DOOMSPIRAL

Pledge Manager Smoke Test & The Opening Read
6 months ago – Fri, Dec 19, 2025 at 06:59:08 AM

Oh backers! Behold thy inbox and keep they lidless orbs peeled for the coming of the Backerkit Pledge manager. Some lucky and godless fools amongst you (roughly five in every fivescore) shall have already recieved the message, a great test of fate and a "challenge emitting from flame, ash and cinders", with the rest of you hapless souls recieving it in a few weeks once we have tested its veracity. 

(We finished the pledge manager. The smoke test has gone out. The rest of you should get it in a few weeks once we've checked the rates work and the survey is good!)

You also asked for the intro to Doomspiral, and now I shall supply it. We have still art and lore aplenty to share from. There is a deep and preposterous well of content to tease you all with, laden with troves of treasures, tombs and terrors.  

“Yes, for an age the World was proud and bright; the march of time orderly and measured.

For all; a place was given, a time was measured, and an end was appointed.

This was the promise of Godspun Fate.

Now broken, as all things are, and will ever be,

And to which the Gods make no rejoinder.

So cast on, you Forsaken - make true the promise thou art severed from.”

• The Eidolon of Halfway House

Weftenthaal is the still point of the turning world, the land where the Gods have anchored Fate itself, spoken of in legend and with reverence by the peoples of the lesser world. From here Moiranasse the Guardianess, first amongst the divine-equals, tightly grips the Loom of Fate and so commands the destinies of mortals. 

The characters are Forsaken; wretched, deathless warriors cut off from the certainty of Fate. The goal of their campaign is wrest control of the Loom from its Guardianess and topple her order, so that they may impose their own designs upon the future eras. Only the Forsaken, untethered from Fate, could ever hope to usurp it so. 

The Forsaken begin in the prison-fortress of Saltcrag, and must kill the Pharos-Warden to escape. Beyond this they may approach the various regions of Weftenthaal in any order, eventually reaching the Halfway House, a lonely safe haven where many other characters in the adventure take shelter.

To approach the Grand Foundation where the Loom of Fate is secured, they must first defeat the five Gods who serve alongside Moiranasse: Rainlord Gwyddain atop the Storm Tower, the Lovers Carwyn and Ceridwen sequestered in Mirrormire Manse, Linnea the Twinned who stalks the Halfgrave Forest, Gentle Amn slumbering in his Necropolis, and Glorious Emyrriad, last sentinel of Tar Valarn. Until they lie slain, the path to the Loom is sealed and Fate unassailable. 

There is no one path in Doomspiral; there are many regions to explore, secrets to uncover, stories to tell, and endless foes to overcome. Each journey will take its own route and have its own ending, influenced by the decisions the Forsaken make and the allies they make along the way.

As seen, we swear a solemn oath to make this game the biggest soulslike extravaganza any mortal has ever laid eyes upon! Keep your eyes out for the pledge manager, and continue to enjoy the quickstart. Head on over to Discord if you have questions for us, Nick and I are about, happy to tease and terrify. 

Thanks 

Zach

We Funded + Doomspiral Intro
7 months ago – Thu, Oct 30, 2025 at 08:14:05 AM

Hey all, 

It's Zach here. The last 48 hours of the Doomspiral KS project was a bit of a whirlwind and I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for some support and share some teasers.

Nick and I are hard at work on the stretch goals you've hit and we're days from finalising the manuscript for the game, and moving it over to our amazing editor Cody next month for what will hopefully be an incredibly thorough editing pass! 

I thought I'd share some info on Aegnmere, the NPC I wrote for my stretch goal. 

"I'll do whatever it takes". That sounds pretty absolute, doesn't it? I hope that quest for Ancient Fire doesn't go poorly for Aegnmere. 

I thought I'd share this new piece Dwyn has done for the Threshold City, home of Emyrriad, the Lord of Glory and Ruin. Emyrriad is sort of the Herald of the Doomspiral, a mighty figure who once served as God of Prosperity, but the sickly ruin of Corrosion has set in on his realm of glory. 

The rot has set in accross the the Threshold City, affecting the Knight Prosperant and the Threshold Soldiers most of all! Worse, it seems Emyrriad has abandoned his city, and instead at the gates you will find the Golden Idol, a statue of a forgotten hero in glorious gold, but ruin spreading from his joints. The Idol serves as the first real real boss of the campaign, after the Pharos Warden many of you have met in our free quickstart, and he is the main obstacle between you and the fabled Halfway House. 

We've got all this and so much more to show you. I'll do a new update next month, and let me know in the comments which of these three you want to read: 

1. The intro to Doomspiral, and all the lovely paragraphs of flavour text which kick off the campaign. 
2. An overview of the Saints that gather at the Halfway House, and an inkling of the available. quests 
3. A look at the final boss we haven't shown you, Gentle Amn, lord of the Underworld. 

Thanks so much for your support! The best way to talk to us is to join the Discord and keep chatting in our specific Doomspiral channel.  

Thanks, 

Zach, Mol and the rest of the SoulMuppet Team 

£50k Stretch Goal Achieved!
8 months ago – Wed, Oct 15, 2025 at 03:55:13 AM

As we approach the final day, we’ve hit our £50k stretch goal! 

So all creatives involved in this project are going to receive a payrise to match the success of the campaign. At SoulMuppet we are committed to always paying above industry standard but stretch goals like this allow us to support our creatives as the campaign continues to grow. 

Doomspiral couldn’t exist in the way it does without our amazing team and we want to take this moment to celebrate them. 

Dwyn has brought the dread, wonder and loss of Doomspiral to life with their illustrations. Dwyn has been an absolute delight to work with throughout the project, always excited for the next art pitch and always completely blowing us away with each piece. Cody has done so much to make our quickstart the best it can be, with some incredible edits that have really tightened up the manuscript. Our layout artist Eryk truly understood the assignment of this project, coining the phrase “a24 brutalism” and perfectly balancing our desire for aesthetics and usability. Myles, head dicemaker at RuneFable, brought new techniques to the table that we would have never thought of. Thoughtfully listening to our ideas and returning with something that went above and beyond. Fernando, Doomspiral’s cartographer, took Nick’s art pitch doc and, with insane skill that we may never understand, turned it into an stunning map that not only serves as a useful worldmap but also as an art piece that we’re proud to hang on our walls.

As we spoke about in yesterday’s update, we’ve added a couple of bonus stretch goals that we’d love to achieve in the final phase of this campaign. 

First up is Curse-Rotten Corvast, a bonus adventure from Zach, which focuses on Corvast Castle, an ancient cursed castle transported inside Weftenhaal’s borders by a mix of spite and sorcery. After that, we’re aiming to commission a digital character keeper to accompany Doomspiral's more traditional character sheet. To help us achieve these goals, please continue sharing this project with your friends or on social media - people like to hear recommendations from their friends rather than from the folks making the game! Also make sure you’ve adjusted your pledge to include any add-ons you want. While these will of course be available to grab in the pledge manager stage, getting them now helps push our goal forwards.

Finally, we want to say a massive thank you to all of you. It’s your support that allows us to continue making projects like this and to continue doing what we love. 

~ Mol, Zach and the rest of the Doomspiral Team.

Curse-Rotten Corvast Sneak Peek
8 months ago – Mon, Oct 13, 2025 at 06:54:48 AM

Come closer Forsaken, let us whisper of distant lands and ancient curses.

Wow it’s me, Zach, the JellyMuppet. I’m here to tell you all about Curse Rotten Corvast, ahead of the final 72 hours of the Doomspiral project. We’re nearly at £50k, staring down our fantastic payrise stretch goal, but the one I’m really excited about is our £60k goal, Curse Rotten Corvast. In my excitement, I’ve already begun writing this adventure, and if we hit this lofty goal we’ll be commissioning art, editing and layout to bring this zine to a reality. As a reminder, you’ll get a free PDF of it and the opportunity to add a physical on during the pledge manager. 

So what is Curse-Rotten Corvast?

The main Doomspiral campaign is set in Weftenthaal, the lofty land of the long-faded Gods. It has a similar structure to Elden Ring’s open world: sweeping and vast overworld regions and individual complex legacy dungeons, all woven together into a labyrinthine campaign that can be explored in almost any order.

Curse-Rotten Corvast is a much shorter adventure, centering around a single multi-layered dungeon called Corvast Castle, transported inside Weftenhaal’s borders by a mix of spite and sorcery. 

Where Weftenthaal feels like the sprawling lands found in Elden Ring, Corvast is going to feel much more like the traditional design of a Dark Souls game: a claustrophobic and broody fortress filled with all manner of treasure and foes. That isn’t to say it's linear! There are a multitude of different sub-levels and surroundings that can be explored in a bristling variety of orders: the encircling wall around the Living Woods, the awful acid-pocked mountains of the Cloud-Scorched Heights, the fortified palace of Slatespire Peak, the fetid dungeons of Longrot Goal, and finally the mysterious Cursewright’s Towers, where one might discern the origin of curses and the witch that created them.

Curses?!

What is a curse, you might ask? Our good friend Whalebill Stackrass has some words to say about that: 

This odd fellow promises to take you to Corvast, if you climb inside his beak. A talking bird is odd though. In Doomspiral, birds are typically the servants of Gentle Ahm, the god of death. Ahm dwells at the bottom of the Necropolis, and his avian servants carry the bones of the dead to the underground city where Ahm can protect them. It seems the people of Corvast has some other burial practices, and if he isn’t lying (and when has a Soulslike NPC ever lied?) then perhaps some way of avoiding death altogether. A pair of the Character Backgrounds from the main game actually loop back to Corvast: the Wretched Curse-Host and the Seneschal of Corvast. 

Along your way, you might also meet the cannibal Haggard Pyte, the amnesiac Starving Maggot, or the questing Brave Jotentia, all of whom have their own quests! There’s also a feast’s worth of bosses: the Knight Passard and his cursed Hound, the vicious and bloated Rot Warden, the Three Lords of Corvast who rule the palace, the invading Lakeshine Knight, and finally Cursewright Iabel, architect of Corvast’s ruin. I may be biased, but these are some of my favourite creatures from Doomspiral overall, and I hope in playing through this adventure you’ll be able to see my references on my sleeve, and perhaps hazard a guess that I was playing a lot of Bloodborne while writing this campaign.

That’s all from us today! Please continue your amazing support of Doomspiral, and give us a share on social media so we might crest this final stretch goal and bring the acid-pocked, smelly towers of Corvast Castle to dreadful unlife. 

Thanks, 

Zach, Mol and the rest of the SoulMuppet Team

New Stretch Goals and Map Sneak Peeks
8 months ago – Fri, Oct 10, 2025 at 07:34:59 AM

Oh Forsaken, the Loom of Fate foretells the approaching end.

Time really flies and we’re now into the last week of this crowdfunding campaign! 
This update contains sneak peeks into the gorgeous map by Fernando Salvaterra and some exciting new stretch goals.

New Stretch Goals

We’re half way to our next stretch goal, a payrise for everyone involved in the project! So we also want to announce some goals that we can aim to reach in the last week. 

£60k - Curse-Rotten Corvast

At £60k Zach will pen Curse-Rotten Corvast, an additional adventure zine that can either weave into Weftenhaal or act as a shorter, standalone adventure (at a slightly higher level). This grimy dungeoncrawl is set in a mountaintop Corvast Castle, ruled by the feared Curselords and filled with all manner of despicable characters and monsters, and is written by SoulMuppet’s own Zachary Cox (Inevitable, Orbital Blues, Paint The Town Red). 
Corvast explores the origin of the curses which threaten Weftenthaal, and specifically plague the Twin Gods of Desire and Obsession, Carwyn and Ceridwen. We were originally going to do Corvast as part of the project, but as Weftenthaal bloomed into the beast it is today, we decided to focus on the core experience. 

We’re excited to add Curse-Rotten Corvast back into the project. Corvast will be a free PDF to all backers at any pledge level, and we’ll be doing physical add-ons on Backerkit. 

£70k - Character Keeper

Doomspiral is a complicated game with tons to keep track of. Alongside the character sheets and beautifully edited rulebook, we’ll also be commissioning a Google Sheets Character Keeper to help you play the game online, and even act as a referencing tool for characters and monsters in play. 

If we hit this goal, we’ll make the character keeper free for everyone. As an example of a previous SoulMuppet character keeper, check out this one for Inevitable. 

The Map of Weftenhaal

For Doomspiral’s map we’ve been working with the fantastic Fernando Salvaterra, an icon in the TTRPG map making community, to create a detailed world map of Weftenhaal. It’s been honestly incredible to watch this map come to life from sketch, to line art, to fully colourised final form. The map is available as either an add-on to your pledge or included in the Hopeful Wanderer and above pledge tiers. It'll also be featured inside the Core Book and we'll use snapshots of it at the start of each area section.

So how did Fernando take a document full of notes and turn it into both a usable map of the world and a beautiful art piece?

First, Nick wrote up a (frankly huge) map briefing doc with details and information on the various areas and even sketched a little plan of where the areas should go. 

Fernando returned with a pencil sketch of the map. Sketching the main features and locations, making sure that each area was in the correct space and to Nick’s vision. He also began designing a custom border, compass and banner for the map. 

Once the sketch had been finalised, Fernando began working on the line art. Cleaning up the pencil sketch and focusing on the various locations, regions and geography. Including a LOT of mountains! 

Each section of the map is lovingly illustrated with little details and secrets to find. We could spend all day pouring over each section. 

Fernando returned with the fully inked map and had begun working on finalising the border, compass rose and title banner. The title banner is a team favourite. 

Then came the process of adding colour to the map, Fernando worked through a few colour choices with us until we found one that balanced the vibe of each region while maintaining colour during printing.

Finally, Fernando labelled the whole map. From subregion titles to the various points of interest to be found across the lands of Weftenhaal. With a world so full of places and things to find, we’re so proud of how he managed to balance usability, readability and visuals. 

It’s honestly been an absolute pleasure to work with Fernando, we’ve been big fans for a while and it’s wonderful to work with him on such a project. He has truly brought this world to life! If you’re not already a fan, be sure to follow him on social media and support him on Patreon. 

Also, don't forget to grab the map as an add-on to your pledge or by upgrading to Hopeless Wanderer tier or above

Good luck out there oh Forsaken, time grows thin and the bones of this campaign begin to crumble... 

(Share with your friends, tell them there is only a week left and you want to see Dwyn draw more horrible monsters for Curse-Rotten Corvast)