Happy New Year, everyone! We have a few small updates this month, adjustments to lore, and a few templates that can help organize information. Likewise, the move from soft opening to grand opening just sped right past! Incredibly, we're nearing one whole year of existing and we have a few characters who've been with us since the beginning, riding along while we were developing the magic and dice system. Thank you so much for that! The documentation is slowly but surely reaching a completed state, so as we go forward, take a second to review the documentation for each Path and make sure everything is updated.

And welcome to all our newcomers, we're so thrilled to have you join our game and we hope we can have a lot of fun together long into the future. On to the updates!

Development
Luck and Keywords
The Luck Stat has been updated to include applicable mundane and magic keywords. In terms of the mundane combat stats, if your character is holding the appropriate weapon when the encounter starts, then the Strike dice are added to their Luck. In the cases of unarmed combat and Exchange training, these are always active, unless the character is somehow restrained.

In terms of magic keywords, having the Fortune keyword gives a boost of 1 to Luck.

Lovecraft Locations
Although we have creatures from the Lovecraft Mythos, we, unfortunately, do not include the locations as this may conflict a little too heavily with existing lore.

Shifter Affliction
Catching the shifter curse is considered very difficult and more often than not, downright deadly. The infection is also asymptomatic. If a character has been attacked by a shifter, and you would like to see if they've caught the infection, submit a request in the mod request forum. You will know their fate on the next full moon!

Silver for Shifters
The effect of silver on a shifter's Luck in combat has been reduced from 3 to 2.

Sky Iron and Half-Bloods
As noted, sky iron has a proximity effect on half-bloods that is pure flavor. We have added a mechanical effect: half-bloods lose 1d6 from their Cinder pool as long as they are physically touching the material.

Arcanist Charms
The Arcanist path is granted one charm per level now. If someone moves away from the Arcanist path, they lose access to these charms, but they retain the keywords they learned at the Circlebreaker rank.

New Additions

Spirits and Magic Items
As beings of pure magic, spirits often find it challenging to interact with the mundane world. However, magic items are a different story. Spirits are able to hold these things without difficulty, although it's theorized that they are actually holding the item more by the magic inherent than its physical container.

Undying: Hibernation
With preparation and will, an undying can force themselves into hibernation. This is a state in which they are almost inert, generally unconscious to the world and vulnerable if they do not take steps to protect themselves. A sudden change around them, like their tomb being broken into, can awaken them, but they will be starving and desperate to feed and regain strength.

Many undying through the centuries have hibernated and been protected by followers, leading to interesting myths and scary stories around campfires, as well as entire cults dedicated to them. These cults generally experienced quite a nasty surprise when their object of worship awakened.

The Sewing Circle and the Tongue-Tyers
Head on over to the Exchange document and explore some of the expanded lore on the Exchange in both Europe and the Americas.
Link

Cheatsheet
The d20 icon in the upper right-hand corner of the header contains a pop-up modal of quick reference information involving Strike & Cinder, combat, and Luck, among other things. We're always looking to improve on making things easy and accessible, so if you have any suggestions on what we can add or clarify, don't hesitate to let us know!

Reputation Template
We've added a reputation template that you can put into your character's development thread. With this, you can track and grade your threads as minor or major events and then submit them as a report in order to change your Reputation. It is not a required feature, but there are some fun goodies if you do track things!

Link to Template

Inventory Templates
There is a new section in your profile for magic items and there's a handy HTML template you can use in the templates forum for it if you like!

Link to Template

Upcoming
- Leveling Requirements (early this month, don't worry!)
- Thread Summaries - still in development!
- An event for Chinese New Year in February!

January Hotspots

Head out to one of these locations and see if you can find something strange by requesting an encounter!

Time Until

Our Time Until meters can be found in the header beneath the hour glass. We're really excited to see them go up and although we won't tell you what they're for (it's about the MYSTERY!), here are a few that are looking PRETTY RIPE.



And that's it! If there are any questions or suggestions, toss them up in the #maintenance or #game-dev channel on Discord and tag @admin. A really huge thanks to everyone who helped us test out our dice system and offered feedback, we love to hear it!