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.

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.

Superb news! Vagrus has been picked as one of the Top 10 upcoming itch.io #indiegames by 'ClemmyGames - The Best Of Indie Games'!

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.

This time we would like to introduce a brand new game mechanic to you that you will see quite a lot in Vagrus: the acquiring and delivering of news across vast tracts of wasteland. Carrying news between settlements not only makes sense from a gameplay perspective but has its foundations in-world, too, that is, comitati are known to have a vital role in distributing news and taking messages all over the continent of Xeryn.

In the last part of the Combat Guide we took a look at defenses and their importance. This time, we'll delve into effects that involve movement or its restriction in one way or another. 

In the previous part of our Companion Combat Guide (Part 1: The Basics) we left off at discussing the Leader's role in combat after outlining the basic rules of an engagement. In this part, we'll cover the actions that Companions can take during their turn.

The fellow you can see above is called Harvek, one of the potential Companions you can recruit for your comitatus in the game. As it is probably evident from the design, he is no hero. In fact, Harvek has spent a lot of time in the cruelest, most dangerous penitentiary institutions of the Empire. It may have been for crimes he did not commit but there was certainly enough on his plate to justify the imprisonment nonetheless. Having survived the ordeal, he's now out to find his place again. Harvek is Tainted, that is, a human who has mutated into a new form due to a mysterious arcane disease. These mutations make him an extremely dangerous foe but his real value comes from his contacts in the criminal underworld.

Interested in what's new? 
You can find it on GameJolt or Itchio, or below.

We at Lost Pilgrims will always remember 2018 as the year when it all began to come together, the year when everything changed for us. It was the year when development on Vagrus got out of the preparation phase and into hardcore production.

Now that this crucial year is done and over with, we felt it would behoove us to recount how 2018 went for those of you interested (and for posterity!).