Sure, there are reptiles in Chartagon! These are Dareneons, translating to “stem lizards” or “stock lizards” or “tribe lizards”.
It is quite counterintuitive, but Chartagon has some specimens of reptiles and amphibians. However, the long cold autumns and winters, make their hybernation very long, and they are only active during very short periods of the Chartagonian summer. They have only been observed and studied at the mainland, and we have no reference to these beautiful animals from the islands. They live mostly in forest habitats, but some species can also have small populations in the plain habitats. The study of reptiles and amphibians have been focused on their potential use in medicine and anesthesia. Rumors say that the Queen has a green house garden with different spieces and habitats, but we have not found any proof or details about such a building yet.
Not ready yet: the water is just starting to turn white.
“Mirorale” was a popular beverage in Chartagon which was served both as a regular dinner thirst quencher and as a luxury drink during solemn occations.
Mirorale was produced by putting a special type of onion, “Annealyn”, in water and letting the roots grow for a couple of weeks. The roots are covered with a net of symbiotic fungus, which together with (friendly) bacteria started a fermentation process. This process made the water turn white, as if someone poured milk into the water, and sometimes Mirorale have been refered to as Mirorale-milk, “Mirorale -gomaen”, when the drink was of extra high high quality. The fermentation process could be stopped at various timepoints to add other ingredients, such as sweetener or flavour. If done correctly, the beverage could be botteled and aged for decades. However, it is not known whether Mirorale was also used for alcoholic beverages. In addition to drinking, Mirorale was also used in cooking and baking.
Unfortunately, we have not found an substitute for Annealyn onion that could be used today, but the taste should be similar to Kefir or Kombucha.
Chartagon during winter? Or is it just an exclamation mark upside down?
Happy new year everybody! To be honest, 2021 was not the best of years for us. But we have not backed a single step. Actually, we have advanced and our visions and goals are now more concrete.
For example, development of Chartagon was finished, and we made an online version for competitions. This allows us to have online tournaments, and people can try and practice the basic rules to decide whether they want to purchase the full board game.
Another example is the Storm Post, the first game in the Chartagon series. It has been designed and tested since 2011 but was finished during 2021. It is more or less ready to be manufactured now. Storm Post is a really cosy family game, which is really easy to learn and enjoy. It encourages eating snacks together, so we can almost guarantee a good experience 🙂
We have also applied to arrange at GothCon 2022 in Gothenburg, Sweden in April, and I think we need to have at least one release party before then. This is a step toward a Kickstarter project or some other crowdfunding project. We’ve found a possible manufacturer in Hero Time, so we might have found a solid path forward. Remember: publishing the game is only the first step, and we are already looking beyond that.
All in all, 2022 has potential, and we just need to continue unlocking it!
All our enthusiasm in October about having a release in 2021 was killed in November by an unfortunate series of events. TGC mistakenly did not include the final rule book that we needed to proof, and sending a replacement took a very long time due to covid-19 transports. When it finally arrived it looked good, but it was too late to order and recieve a larger order before Christmas. So we decided to postphone the release and consider other options than TGC.
Perhaps it all turns out to the better. We’ve been in contact with other game manufacturers, and there seem to be some options. We’re now also thinking about a Kickstarter project, depending on what the game manufacturers can provide. As usual we don’t talk a lot about the plans, but we can at least say that we dropped one plan because a third party failed and adopted another plan. Adaption is key not only for survival, but also for evolution. Long live the plans!
Today we found some scraps and pieces that may contain information about the Queen’s capital. Preliminary analyses suggest an archipelago or, more probable, a river delta giving shelter from the ocean. Navigating into and out from the harbour required an intricate system of navigation aids, and it seems like there was at least five small light house stations involved. These small stations, with three or four houses each, were served by families living for different periods of time at each station. Communications with the city was regular, and there was something like a ferry line transporting supplies and guests several times a week.
Information about the the city itself is still scarce. It can not have had more than 10 000-15 000 habitants, but we know that there was a palace and a lot of administrative and academic buildings.
We are preparing for release party this autumn!!! Hopefully we will receive enough boxes from TheGameCrafter to finally launch Chartagon and Storm Post during November! We had a small misfortune in our last order, but TheGameCrafter’s excellent customer service solved it very rapidly. So we are enthusiastic 😀
The last weeks we’ve been working on the backdrop for the sales table, and today we’re working with the finishing touches… looking forward to see it in use!
It’s been a while. Progress has moved unseen in the shadows. Now, we are about to unleash a major, major upgrade to the Chartagon world. If things turn out as planned, there will be a Chartagon event where we present the board game to the world! Though everything has been delayed due to the pandemic, we think it’s been worth the wait…
Right now, we just wait for the right moment to unbox the package with Chartagon, Storm Post and Traces that just arrived. Yes, we’ve updated all three games this time! Chartagon and Storm Post is hopefully perfectly done, and we look forward to polish Traces during the autumn.
We’ve been on a trip to the northern part of Sweden to find out more about Chartagon. It’s been an exciting week, and although it is impossible to share all the wonderful moments we’ve had, I’d like to share some of them…
Base camp. A small fisher hut 20 meters from the sea. We got here by boat, and are now playing Chartagon:discoveries in the bright summer night.
We started out by car from the Stockholm region, and got 800km further north. The coast is very flat and has lots of stones. The forests reach almost all the way to the water, and there are many desolate coves and islands. My grandfather had a small hut used for fishing out in nowhere, and I’ve spent most of my summers here fishing with nets. There is no electricity or running water. Fortunately, the cove where the hut lies is very shallow, and get relatively warm according to Swedish standards, and is very suitable for swimming. Perhaps some shallow plain lakes in Chartagon has a similar temperature profile: warm on the surface, cold a few meters down.
On the walls of the hut there are a few old objects. A harpoon for throwing at seals, fishing intruments, binoculars, and a necklace made frome the spine of a giant pike. If we had rented this hut I would suspect that they were all atmospheric fakes, but knowing my grandparents I think otherwise. As the night fell, we had an urgent need to play Chartagon, accompanied by the sounds of sea gulls… This was the perfect spot to play!
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The next day we packed the boat to go further out to sea, and visit an old fishing camp with a light house. Of course I also packed some Chartagon maps that wanted an extra adventure! The way there was a bit hard, because we did not have a nautical chart, and we had to pass a few other islands. However, by taking the longer route with safe distances to the shallower passages we made it without mistakes. The feeling of walking among the simple huts and houses, where people have lived for generations in close relation with nature, was wonderful. This must have been very close to the standards of the constructor, the light house keeper, his daughter, the poet, and the clerk. Except that they rarely built more that one or two houses on the same island.
Unfortunately the light house was closed (as many are), and we could not get up to the balcony. On the other hand, we were fortunate to witness a wedding couple who got married in the small chapel on the island. Life will go on here, just as everywhere else. And it makes us wonder who got married with the constructor?
Chartagon and RuleThemAll has come a long way together, and earlier this week we promoted Chartagon on the RuleThemAll Facebook group:
“This is the second drawing ever made using the Rule-Them-All app that I’ve created (still unpublished though). If you read this post, you’ll learn why I post it now… In approx. 2010 my daughters and I created a board game about an alternate past. That was “Storm Island”. There were five characters in the game, and I decided that I should draw what they looked like. I failed miserably. My drawings looked like crap, and I decided to learn how to draw. For this sake I created the Rule-them-all app, and the drawings became more that satisfactory! I hope you like this leery guy!
IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT RULE-THEM-ALL INDIRECTLY, ALSO VOTE FOR THE GAME BEFORE TUESDAY, JUNE 9:th: https://chartagon.com/vote“
By now, more than 10 000 people have been reached, and let’s hope that some of them will help out with voting. The results for the semi-finals will be released any minute now! Wish us luck!
