The Priest-King of Shade

Back in 2013 I submitted to I.C.E., and they accepted, my manuscript for “Priest-King of Shade”. There was no formal agreement, but at the time, product output was slow, RMU was just getting rolling and Terry was open to third party submissions. Nicholas gave the go-ahead and both he and Terry gave it a few editorial passes early on. Then things slowed down. For years.

Over the ensuing years, I continued to refine and add content, edit my own work and found various artists and others to help with floorplans and layouts. I continued to submit my new updated versions until I was told not to work on it anymore until a complete editorial pass was finished. 

That was several years ago. In a few weeks I’m turning 49 and staring down the barrel of 50! I have 3 more comprehensive modules nearing completion plus all the other RMBlog stuff I’ve been working on. Terry has announced he doesn’t have time to edit my project and I haven’t heard that anyone else will take on editing duties. The product needs artwork, layout, floorplans and probably another 20 pages to really polish things up. While I was really looking forward to having an “official” published ICE/SW module, I have no interest in waiting forever. My brother Matt (Vroomfogle) did all the work on the Shadow World Players Guide and was the lead design on RMU, so I’ll let that be our family’s official testament to our long standing commitment to I.C.E.

With that said, I’m attaching an early version of Priest-King in PDF format. It’s rough, the charts don’t quite fit on the page, these floorplans are shite and it just needs a lot of work. However, I have complete versions of all charts in excel, clarifications and can provide them if you email me. Since I never had a formal contract with ICE and I’m offering this for free I can’t imagine anyone will care.  Let’s call this PK.v.2. My most recent version has several more adventures and is hitting 180 pages. With professional artwork, layouts and newer material there is still a publishable product here. 

If you haven’t followed my blogs here, Priest-King is actually Chapter 2 in the middle of my extended “The Grand Campaign”. Chapter 3, The Empire of the Black Dragon segues into one of the Dragonlords storylines and injects the PC’s into the world spanning battle with the Jerak Ahrenrath and the Eyes. Heady stuff in my campaign!!

So while this is rough, it’s also free. How about this as an idea? If you want to contribute to this, help with one of the floorplans, or insert an idea etc, let me know. We can crowdsource this a bit and make it even better. I’m open to that and can focus on all my other projects!