Lords of the West: Update 2

I thought I'd post an update to clarify exactly what is happening with the Lords of the West books. As most of you probably already know, the books will no longer be published by Moon Design, but have been taken up by other publishers. One of those publishers has not made a formal announcement yet (that I know of), although it's probably not desperately hard to work out who it is! So, to summarise what has been announced:

The Book of Glorious Joy
This will be published by d101 Games, and will be a bumper volume including most of the material from both LotW1: Heroes of Malkion and LotW3, the book that would have covered Loskalm. We're working to make it self-contained, although many of the cults from LotW1 will lack detailed descriptions or rules sections, since a "book of cults" wasn't considered very desirable. There is no definite release date for the book as yet, although we're hoping to have it out by the end of the year, and work is already underway on art and layout.

One chapter of LotW3 has, in fact, already been published. It is available in Hearts of Glorantha #4, available from d101 Games via lulu.com. This is the chapter covering Junora (which does, unfortunately, to some extent make reference to the as yet unpublished remaining chapters). It is graced by some wonderful artwork by Peter Town, and, of course, is accompanied by articles by many other great authors - it's well a worth a read. The magazine is available both as a hardcopy, and as a (cheaper) PDF file.


Kingdom of the Flamesword
LotW2 would have covered the Kingdom of Seshnela and the Rokari religion. Details of the exact format and contents of the published material are still being finalised, but the publisher has permission to use everything from LotW2, plus all of the cults from LotW1 that didn't make it into The Book of Glorious Joy. There may end up being a few bits that are not published in hardcopy, but these will mostly be material directly tied to HQ1, and will eventually be made available on my website.

LotW4
Well, obviously, there isn't a Lords of the West 4, nor is there going to be. But if there had have been, it would have covered the Kingdom of Jonatela, a dark and sinister land lying east of Loskalm. Although this book isn't ever going to happen, I have started to put down some thoughts as to what it would have contained. I will be releasing this material as and when I have the time, under the terms of the Fan Publication Policy on my website. It is, of course, entirely unofficial, and cannot be considered binding in any way on anyone: these are just my own thoughts, much like any other website on the net. (Of course, I should point out that The Book of Glorious Joy and Kingdom of the Flamesword aren't official, either!)

Because this isn't being done for publication, I will not be working to any deadline, and the material will be in a somewhat rough-and-ready format - essentially unedited, and certainly without any artwork or fancy graphics. I hope to get something out every month, but no guarantees. The first instalment contains my musings on Jonatelan history, and is available at my website now.