I'm not exactly on schedule for Tale (I intended to have a playable alpha this month), but here's your consolation prize: art updates.
I recently added Fire Drakes and ducks to the Tale managerie. You'll encounter varous breeds of Fire Drake Elementals and Alloyals throughout the eastern face of the world, Oria. The brave and, more importantly, resilient will eventually encounter FrancisDrake, the drake leader.
Additionally, those daring to travel south to Austra will eventually encounter first patrols, squadrons, platoons, companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, divisions, corps, and eventually hordes of penguins. The penguin collective recently added an air-force to their numbers with propellor-beanie sporting aerial grenadier penguins, Aero-pengins, and ballistic-missile ground forces, Rocket-penguins.
The penguins appear to be gearing up for war with Borea, however, the red mage of the North will not be caught with his snow-pants down. The elves have recruited the not-so-friendly poler-bears to introduce penguin to their rich baby-seal diet. The narwhal claims neutrality and you're not likely to find him unless you dive in the frigid Boreal Sea.
Plans are under-way to populate all of the evil faces of the world with popular open-source mascots. You can expect to see the BSD Daemon in the hell-world of Dysia, and maybe even Fire-foxen in Oria. Drop me a line if you think of an appropriate mascot for the /East, perhaps involving fire or ducks, especially if it continues the theme of rougue operating systems.
On a completely different topic, there is new art for Tale accessories including a morning-star, the brick-of-power, and the iTome for manic fighters. These items will be available on the ever-popular face 5, Occia.
That gives me a good an idea. Perhaps there should be an operating system for every face! Faces 6, 5, and 4 (good) would be commercial operating systems while faces 1, 2, 3 (evil) would be open-source. Face 6 will obviously be blighted with drafts; does anybody have an idea for Borea, the north pole?
Also, there's a new item for your initial inventory when you start the game in Euia, a spork.