End of Year Update for Patreon Supporters

Hello lovely Patreons!

Hannah Brankin here for something a little different from our usual Patreon updates. My job at Rusty Quill is COO, which means I am basically the oil that greases the cogs in each department.

I thought I’d spend some time today updating you all on a few behind the scenes titbits here at Rusty Towers, as well as some of the exciting projects we’re working on.

It has been an incredibly busy year here at Rusty Towers, with the launch of our long-awaited series Neon Inkwell, and of course fulfilling Kickstarter pledges ahead of the public release of The Magnus Protocol in January 2024.

It’s been said many times, but it’s worth reiterating how important your Patreon donations are when it comes to keeping the lights on at RQ. Whilst Patreon is not our sole income stream – with advertising and merchandise, among other things, playing an important part – having a regular, consistent income each month is lifeblood for a small, independent company like ours. I wanted to take some time to tell you how we use these funds. Money earned via Patreon goes straight back into Rusty Quill Original shows, paying our crew, directors, cast, writers, consultants and more to work on them, covering various hosting and distribution costs and providing essential equipment to our team around the world.

None of the money we raised on Kickstarter has gone to anything other than the production of The Magnus Protocol, and similarly the RQ Network is entirely self-funded. Patreon funds on the other hand go towards creative endeavours such as Cry Havoc! Ask Questions Later and Neon Inkwell which both launched in 2023.

Speaking of the Network, we’ve had a fantastic year so far. We’ve welcomed on a host of new content creators with even more scheduled for announcement in due course. Patrons will continue to get early access to this information ahead of the public.

The Network has been an incredibly rewarding project to work on, allowing us to showcase podcasting talent from around the world and share incredible podcasts with our fans in a way that we weren’t able to before. The shows hosted on the Network are some of the best audio dramas around, handpicked to represent the very best in podcasting.

On the RQ Originals side, it has been a varied year as we launched a variety of different podcasts.

We were so pleased with the reception of Cry Havoc! Ask Questions, including a review in The Telegraph describing it as “Somewhere between Succession and Up Pompeii!”. I personally normally wait until public release before listening to our content but I admit that Cry Havoc! was one show I peeked at ahead of release for every episode! We are glad David K Barnes will be getting a break from orgy writing after this 20 episode epic and hope to work more with David and Amani in future.

Neon Inkwell is now well underway, with multiple series in simultaneous production. Showrunner Elizabeth Moffatt is currently working on recording the third series and casting for the fourth series, with the post production team currently finishing up work on ‘Of That Colossal Wreck’, the science fiction horror written by Sasha Sienna and Jonathan Sims.

The concept behind Neon Inkwell is to give a home to short-form podcasts that allow us to experiment and trial new genres, new techniques and new collaborations. Much like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, a number of our production team are stepping out of their comfort zone with Neon and trying their hand at a new element such as scoring music or mastering for the first time whilst we introduce new talent into the mix. I am excited to see the end result and am chuffed we can let the team stretch its legs a bit!

Of course, I have to mention the overwhelming support we have seen for the Magnusverse this year. Between The Magnus Protocol Kickstarter, the Europe-wide ARG, and the astonishing success of our Monte Cook Archives TTRPG, it really has been the Year of Magnus. Writing is well underway for Seasons one and two, with recording and post-production in full swing. I will be joining Alex, April and Sam Jones the Music Man in Vienna late December to record a full orchestral composition of The Magnus Protocol, ready for mastering and release in January. Needless to say this is exciting for me, but it is a dream of Alex and Sam’s since they were children and so there may be a happy tear shed by me that day. But I digress…

The pre-mastered pilot episode for The Magnus Protocol was received well by backers and Patreons earlier this year, and I’d like to extend one more thank you to the lucky folks that made it through storms and train strikes to our Premiere event in Manchester in October, it was wonderful to see the enthusiasm for our shows, and it has certainly whetted our appetite for more fan-facing events for 2024. Bonzo feels more real and awful now than ever before!

The sheer amount of support we received meant that we could offer extras that were unthinkable for us before, such as the orchestrated music, the ARG, the documentary and spin-off podcasts, not to mention an entire Live Show that will tour the UK!

Of course, I’ll mention here that when Protocol is released to the public, Kickstarter backers and Patreons at Knights and Nobles tiers will still receive early access 48 hours ahead of the public release on all episodes.

Last but not least, we are FINALLY back into events mode too! Our excellent Events Manager Jess Anson has been working on numerous opportunities for events we can attend – both professional business-to-business events and panels, and more fan-oriented cons and appearances. To boast a tiny bit, we smashed the MCM London event in October and were very humbled that people waited so long in queue to meet us all. The quality of the cosplays was out of this world! I stood there an hour before opening time fretting that no one would come. I was very wrong. We are absolutely going to lean into invites like that again in future, we had so much fun.

Of course, we’re also looking at a live tour of the UK as part of the Kickstarter pledges, though we are very much prioritising the podcast currently and are looking to really dig into the tour planning and writing in 2024. To our knowledge no podcast has ever undertaken a fully theatrical production at this scale before and it is exhilarating and mildly terrifying!

I think that covers a lot and I don’t want to bend your ear much longer. So I will close out by saying again, thank you so much. For your patronage, for your kind words and emails for my team that work so very passionately, for your feedback and suggestions which constantly help to shape how we grow and evolve. The independent space in fiction and the pockets of indie creators; the oasis Rusty Quill provides, feels ever more precious and ever more important and I hope you, like I, cherish it.
Thank you, from all of us.
Hannah Brankin
COO