'That thing hunted them. Relentlessly. Worse than any predator they had seen before, it hounded their steps through the forest called Smuggler's Cloak by the commoners. Yet no cloak proved to be enough to hide them from those horrible reptilian eyes. The creature was clever, too. It did not attack them but tracked them from a distance, waited until they were exhausted, harried, and desperate. And then it took them, one by one. The last wretched fellow gave himself up to the first patrol he stumbled across; better break rocks in prison for the rest of his life than fall prey to a Krawag.'

Foul-mouthed, easy-going, hearty, and chatty, the creature now known as 'Vorax' (meaning 'ravenous' in Imperial) is an undead abomination who can become one of your companions. He woke up one day in this bloated unliving form with no memory whatsoever of who he was or what he had done to deserve this fate. Yet his will is free, unbound to dark magicians (a rarity for undead), so he decided not to worry about it and get about his new 'life' with great enthusiasm.

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.

The Imperial word calerus has come to describe the many crystal forests that now dot the continent of Xeryn. The vast majority of these forests can be found in the east, in the province of Sargot Kala but some have grown in the central region of the Empire. Some caleri can be visited in the game, such as Loom, or the twin caleri simply called North Calerus and South Calerus.

The wretched animated beings that plague the desolate Riven Realms have many names, even the general, rotting raised dead such as the ones on the image: shamblers, unliving, awakened, undead, corpsemen, and many more. Travelers who died on the road and came back as undead are typically referred to as 'Forsaken', however, and these unfortunate creatures are often drawn to living travelers, seeking to extinguish their lives at the command some unfathomable curse.

'They may be called the 'Children of the Calamity' but make no mistake, dominus. These terrible creatures are far from being child-like. When you see one, do not hesitate; they won't.'

In Character design - Part 1 we talked about the types of characters in Vagrus, focusing especially on Companions and their roles in the game. Now it's time to move onto the topic of what exactly goes into the graphic design phase of these characters.

It's spring 1990 and I'm in elementary school. My best friend brings a book to school that he reads aloud to a small group of us during our big walks at lunch break. The book has a weird old wizard on the cover conjuring smoke from a crystal ball. More interesting are the illustrations on the inside: intricate black and white drawings of strange fantasy creatures and dungeon locations. The little book is Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson's Warlock of Firetop Mountain, translated to our native language. Most of you probably know that it's a gamebook that you do not read from start to end but in branching numbered chapters that make the story personal and add replayability. Yet they are much more than simple choose-your-own-adventure books because they include a stat and combat system you have to manage throughout the adventure - albeit a really simple one.

This week's character reveal is the Orc Marauder. Orcs are popular fantasy characters with many different iterations since their addition to fiction by Tolkien. The Orcs of the Riven Realms are creatures prone to violence, sharing a mystical past and origin but they were created fairly recently. They are tribal in their homeland called Darkmoor but rarely travel in groups when far from it.