Bloodpunk is a new and unique way of re-imagining a “punk” setting, it has similarities with others (steampunk, cyberpunk, dieselpunk, etc) yet it uses blood-based technology with an unusual combination of Victorian and art-deco aesthetic.
Bloodpunk takes place in a realm called Tolia. Tolia is a dark, dystopic, and ominous setting where blood started to be used in blood engines as the main source of energy after the exploration of a magical crystal, Angst. Wars, darkness, gruesomeness, and danger infest Tolia like an epidemic, and people are bound to live in either one of the cities: Kanrath or Cyherested, or face death in the deadly wilderness.
May your blades be sharp, and your hearts filled with Odin’s might and Freyja’s love.
Skol!
Fulfillment Update: Deliveries are on the Way
over 2 years ago
– Wed, May 11, 2022 at 01:29:39 AM
Hello Svillanders,
We hope you are ready for your adventures in Svilland, because we are now sharing with you the joyous news that deliveries are starting! GamesQuest has already started their deliveries for the UK and EU, and Quartermaster Logistics is starting their deliveries soon!
Deliveries in the UK and EU
As of their email GamesQuest / ShipQuest sent us at the end of last week, deliveries in the UK and EU regions have started. At the time of their email, 20% of the UK and EU deliveries were on their way, and half of the deliveries in the UK and EU have been processed. They stated that they are expecting all the deliveries to be sent by this Friday.
As they are distributed from the UK hub, the deliveries take 2-3 business days to reach in the UK, so most of you in the UK or Ireland may get them by Friday or immediately next week. Deliveries to the EU can take up to 5-10 business days, so those of you in the EU countries may expect to receive them a little bit later than that.
Their processing of packages and dispatch are not uniform to regions or countries. Meaning that, for example, they are not dispatching the packages like; send all the UK, and then Ireland, then France, etc. If there are some of you who are confused why some backers in the further EU countries have received their books but you haven’t yet, this is why, and there is nothing wrong with your delivery status.
Deliveries in the US, Canada, and RoTW
On the other hand, we are observing traffic in the US hub due to many projects queued for dispatch by the Quartermaster Logistics. We aren’t sure of the exact reasons but we suspect that due to the higher volumes of projects QML is fulfilling, although they are often great at managing their deliveries, mishaps in freight times and receivals sometimes cause queue traffic in the QML hub.
We are in the earlier side of the queue and after many emails back and forth, they promised us to pull it as early as possible. Still, they are hoping for a mid-May fulfillment start and estimating an end-May fulfillment start. We are not happy with this news of yet another slight delay. Yet, at this point we are kind of got used to it and are just going with it.
Regarding Address Changes
By now, addresses are long locked and the time for address changes has long passed. Yet, we always aim to fulfill address change requests up to the latest time we possibly can, so that no one is left unfulfilled or having to pay for another re-delivery. This is because we understand that we are all human and can forget such things, or we may experience an unexpected moving etc.
We kindly wanted to let you know that from now on we won’t be able to change addresses upon request. This is because it is not simply in our capacity to do so anymore, while deliveries are being processed and/or dispatched. Still, no worries! If you are in need of an address change, there are still ways you can do so:
If you are in the UK or EU regions, you can attempt to reach GamesQuest / ShipQuest when they send you the heads-up for delivery and you see that the address is wrong.
If you are in the US, Canada, or RoTW regions, your job is easier: QML has a built in Address Verification System (AVS) with which they send a last-minute email to you asking you to confirm your address. You can change your address if needed by replying to that email. They have notified us that they are planning to send the AVS emails on May 13th, so keep an eye on your emails that day.
Bloodpunk is Launching on May 17th Tuesday!
We are very happy to have you with us in this long journey of Svilland & Freyja’s Tears, and would love to see you on board on our next project! We are excited to let you know that we are launching Bloodpunk next week on Tuesday May 17th 11:30 AM PST/PDT!
Bloodpunk is a new and unique way of re-imagining a “punk” setting, it has similarities with others (steampunk, cyberpunk, dieselpunk, etc) yet it uses blood-based technology with an unusual combination of Victorian and art-deco aesthetic.
The main development is the blood engines which work together with angst crystals. This semi-magical mineral is a crystalline rock, resembling faintly glowing orange quartz. The method of producing energy is mechanically simple yet scientifically astonishing. The angst crystals are made into tubes, through which the blood flows to generate heat and light, powering machines.
Bloodpunk takes place in a realm called Tolia. Tolia is a dark, dystopic, and ominous setting where blood started to be used in blood engines as the main source of energy after the exploration of a magical crystal, Angst. Wars, darkness, gruesomeness, and danger infest Tolia like an epidemic, and people are bound to live in either one of the cities: Kanrath or Cyherested, or face death in the deadly wilderness. The rulers of these two megacities, vampires and sorcerers, are literally draining their citizens to praise their technologies, power their war machines, and scheming their sinister politics.
We have also talked much about Bloodpunk in our previous update “Fulfillment Update: Ships Reached Port”, so you can check them out as well. You can also check out our Kickstarter pre-launch page for following our launch!
Click “Notify me on Launch” and don’t miss the early bird!
See You Next Update!
We are excited to see your comments when you receive your deliveries soon, and we hope to see you with us on our launch day of Bloodpunk! We wish you a great time adventuring in Svilland, and making your path in Freyja’s Tears!
May your blades be sharp, and your hearts filled with Odin’s might and Freyja’s love.
Skol!
Fulfillment Update: Packaging and Distribution
over 2 years ago
– Thu, Apr 21, 2022 at 12:01:44 PM
Hello Svillanders,
Today we are here with a detailed update regarding the fulfillment of Svilland and Freyja’s Tears. We have only recently received the latest news from our fulfillment partners Quartermaster Logistics and GamesQuest, and will now pass along the information we have received.
Fulfillment Status
We have been informed by both of our partners that they are planning the fulfillment delivery to happen within May, hopefully within early May. Since we received these news, we have been communicating back and forth about why their April dates were postponed, and they have said the following:
Quartermaster Logistics, who is our fulfillment partner for the US, Canada, and RoTW regions’ deliveries, stated that with the customs for the second ship postponed but then cleared only recently, they were looking at a “very early May fulfillment start”.
They have also provided us with a sample package. Here is the packaging our backers from the US and Canada will receive:
They are using the same packaging they used for Corpus Malicious and we can say that this packaging works as we only had a handful of damaged deliveries (among hundreds) in that fulfillment.
GamesQuest / ShipQuest, who is our fulfillment partner for the UK, EU, and rest of Europe regions’ deliveries, stated “Unfortunately, we may not be able to start fulfilment until after the first week of May at the earliest.” They said this is due to the recent Covid outbreak they had in their hub, which resulted in many employees having a mandatory leave and the rest overburdened with a very high workload.
At this point we’d like to stress we share in the disappointment some of you may feel. Still, under the current circumstances, with the pandemic still affecting many areas of the business, we feel we don’t have a lot to do regarding this particular latency. Still, we wanted to provide you with a thorough explanation on what happened, how we reacted businesswise, and what we can do regarding our fulfillments in the future.
The Fulfillment Chain
As a start, we would like to give you information on how our logistics chain works and who-can-keep-who accountable for a change for better and more efficient fulfillment. As this is the business side (the back end) of our operations, the subject may be boring, but we recommend that you have a glimpse if you’d like to get an insight on how our logistics work:
Printer - Our supplier for our books and other items who prints and produces our products. We have a considerable degree of back-and-forth accountability in between, meaning that we can ask our printer to speed up if need be, and similarly, our printer can sometimes request more time, usually when it comes to printing pricing quotes and sampling processes.
Freight Forwarder - These are third parties who coordinate the oceanic container ships and book containers or spaces within containers for freight transport for parties like us. For the last two Kickstarter projects, we had been using freight forwarders of our fulfillment partners as they had a more efficient communication with them rather than us trying to select one and start working with it.
These forwarders are working on supply and demand, and since the pandemic the supply is always lower than the demand. This means that they have the strength over the pricing, as well as the timing (hence the postponing of our second US freight), and they use it if they see fit. Thus, neither us nor our fulfillment partners have much to say over the workings of the freight forwarders.
Fulfillment Firms - These are our fulfillment partners. In our first Kickstarter, we had worked with a fulfillment firm who turned out to be quite the disappointment for both us and our backers, as they had sent the books without adequate protection and consequently many of the books got damaged on delivery. Since then, we have been working with Quartermaster Logistics and GamesQuest/ShipQuest, both of which are key players in our industry, and they are also a favorite with our backers as many of our previous backers asked for us to work with them.
What Can We Do?
The latency caused by us: As we’ve stated in an early update,when we first launched our Kickstarter project for Svilland and Freyja’s Tears, we did not take into account the production times of the stretch goals. Thus, the timeline stated on our Kickstarter page was for the main project. Since we had many stretch goals unlocked, we actually had to prolong our production time to complete all the tasks, but this resulted in a latency in production and thus chain-reacted to a latency in printing, and then in shipping, etc.
To prevent this problem in our future projects, we will make sure to add more time into our timeline for the stretch goals as they unlock, as we did so in our recent project The Corpus Collection.
About the situation with fulfillment partners, we did not have an option but to abide by the recent news. This is because their latency was caused by the pandemic outbreak and the postponing of the second ship’s arrival.
Still, we will plan to book a freight time much earlier than we did before to minimize surprises on the freight ships, and also make sure all our items are on the same ship rather than getting divided among two freights.
Another solution for us would be searching and picking a freight forwarder by ourselves with careful examination and detailed analysis, as well as contracts to ensure timeliness, if that can be done. This way we would not experience such a latency because of the selection of parties other than us, and perhaps a tailored contract would indeed ensure their timeliness.
Other than that, our partners are doing excellent work on fulfillment with the situation they are in. We are receiving weekly updates (although most of them turn out to be “nothing has changed in the plan” statements), and we are happy with our communications with them.
We Care About Your Feedback
We know some of you are frustrated about these continuous latencies, and we share your feelings regarding this situation. Although right now our movement is limited in this stage of the fulfillment, we promise you that we will make better any step that we can in our fulfillments of future projects. In this regard, we are open to any feedback you feel like sharing with us, and we will do our best to apply them to our strategies and operations.
See You Next Update!
We are sorry for taking your time with such a long update, but we thought that this information was needed to provide answers to questions or doubts some of you may have. We also would like to thank you for being as patient with us as you can, and being with us through such a situation.
We will see you next update when the deliveries start. Until then,
May your blades be sharp, and your hearts filled with Odin’s might and Freyja’s love.
Skol!
Fulfillment Update: Ships Reached Port
over 2 years ago
– Sat, Apr 02, 2022 at 05:46:04 PM
Hello Svillanders,
Today, we are here with a short follow-up update regarding the fulfillment of the books. Also, we have a nice surprise for you regarding our upcoming project, Bloodpunk!
Fulfillment Process
As of today, the ships for the UK and the US are going through customs clearance. Once they are cleared, the pallets will reach the hubs and the packaging will commence. No change in the delivery schedule has been reported to us by Quartermaster Logistics (US) or GamesQuest (UK) so we still have the estimated time of deliveries as first half of April.
Bloodpunk is Coming!
We also wanted to share with you the joyous, or rather bloody, news that our next Kickstarter, Bloodpunk will be launching soon! We have the pre-launch page open and as of today, we are planning to launch it on May 17th.
Bloodpunk is a dark-victorian setting with blood as the prime fuel of steam-age technology. It will include a whole overhaul of 5E that suits that technological age, as well as nefty politics and two ominous cities to explore, whether in grand balls or on the shady back streets. The Kickstarter campaign will consist of two books; an adventure for 1-7th levels called Bloodpunk: Heritage of the Damned and a campaign setting book called Bloodpunk: Region Guide to Tolia.
As usual with our books, we will provide a lot of content ranging from new archetypes, backgrounds, and other character options, to bloody monsters, interesting NPCs and new deities. Here are a few pieces of the artworks for Bloodpunk:
See You Next Update!
We hope to see you very soon with the news of books packed and deliveries starting. Until then,
May your blades be sharp, and your hearts filled with Odin’s might and Freyja’s love.
Skol!
Fulfillment Update: Ships will soon reach Port
over 2 years ago
– Tue, Mar 15, 2022 at 12:34:12 AM
Hello Svillanders,
We hope you are doing well and having a lot of fun with your adventures and campaigns in Svilland! Today, we are here with another update regarding the fulfillment of the books. As some of you have seen, the fulfillment has already started in the Asia and Australia regions. Other regions’ fulfillment from the US and UK hubs will soon follow.
Distribution and Shipping Partners
We also wanted to provide a recap on the information about our shipping partners for those who missed it:
We are working with two main shipping partners for the fulfillment process. GamesQuest/ShipQuest (“GQ”) is handling our deliveries for the UK, EU, and the rest of Europe. Quartermaster Logistics (QML) is handling the rest of the regions being the US, Canada, Australia, Asia, and the rest of the world.
Statuses of the Fulfillment
Australia and Asia - As you may recall, QML has stated to us that they are estimating the fulfillment for these regions to commence in early March, and it did! Most of our backers in these regions have their books delivered, and the rest will soon be delivered as well.
The US, Canada, and RoTW - The schedule for the QML’s US hub fulfillment remains the same and the ship will soon reach port. After the customs clearance, arrangements, and packaging, they will commence fulfillment in early April. So there is no change in their fulfillment schedule from the previous update.
The UK, EU, and Europe - Our friend from GQ has just provided us the information that - sadly - the scheduling for the ship has been postponed to March 16th. This means with the clearance, arrangements, and packaging, their commencing of the fulfillment has also been postponed. We are estimating they will be delivering your books around the same time as the US hub; in early April.
See You Next Update!
From this point on, we will be posting updates regularly on Kickstarter to keep all of you on track on the fulfillment. We will post an update when the US and UK ships have reached the port, another one when the goods have reached the hubs, and another one when the fulfillment in these hubs have started.
We would like to thank you all for understanding us and our situation given the conditions of the pandemic and all the things going on in the world right now, that are directly or indirectly affecting logistics. Thank you for being here with us on this journey, even through these hard times. We hope we will share the joy of all of you getting your books soon!
May your blades be sharp, and your hearts filled with Odin’s might and Freyja’s love.
