Final Lockdown on Backerkit Survey
3 days ago
– Thu, Apr 16, 2026 at 12:45:02 PM
To all of our backers, we are about to start shipping out the physical The Kingdom of Keshanar sourcebooks. This means that next week, the week of April 20th, all cards will be locked and any remaining balances to cards will be charged. If you need to update your shipping address, your credit card on file, or anything else, now is the time to do it! Please email [email protected] for support. We will be actively monitoring our inbox to make sure that we don’t miss any of your emails.
Thanks for your support, and get ready to unbox the sourcebook!
Sourcebook Shipping About to Happen
10 days ago
– Thu, Apr 09, 2026 at 02:57:34 PM
Hello everyone. Thank you as always for your patience. We finally have pallets of the Sourcebook in our climate controlled storage and we have begun the process of shipping. This is going to take a few weeks to get everything that we have on hand (sourcebook, dice, canopic jars and scarabs) out to you. As we mentioned earlier, we are are dividing the entire KS delivery into two phases so that we can get you the sourcebook now. This adds about 15K to the shipping costs but we are anxious to get the sourcebook and a some other items into your hands ASAP. We call this Phase 1.
Phase 2 will be the LE covers, the campaign, DM screen, printed minis and everythign else that comes with the campaign (like the cards and battlemaps). The PDF of the Campaign will come sooner of course but the printed books will be printed in China as we kinda shot the cash wad on printing the sourcebook in the US (saved 4 months) so now we need to be a bit more frugal on the production costs for the rest of the physical goods.
Over the course of the next week we will complete our fulfillment logistics and start getting hundreds of packages into the mail. We will be sending updates once that starts you can seeing them shipping out.
Thank you as always for your generous support and patience. We think you will really like the sourcebook. It came in at 512 pages rather than the estimated 400 and it is loaded with amazing art. It has some minor errors (despite the dozen editors and proofreaders) because we did the layout in 3 weeks instead of 3 months. Rushing the layout introduced a few errors that were not in the manuscript but I think they are forgivable - errors are like Pokemon, you can't catch them all, or maybe it's you gotta catch em all - whatever. You will recieve a card for the errata PDF download with each book. We are also getting ready to release the Shadown Manuscript from Dr. Jill, our Egyptologist, that points out what aspects of the lore and Keshen theology and culture that are accurate to ancient Egypt and where we deviated in the interests of game play and adaptation to general DnD cosmology. That will be a PDF and you will reiceve a notification to download it.
While all this is happening, I am cranking on the campoaign. Its close. Then it's art and layout and the PDF will ship. I hate to guess when because it will probably be wrong but its a matter of some few months. Getting that in your hands is priority number one.
Regards
Dave, Marx and Emily.
Setting Book PDF has released!
2 months ago
– Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 01:38:21 PM
Dear Backers,
Today was a huge milestone in the lives of the Orthane Productions team. We just distributed the PDF of the setting book for the Kingdom of Keshanar. If you did not receive an email to download it from BackerKit then please send an email to [email protected] to get that sorted right away! Soon we will be releasing the STLs packs although we have decided to make some enhancements by adding color to the models. This doesn't print (as far as I know) but it looks cool and may provide some inspiration to the mini-painter. So look for more digital content releases soon. The PDF came in about 100 pages bigger than we anticipated. We thought about spreading some of the content into the Vol 1 of 3 of the campaign (like putting most of the NPCs in there) but because some backers only want the setting book, we decided to pack as much in there as possible and use it referentially with the campaign books; our maxim is maximum value for your table.
All other items are on track with the date I mentioned in the last update (#27), and the hardcopy books will be printed in the next 30 days.. This moment is a trepidatious one for us as we have poured so much into this and now we get to face the feedback after all the hype. And while it is not over (and hopefully won't be for a long time), this is the close of an era where we get to experience so much support and enthusiasm for a product nobody has even seen yet! That was indeed, a humbling experience. If you like the setting book, I can say with some confidence that you are going to love the campaign. It's a little eerie how the overarching story of the campaign meshes so well with ancient Egyptian religious canon and we are going to roll it out in a slightly unique way (at least in my experience). But more on that later. Now I am back to the grindstone finishing up Ra-Memnon and the Book of Gates here at the Luxor airport waiting area. As Marx and I developed the setting book, chunks of the associated campaign were invalidates by enhancements we made to the setting.
As always, we would love to hear from you on our Discord where we do most of our lurking, and/or see you at a con (GaryCon, Origins and GenCon are in the lineup).
Dave and Marx
We are on the eve of printing the setting book!
3 months ago
– Thu, Jan 22, 2026 at 10:31:50 AM
First off, sorry for the radio silence. All, and literally ALL, of our energy of late has been going towards finishing the TKK Sourcebook. No excuses for leaving you in the dark though as I know that not all of you are in Keshite Conclave on facebook or our The Reth Discord server. And on that note, we have some exciting news: We are currently DAYS AWAY from finalizing our files and sending them to Walsworth to print the regular edition cover of the setting book. We decided to upscale both covers significantly and we are absorbing those costs. You should have them in your hands by the end of April. After that we will have the regular edition covers and they will start going out to you, our faithful and generous backers! The Setting book is coming in at 512 pages - about 20-30% higher than anticipated - mostly because of all the stunning art from our 60+ artists (just the hieroglyphs are a big process taking several people). Our goal is to have them in hand at GaryCon 26 but if that doesn't happen, we will bring a few proof copies to GC (where we announced the project 2 years ago and launched the KS 1, year ago).
Of course, the backers get everything first. We will be shipping most of the physical rewards in April. The campaign book is going to take a little longer as well as a few of the physical rewards that are associated with the campaign book (Like Secrets of Bast Cards and some maps). There IS a large tear out double sided map in the Setting Book though. The Setting came in much beefier and took more time. For instance, most of the NPCs that the campaign will be referencing are in the setting book (not all - some new ones in Campaign also).
The custom covers are going to be printed by Regent (in China) as there is not a printer in the US that makes leatherette covers, custom bronze stamp debossing and other features at the quality level we want. We even explored full cowhide leather but there were lots of quality and consistency issues so we are using real but processed leather.
We never imagined that layout was this much work (I'm sure our colleagues in other setting projects are laughing at this) but we remain committed to getting this to the our US printer (Walsworth) within a few days - even if it kills us - and it might. The good news here is that we have established our style guide, our processes, our cadre of artists, our layout team, etc. The campaign book will truly happen quickly (by comparison) and we are committed to launching the Lv10-15 and 15-20 campaign books rapidly so that there will be no delay in your campaigns. The second this one goes to print, we will start on the next and the master ark of narrative for all 3 campaign books is already set.
The PDF will be available sooner than the print. We just need to put the links and other functionality in after we send it to the printer and make sure we have the distribution process full nailed down.
As we may have mentioned earlier, this means that we will not be shipping all the physical rewards together so you may get multiple shipments. We don't want to prolongue getting things in your hands just to save on shipping.
Eternally grateful for you all.
The Orthane Team
Here's a preview of what we've been putting together
And this:
Another example of the care and authenticity that is going into this. We made this ancient Keshen tablet in the style of some specific ancient Egyptian wall art. The hieroglyphs are real, and we aged it to match similar AE wall art. It took a month for this one page. We are NOT screwing around here folks! You will be pleased. There may be a few typos or a missing indent here and there because we have so condensed the timeline but trust us when we say that this is not your grandmother's AE setting book. Our 3 trips to Egypt in 12 months testify to that (and I am going back in Feb).
Part of the reason why we need to go there is that there is so much art, architecture, hieroglyphic text and other material that is not on the internet or otherwise available. Going is the only way. Orthane is also opening up TTRP in Egypt (we already set up a lending library of books, dice, battle mats, screens and minis - 500 pounds of gear) and are working to fund some actual archeology there but more on that later. I'm back to the grind! Thank you for your faith in us. We cannot express how appreciative we are. SO CLOSE!
PS. Many other game TTRPG studio folks told us that delivering a KS of this magnitude within a year was impossible and, frankly, I think they were right. But we had never done this before so we didn't have the assured knowledge of impossibility to override our enthusiasm. Are we paying for that now? Yes. Do we regret it? No. We are the kind of people that get out of bed faster when you tell us our work is impossible, not roll over in capitulation. And you folks are the kind of backers that do the same.
Thanks for your trust and Belief
Dave, Marx, Emily and the entire Orthane Productions team.
Closing in on Keshanar!
5 months ago
– Fri, Nov 21, 2025 at 07:09:47 PM
Hi there Keshites!
As we close in on the end of the year I wanted to give you some project updates. Lots of good stuff happening!
Where's Dave?
Our fearless leader is on his way back to Egypt to talk to some Egyptologists about what we're doing. Both for more on-the-ground inspiration and to explore ways we can support real world archeological research. So yeah, he's going to be doing his next bit of writing by the pyramids of Giza. I'm totally lime green Jell-O, but at least I can admit it (looking at you chip).
Upcoming Conventions
We'll be loading up Conshu and Heading to Scarab Con 2026 come see us January 16th-18th in Columbia, SC. We had a blast at this one last year and I mean, come on, Scarab? We've gotta show up for that!
Gary Con is a go! We consider this our home convention and are proud to sponsor it once again. I mean it takes me two days to drive Conshu up there, but it feels like home. This was the very first con we ever did and this will be our third year. We'll have a booth and we'll be running a metric ton of games, so come see us March 19th - 22nd in Lake Geneva, WS.
Play Tests
We completed our closed playtest of our mechanical content and I am so grateful for all the fantastic feedback we got! I'm really happy with the state of what we're going to deliver. I've also started an open play test of Keshanar's favorite blood sport Murderball. We've gone through so many iterations of this mini game over the years and I think this will be something fun for players in and out of Keshanar. So come down to our Discord to take a look and tell us what you think.
Pre Order Store
In order to prepare for production we'll be closing our pre-order store on December 1st 2025.
Production Timeline
Good progress is being made around all the physical accessories and we're working with our fulfillment and shipping partners to prepare for delivery. The STL modeling is also making great progress. The most important items are, of course, the books. The source book has been the thing we've devoted most of our time to and I expect us to have a well polished product ready to go to print by the end of the year. The source book has taken so much more of our attention than we had anticipated, so we ended up needing to make a decision. We could split our attention between the source book and campaign module and potentially deliver sub par content, or we could focus fully on the source book until it was done and then give the module the proper care and play testing. We decided to go with the first option. This means the books will be done at different times, which means they'll have to ship at different times. We're going to cover whatever addition shipping this will incur. It's important to us to get you the core of Keshanar so you can start playing it at your tables. Once the book goes to the printers, a PDF of it will not be far behind. So We're still aiming for a digital release in January 2026 and to start shipping physical items in March 2026, but that won't include the campaign module. I don't have a timeline on that book yet, but I expect I should have a better handle of that by the first couple months of the year.
As always we appreciate your support and your patience so much. It's been a long process, and we've learned so much. I can't express how exciting it is to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Thank you all!
Marx Brothers (no relation)
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
All the places to find the Keshanar creators and keep up with the frothy conversation about ancient Egypt-themed TTRPG and get free stuff!
Have you joined our coin contest yet?. Win a hand-made and hand-cast, sterling silver Keshanar Silver Piece You can enter for free at the bottom of the Keshanar Webpage. www.keshanar.com
https://linktr.ee/orthaneprodu
