Marla & Hector

Jo211716 · April 23, 2026, 5:54pm

I LOVE it when Hector puts his feet like that!

Alek228242 · April 28, 2026, 11:28pm

We’re just taking a quick nap!

Just_In · May 1, 2026, 3:41pm

Starting the terrace season

Crerigan · May 5, 2026, 3:27pm

I made this post straslated with my Ai, i am unsure of the ose of many words. after the one of febryary, i think you all deserve an update. Beware, it’s a long one
—————-

You know how it works by now: I start with “tiny update” and then, somehow, thirty paragraphs later, I’m still here, half emotional, half exhausted, talking about books, money, Marla, and the strange survival habits of Italian goblins. So.

First thing first: at the end of May, Marla and I will disappear for a few days.

Nothing bad, don’t worry. We are not running away, we are not dead, and I have not finally been arrested for crimes against spreadsheets. We will be at one of the biggest tabletop RPG fairs in Italy. With our studio. With our game. With our own stand.

And yes, that still feels a little unreal to write.

Some months ago I told you what happened with the former producer, the legal mess, the attempt to take from us what was ours, and all the reasons why last year became such a strange, angry, exhausting monster. You don’t need the whole story again, you were here when I wrote it, and you probably saw a lot of the consequences even when we couldn’t explain everything properly.

The silence.
The tiredness.
The weird energy.
The fact that Hector and Marla were still here, but not exactly in the same way as usual.

Since February, though, maybe you noticed something changing.

We were still busy, of course. Still working too much, still vanishing sometimes, still answering late, still trying to keep ten different things alive at the same time. But the mood was different. A little lighter. A little less desperate. We started laughing more again. We started breathing more again.

And there is a reason.

The fair is getting closer, and for most small studios a fair like this is basically what I would call “pay and pray”: You pay for the space. You pay for the materials. You pay for the books. You pay for shipping. You pay for the lights, the prints, the tables, the decorations, the stupid little things that nobody tells you about until two weeks before the event, when suddenly you discover that yes, of course, you need that too, and yes, of course, it costs money.

Then you go there, you smile, you hope people notice you, you hope they stop, you hope they understand what you are doing, and maybe, if the gods are kind, months later you can say it was worth it.

That is how many fairs work.

They are marketing. Expensive marketing. Sometimes necessary, sometimes useful, but still a gamble. And honestly, after everything that happened to us, the idea of walking into another situation based only on hope was not very attractive.

So we did something else. We built the boo👻ring part. The part nobody sees, nobody claps for, and nobody imagines when they look at a pretty book on a table. We built the company. We built the sales system. We built the preorder structure. We built the production pipeline. We built the creator links. We built the shipping logic. We built the digital platform around the game. We built the way to bring the thing from our hands to the players without depending on someone else holding the keys. rom ISBN to the customer’s door.

Because this means no one can tell us “actually, this is ours”.

No one can force us to present our own work as someone else’s product. No one can put their name above what Marla and I bled for. Not anymore.

And here is the part that makes me very tired and very happy at the same time:

we are going to the fair already at break-even.

I don’t want to turn this into a business report, and I won’t give numbers because this is still our little closed world and not a public shareholder meeting written by a very horny accountant, but I wanted you to understand what this means.

It means that all this work actually did something.

The preorders worked. The community answered. Creators helped. Friends helped. The machine moved.

The money did not vanish into some vague marketing fog. It went into the stand, the printed material, the stock, the shipping, the setup, the lights, the panels, the physical presence of the studio, the things people will touch and see and remember.

And before even arriving there, the event is not a desperate bet anymore. That changes your brain. Really.

We are still tired, obviously. I am not going to pretend we suddenly became peaceful forest spirits ■■■■■■■■ tea under the moon. There is still a lot to do, and I fully expect at least one moment where I stare at a pile of boxes and ask myself why I didn’t choose a normal life, like opening a bakery or becoming a professional mushroom. But it is a different kind of tired.

Before, it was “we must survive this”. Now it is “we are actually building this”.

And yes, the stand will be ours. Not a corner borrowed from someone else, not a little table where we politely ask people to notice us, but our own place, with our identity, our game, our platform, and our way of doing things. We are not building the usual “pile of books and cashier” stand either, because apparently we are physically unable to make our lives simple.

There will be tables to play. There will be a lounge area. There will be panels. There will be a big projection with our digital platform as the heart of the stand. Orders will go through our own system instead of the normal “cash box and chaos” approach, and then they will ship after the fair.

Basically, we are not only showing a book. We are showing the ecosystem.

The game, the studio, the platform, the community, the way we want to produce things from now on. Which is ambitious, yes. Maybe too ambitious. But after the last year, “too ambitious” became strangely relaxing compared to “please don’t let them steal our work”.

So if lately you saw us happier, this is why.

Because we are not only defending something anymore. We are walking toward something.

And also, yes, because May is here, the sun is here, and after the fair I would very much like to remember, with all the devotion and discipline of a serious husband, that Marla is not only my co-founder, production partner, emotional anchor, and the woman who somehow survived this madness with me.

She is also our sexy Marla. And I have been criminally underusing that part of our life. So hopefully, after the end of May, things here will slowly become more normal again. More active again. More alive again. More us again.

And maybe, finally, with a little more sun, a little less panic, and a lot more love in the physical, ancient, extremely necessary sense of the word.

I wanted to tell you because this place has always been one of the few places where I can talk like Hector and not like a studio.

You saw the tired months. You saw the silence. You saw the weird half-presence.
You saw us trying to keep going even when we couldn’t explain everything.

So I wanted you to see this part too. We changed the playing field.

A few months ago we were protecting our work. At the end of May, we walk into one of the biggest stages of our country with our own name above the door.

Tired, yes. Probably slightly insane.

Definitely horny.

But standing.

Thank you for staying here with us. Thank you for being patient.

Travon185961 · May 5, 2026, 5:00pm

Your post certainly sounds as if you are happy , excited and hopeful. I hope all the stars align so that not only these things but wealthy too…….all down to your hard work! Not forgetting Marla’s input of course , I am well aware that it doesn’t matter how hard guys work , without the backing of a good woman we are nothing! Good Luck!!!