Hi! This is John Nephew, president of Atlas Games, and fan of Ars Magica since 1988. I've been working hard since the campaign ended to get the first of your rewards to you, and I have a lot of information to share today! Thank you for your patience.

Our pledge manager is now set up. Today we will send out a "smoke test" -- this sends surveys to 5% of each pledge level, and gives us a chance to find and fix problems before we unleash the entire Infernal Realm upon ourselves.

If you receive a survey, I hope you can fill it out right away! There are so many variables in fulfillment of this campaign, and we can't wait to get backers the rewards that are already available.

A week ago, I found an unpublished introductory scenario written by Jeff Tidball in 1997 for 4th Edition. It was designed to play in under two hours, so it could easily run in a convention game slot to introduce the game to newcomers. We've set it up as a free download for everyone who backed our campaign at any pledge level. You must fill out your survey to receive it!

You'll see numerous new add-ons available in your survey, from a newly digitized version of Ars Magica 1st Edition to a House Bonisagus medallion, hand cast by me in your choice of four alloys. Newly digitized books will soon be available on our website as well, but as campaign add-ons you'll see a 20% discount.

Going by credit card billing address, we have backers in 61 different countries! The pledge manager now has shipping tables for them ALL, covering scenarios from "one set of dice" through "full Library of Durenmar plus additional add-ons". I can add more countries and territories if necessary -- drop us a line at [email protected] if you need your rewards sent somewhere not already configured.

The pledge manager will calculate shipping and, where applicable, taxes, which we will charge to the credit card you provide. You'll see a summary of your pledge including funds already collected; if your original payment didn't go through, you can pay everything together through the pledge manager.

After you fill in your survey, you'll be able to view your Digital Downloads page. It gives you immediate access to the files we've already distributed -- the advance manuscript text, digital freebies, and for eligible tiers the advance PDFs of Definitive Edition chapters 1 through 4. Future advance layout PDFs will be distributed this way as well, our password-protected folder proved to be immediately insecure, unfortunately.

Digital Downloads page access to your digital bundles and add-ons requires that your survey be complete, locked and paid.

The final digital version of Definitive Edition will be available this spring, when the book layout is finished and going to press. You'll find the core rulebook on the Digital Downloads page then, and we'll send everyone notification.

For many orders, we now expect to split shipment. When Definitive Edition arrives late next summer, we don't know what the international trade and tariff landscape will be like. We may need to have international orders of the book fulfilled from outside the United States. Items made in USA (such as dice and medallions) will need to ship from here in any case; and print-on-demand items may drop-ship directly from the manufacturer.

This means that some of your rewards may come much sooner than originally expected. I'm evaluating a print-on-demand book vendor that would let us print and drop-ship all of the softcover books for the Library of Durenmar and add-on backers, directly to you, very possibly before the end of this year. The source files are already set up for production; I'm just waiting for samples to evaluate.

We'll need to lock addresses for anything that ships soon. We will unlock addresses next year, before fulfilling Definitive Edition, so that anyone who moves between now and then will have a chance to confirm or update their place of delivery.

-John