Here's a small taste of what kind of enemies the player is going to face in Vagrus. Enjoy!

Many forms of undead have existed all around the continent of Xeryn ever since the Calamity. One of the side effects of the magical cataclysm is that in some places, the dead don’t rest in peace, but walk among the living. Much of this threat is dealt with by Imperials, but some remote areas are still constantly plagued by the undead. One such area is the Molten Tongue and Dvendar Tharr, the former kingdom of the Dwarves, where shuffling, burnt corpses rise to kill indiscriminately.

These charred corpses are in various degrees of degradation, but all show signs of burning (as well as other traumas). There is still some flesh that cling to their bones on most of them, albeit burned and charred. They are completely mindless, attacking living beings on sight. It is remarkable that no Dwarven corpses are reanimated in this way, suggesting that the curse could have some kind of connection to scavengers or the disturbing of the dead kingdom by outsiders. Cinderborns attack by mauling, clawing, and biting, and often fall apart quite easily.

We are extremely proud and happy to announce that our core team grew with a brilliant graphic designer, Szonja. We have been looking for a character artist for quite some time to ramp up our progress on that front and Szonja proved herself to be the best fit by miles with her unique style and open-mindedness.

Her main task is to bring our hero and enemy characters to life and help us with shaping the user interface as we enter Pre-Alpha stage with more parts of the game added each day.

We have a marvelous journey ahead and could not imagine any better traveling companion than Szonja. Welcome aboard!

Called the Desert of Black Sands, or the Black Desert (Arenas Negrasin the Imperial language), this vast, empty desert that has fine, black sand instead of any other color is probably one of the most ill-reputed places of the post-Calamity era. Nothing lives here, not even insects. The silence is deafening. People who enter the desert and stay for a while usually inexplicably disappear. In the center of the area is a terrible place, supposedly the source of all evil in the region: The City of the Dead, Arx Mortis.

Formerly the capital of the Sanvorati province and previously known as the Shining City, Calderum was made into its own horrible caricature by the Calamity. These days, Arx Mortis is a dead place filled with eerie moaning and groans, cast in perpetual twilight, beset by bone-chilling cold and a pale, frigid light emanating from the faded rocks that are almost all that remain from the once beautiful buildings and walls. Now these stand vacant and hollow, often reminding visitors of broken teeth peeking out of black gums.

Countless vagrants, opportunists, bullies, and broken men end up becoming highwaymen and bandits on the forsaken continent of Xeryn. These individuals are often organized into marauding gangs by the more charismatic lowlifes. Liberated tribes, made up almost exclusively of escaped slaves, also roam the Realms, taking what they will and can.

Truly, these men and women are a plague on the Empire, as there are neither enough resources to hunt them down, nor would it be entirely possible due to the many places where they can hide in the wasteland. Also, there seems to be an endless supply of people who end up becoming such lowly criminals.

The Brigand here is one such individual, and one of the first of many enemies the player can come across in Vagrus.

Hey guys, we've got another location artwork here for you, and a little backstory to match it:

Before the Calamity, Dvendar Tharr was the homeland of all Dwarves on the continent, a kingdom unmatched in technological advancements, inventions, and inventive ambition. One of the most ancient of Dwarven royal lines, the kings of Dvendar Tharr were sympathetic to humans and aided them from as early as the Second Age. The Inventor Kings showed early Imperials the art of metalworking and stonemasonry, helped build their cities, and taught them the art of mining. Dvendar Tharr itself was abundant with metal and precious stones, so much so that in their arrogance, the Inventor Kings of the Third Age forgot the wise ways of their forefathers and started rebuilding their massive stone fortresses and arching bridges purely from iron. 

Sedarias posed mightily on the Patreon high-resolution wallpaper reward back in January 2018. Now it is time unveil him to the public. Enjoy!

Meet Sedarias, one of the characters who can join your travelling company in the game. He is an Imperial human serving the Ordis Negras Solis (the Order of the Black Sun). Sedarias was knighted after a period of squire service under an infamous knight Konarius. Knights of the Black Sun worship Sergorod, God of Malevolence and Vengeance, and Ahskul, God of Death. The Order itself was created to bring the two clergies of these competing new gods closer in cooperation for the good of the Empire. Having been around for over 600 years, Ordis Negras Solis is the first and most powerful of the Imperial knightly orders. Its members are picked from the best soldiers, nobles, and warriors of the Empire.

From the very first moment in art design and development for Vagrus, we knew that the game world's haunting, post-apocalyptic beauty is key to conveying the atmosphere we want to create. Of course, that may not be saying much, since most games today rely heavily on visuals, it comes with the genre. More specifically, the challenge was to convey the right kind of atmosphere and find the art style that is perfect for that. We agreed soon that cartoon-like or pixel art would not do, nor would any other more stylized imagery. We settled upon the more realistic, but painting-like look, which gives a feeling almost akin to observing an old and faded piece of classical art. The other challenge was that the world of Vagrus has been a living and detailed environment for a long time now, so often our fantastically talented artists have to follow very specific directions on certain elements of an image.