our capital that I've never seen. But best keep that to myself, else the Priests of Sergorod find some punishment for me. They would sure love to. Perhaps there will be a night attack, too, at least that's what the talk is around camp now. If so, and considering the losses of the 3rd and 7th cohors in the last few days, I am not sure I will ever see the capital...'

As the name suggests, Tainted Madmen are unfortunate souls driven insane by the arcane disease called the Taint. Even if it does not directly erode their minds, the more extremely mutated of these forsaken are cast out by family and society, which is often enough to start them down a path of madness and desperation.

As enemies in the game, Tainted Madmen are often encountered all around the central regions of the Empire. Living in city gutters, sewers, or caves in the wilderness, they often emerge to waylay passersby.

The greatest cause for mutations in the Riven Realms is a mysterious arcane disease that people call the Taint. There’s no telling how it spreads or why it attacks the ones it does; its workings have eluded medical science altogether. These days, every third human on the continent is Tainted. The Taint begins with a period of incubation when the victim falls gravely sick and suffers seizures and spells for days or weeks. About half of them perish during this interval.

Stone forests are comprised of thousands upon thousands of standing, pointed stone spires or pillars of varying heights and girth. Carved by arcane winds initially, and further chipped by the unceasing gales ever since the post-Calamity wastelands were formed, these forests are now mazes of rocks and gullies where one can easily get lost. Occasionally, a 'stone tree' falls when there's movement about, which makes navigating these labyrinths even riskier.

As we are cycling through and iterating the various UI elements of the game, we have now arrived to the Codex and gave it a neat little redesign. Many of you have enjoyed reading Codex entries (yay!) and we wanted to upgrade and update the experience, especially along the lines of your feedback.

The Empire has been strewn with ruined fortresses and keeps since the Calamity. Additionally, the brutal wars and conflicts ever since the catastrophe have done considerable damage to the reclaimed and rebuilt forts, leaving many in disrepair or outright abandoned. Fort Larius, Fort Teltulis, Fort Tirnos, one of the Twin Towers - the list goes on and on.

Another crucial game mechanic that is being added to Vagrus as we are writing this is a system of Rumors. Rumors are short entries in your Journal that are meant to guide players to content and unlock locations on their Chart in order to help them plan journeys and find places. We have come to the conclusion during playtesting that not only do we need to differentiate these Rumor entries from your Objectives in the Journal but we also need to separate them entirely and move them to a different pane. As evident from this, Rumors have undergone quite a lot of change since their original conception.

Have you met the kingpin Skornar in the Prologue? He's quite the colorful sort. Good news is: he'll make his return in the main game as a Companion you can recruit! Ten years older and much grumpier, the warrior has a serious grudge against those who ousted him from Avernum's criminal underworld. Yet his story arc will involve much more than that, with the central theme of coping with growing old - not an easy plight for a warrior and leader such as Skornar.