'How hasty you are to point out that my people owe allegiance to your Senator. But your petty strife and pitiful intrigues bore us, Imperial, and our allegiance is merely ink on paper, not invoked by blood. We never shared battle, nor feasts, nor kinship. The Senator thought to purchase us with that crude contract but we are Moreldin, descendants of Caladnir Aen Daglunath and the great heroes of the Second Age, the victors of the Forgeheart Massacre, the defenders of the Kavraenar Ziggurath, and scions of Dread Skar'Voran. My kin owes nothing to yours save for the silver already paid as per your sorry little contract. Tell this to your Senator.'

'No way in Tartaris that we go toward the damned Vortex. Not a year has passed since a small part of it broke off and eradicated half the camp. No, we take a different route. Over the flats. Wait. Wait! Listen! I know what you have heard but it's all lies to keep us from going that way. Think about it. From a distance, we'll look to patrols as any other slave miner brigade. And once we make it over to the other basin, we're free! The Dragons are the key to our liberation. It's just a few days over the salt, boys.'

'We may have lost the Krawags but by then the sun was high up in the desert sky and scorched the survivors relentlessly. My comrades fell one by one and we were so weak and thirsty that we just left them behind to die on the scalding sands. Only a handful of us reached those accursed ruins. One of the men recalled having seen the stone walls and broken arches on our march towards Dragmolac. We dragged ourselves atop another dune and there they were below us, like a jumble of rotten teeth sticking out of sick gums. But we still rejoiced upon seeing them because they had cover and shade; and that shade proved to be our undoing.

Specters are a relatively common phenomenon in Vagrus's dark, cruel setting but that does not take away from how dreaded they are. Angry, insane souls stuck between life and the afterlife, these sad creatures roam the forsaken places of the world - often locations where they were slain, haunting the abandoned reaches of the Empire. The initial challenge in encounters with Specters is finding ways to harm them: by nature, these entities are between worlds and thus can not be damaged by normal means. Once you find the means, they are less of a danger but must still be taken seriously.

Hi Folks,

Thank you for all the feedback you shared with us in the last few weeks! This was immensely useful from the smallest bug reports to the super-ambitious ideas on how to turn Vagrus into a AAA title [thanks for crediting so grand a potential to our tiny team], and we appreciate you taking the time to help us with your insights.

Lately, we have been working on Crew Combat to further enhance its mechanics and the latest improvement is the 'Flee' feature. Let's check it out!

Flee!

Fleeing will now be added to a selection of Crew Combat encounters with the following considerations:

Ah, yes, the Ghouls. Are they Undead? Not quite. But they are equally disgusting and very, very dangerous. This one is about to leap at a tasty target.

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Our crowdfunding campaign is LIVE at Fig.co. Get instant access to the Alpha build now!

With the previous large update (Codename: Bandage), we have introduced some changes to Scouting on the campaign map and we thought that we should give you a more detailed change log of what exactly happened. These alterations all appear on the Scouting Result UI.

• A set of colored chevrons now indicate the success or failure state of your scouting in each direction instead of text saying how things went.
• For each successful scouting, a set of icons appear that indicate what to expect there with chances for each of these outcomes next to the icons. The scroll icon indicates an Event, the axe icon means a crew combat encounter, the compass shows an exploration Task destination (but we'll implement this feature in the future), and the crossed-out circle indicates that nothing happens.
• For each critical success, you will now get more precise percentages and more detailed information in the case of Events. The blue scroll indicates a priority Event (story-related or fixed local Event), while the golden scroll means a random Event (general or region-specific).
• Scouting now also provides information about the viability of hunting and foraging on the scouted nodes. Percentages represent the expected chances of such activities on the nodes. The less successful the scouting, the less  accurate the percentages are (with critical success being perfectly accurate).

As you can see, we have been working on making Scouting more desirable for players, as we feel that in its current form it is rather under-used. This is but a first step - we have many more ideas and will hopefully be able to implement them as we go along. Thank you for all the amazing feedback and improvement suggestions you all gave us!

In a long line of non-location-specific artwork, we have a version of the 'tunnels' to show you, which we use with many underground ruins, building interiors, mazes, and so on. Variants include lit corridors as well as dark, abandoned ones. This particular location artwork was done by Attuss Varga along with a whole lot of others of this type. These illustrations are key to the game's thick, dark atmosphere and luckily for us, Attuss has always done a great work with them.

With the relatively recent arrival of Factions to Vagrus, you guys finally got your hands on a new way to specialize your comitatus. Up until now, this meant some obscure (albeit very welcome - I'm looking at you, road tax) boons and perks but now, with the addition of claimable rewards, Factions are going to become your best friends.