I would like to thank all of our fans. It was you that made it so worth while, and it is with a great deal of regret that I write this after the show has podfaded, instead of going out “with a bang” as you deserved. Your enthusiastic comments were always appreciated, and your positive reviews fabulous for the ego. Thanks for all the time you gave us.

I would also like to thank the game publishers that provided games for us to review. Without things to talk about the show would have consisted of even more indulgent conversations on our favourite topics than it already did! Many publishers were very generous with their products and their time. I am disappointed that we did not conduct more Skype interviews, as there are many, many people I would have loved to chat with. Having said that, I have made a lot great friends through the show, and am thankful for that.

While I am thanking people, a loud shout out needs to go to the other gaming podcasters and bloggers that inspired and encouraged Marty and I and supported us in a multitude of ways. The tiny tabletop gaming media community is a wonderful thing to be a part of. I hope to one day make it to GenCon Indy and participate in one of the famous podcaster’s parties!

Finally, and mostly, I want to thank Marty. Without him I would never have had the balls to begin a podcast, and the show would not have been the enjoyable distraction that it was. Our time planning and recording episodes were the highlight of my week and (for some inexplicable reason), we just really worked together. The Vegemite and Cheese of the podcast world. Recording the show with Marty made it all worthwhile, whether anyone ever listened or not. So cheers, Mate.

So, what now?

The website will remain, a digital tribute to our golden days of internet broadcasting, but the podcast itself will likely disappear fairly shortly. I will no longer be paying for the show’s hosting so I imagine when our account with Libsyn expires at the end of December the links to episodes will no longer work, both on the website and via iTunes. If you have a favourite, save it now! I will, of course, keep a copy of the episodes and look at hosting them elsewhere, but at this stage I have done very little investigation and it will only happen as time permits.

The email address will remain active as long as the website does, and I will continue to receive notifications when you contact us. Likewise, the twitter account and Facebook page will remain, though they have not been actively used in some time.

And, what’s next?

While I am bringing the show to an end, I am hardly retiring to a secluded life away from the internet and gaming. As well as continuing to dabble in game design and fiction writing, I organise National Game Design Month and help out with my local games club. My wife and I had a crazy idea that will see some renewed enthusiasm (and content!) in the near future. The best place to get a handle on everything I am doing is at my personal website, NathanRussell.net, or via twitter @MrNathanRussell. I still have an itch to share my thoughts, ideas and opinions with the world and am exploring the best ways to do this, so don’t be a stranger!

The End…?

With all that said there is not much more to do but say Goodbye. It has been great.

• Steampunk Bible
• Deadlands
• Space 1889
• Airship Pirate

As always, your feedback is appreciated, so leave it below!

>>Direct Download to Episode 54<<

Discussed this episode:

• Warmachine
• Hell Dorado
• Pathfinder
• Legends of Drizzt
• Small World Underground
• Warpath

Thanks for listening, and tune in again at the end of the month for our first themed episode. Feedback is appreciated, either in the comments below, on the facebook page, or via email.

>>Direct Link to Episode 53<<

For millenia they have existed in a shadowy world hidden within our dreams, unable to communicate with us, unable to make sense of our strange ways and customs. Hidden in their vast labyrinth, they have waged an eternal civil war, the ripples of which have spread across our unconscious minds as nightmares and insanity. Only recently have we been able to piece together what they are really up to, and only now is the world ready to recieve some of their esoteric wisdom.

Vulpinoid Studios is proud to present the first two parts of that wisdom, The Goblin Tarot Deck and the Goblin Tarot Deck Companion.

There are some great rewards and I strongly recommend you check out the Indie Go Go project page for more details.

• Dark Harvest website
• Cubicle 7 store

This will be the last episode for a few weeks, as I need to take a short break to concentrate on family and work. I will be back towards the end of September!

>>Direct Download to HBGOTR #12<<

• Lego Heroic

Thanks for listening, and please leave feedback below.

>>Direct Download to HBGOTR #11<<

Journey to the Heart of Luna

by Andy Frankham-Allen

Prologue

1.

It was impossible! Aether flyers were not, by definition, designed for a crew of one, a fact that Annabelle Somerset felt with ever increasing dismay as she raced from the control to the navigation station. Just getting the Annabelle (yes, God bless her uncle, he had named the flyer after her) out of the gorge had been hard work. Starting up the boiler single-handed, then rushing the length of the flyer to the control room to check the instruments to make sure the water was creating enough steam, then back to the engine room at the rear of the flyer to set out the rocket engines her uncle had designed especially to combat the awkward gravity of Luna.

She cursed Tereshkov once more, and squeezed her eyes shut for a brief moment.

 I have to do this, she continued to tell herself. She had survived much worse. Annabelle almost laughed at that. Living for two years amongst Geronimo’s band of Chiricahua Apaches had tested her when she had been a mere slip of a girl. She had survived that, and she was certain she would survive this. That she had no choice was beyond question; there was no other left who could get the message to Earth. Uncle Cyrus’ life was in the balance and she could not allow herself even a moment of weakness in her endeavour. She had let her parents down, and she refused to let history repeat itself with her uncle.

She was not a little girl anymore, and the Russians be damned!

Instruments were laid out before her on the navigation station; some of standard design like the orrery, a mechanical analogue of the Solar System, and an astrolabe which allowed precise measurements of the planets positions; others were of her uncle’s making, and these she did not even know the names of. They were recent creations of his, and her decision to join the expedition had transpired late in the day, ill affording her the time to study these new inventions. Annabelle was no expert at reading the standard instruments, but she understood enough from having watched Blakely at the station to ascertain the current position of the Annabelle. The flyer was barely a kilometre from attaining a low lunar orbit.

She scrambled across to the control station once more, almost colliding with the bulkhead as the flyer shook around her. The damage sustained to the aether propeller by the Russians was too much. When she had first set her eyes on the propeller she had been certain she would never be able to navigate the flyer, despite the relatively unscathed nature of the aether propeller governor. She was fortunate the Russians did not recognise the governor for what it was, or they most certainly would have found a way to remove it from the Annabelle, and if not the whole apparatus then certainly they would have taken the diamond that served as the aether lens. Without it the governor would have been less than useless.

She gripped the aether wheel, a small ratchet-operated wheel that controlled the aether propeller at the rear of the ship, and turned it slightly. Annabelle looked out of the window and was elated to see the distant shape of the Earth, and before it, barely a speck in the depth of space, Her Majesty’s Orbital Heliograph Station Harbinger.

When she had first happened upon this plan with K’chuk she had hoped to be able to pilot the flyer to Earth; it was a difficult task, one fraught with many dangers, but the odds were not insurmountable. Upon seeing the damage rendered by the Russian okhrana, Annabelle knew she would have to adapt her plan. Obtaining a lunar orbit was the best she could hope for, but it would be enough to put the Annabelle in a position relative to the Harbinger. It was operated by the British Empire, and that served her purposes perfectly, as the help she required was located in England and not her native America.

She turned to the heliograph apparatus and was just about to start tapping in her coded message when her eyes espied a most terrible image through the port window. Annabelle’s finger paused over the key, and her eyes stared wide. Its iron clad surface reflected the light from the Sun, rising from Luna like the Great Beast of Hell.

“No,” Annabelle hissed. “This cannot be the end.”

So, she determined, it would not be. The Russian flyer was closing in, its gun ports no doubt opening as she looked, her mind trying to catch up with the increasing beat of her heart. Uncle Cyrus’ flyer was not a warship; he was an inventor, and his flyer echoed that. It was designed for exploration, not for battle. Any armaments it did have were minimal, and even if Annabelle were able to get to them in time, she doubted greatly their effectiveness against a fully armed Russian ironclad.

Annabelle turned away from the approaching flyer and focussed her attention on the heliograph before her. She began typing out her message, praying that the orbiting station would pick it up and relay the message with haste.

Space: 1889 © & ™ Frank Chadwick 1988,2011

Logo Design © Steve Upham, 2011

‘Journey to the Heart of Luna’ is © Andy Frankham-Allen & Untreed Reads LLC, 2011

Space: 1889 & Beyond is published by Untreed Reads Publishing, and the first series begins late August 2011. You can now buy the season pass, and save 25% directly from;

http://store.untreedreads.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=68_7_49_197&products_id=193

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Coming July 2011 from Untreed Reads Publishing

SPACE 1889 & BEYOND

Everything Jules Verne should have written.

Everything H.G. Wells could have written.

Everything Arthur Conan Doyle thought of,

but never published – because it was too fantastic! 

A brand new series of ebooks based on the world-renowned Role Playing Game, fully licensed from creator, Frank Chadwick, and headed by best-selling author of Seeker (Book One of The Garden), Andy Frankham-Allen. Space 1889 & Beyond takes the concepts and ideas that have thrilled steampunk gamers for over two decades into new and unexpected directions. Familiar enough for the old guard, and thrilling enough for a whole new generation of fans.

This series follows the exploits of “Professor” Nathanial Stone, scientific genius and unwilling adventurer, and Miss Annabelle Somerset, niece of infamous scientist Doctor Cyrus Grant and born adventuress, as they travel the inner worlds uncovering secret plots and encountering strange creatures. From the unexplored subterranean world of Luna, all the way to the divided sands of Mars, and back again, adventure and wild daring-do is never far away.

The first series of six ebooks runs from July through to December 2011 and is brought to you by some of the best names in the field of steampunk, science fiction and horror.

Andy Frankham-Allen is a Welsh-born author of many short stories, both for Untreed Reads and the Big Finish official range of Doctor Who anthologies. In 2005 he co-authored the last in Noise Monster Productions range of Space 1889 audio dramas, and in early 2011 Hirst Publishing and Untreed Reads published the first novel in his new real world dark fantasy series, The Garden, which has recently been nominated for the Rainbow Award, Best Full-Length Gay Supernatural Novel 2011. He is the author of story #1: Journey to the Heart of the Luna.

K.G. McAbee writes steampunk, fantasy, horror, science fiction, pulp and YA, plus a few more genres from time to time just to keep her hand in. She’s had seventeen books and over ninety-one short stories and novellas published so far, and she has from five to seven underway at any given time; she also has a passion for prime numbers. She’s the author of the Lady Abigail steampunk short story series at Untreed Reads, and she is co-author of the steampunk series The Brass Chronicles; the first book, Brass and Bone, will be released soon from Carina Press/Harlequin. She’s a history geek who once spent an hour lying in a stone vault in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid, and she lives in a 217-year-old log cabin in the woods of upstate South Carolina, near an ancient stone quarry used by some of her ancestors, the Cherokee. She is the author of story #2: Vandals on Venus.

Mark Michalowski is the author of four BBC Doctor Who novels, a Doctor Who spin-off novel and a BBC Being Human novel, as well as more short stories than he can count (mainly because he’s never been very good at counting). He lives in Leeds with half a cat. Not in a macabre way – it’s just that Lulu spends half of her time living in the lap of luxury at various neighbours’ houses. If only humans could do that… He is the author of story #3: The Ghost of Mercury.

L. Joseph Shosty lives in Beaumont, Texas with his wife and son.  He is the author of nearly fifty short stories, as well as numerous essays, articles, book reviews, and poems.  A novel, Sign of the Hanged Man, was serialised on the web in 2000 and 2001, and his story collection, Hoodwinks on a Crumbling Fence, was published in 2000.  His second novel, a mainstream work titled The Return of Baldheaded Johnson, has recently been completed. He is the author of story #4: Abattoir in the Aether.

Frank Chadwick is no stranger to the Victorian science fiction field. He is the creator of the Space: 1889 universe, with the first in a series of role-playing adventures, board games, and miniatures rules appearing over twenty years ago. He is known throughout the gaming industry as one of its most prolific designers, with over a hundred published games. He is also well-known in the history and military affairs field, with over two hundred books, articles, and columns. His 1991 Desert Shield Fact Book reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list, but he still lists steampunk as one of his first and greatest loves. He is the author of story #5: A Prince of Mars.

J.T. Wilson is an author, a script consultant and a musician. He is the manager of the band Deathsex Bloodbath and the wrestling zombie Chris Stone, a traveller in Unspace, a renowned lover and a compulsive liar. He is best known for his far-fetched fiction novel Cemetery Drive and the forthcoming Untreed Reads short Squalling Brats. Despite growing up in the North of England, ill-fated dabblings with the undead condemn him to dwell forevermore in Coventry. He likes cats and dinosaurs and is the last of the romantics. He is the author of story #6: Dark of Luna.

Steve Upham is the artist, editor and publisher at Screaming Dreams, a small press dedicated to all things fantasy, sci-fi and horror. He also produces cover artwork and designs for several other independent publishers. Although formally trained in traditional media, Steve now works digitally for illustration work using numerous 2D and 3D graphics applications. As if he doesn’t already have enough to do, he continues to look for new challenges! You can find out more at his website – http://www.screamingdreams.com. He redesigned the series logo, and designed the cover template.

David Burson is a freelance illustrator specializing in science fiction art. He writes and illustrates the comic book Draculasaurus, and is an active Doctor Who fan artist. David lives near Austin, Texas with his wife. He is the cover artist for series one.