Gather round

Hi folks,

Wishing you the very best for the coming week from everyone at Rusty Towers!

Last week, we included a big update on Gaming & Giving 2021. If you missed it, you can read more about it here. One of the things we announced was a special, VIP, virtual event space, hosted on the Gather Town platform, where ticket holders can gather to watch the live stream at a wintery “Rusty Towers”. As well as being a space to hang out and talk with fellow fans, cast and crew will pop in to say hi during the event and there will be some exclusive interactive aspects related to the main show. If you’re not familiar with Gather, it’s a virtual space perfect for online events such as ours, and they gave us a huge discount to run this event with them which is rather nice! You get to customise your own pixelated avatar (think Stardew Valley), then you can walk around the space and chat with people using webcams or text chat. You can take a look at the Gather Town website to see some videos of a space in action! Here is a sneak peek at one of the corridors in our own space...

[Image description: A screenshot from the Rusty Towers Gather Town space. Visually, it is similar to Stardew Valley. Visible in the screenshot is a long corridor made of grey stone and several rooms with tables and chairs. In the centre is a character sprite, standing next to a festive Christmas tree.]

If this sounds like something you’d like to join, we’re delighted to say that tickets to this exclusive space are available now! We have just 220 tickets available across the two Gather areas, one for each day so we recommend getting tickets sooner rather than later to avoid disappointment. Tickets cost £7.50 for Saturday, and £7.50 for Sunday (plus a small handling fee and VAT) – this is simply to cover the small cost of hosting the room with Gather, with the remainder going straight to our charities Mermaids, ActionAid and Centrepoint. Ticket holders will also get an exclusive chance to win one of our giveaways, but more on that later!

You can find the tickets available at this link. If you have any questions at all, please let us know at mail@rustyquill.com or events@rustyquill.com.

This week on Enthusigasm, we’re talking about pets! Joining Helen will be Tessa (talking about Tikka), Lydia (talking about some chickens) and Sue Sims (talking about Cressida and Bilbo). A particular highlight of this episode is the reveal of Helen’s one and only pet, but there’ll also be discussions of tricks, training, and why we love our pets the way we do. Then on Sunday Helen will be discussing one of their very favourite topics: Villains. Join Cathy, Gabriel, Hannah P and Lex for everything from Count Olaf and Dr Horrible to Loki and Richard III.

Meanwhile in RQG we’re continuing our Hallowe'en Special, The Quiet Year. As spring begins the community starts to split into factions. Will they be able to unite in time to protect themselves against the Frost Shepherds? Find out on Tuesday! Finally, on Wednesday we have the next Rusty Fears 5 winner: Final Sale of the Remaining Works of E. Cutler, by Cormack Baldwin, read by Imogen Harris. Upon the death of the famed reclusive artist, E. Cutler, a one-of-a-kind auction is arranged for the sale of some of his most notable, and most unusual pieces…

Finally, here is our weekly transcript update. As always, this is also shared on our website.

Enthusigasm continues to launch with transcripts, and we hope you like the new format! We've been impressed by how closely a single page matches approximately 1 minute of audio, like in a film or theatre script. This was a particular accessibility goal we had set, as this format can make it easier to follow and pick things back up if you stop reading in the middle of an episode. The transcripts of both episodes releasing this week are now complete, and the audio of two more episodes are already in the hands of the transcription company.

We have 40 transcripts in our new house style completed for Rusty Quill Gaming so far, though they will need a review for quality before release. The transcript company seem to be making great progress towards completing all of the main series episodes in December, so we can aim for a planned January release.

Here is our full schedule for this week:

Mon 18th October

EGSM 5 – Space (Public) (4pm BST)

Tue 19th October

RQG – The Quiet Year Halloween Special – Part 2 (Patreon) (4pm BST)

Wed 20th October

MAG – Rusty Fears 5: Final Sale of the Remaining Works of E. Cutler (Patreon) (4pm BST)

RQG – The Quiet Year Halloween Special – Part 2 (Public) (4pm BST)

Thu 21st October

MAG – Rusty Fears 5: Final Sale of the Remaining Works of E. Cutler (Public) (4pm BST)

EGSM 6 – Pets (Extended Cut) (Patreon) (6pm BST)

Fri 22nd October

KNIGHTS+ Bonus – Rusty Bits #24: RQG Behind the Scenes Part 1 (4pm BST)

EGSM 6 – Pets (Public) (4pm BST)

Sunday 24th October

EGSM 7 – Villains (Extended Cut) (Patreon) (6pm BST)

Have a good week all!

The Rusty Quill team