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sitting w mira's words today (surprise, surprise)

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Opened up my inbox, feel free to ask me stuff (as long as it's not rude or weird) and I'll respond as soon as able. ✌️

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if you're feeling powerless right now—and god knows I am—here's a reminder you can donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, the Trans Law Center, Gaza Soup Kitchen, the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, and hundreds of other charities that will work to mitigate the damage that has been and will continue to be inflicted

life continues. we still have the capacity to do good, important work. that matters

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yesterday's halloween piece

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Hi. Things are bleak, I know that. I know that we paid for Trump's last term with blood and it is likely the price will be blood again.

But listen to me. LISTEN.

You do not have to force yourself to witness horrors as an act of activism. It is not a form of activism. You can put your phone down, you can block that horrific video. We cannot win if you cannot fight and you will not be able to fight if you are hopeless.

Do not let them guilt you into this. People who are exhausted are easier to walk over. Take care of yourself, find community where you find joy.

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the beginning of memory

from my comic, THE S☉LAR SYSTEM.

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Dance of the Astral Witch

I will have 11" x 17" prints of this gal at Geek Girl Con next month!

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Dance of the Astral Witch

I will have 11" x 17" prints of this gal at Geek Girl Con next month!

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9 of Swords

Prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/mxmorgan/9-of-swords/

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9 of Swords

Prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/mxmorgan/9-of-swords/

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Midsommar

Pen and ink on Arches paper

5.25 in x 6.5 in (Framed)

For sale here: ko-fi.com/s/68fe782954

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Project Update 09/01/24

Hello, Kinfolks. We're a little under 60 days from releasing Book 1: Cliath, and I wanted to give you all a quick update, provide a few book facts, and hope this lets you share the excitement the rest of us have been feeling!

Book Layout

As you might've seen from our previews, writing is transitioning from writing to copy editing and book layout! If you haven't yet, check it out! The first two chapters are done, and chapter 3 is well underway. Outside of my work on Hearthbound, this is my first major book project, the largest book I've written, and the insights I've gained are ones I think might help future community content partners publishing work on Storyteller's Vault.

On Bluesky, a few months ago, I commented that you should "plan to take as much time doing layout as you do for writing." Even if one writes the book inline right in the desktop publishing program, annotation will still add time. With a WtE book we want to not just provide an adventure and a crash course on the Tellurian, but to also be a roadmap for Storytellers, new and old alike. This has happened on three fronts. The first and most important is we're taking the time to properly index everything in a way that'll let you look up specific book information quickly. The second is how we streamline information through the liberal use of cross-referencing in footnotes. In early chapters, you read truncated summarization, and in the footnotes, you can find book sections that expand on the information you're looking for and let you tune out the things that may not be so important for you to know at the moment. The third and most important feature, however, is where able, we cite our sources for our information. Should a Storyteller wish to learn expanded information on topics, they have a direct book and page citation where they can find deep lore to help construct their chronicles.

Cracking the Bone: now in coloring flats stage

For those that haven't been following, we are returning to old form. The moment you open Book 1, you'll be greeted with a fully illustrated and colored 22-page comic book showcasing life in the Age of Heroes. This story is centered around Dante (he/they,) our protagonist, and his first steps towards his First Change as a Bitten Homid Philodox. Throughout the book, we'll follow his journey towards becoming a Cliath, forming his pack under Earwig and his first mission as a Zedakh in a pack of other Queer Garou. In successive books, you'll see him transition from a scared baby gay Cub to a respected Elder in the Eastern Concordat! We're all absolutely thrilled to follow them on their journey. Illustrating this comic is the highly talented @mekanikaltrifle, who has partnered with us to bring Dante's story to life. I have a single pane I'd like to show you, bearing in mind these are just a first pass!

Book Pricing Information

We've also finalized some of our possible pricing on this book. On Storyteller's Vault, Community Content is priced on a per-page basis. The average is considered to be 12 cents per page. I did some early market work by releasing Hearthbound on a pay-what-you-want model with a recommended pricing of $2.99, totaling roughly 8 cents per page. I advertised exclusively here and on other social media platforms to queer audiences to help gauge a fair price for materials explicitly marketed to that audience. Of those that decided to pay for copies of the book, readers paid an average of 5$ per copy for an average of 14 cents per page. Given the voluntary nature of the release, we on the team have agreed that we'll be charging a rate of 14 cents per page for this release, which puts us on par with pricing for similar releases with a matching pagecount. With layout underway, we're currently looking at a book length of around 200-250 pages. 50% of proceeds go to the publisher, and the remainder will be split equally among all contributors, myself included. I and another artist have pledged to donate the entirety of our shares toward preserving the Kalapuyan language.

Book 1: Cliath releases on Halloween day!

I'd like to give a shout out to @a-boros-named-seamus, @madamebadger, The Bohemian, @peltofash, @ar2456, and Durodragon for supporting me on ko-fi, through yours and the donations of other ko-fi sponsors, we've managed to hire cultural consultants to review about half of what's been written. Because we weren't able to review all of our written words, we've narrowed our focus onto some of our most sensitive subject-matter, and believe that what we have coming out will be the inclusive Werewolf: the Apocalypse Quickstart you've all been waiting for. Thank you! It means so much to us that we have our own sept of Kinfolk out there who believe in this project!

If you'd like to help sponsor this project, subscribe on ko-fi to help us pay Cultural Consultants to work with us! We have some cool perks for subscribing, including access to book and setting previews, the ability to give feedback on game content we're producing, personalized advice for your own tables, and can even get a shoutout right in the book.

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The release of Werewolf: the Apocalypse 5th Edition has evoked a sense of urgent inspiration in me. I found the news inspiring because it marks the launch of a new product that rings so close to the original game in which its new premises instantly evoke a lost-world setting perfect for new players to uncover through revelation. And with it, a sense of urgency that a large chunk of the game’s horror pathos and cultural representation will be lost in lieu of chronicles centered around direct action, high entertainment, and transactional resolution.

First and foremost, I applaud the efforts of anyone wanting to excise Werewolf: the Apocalypse, and it’s fandom, of it’s toxic player base that has festered far too long. Anyone taking that on isn’t blind to something that is both wonderful and incredibly problematic, and it requires a collaborative effort to address meaningfully. It means being willing to internalize hard and profoundly uncomfortable truths. 

When I look at the prior editions, I consider its inherent value and feel that the things that made the original editions of Werewolf so special to me don’t entirely align with a large portion of it’s old player base. This is not for those players. In some ways my aim with this is small, with the understanding my target audience is also small, and this space exists for them. 

Werewolf: the Essentials is a project culminating my 25 years of entertaining and horrifying players. This is a carefully curated gaming experience tailored to Queer tabletop audiences primarily, although I am confident it will resonate with many others as well. This started as something I was working on alone but quickly has grown to include a pack of other avid Players and Storytellers who have felt left behind by the current direction of the gameline. I am laying out every little trick, twist, and ounce of Storytelling experience I have acquired over the years. In many ways, this is the quintessence of my inclusive World of Darkness, and a passion project that I hope those who read this may too come to appreciate.

In the first and second editions of the various splats published across the World of Darkness, the Storytellers Handbook gave Storytellers the raw narrative tools to convey the world to their troupe of players. As time has progressed, the sourcebooks to follow have greatly expanded to include Garou society, their relationship to Gaia, and to each other. As the editions expanded what they made available to Storytellers and Players, some of the original content of earlier editions was left out. By the time the 20th Anniversary Edition was being written, many of the edits were made to cut back a bit on the roughage and “get to the meat and potatoes” of mechanics crunch. In that way, the edits were a complete success, but something important was lost.

The earlier ST guides laid out explicitly that the World of Darkness is first and foremost a horror game. Essays within their pages provide advice on using textural descriptions and different modes of storytelling to lure in players and make the hairs on the backs of their necks stand on end. These remarkable essays are now lost to those who don’t possess the older editions. They serve as a toolset that could be applied across any RPG, and not just Werewolf alone.

W20 fell short of delivering a fully serviceable RPG to it’s Storytellers, however well-intentioned. It had all of the main bones of the setting and stats but no guidance on how to turn it into a game for one’s players. Taking it a step further, some of the writing in this new edition only managed to alienate modern audiences. 

The use of in-character narration to express setting information in prior editions seems an attempt to convey the horror and pathos of the world that would be difficult to get across in stats alone. The information contained in that first-person text is among the most important parts of the setting, but it often fails to convey the true horror of the world of Garou. In many ways the World of Darkness was intended by those who created it to be a place of genuine terror and horror, and not merely “savagery” for its own sake. Horror is a very complex basal guttural emotion that sits in the ganglia, ready to tug the emergency brakes on your body in the presence of what it believes to be a tangible threat. There are many complex higher emotions, but when it comes to the lizard brain, it takes considerable effort to trick it into getting spooked. Invoking a sense of horror in a horror chronicle is a complex enough endeavor that, by and large, these efforts fell short of delivering that experience. 

Werewolf: the Essentials is to serve as a masterclass in using those old tools to introduce new players not just to Werewolf and the World of Darkness on the whole. It gives these important storytelling tools to new and future storytellers in any game, that they might continue genuinely terrifying their players for many more years to come. The passages found in this series can add narrative value to not just Werewolf, or even Vampire and other World of Darkness tables, but also horror writing on the whole. Furthermore, this project aims to streamline the availability of that information and provide guidelines for Storytellers wishing to conduct research using the labyrinthian older editions.

Every sourcebook in this series will grow with your tables, providing increasingly more powerful stats, guidelines for making more powerful NPCs and PCs, and serve as a continuation of the legacy games’ metaplot. Some elements you’ll be reading will, for older players, be surprising at times. Some historical events are shifted further in the past, and others eliminated entirely. This project aims to make the presentation of the game a little more timeless, so it’ll hold relevance to tables now, as much as it will 20 or 40 years from now.  The World of Darkness is now something far too large for any one person to fully comprehend while providing enough tools for one to explore deep lore that holds the most relevance to their tables.

Werewolf: the Apocalypse has a long history of problematic and exclusionary elements, both in it’s fandom and, sadly, often in it’s published work. Despite this, I see more value in this game than the literature would have you believe at face value. This project is an attempt to increase the inclusivity in this game I love while also helping introduce new players and Storytellers to this world. This is a glimpse of something absolutely beautiful, horrifying, and unique, contributed to by a group of equally passionate artists and writers. Even if the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, the next best time is today. If you can listen critically, and take the lessons between these pages, then maybe you too can come to find the Glory, Honor, and Wisdom within the depths of our darkest fears.

Book 1: Cliath launches October 31st, 2024 on Storyteller's Vault

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Greetings, folks! This week we’re highlighting Mamó’s homestead - her hut between the Forest and the Bog. Our Art Director, Morgan, goes further into detail on the design.

When Henry and I were first pinning down concept art ideas and inspirations, I knew I would have to shift my style in a direction I’ve not typically explored in my work (in a good way!). I’ve been studying gouache as a medium for a little bit, and a large inspiration for Henry was the Random House Book of Fairy Tales, a collection of illustrated folk tales from his childhood. I drew a lot of inspiration from Eyvind Earle, the graphical illustration master and a huge inspiration to make art in my youth. In my research, I also studied the style of Little Golden Books from the 1960s. I had a hand-me-down set from my mom, which I read a whole lot as a kid. These all felt like a good base to evoke a feeling of a fairy tale we’ve heard in our childhood. In designing the homestead, I wanted to visually ground Mamó at a neutral point - on the west lies the dark bog and to the east is the forest leading to the realm of the fae. Ultimately, however one chooses to play the witch can make her the sinister presence the townsfolk say she is, or more benevolent than we were led to believe, and I felt it was important to visually communicate that in every environment in-game. I enjoy a story of a witch that can manipulate her scenery, creating a false sense of security to the observer. But is Mamó that type of witch or simply a self-sufficient old woman?

Follow our Discord for game and studio updates!

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today is my birthday so I'm sharing a few of my favorite personal pieces and hope you enjoy them too 🌿💜

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Commissions are open!

Above are types of commissions available this round. OCs, RP characters, and fursonas are welcome to apply as well.

All details and form is located here, and the form closes September 1st: https://forms.gle/dghArdNX9RWFDGbG6

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Commissions are open!

Above are types of commissions available this round. OCs, RP characters, and fursonas are welcome to apply as well.

All details and form is located here, and the form closes September 1st: https://forms.gle/dghArdNX9RWFDGbG6