Printing complete. Physical fulfillment begins.
10 months ago
– Sun, Oct 26, 2025 at 11:02:12 AM
Venerators,
This week, the printer sent me a magical email, and shortly thereafter I handed them a very large check.
Printing Complete
Behold two of the many, many boxes that I received and which I've stacked like temple blocks beside my desk.
Behold what they contain.
Shrines: Sites of Reverence & Power
How odd to see, in physical space, a project that resisted its own birth for so long. What an obstinant book. What a specific and altogether finished piece of art.
SANCTUM
In the end, Shrines took so long that I had time to revise SANCTUM ahead of its reprinting.
The copies you'll all receive feature covers that actually tell you something (it turns out pretentious secrecy sucks for retail), a new Prologue section (optional like the Epilogue) for high-level worldbuilding context, a new piece of art for the Epilogue, and refined layout in general.
These feel pretty definitive, and I'm glad you all get them first.
Pilgrimage (system card)
You may recall from a previous update that I distilled Shrines' Pilgrimage system, which occupies 5 pages of the Gameplay Mechanics section, into a little A6 worksheet card that players can mark up alongside their character sheets.
I plan to sell these separately when booth-vending at cons, local art markets, and so on, but I'm including one with every copy of the book for all of you.
I think they look pretty cool! May your characters undergo interesting changes on their journeys.
Physical Fulfillment
There's only one thing to say here: it's time to put these in the mail.
My wife and I have a few afternoons of work ahead of us, and we both just started survival jobs (the video game industry and public education both imploded in the US), so please extend your patience just a little while longer. I expect this to take multiple waves.
In the meantime, it looks like 19% of you haven't confirmed your shipping details yet on BackerKit, so please do bang that out. If you've lost the email, here's a link to recover the survey.
Thank you, thank you, and in touch again soon,
James
Please complete your BackerKit surveys!
11 months ago
– Thu, Oct 02, 2025 at 09:09:49 AM
Venerators!
Quick update this time to prod the remaining 25% of backers to please complete their BackerKit surveys for shipping and add-ons.
The sooner we hit 100%, the sooner I can lock surveys, charge everyone's cards for shipping, and move us onto the last stage of fulfillment.
If you lost your survey link for any reason, please use the BackerKit recovery page here.
Thank you, as always,
James
Survey Sent via Backerkit
11 months ago
– Tue, Sep 16, 2025 at 06:29:58 AM
Venerators,
The BackerKit smoke test is complete, so I've just sent the remaining surveys.
As a reminder, these collect your addresses and payment for shipping, as well as offer a final chance to upgrade your order with extras copies of Shrines (Base Edition) and SANCTUM. For more info about rates and order limits, please see this campaign's previous update.
I would like to lock orders on Oct 3, 2025, which is 17 days from now, but obviously I'm in no position to rush you guys after such a long wait. The sooner everyone completes their surveys, however, the sooner I can start fulfilling, so please don't delay if you can help it!
Thank you again for your patience, and I can't wait to get these books into your hands,
James
Final Physical Proofs, Shipping Costs, and Add-Ons
11 months ago
– Tue, Sep 09, 2025 at 01:16:58 PM
Sweet baby vens,
Sorry for the pause in updates there. Two things happened:
- The pantones and cover foiling both took multiple rounds to get right
- My points of contact at the printer took some vacation time
Full Physical Proofs
No sweat, though, because the first full physical proofs just came in—bound, foiled, and juuuust about ready to print. Behold.
Look at these beauties. I love how ancient, heavy, and raw the paper stock feels. Just wait until you hold it.
Last Corrections
These proofs have two flaws that I want to knock out before greenlighting the run: one trivial and from version-control, and the other a meaningful matter of trim/alignment.
Ordinarily I'd spare you this look at the sausage mid-making, but this project took a Saturnal year to finish, and you've all been unreasonably patient, so I'll show you that second flaw as an example of the wrinkles I've been smoothing ad infinitum:
The actual off-white trim should be roughly half the above trim's height and appear on all three non-seam edges, like so:
Easy fix, the printers say, and I'm on top of it.
Shipping
That shipping email I've been threatening is actually about to fire, for real and for true now.
It'll come from BackerKit and collect the following payments by weight and location:
I dug through many third-party shipping services to get you guys the best rates that I could, so I hope you find these reasonable. I think they're pretty good!
Add-Ons
Many of you have reached out about how you might increase your pledge from the digital to physical version book (thank you for this!).
The forthcoming email from BackerKit is your chance. When paying for shipping, everyone may add up to 2 copies of Shrines (Base Edition) and 3 copies of SANCTUM. These limits help keep the shipping prices under control; if anyone wants to exceed them, they can do so through the EM|NCD e-store after I've listed Shrines for sale.
You may not add copies of Shrines (Hallowed Edition) or either of the t-shirts for three reasons: the split for the book's print run is locked, we already printed the shirts, and I take "Kickstarter exclusive" seriously.
The BackerKit interface will look like this:
Discord
It's been a while, so here's another link to the press' Discord, in case you wanna hang.
A thousand thank-you's, and look out for that email,
James
Fine-Tuning Specs with the Printer
about 1 year ago
– Tue, Aug 05, 2025 at 09:49:56 AM
Venerators,
Quick update: I'm in a back and forth right now with the printers, especially to get the colors and cover foiling correct.
Colors
The skinny is that uncoated paper stock—which we want here for that raw, natural feel—absorbs more ink than glossier modern stocks, which can turn out kinda dull. The red in the first physical proof was too burgundy, going on brown, so we did the whole Pantone dance and picked 1945 C for the red in print. The digital version's red will differ slightly, but not by as much as it did from that first proof.
Cover Foiling
This step is delicate and depends on vector exporting that I'm doing for the first time and which Affinity seems to handle differently than Adobe, which the printer expects and prefers. We're figuring it out.
Shipping
Please continue to watch for that shipping email. There are some choices on my end here: Kickstarter has a new partnership with a company called EasyShip that offers (AFAIK extremely) reduced rates for shipping, so I'm exploring how that might integrate with BackerKit and our printer's in-house distribution arm. I don't want to do this twice, so please bear with me while I do the admin.
Thanks again, and in touch with a second physical proof soon,
James
