Marrow & Tine
“Ink remembers what gold forgets.”
On the Operation of This Glowing Sheet
Plain instruction, set down by the Pressman.
Item the First – Unrolling
The sheet is longer than your pane of glass. Drag a thumb up it, or turn the little wheel if your engine has one. It unrolls. Quite the parlor trick.
Item the Second – Imprints
Words struck in red ink are imprints. Press one and you jump straight to the column it names. Press it twice and you jump twice. Quite the feat of Artificery .
Item the Third – Stamps
The bordered squares farther down are stamps. Press one to leave your mark in our ledger. A mark is a word given, so don’t press them for sport. We see every one.
News from the Press Floor
A Letter from the Lead Compositor
Concerning the Valoria Chimera System, now at press, and the works to follow it.
To the reader. The Valoria Chimera System is at edit and revision in this house: the Player Core and the Veil Master’s Core, two volumes, saddle-stitched, sized for a coat pocket. The proofs are in production and the corrections are being set. The run will be pulled and issued when it is right, and not sooner. This sheet exists so you will know when that is.
The System is a manual of games. Two to five players, or perhaps more, take characters into the four kingdoms; one serves as Veil Master and plays the world. The dice resolve every act into one of six outcomes, and the most useful of these is called Overshoot: you succeed, and something else happens too. Wounds last. Creeds have costs. We have set every word of it twice, and we judge it good work.
On its making: the System is drawn chiefly from Master Halebrant’s writings in the Codex of Valoria, Volumes I and II, and was drafted in collaboration with him and with the measly Studio Director of our Expeditionary Branch in Portland, who is, for the record, the only soul both this house and Master Halebrant will reliably answer correspondence from. The Director is also the primary facilitator of conveying the material and stories of The Codex into what people outside of Valoria would refer to as “Table-Top-Roll-Playing-Game” . Direct your questions accordingly.
Work continues despite the Shardwater. Three squalls hit the drying week, and a flask of moonstone rain cracked in the storeroom, which now has a ceiling condition we do not discuss. Behind the Core volumes come the first three Path Booklets, The Warrior, The Priest, and The Sage, with the rest locked in the forme. Master Halebrant’s pages arrive by a grey raptor that will not be touched and will not wait. We set what it brings.
Everything coming, and its standing at press, is listed in the Scriptorium below. Readers outside Valoria should address the Portland branch with inquiries. Readers within it know where the Third Vault is.
– B. Vanderquoin Lead Compositor, Marrow & Tine
Works at Press
Direct Booklet Sales & Manifested Digital Downloads – Forthcoming
No work below has yet been issued. Each is listed with its standing at press. Within Valoria, all sales are processed and issued by the headquarters in New Volundara and paid in Eyes. Anywhere outside Valoria, all sales, orders, and “downloads” are taken by the Portland Expeditionary Branch, and will be paid for in their local currency, plus The Covenant of Eyes’ conversion fees. Subject to negotiation. .
Valoria Chimera System
The manual entire. One player serves as Veil Master and plays the world; two to five others take characters into the four kingdoms. Every throw of the die reads out in six bands, Overshoot among them, the deed done, and something gone sideways with it. Drawn from Halebrant’s Codex of Valoria, Vols. I & II, and drafted with the Portland Studio Director. Two volumes, saddle-stitched.
Bound, the pair: 12 ß · Phantom folio: 7 ß
Stamp the Standing-Order Ledger
Not yet pulled. Your mark sits in the standing-order ledger, and word goes out the day the run is issued. Outside Valoria, write the Branch: studio@marrowandtine.com.
Mark the Phantom Folio
Noted. The phantom folio manifests when the bound run does, and not a tide sooner. -N.B.
The Path Booklets
Three of the Thirteen Paths in pocket volumes, every feature a player needs for adventuring, Tier I through IV. The remaining Paths are locked in the form and will follow in their season. The full set numbers thirteen. We will not be hurried by letters.
Bound: 3 ß apiece · the trio: 8 ß · Phantom: 2 ß apiece
Stamp the Standing-Order Ledger
Marked. State your Path when word comes; the clerk will pretend not to judge it, and likely fail.
Mark the Phantom Folio
Marked. Three booklets with no weight at all. The Warrior calls that suspicious. The Sage calls it efficient.
Songs for the Threadwalker
Tales that address you as you. Some readers call that impertinent; the rest call it accurate. Accounts of walking where the world runs thin, arranged by the author of the Codex of Valoria, originally written by an undisclosed Thal’Valenyan mystic of unestablished repute. The volume binds when the last pages come off the raptor.
Bound: 4 ß · Phantom folio: 2 ß
Stamp the Standing-Order Ledger
In the ledger. It binds when the author finishes. Read it indoors the first time.- H.C.
Mark the Phantom Folio
Marked. A walking-book that goes everywhere and touches nothing. Halebrant would call that fitting.
The Hearthvault Almanac
Rumors, recipes, weather of the Veil, and charts of no military value, and other news from the Holds of Kazad Grimnir. New numbers issue as the press allows and the mountain permits. Read it by the hearth it is named for.
Bound: 1 ß · Phantom folio: 1 oß
Stamp the Standing-Order Ledger
Marked, and cheap at that. Leave a rumor with your order; the good ones are paid in kazaffee.
Mark the Phantom Folio
Half a coin for the cheapest haunting in New Volundara.
The Expeditionary Branch
For all sales, orders, and “downloads” placed anywhere beyond the kingdoms.
This house keeps two outposts. The Expeditionary Warehouse at Crowport, Galadorn, moves freight and answers to no inquiries or out correspondence. The Expeditionary Branch at Portland sits a good deal farther out, past the edge of any chart we print, and answers everything. If you are reading this sheet from outside Valoria, and we suspect most of you are, the Branch is your door. Its Studio Director is liaison to this house and to Master Halebrant both, and every order, question, or commission from beyond the kingdoms crosses his desk.
Marrow & Tine Independent Printworks LLC · Portland Expeditionary Branch
Marvin
Studio Director / Apprentice Paper Cutter
Head of the Dockward Goonsquad
On behalf of S. Halebrant
Ink remembers what gold forgets.
Letters reach him faster than the raptor reaches us.