TheAstralBackstage

 Hello. C J here. The Core Rules of Legend – Quantum are done. I’ve made, for the first time in my company’s history, a list of what is done and what still needs doing. Legend – Quantum isn’t the only thing I have to work on. All products mentioned here are available in the Books download link or the Novels download link on those pages. Here’s what I have done forever. Legend – Elements The core tabletop game rule book that the Legend Series runs on, with rules for everything from building a castle to firing a rail gun off a star destroyer. Legend – Astral The official setting manual for the Astral and Legend Setting as a whole, with the complete master copy of the magic engine and additional rules for magic Traditions and races. Legend – Dominion The official tabletop miniatures game of the Astral and Legend setting, this game is 99% done and everything I need from it for the other games is done enough to use. It will be out later and there’s a free sample up for download. Legend ...

Hello. C J here. Finally, after years of work, the final set of core rules for the five part Legend Series game line is done. Welcome, friends, to the Legend Series official educational card game, Legend – Quantum. Legend – Quantum is an all in one card based tabletop rolepalying game that not only allows for character advancement, dynamic combat and meaningful crafting but also aims to capture real world knowledge and make learning anything from English grammar to biochemistry easy and approachable. At its core are the root goals of gender inclusion and the validity of spirituality the world over. The 90 core rule cards are up in the Books download link under the Quantum folder under the Starter Set folder. The home print PDFs will be worked on starting now. Enjoy! C J Mcpherson Head Game Designer Concept Art Lead Infinity Game Studios  

 Hello. C J here. I've got three final finished Topaz gem cards for the Quantum Starter Set. Once the Quantum Starter Set is done I'm moving into the first Expansion, Lands of Creation. These are some of the Topaz gems, representing common food items you can pay to buy or cast spells and items in the game. Some Expansions allow you to craft golems or other allies as well. Lands of Creation has a strong food theme so I needed these done. There are twenty in a colour so I only have seventeen more to do. All assets including the food are hand drawn and will be available as free home print PDFs.  C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. I've been doing some more chocolate science and I've got my last two major goals to work. The goal is to make fancy fruit or nut flavoured truffles, the kind with cream or ganache centres. I have a peach flavored cream for one of my goals and a hard peach flavored sugar centre for the other. Here's the recipes. Peach Soft Candy Cream Two Peach Hebal Tea Bags Two Tablespoons Milk One Quarter Cup Sweetened Condensed Milk One Half Cup White Sugar For the Peach Soft Candy Cream In a small saucepan over low heat simmer the tea bags in the milk for 3 minutes. Remove the tea bags and add the sweetened condensed milk and white sugar. Stir with a wooden spatula over low until the sugar combines with the milk. Take off the heat and let cool. For the Peach Hard Candy Filling Follow the same steps but omit the milk. Steep the tea bags in the sweetened condensed milk and add the sugar after removing them. Be very careful to stir often and not caramelize the sugars. Let...

 Hello. C J here. I have an exciting new Quantum update. The first player character card for Quantum is done. Meet Zed Matthews, the Dark Lupine. In addition to being the source of one of my pennames, Zed Matthews is a wandering wolf known for his mastery of mostly illegal magic and his skill with a blade. He’s bisexual and often turns his many partners and lovers into loyal servants incapable of free thought. They sign up for it, of course. He is a Traveller after all and a Traveller has rules. He’s from the jungle Caribbean themed continent Arkad. Arkad is known for their fine Arkadian rum and also their mastery of food based biotechnology. His lineage of brightly coloured half-wolves, to use the human term for their species, also all have genetic mind alteration powers. His brother Zan Matthews is a similarly skilled if less ambitious wizard mercenary living in Ascala. Currently Zan Matthews and his brother are in Ascala on a job for the government. They know some of our hero ch...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got another of the ten playable characters from Legend – Quantum drawn, The Astral Ten. The Astral Ten are the ten most famous Astral Travellers in the Legend Setting and they form together the ten playable characters in the Starter Set for Legend – Quantum. The Legend Setting is vast and they are some of the only people who can show up in all of it. Here’s Owen Riversmeet. Find his stats in the free samples in the Quantum folder in the Books download link. Quantum has stats that look like spells and are in text for most of its characters. Owen Riversmeet was born third in line to be Emperor of Vantara. While his oldest sibling, Michael Riversmeet, later took the throne and his next oldest sibling is helping run the palace where they live, Owen Riversmeet had more scholarly ambitions. He studied at the Order of Mages and quickly found himself in demand as a rare mage mercenary. His mastery of flame and elemental magic is peerless in the field. He is one of th...

 Hello. C J here. I have the Uprising token cards done and uploaded. I’ll post a few of them here. That’s another massive list of things off my plate forever. I am slowly having more and more free time each batch of these I do. It’s time as of now to put that free time to use. Uprising is a much easier game to work with than Quantum and Quantum is still being built as part of that list of things but it will continue to go slowly. Once that is done my entire list of things will be just Dragon Engine, my video game project. Dragon Engine will be in full release eventually but that’s not for a while yet. I’ve still got a stack of books to read, more I am looking into reading and a list of video games to play. This is all then going to inspire stories and future game expansions. I never have writers block because I read voraciously and only play video games that I want to learn something from. I also have a ton of characters, setting text and game ideas I need to put on cards. Then I c...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got some fun Dragon Engine updates for everyone today. I think I’ve got the base layer of the terrain tiles figured out. Now I need trees. I spent yesterday looking at the free low-poly trees that come with GDevelop. They’re nice, but on closer inspection they will not match the photo realistic look I’m going for to make Dragon Engine an animation platform. I will have to 3D model my own trees in Sculpt+. This is going to be fun. I’ll also need rocks, grass, small plants and flowers. Then once I have all of these, and that may take a while, I combine them with the base layer tiles and add collision in patterns that make the trees climbing compatible and make sure you don’t fall through the ground. I’ve got the textures I need for tree trunks in various colours already done and leaves already done as well. Then these final tiles with trees, plants and rocks together will be the ones you can place over a bedrock tile in the final game. Buildings follow a simila...

 Hello. C J here. The Uprising Core Rules cards are done and up for download. I’m still working on the Uprising Core Rules home print PDF so they can be played but there’s also a lot of cards I need to make and illustrate before it’s playable. So, in the meantime, here’s one of my characters. Welcome to life according to Prophet. Prophet is a fun hero character. She was originally introduced in The Astral Chronicle as a side character. She helped the crew win when it counted, discovered magic within herself and returned to her homeland of Ascala for all the correct reasons. Why she was in the Astral in the first place was part of the story. Her normal name is Sarah Lanarday, part of a noble lineage from the land of Anteli. A few branches of House Lanarday left Anteli and moved to Ascala through the Astral. This was before she was born by a while. She’s to my reckoning in her early thirties and is a specialist in sound magic. Upon returning to her homeland she made a name for hersel...

 Hello. C J here. Big news. I’ve just finished making and uploading the 50 core rule cards for Legend – Uprising to the downloads link in the Books page. The game has exactly 50 rule cards and is designed to be made, learned and played fast. Legend – Uprising allows you to grab a team of friends, invest in fantasy property, recruit a small army and adventure across the entire Legend Setting. The game is also my complete guide to writing fiction set in the Legend Setting. Not all of the cards have art on them but I’m presenting here a few of my favourite pieces from the cards I have uploaded. The game is in downloadble card format for now and I’ll also upload the home print PDFs when I have them done. Those, a laser printer and normal business card paper and you’ve got a game. Here’s those cards. C J Mcpherson Head Game Designer Concept Art Lead Infinity Game Studios

 Hello. C J here. It’s taken most of today but I’ve got half the Legend – Uprising Core Rules cards together and all of the supplies cards done. Here’s the five supplies, ore, wood, clay, sand and stone. Legend – Uprising is a cooperative card based city builder where you buy, play and explore buildings and interact in normal game turns with their inhabitants. These are the components you use to buy and play those buildings. I wanted the look of the cards to be minimalist and a bit art nouveau. The full set of core game cards might be out tomorrow including the home print PDFs. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. Okay, hear me out. I’ve gotten good at using AI art to make things. I need it for concept art or I will spend the next two to three years planning and drawing the Quantum Starter Set. The Quantum Starter Set will be out probably in a few months and on time because of AI art. I’m writing the code for these myself and I’m finally willing to start publishing them. Here’s the one for today’s image. male white blue stripes wolf white blue suit jacket modern docks walking off a steam ship crowds Notice no capitols, no punctuation. It’s me telling the algorithm at Perchance what assets I want it to piece together into an image. It’s keywords mostly for nouns or colours. In other words, computer speak. I don’t get why people hate art generation so much. I’m a trained painter and this is faster than making every image out of acrylic. I then draw the final versions myself by hand. Why is one better than the other? Both take planning and an eye for detail. Moving on. Now. Fo...

 Hello. C J here. A while ago I worked on a game called Legend – Uprising. I eventually decided that I didn’t have the time to finish Legend – Uprising despite the fact that the core rules work really well. Now that I’ve got the concept art and some of the final draft fountain pen art done for the Starter Set I’ve decided to look into Uprising again. The game is a lot easier to make than the Starter Set and is a deck builder city builder with skirmish combat. It’s also a free print your own card game. I’ve uploaded what I have to the Books download link. I’ve reorganized the downloads in the Books page to account for the new product. I’m willing to use my concept art as final art for the product and I’m also willing to commission sets of card art from other artists in the fandom for it. I want everyone to get a say. The game is named Uprising because it can be made and played fast, unlike my other card game. I’m also going to continue looking into having people script and draw grap...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got a new piece of final Quantum art today. Here is the default armour for the Starter Set in Quantum, nicely shown off by our friend William Youngsun. The Starter Set is moving along faster than I thought it would. This is good. William Youngsun and the background are hand drawn in digital fountain pen. Modern armour provides two points of Armour and can be both bought as a story reward or crafted from Ruby gems. Ruby gems are the ones used for all armour and equipment but never for food. C J Mcpherson

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got some Dragon Engine updates for this morning. Dragon Engine is my one-person open world fantasy RPG video game project. It’s the product of 20 years of planning and is going to be darn fun. It’s being made in GDevelop and I’m currently doing the 3D modelling for the NPC generation system. The NPC system is modular and maps partial arms and legs in different colours or clothing options to a single core body that comes with the app. This way one set of animations can be shared by all characters equally. Here’s the 3D models I have done so far. We have an upper arm, lower leg, reptile head and chest. I’ve also updated and added to the Dragon Engine page. If you were ever thinking of setting aside a morning and reading the Dragon Engine page, now would be a good time for that. I think I’ve finally got most of the planned features in it. Also I’m back on BARQ and that app seems to be growing in popularity rapidly. I’m the admin of the Kingston and Area group fo...

 Hello. C J here. It’s my birthday today so we’ll be doing things most of the day. I’ve got all of the concept art done for the Starter Set characters so it’s time to move onto drawing them. First on my list is Barran Marradh. This male wolf wizard is from the heavily forested Celtic inspired land of Lyywain, where his parent nation the Empire of Morrigna bears the name of the current Archfae of Winter, who journeyed there in ages past to found a nation for her mortal followers. Although he’s a normal animalia he has been brought up surrounded by Fair Folk and their strange fae magic. Here he is. Here’s the background for this piece. All of this is done in a combination of digital fountain pen, oil paint and chalk. All of this is done by hand with a stylus or mouse including the lighting effects and his signature knotwork runes. This background is composed out of smaller pieces, all of which I keep on file indefinitely and will reuse often. Here's a modular 2D tree. This tree is ha...

 Hello. C J here. I’ve got twenty pieces of concept art for today. Here we have AI art versions of all twenty hero characters for the Quantum Starter Set. I use AI art for concept art and while I do not intend to sell any of it I can use it to speed up the art design process by a factor of about 100 times. Half a year becomes half a day. We have the entire set of twenty NPC characters for the Quantum Starter Set here. I think this is all the concept art I need for the set so now it’s time to take the concept art and draw all of it in digital fountain pen. Then I put it on cards and get serious about marketing on Bluesky and in person. Here’s the list of characters in order. Zan Matthews, William Youngsun, Vell Blackscale, Vaun Silver Kin, Solstice, Prophet, Mist, Markus 'Blue' Fargather, Lyric, Laura Brightfox, Kan Makel, Ivy, Hyll Bighoof, Flame, Dagger, Benjamin Everwander, Balath Regal, Bael Kyneth, Azkail Anion and Allister Youngsun. All of these characters are license comp...