Black Market Guide to Immortality

We are entering the last week of the project! Though we're just around the corner from unlocking our 100K Stretch Goal, adding more moon lore to the book, we thought it's been enough time to update you on how we were doing.



First, to show you a bit of what your generosity is allowing us to create, here's a draft of our original soundtrack's cover! You can see Seul-ki conducting before an orchestra of spirits in Dangukese royal halls. We're excited that we get to make these artistic flourishes with what we do. 

Ranger: Vaultrunner/Animist: Voyager of Forgotten Storerooms and Cleric: Emptiness Domain/Oracle: Enlightenment Mystery have been added to the preview documents! When able, we'll continue to update the pdf with material that's been unlocked. You'll get to see them slowly but surely over the coming weeks. Please let us know what you think as we take community feedback to punch up the material a touch. 

For our 130K stretch goal, we've decided to put out a new one-shot: Legacy of the Wailing Souls. It will feature Seul-ki hiring you as part of a team of adventurers to help her scavenge a Society of Wailing Souls cult hideout that's been largely (not entirely) abandoned after the events of Undying Corruption. She's in the process of gathering materials to write the in-game Black Market Guide to Immortality and needs to get her hands on a last secret that her mother has been hiding. Namely, how she has lived for so long and the source of her connection to the Primordial Fox.

We will also use these new resources to touch up Dirge for My Bygone Days for both 5e and PF2e official release.

In preparation for the one-shot's potential release, we've put out a poll to get your preferred tier of play down! We can make this newcomer friendly or give a rare challenge for higher level adventurers. Your choice here will absolutely help shape the contents of this adventure!

We're also excited to announce that we'll gather again for another livestream to answer questions and wind down the campaign! For this, we'd like to get as many people as we can, so if it's at all possible, we might move around the time. You will of course be notified immediately.

For now, we're eager to spend several hours answering more questions if any, chatting, and watching as the final hours count down. Please be sure to join us!



To leave you with one last preview, the Skull Gwishin has largely finished being modeled! That is now 4 out of 5 of the team-chosen copies. We will begin voting on which other monsters or npc's you might like to see modeled after the project!

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reply here or email us at [email protected]. Or please join our Discord server by clicking the bottom banner!

That was quick! Not only have we unlocked the collaboration with our friends at Mithral Canvas, the book gains one more homebrew subclass to be voted on! Voting has already been underway in the polls. Both 5e and PF2e polls for favorite classes are up and the winner for either will be selected to receive a subclass. Of course, the winner for one system will be converted to the other as well, so in effect, you're getting two subclasses for the price of one. What a bargain!

As item experts, Mithral Canvas will again help shape a number of magic items in our book to also be shared with their community. Much of it will be original items based on our research, complementing our legendary items we've uncovered from our research.



To tease out our $110K stretch goal:


Season 2!! Of Stellaluna's Undying Corruption Actual Play, off to the southern province of Nampung. Provided we reach 120K, we'll have enough funding to pay performers to produce season 2 very shortly. In addition, there will be some adjustments such as encounters from Black Market Guide included! These will replace some more generic encounters derived from creatures in the monster manual.

In addition, you can expect us to tease out some NPCs from the NPC Guide as well. The production of season 2 will weave these two projects together as intended.

More to come! We're weaving a number of rewards just to keep up with ya guys. If you have any questions or comments, do reply here or email us at [email protected]. Or you can click here to join our Discord server!

Hello all, happy Friday! As we enter the final two weeks of the project, we have some exciting news to share: we’re partnering with Grim Moon Studio and their 5e campaign, Nightfell The Witches’ Path. Nightfell is an established horror-fantasy setting and winner of a 2022 Gold ENnie Award for Best Monster/Adversary.

We felt this was an exciting opportunity to partner with another group of creators working to create their original setting for 5e play. As we reach our 100K stretch goal, an expansion of lore featuring the Lunarian Conclave, we thought playing off of their Lunar Cultist homebrew class would give us an opportunity to do more storytelling with the interesting groups and factions on the moon!

How to Get Your Bonus

We're also hard at work updating the playtest documents. By the next update at 95K, we'll have both the 5e and PF2e playtest docs updated with previews of the Cleric: Emptiness Domain and Ranger: Vaultrunner subclasses for 5e and Animist: Voyager of Forgotten Storerooms apparition and Oracle: Awakening mystery for PF2e. We're inching towards 92K, so it won't be long now!

Previews


At the same time, our miniatures have started printing very nicely! The degree of detail's very impressive, especially how they translate well into physical form. Just wanted to share!

We've also teased a legendary encounter in our book! Dao Lao Gui, in the context of our setting, are venomous insectoid monsters that infest and feed off of the spiritual energies inside mountains. Their influence putrefies the waters, making nearby areas uninhabitable for other organisms. They were created by Xiangliu, minister of one of the Long Xin creator gods, as a scheme to turn the lands uninhabitable, returning life to the seas.

The Dao Hive-Mother, the colony's queen, breaks apart human matter and uses it in a process of internal alchemy to create soldiers to expand her territory. It's possible for people to someday recognize a dao lao gui, even the hive-mother, bearing distinct physical features of a friend or family member that disappeared.

They prefer hunting during storms and possess the ability to fire excessively venomous darts from their bodies. Everything about them symbolizes hatred for life on land.

More to come soon!

Good morning! We've reached in about 11 days what we've accomplished in our previous project. We still have several weeks and many more stretch goals to share. Speaking of, let's break down what's been unlocked and what our next goal is over the horizon.

We're at a grand total of 20! With 5 of our own choices, backers that received the Sage tier and above can vote on 15 (possibly over 3 rounds just so this doesn't become super overwhelming) monsters for us to make into 3D Printable Minis. Talking about it with WyrmWorks, we've decided that in addition to the three we've previewed, we've chosen the Skull Gwishin and the Bulgasari to model. Everything else will be your pick!

Currently on the 5e side in the polling, Dragonborn, Tiefling, and Elf are winning.

On the PF2e side, Leshy, Elf, and Orc are the overwhelming favorites. Given we have two elves in the running, we're going to design the two as uniquely distinct concepts and convert them. In other words, both books will be receiving two different elves from one another! Just to keep this fair and to not deprive anybody of their just rewards due to the overlap.

Next Goals: 95K and 100K!

Once again, we've reached out to our friends at The Mithral Canvas to partner up for The Black Market Guide! Some of you may remember the Treasures of Daehan Minguk series that they put out. We're going to work on a totally new set of magical items for both of our communities based on aesthetic themes and mythological stories from across East Asia. Something enticing for both of our communities!


And just as a bit of a preview from our side, we're excited to preview another item. The True Samadhi Furnace is a forge that can hold within it the inextinguishable samadhi fire, using it to bring to life legendary weapons, armor, and magical items of all sorts. Supposedly, the furnace is also hot enough to melt down immortals into elixirs of immortality.

It's an artifact in possession of the Jade Emperor who, in Journey to the West, once ordered Son Wukong sealed inside of it. Only for him to survive because, well, what else do you expect from the Monkey King? It brings to physical reality the flames of total spiritual purification.

Now that we've finally reached this point, we can start tallying the votes for the most popular classes that you've chosen. Based on whichever wins at the end, we'll design a completely new subclass to be added into the book.

So far, the most popular choices are: Warlock for 5e and a tie between Swashbuckler and Wizard for PF2e! Like before, based on the picks, we'll do cross-conversions, so both 5e and PF2e will receive something like what the other's receiving. We'll be taking a good, close look at how this plays out.

Folks, NHP is going to the Moon. We will include more thorough worldbuilding pertaining to the Lunarian Conclave! The civilization of the conclave was first started by a number of moon gods, like Chang'e and Tsukuyomi, were exiled or imprisoned there, then organized as others of different pantheons began to take notice. Lunamorphs, descendants of the rabbits that accompanied the first gods, created the society as one part theocracy and another part based on science and exploration across the recesses of space.

This is in addition to the Thieves' Guild NPCs, which... well, what sort of criminal organizations could be on the Moon! Makes you wonder. We're eager to preview more the closer we get to 100K!

As we begin to settle into the halfway point, thank you all once again for being here with us and for helping bring this book into being. If you have any questions, do comment here or email us at [email protected].

You can also click on the following image to join our Discord server!

Goodness, we've just blazed through our entire first set of stretch goals in just the one week! Absolutely amazing and sincerely, till the ends of my days, I have nothing but gratitude for both the returning backers continuing to support us and new backers giving us this opportunity.

With that, we will get to work on expanding our lore featuring the Four Benevolent Beasts and the Four Perils. We'll include a full array of lair actions, hazards, regional effects, various campaign hooks, and include various unique minions they can call upon to help build a most memorable boss fight.

Some folks have been mentioning they'd like to see tieflings/nephilims based on them! Certainly a fine idea. Speaking of, new core lineage/heritage! That brings us up to 3 total, meaning we'll pick the top 3 ancestries/species in each poll, both 5e and PF2e, and get right to work on making a new heritage/lineage for them.

At 85K, our total number of new printable minis increases to 20! Rachel has been printing and sanding them and we're very eager to share them very shortly. 

We've also reached 750 backers which means everyone receives a free sticker (if you want it!). We'll ask you in your survey which you'd like most and send them to you accordingly with your order. Thank you so much!

Me and some of our writers and consultants (Tan Shao Han, Adam Ma, and Horkewnochiw Ayoro) will stream on YouTube to discuss some of what we've been working on for the book! We'll get more into detail with our player progression system into immortality and the various immortal NPC creature adjustments we have in mind. This will also be an opportunity for us to speak a bit on our cultures and how we've explored them in our writing, both for this book and outside.

It'll be a chill, informal chat, hence we're inviting you into our Writers' Room! If you can, we'd love to see you there!

Previews



The kamuypo is an exciting concept for a heritage/lineage based on Ainu mythology. Kamuypo literally means "Child of Kamuy". Kamuy is an Ainu word that often describes the gods, but can also refer to anything generally inhuman (gods, spirits, animals, elements, objects). Being born of a union between a god and a human, your soul carries with it a raiment inherited by your divine parent. It can materialize as cloth, accessories, or armor that you wear.

A limited number of times a day, you can tap into its power to wear something akin to a flesh suit that shares the appearance of your Kamuy parent. We're thinking of treating this like the Sangun's divine transformation. This ability is based on Ainu beliefs that Kamuy descend into the world wearing the physical hides and forms of beasts. When they pass on, they leave behind their flesh to serve both as sustenance and as valuable materials for tools, being a gift for the people's continued livelihoods. By donning the raiment of your soul, you can wear a similar body, controlling it from within as an organic armor.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment here or reach out to us at [email protected]! You can also join our Discord server, which is really starting to pop off! Click the banner to join us.