There’s a new Update of the Avatar posted over on the Shroud of the Avatar website. As you might expect, a goodly portion of it is given over to items — either backer rewards or things available for purchase. Richard Garriott’s, Starr Long’s, and Chris Spears’ opinions on Release 2 can also be found, the Pantheon cross-promotion merits a mention, as does the Hearts of Britannia competition.

And of course, we’ve already talked about the latest map piece.

Now, I’m going to scale back just how much of these Updates I actually repeat hear on the site, since a few of you have mentioned that it’s more or less needless duplication of content. That said, the Founder Knight Lighthouse home is worth drawing some attention to for how good it looks:

Which reminds me: I need to build a “houses” section on the SotA subdomain.

Oh, and of course there’s a new Blade of the Avatar chapter available:

Chapter 7: Awry

“Is it night?” Aren asked.

“I’m tired enough for it to be night,” Syenna sighed. “So it might as well be.”

Syenna and Aren stood on an outcropping of rock at the top of the cliff face that overlooked the Hellfire Rift. It was, perhaps, the most inhospitable terrain he had ever viewed. The jagged peaks thrust upward as sharp as finely-honed knives on either side of what passed for a wide valley floor of the Hellfire Rift. The rift itself was a bleeding wound in the world that never healed. Shifting pools of lava sputtered and spit molten rock into slow-moving rivers that glowed with unspeakable heat and shifted down their courses only to cascade back down into crevices once more. In the far distance, through the dreamlike shimmering of the heat waves rising from the molten floor and the haze of ash and smoke, Aren could see a shattered mountain. Great plumes of smoke and ash rose from its maw, feeding the perpetual storm that raged overhead and blotting out the sun and sky as far as he could see. Lancing webs of lightning were being woven among those terrible clouds, constantly fed by the ash and the heat from below. Any forests or vegetation that might once have been here had long since burned away, leaving only the raw stone, sand, and occasional steamy, acidic rain.

I trust by now you all know where to head to in order to grab your copy?