December update

So today we finally released the 11th Champion. I'm very sorry to keep you all waiting for that, but I hope you'll like her!

As some of you will already know, things are still pretty bad down here in South Africa, where I live.

We'll get the obvious one out of the way: The ominous Omicron variant was discovered here and has everyone across the world panicking. There's definitely reason to be concerned, but with my whole family vaccinated and generally averse to high-risk behaviour, I'm reasonably confident that we'll be alright. This time the government has taken a sensible wait-and-see approach, and is carefully monitoring the situation rather than just shutting everything down, which has been their usual response in the past despite the devastating economic consequences that have followed every time. This could change at any time though, and with cases climbing, a lockdown might not be too far off.

The far bigger concern is the ongoing electricity crisis. This year there have been 47 days of rolling blackouts. On top of that there have been at least 5 days where power has been turned off for planned maintenance and about 20 days where the power has gone out because of an unexpected fault. There have also been over a dozen incidents of cable theft. Of the ~340 days of 2021, a quarter have had some sort of power disruption, with the bulk of that happening in the last few months. November only had 10 days without a power outage, and December has had power outages every single day so far, and rolling blackouts are scheduled to resume tonight.

I'm currently trying to save up some cash to install a back-up power system so that I'll be able to work without constant interruptions, but they are incredibly expensive, especially now when they're in very high demand and supply can't keep up. It might take a while to sort that problem out.

My main website, papercraftdungeon.com needs some major work, and I might need to migrate it to a new server, because it keeps exceeding the CPU quota of its current host resulting in it getting blocked at the end of every month. Hypothetically this should be an easy problem to fix, but with the frequent power outages playing havoc with my ability to get anything done and the constant slate of expenses choking up my available budget, it's landed up being quite a challenge. I am hoping to get it sorted out properly in the next few weeks if at all possible.

Apart from the above, life has been a bit rough. I'm not the type who likes to talk about my problems, but since many of you have been asking, I'll briefly share a little of what's been going on:
My 94 year-old grandmother is in very poor health and has been receiving palliative care for the last few weeks. She's in England on the other side of the world, so we haven't been able to visit or care for her, but my Aunt lives there too and has been taking care of her and keeping us all up-to-date.
My father spent a month in hospital, and was in absolutely terrible shape, but I can happily report that he's back home again and is doing much better now. He still needs to be plugged into an oxygen concentrator to help him breathe and needs a lot of care, but he's been improving steadily and is basically back to being his old self.
My dog, Amber, who has been a faithful companion for over 14 years succumbed to the ravages of old age and, with much sadness, we had to have her put down in late November.

I'm sorry that this update has been such a bleak one, but I would like to end on a happier note: Kev's Lounge art and minis are going to be in a boardgame! League of Dungeoneers is a dungeon-crawler in the tradition of Warhammer Quest and Descent. It is launching in March and will also feature art and minis by our friend Paper Mage. Here's the kickstarter pre-launch page if you want to check it out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ovb/league-of-dungeoneers

Got some more content on the way, and will release it as soon as I am able! Until then I hope you're all doing well and I hope you like the new Battle Maiden!

Thanks for all your support!
Kevin