Flagship, Finale, and (Rusty) Fears

Hi folks,

It’s been another busy week here at Rusty Towers as we inch closer to the end of the year. This newsletter threatens to be another behemoth, so let’s get straight to it.

Firstly, today we share the thrilling finale of our show, Trice Forgotten. In this week’s episode, the pieces are starting to fall. With the crew splintered down the middle, and enemies all around, things are not looking hopeful for the crew of the Netoansom. Tim Meredith and Lowri Ann Davies provide particularly chilling performances this episode, but we should take a moment to appreciate the amount of talent across the whole cast: Vic Zander as Baker, Shahan Hamza as Siva, Gigi Zahir as Noor, Ashley Goh as Inez, Naomi Batoo as Ahn and, of course, Rebecca Brough’s incredible performance as Captain Alestes. Trice Forgotten is Rusty Quill’s first foray (aside from our Patreon exclusive show, Inexplicables) into a full, multi-cast show, and our incredible team of editors, soundscapers, and masterers have bought the show alive. A thank you should also go to our producers who have kept the show on schedule and releasing as planned. Finally, of course, we should also thank and congratulate writer, Morgan Givens, director,and writer Rafaella Marcus, and lead writer and creator, Nemo Martin, for their outstanding work. As we said last week, we are so proud of Trice Forgotten: it showcases the very best Rusty Quill has to offer. If you have enjoyed the show, please rate and review it and share it with your friends, as this is the best way to support any show. If you haven’t yet listened, now is the time to start. Settle in for a swashbuckling tale of the high seas, delicious meals, found family, buried treasure, and a secret that might change everything… Listen from the start here on Patreon, or wherever you find podcasts.

If you missed our update last week, we know that after today’s episode many of you will be asking about the future of the show, but please bear with us as there are some discussions that won’t take place until 2023.

We are also planning on hosting a Trice Forgottenwrap party for Patreon in January – we’ll be sharing more information on that in the new year.

More big news for today, we’re delighted to welcome the podcast Maeltopia to the RQ Network! If you’re familiar with the name, Maeltopia are the minds behind RQ Network Show, The Sleep/Wake Cycle. Mark Anzalone, one of the creators of Maeltopia has also done several artworks inspired by The Magnus Archives, some of which are available to purchase exclusively on Teepublic, some of which are exclusive to Patreon. You can also look forward to the Maeltopia team guest writing on The Magnus Protocol. Maeltopia is a new world of horror fiction: a diverse collection of original horror and dark fiction featuring interconnected long-form serials. Maeltopia is a small team of three neuroatypical writers who have spent years creating a richly textured world with a deep mythology. They enjoy exploring themes and narratives on everything from powerful anti-heroes and fearsome gods to warring factions, mysterious artefacts, secret histories and much more.

We spoke to the Maeltopia team, Mark Anzalone, Steve Anzalone and Walker Kornfeld, who are the writing team behind the show.

Tell us who you are and a bit about Maeltopia?

Brothers Mark and Steve are the cofounders of Maeltopia, having started with weekly written episodes on the company’s Facebook page back in 2014. The world itself, however, has been a brainchild of Mark’s for over thirty years. Through writing and years of roleplaying, the brothers expanded the world to encompass everything it is today—though only a fraction of it has been published so far.

After a few years of posting on Facebook, Walker joined the team, providing editing, a little writing, and helping the brothers decide how to go about growing their audience. Walker had been friends with the brothers for over twenty years by that point, even having gamed with them in the world of Maeltopia under Mark’s GM’ing, back in the day. After drifting apart over subsequent years, Maeltopia brought Walker and the brothers back together again, where they began exploring the brothers’ exciting new ambitions.

And those ambitions included organizing the mountains of notes and stories of this world into some kind of clear narrative to share with the world—no easy feat for three guys who knew little about business and less about marketing.

But we knew we had something worth sharing, and that was enough. And it wasn’t long before we discovered podcasting—the perfect medium for Maeltopia.

What got you into podcasting?

After stumbling upon what creators like us were doing with the space—including greats like Rusty Quill—it became clear that podcasting was the way forward for us. The ability to use soundscapes to share our world in ways we’d never dreamt of was a really intriguing notion. So, we dedicated ourselves to the medium, starting out with cheap equipment and little knowledge, eventually upgrading our equipment and improving various skillsets to produce a quality that we feel is finally worthy of our peers on the Rusty Quill network.

What are you most proud about Maeltopia?

To be honest, we’re just proud that people care about our work. The fact that we have an audience emotionally invested in the world we’ve created is something that never fails to strike awe in us. The incredible feedback we’ve gotten over the years has often been the only thing keeping us going. To hear what our listeners—and especially our Patrons—have to say really makes all the nights, weekends, and credit card bills worth it. We always thought we had something worth sharing, and we’re just so happy to see that so many people agree.

What do you think sets Maeltopia apart?

Well, there are certain things we hope set us apart. Things like worldbuilding, how we illustrate antiheroes, how we try to give a philosophical bent to various themes, the world itself, the nature of horror, things like that. And we like to try things we haven’t seen much before, like mixing combat and philosophy with horror, like in The Shepherd of Wolves and Damnation Machine; or using symbolism or anthropomorphism for neurodivergent conditions like depression, schizoaffective disorder, and others.

That last bit is something we’re leaning into more, now, as can be seen with our podcast The Sleep/Wake Cycle. It’s taken us years to get to a point where we’re comfortable enough to share our conditions with the public, and diving head-first into the issue with a narrative like SWC has been nerve-wracking, but also liberating. We’re getting a lot of positive feedback on it, so we definitely plan to continue exploring the issue of neurodiversity in our work.

You can listen to Maeltopia and The Sleep/Wake Cycle wherever you find podcasts, or on the Rusty Quill website.

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Thank you to everyone who submitted a story to our Rusty Fears writing competition. We’ve had close to 700 entries and can’t wait to start reading them all. For those who have entered, please bear with us while we work on the judging process – as you can imagine, this will take a little while to read every story! The calibre of writing blows us away every year: you make it a very difficult, yet enjoyable, process. We’ll update you in the new year once we’ve selected our winning stories.

Finally, our Kickstarter campaign is still going extremely well with almost 8500 backers, which is an incredible number of people supporting us. We’re getting closer to our next stretch goal, a tour of the UK, and we’ve made incredible headway towards our social and early-raise goals as well. Join us on Sunday 18th December for our final Kickstarter livestream, where we'll be answering your burning questions about The Magnus Protocol!  Send us your questions using this form!

We know you all want the juicy plot details, or the deep dive into the lore - but we can only reveal so much! Questions related to production, for example, are more likely to be picked up. Similarly, we cannot guarantee that we will have time to answer all questions on stream, however we will get to as many as we possibly can. This form is only available to our Patreon supporters, and you don’t need to have donated to the campaign to ask a question.

Here is our full schedule for this week:

Monday 5th December

SEAS 10 – Breach (Patreon) (4pm GMT)

Tuesday 6th December

SEAS 10 – Breach (Public) (4pm GMT)

Friday 9th December

KNIGHTS+ bonus – Kickstarter Launch Video Outtakes (Patreon) (4pm BST)

Have a good week all!

The Rusty Quill team