100% Funded and 1st Stretch Goal Hit. Miniboss Preview: The Ash Seeking-Rook
11 months ago
– Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 07:06:42 AM
Greetings Forsaken,
Celebrations are in order, we’ve successfully funded on day one!
But this world is far from over, we’ve got a full month to go so keep learning those boss patterns, supporting each other and sharing this game with your friends. We’ve also completely sold out of Dwyn’s banners, so a massive thank you to those who have backed at this level from both us and from Dwyn. You’ll get an email at the end of the campaign asking which God you’d like illustrated, please keep eyes out for that!
What’s next?!
We’ve got some exciting stretch goals on the horizon. Both Nick and Zach want to write some additional horrible characters to meet along your journey plus Zach wants to share their knowledge on writing your own Doomspiral material!
Nick's character, Motley the Crow, is already funded! Motley was an early addition to the manuscript who we cut about a year ago to squeeze in more NPCs, but now he's BACK baybee. Nick's Elden Ring: Nightreign character is actually Motley, so he's one of our favourites and I'm happy we could add him again.
Next up is Zach writing Aengmere of Basseyngad. What is there to be known about Basseyngad though? There's two Character Background's in the book: the Waterfall Guard and the Tundra Wanderer, as well as this quote from the Traversing the World heading, in the voice of Aegnmere himself:
“Oh ho! You know it too?
In this land of gods and fate and damnation,
It is easy to forget the simple pleasures
Of an unexpected copse of trees
Or a pleasingly shaped rock!”
Aengmere of Basseyngad
I'll spill more beans on this cheerful fellow in the next update.
Teasers: The Ash-Seeking Rook
Zach/Jelly here, I thought I’d share some bits of writing we’ve done recently. The Ash-Seeking Rook is a mini-boss from one of the areas of the campaign, the Seared Lands. The Seared Lands and their ruined city of Gilcaras are a blasted, grey ruin, endless dunes of ash, and flame-sculpted rock. The Rook, however, is one of the servants of Gentle Ahm, the God of Death, sent to collect the bones of the dead and bring them to rest. What might this mighty creature be doing so far from Ahm’s great underground Necropolis? (another area you visit during the game… more on this later!)
Ahm must have sent the Ash-Seeking Rook to the Seared Lands for a reason, and it is driving the Rook mad. You can perhaps appease it by fulfilling its mysterious quest, by solving the mystery of who or what has been killed, or meet it in violence to venture further into the Seared Lands. Something truly powerful must have died to justify this mission. The real manuscript will tell you who, but we’re going to keep it a secret!
The Rook is a classic example of a good Monster from this game, built around a particularly flavourful gimmick. If you roll Rook’s 3 Move Dice and the total is less than 10, you can’t attack it. This forces players to either focus on ranged attacks, or wait for the bird to roll its higher, damage dealing Moves (like Claw or the nasty unblockable Beak attack). It also penalising using lots of weapons, armour and shields, on one move (the grab and drop) and rewards it elsewhere (the Wing Buffet), which penalises lightly armoured ranged attackers.
It also drops a fantastic piece of treasure: The Rook Spiritstone. Characters can equip Embellishments like this one to gain unique benefits to customise their build. The various Spiritstones are all themed after potent creatures, and this one is a Rook, one of the birds that serve the Death God. As a result, the Rook, hoping to carry ashes home to the Necropolis, gets extra Stamina Dice when an ally dies. This is obviously incredibly situational, only really having an effect with tough battles and not in ones where characters are likely to go down, but useful on any character hungry for Stamina Dice.
Dwyn also did a piece of art for the Rook, and we have a sketch to share with you. I thought I’d share the prompt too: Ash-Seeking Rook - Magnificent, feral, shadow-casting. A fuckoff huge gravebird, the size and temperament of a dragon. A servant of Gentle Ahm, tasked to collect a corpse, but driven mad by its failure. The landscape is volcanic: ragged, raw, blades of stone erupting from the ash which builds pyramids of grey around their bases.
We can talk this much about one monster, and Doomspiral literally has scores upon scores of creatures with this much care and detail lathered over them.
If you enjoyed this and want to hear more, share the post, let us know in the comments and continue to support the project. I might start a thread soon about my plans for my stretch goal, and we could do dozens of this kind of update, covering regions, dungeons and monsters galore!
Thanks,
Zach, Mol and the rest of the Doomspiral Team