'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.'

'This place is death.'

- Thula, apprentice shaman, upon entering the Writhing Oasis for the first time

Even among an abundance of amazing artwork pieces that we are lucky to have in Vagrus, the one depicting the weird and disgustingly beautiful Writhing Oasis is an exceptional one. Anyone who has seen the art of Péter Kovács, our amazing location painter, will know that he is quite at home when it comes to working on dark, haunting, or corrupted landscapes, while biological abominations are especially dear to his heart. Entrusting him with the Writhing Oasis - a cursed grove around a tainted pond that grew together to create a single deadly organism - was a no-brainer, and the result speaks for itself. I love all the little details and the strong call-back to Warhammer artwork.

'Disgusting little runts. Eaters of the dead. Pale vermin. I hereby vow to do all in my power to push them out of your neighborhoods and businesses, to bar them from decent citizens of the Empire, and in the end perhaps even rid this city of their filth altogether.'

- Tribune Septimus Votano of Deven in a speech about Wraiths during his campaign for office

'What draws them to this place, I wonder. Is it the utter sadness that permeates this forsaken expanse? Does it call to them when they begin to feel the chill breath of death? Perhaps there is a wordless language spanning all species that speaks as the realm of Ahskul starts to beckon.'

The wind was speaking to her, telling her terrible things, singing of her demise, chanting of her worst fears becoming manifest, of her never reaching her destination, never achieving her dreams, never being content, never finding rest or refuge or love. It kept on whining and screaming and whimpering until she herself started screaming in a vain attempt to blot it all out.

There are many quarries in the middle regions of the Empire, which consists of territories relatively rich in useful resources: stone, marble, crystal, and obsidian. Three of the sites stand out and will be locations in the game:

The Acherus Quarry is the largest and oldest one in the whole region. It was established before the Orc Wars when the armies of the Empire were in dire need of obsidian for the war effort. Since then, Acherus has run dry and only provides little of the black, glassy material every year. It is overseen by House Darius.

A lot has happened since our last project post where we looked back on 2018 as a sort of a year assessment.

Prologue

We finished the year with releasing the Prologue section of Vagrus just around Christmas. Our hopes were high and the results were... even better! Let's delve into the details.

A bit of indiedev 'humor' at Lost Pilgrims leading to an unconventional cake depicting the great old one, Cthulhu.

Well, we have been so busy that we skipped a beat in our originally planned monthly project updates. Which is actually good news if we are looking at it from a progress perspective. So what has happened since last year?

After returning recharged (and pot-bellied) from the holiday period we focused our attention on two things: 

• Creating additional graphic design capacity by finding more super-talented and like-minded artists to create environment and character art assets for us.
• Prototyping our hero combat to test its mechanics both in terms of graphics and game design.

The obvious intent behind choosing those focus areas was that we wanted to show more to our follower community on how the game is going to look like as well as display some of the game mechanics we're planning on using.