┌─── ∘ April 2026 Newsletter ∘ ───┐
Vernus, Season of Snowmelt, Year 1642

Art by: Ding Hu Art

	The first season, remarking growth and regrowth, begins each calendar year. Life flourishes in verdant green and prepares its buds for the Summer season to follow.
	- Compendium, Standard Calendar

Oh no... The Woglets are invading the Spire!! There are too many of them! We can't hold them off!! AAaahahhhhhh-

Huge systems updates this month, along with an open call for aspiring staff members on all teams. And... a 1.21 beta-test??

° New & Upcoming

Community Updates

The Woggling Contest

• To celebrate his birthday, our amazing community member, @Wake, has put together an art/writing contest!! Please see the details of the contest below.
  • Add your submission to the dedicated Woggling Contest forum thread in the #Art-and-creativity forum channel on Discord.

THE WOGGLING

As April Showers begins, the Woglets wake from hibernation! With their numbers swelled from Spirefolk kindness last year and newly migrated sea-toads, we are in the season of Woglets!

This month, Woglet menace Wake is hosting a competition!
Submit Woglet / Ribbit artwork, Figura model or story for a chance to win!
The Ribbit mod developers from Bonsai Studios, Hellion, Yung and Joosh, are going to help choose the winner at the end of April!

1st place: £50 and Contributor role to an account of your choice!

2nd place: £25 and Contributor!

3rd place: £10 and Contributor!

Money will be sent via PayPal, into what currency you prefer, however much that translates!
If you already have Contributor role, give it to a friend!

March Community Update Meeting

If you missed the Community Update Meeting on March 21st, you can find the notes here. Here are some of the highlights:

• Server Direction and Culture
  • Admin is in talks about general server direction and culture, and how we want to look forward in this community.
  • Recurring complaint from players has been of a general move away from "Rule of Cool" roleplay in favor of "min-maxing" and "rules-lawyering" both on and off server.
  • Admin will have a preliminary discussion with themselves before polling staff teams for wider opinions, then produce a general server philosophy document.
  • There is a thread in #feedback-suggestions on the Discord server, should you wish to be part of this discussion.
• Staff Teams
  • Currently, most staff teams are too small to be handling a server of our size. We will hopefully be conducting a hiring spree for those interested in becoming staff.
  • Lore and Community teams are currently open for staff applications.
    • Lore Team is looking for both Staff DMs and Lore Writers. You do not have to do both.
    • Community Team is looking for Newsletter writers and Discord Event Hosts.
    • If you would like to join any staff team (not just Lore or Community), please submit an application on the Staff Application page.
• Teasers and Updates
  • Feedback has been good and productive. Recent updates have been well-received.
  • Alchemy rework is in progress.
  • Campaign 3 has been going well, with good feedback on a couple of minor hiccups.

Spire Public Library Open For Reading

• The Spire Public Library is now officially open for reading player-created books. Books are placed on the shelves according to the cataloguing system.

  • If you would like to submit books to be stored in the library, please message @Faye Spiritscribe and she will be able to help you.

Tribune Election

• Crow (played by @Captain_Cynical) has been elected as the new Tribune after a rather close election! Congratulations!

Chancellor Election

• An election for Chancellor has just started! You can find details here.

Lore Updates

New Campaign Lead

• Due to events in their personal life, @Soup has stepped down as lead for Campaign 3: Fractured.
  • Soup has been an invaluable member of the team, and we hope things settle down soon so they can return to Avalore in full force. Much love for Soup ️
• @ChishmFips has been promoted to Campaign 3 Lead.
  • Chish is a longstanding member of Avalore who has been integral to many projects and organizations on the server, and has always been pleasant to work with. Congratulations to Chish!!

Guards and Punishment Update

• Standardized Punishments & Procedures
  • Punishments and Penances have been standardized.
    • Fairer and more consistent punishments.
    • Should expedite doling out of punishments.
  • Penances are now typically finite in duration. For information on penances, you can look here.
    • Mainly OOC change. IC, characters will not be aware when their penance will expire.
    • You will be notified OOC of the duration when the penance is given, though players are welcome to keep their penance for longer if they so choose.
    • If you currently have a penance on your character that is older than 3 months and would like it removed, please make a Lore Ticket on Discord.
  • As a refresher, you can read the Common Law here.
• The Closed Fist
  • The Anti-Magic field within the Guardkeep has been rewritten.
    • Now it is a dampening effect. Changed from outright impossible for magic to exist.
    • Spells take longer to cast, do less damage, and cannot pass in or out of the Guardkeep with this change.
    • Spells that heal, stabilize, or revive entities are exempt.
    • Read about this change in Section III. Response Protocols of the Gauntlet Reform Act thread, here. This section also lists what your character may know about the field.

Minor Fey Changes

• @catmerization published some minor tweaks to Fey lore on the Compendium to reflect some behind-the-scenes decisions on the direction of Fey on Avalore.
  • You can read up on the new lore on Fey here.

Systems Updates

The Big Crafting Update

• More Loring Controls
  • You can now /product relore (will only work for items made post-update), which will give you a crafting book with the current lore already pre-filled. If you made a small typo, you can now edit it without trouble.
  • You can also /product lock, which will lock your item from being unlored or re-lored by anyone, including you. Only staff can unlock items.
  • If you use /product by itself, it will tell you the original creator of an item, even if the IC lored name has changed since. This should help with potentially DMed items where you need to track down the original creator.
• New Item Flags
  • Items now have flags attached, such as fabled, arcane, relic, consumable, voidtouched, and more. This will be used not only for aesthetic purposes but connect into the durability system currently being worked on internally.
  • Additionally, if you are maxed out in the skill which determines the item, there is a rare chance for you to make a [Masterpiece] work.
• (NEW!!) Craftable Food Items
  • A brand new swathe of food items have been released as part of the crafting system with this update. These are now already live on our website, visible on the crafting page.

Mutant Overhaul

• Mutant is being moved away from a Feat to a Transformation similar to Vampirism. While Vampirism comes with base level mechanics, Mutation requires taking at least one Mutant feat and does not have any base level, non-feat mechanics.
• Mutant feat has been removed.
  • Instead, A character is considered Mutated (or a Mutant) once they take any Mutant feat. Alongside the first feat, they take a Mutant Hindrance.
  • For every two feats afterward, they take an additional Hindrance. Meaning, they’ll take a Mutant Hindrance alongside their 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th Mutant feat.
• Mutant lore is currently being worked on as well in the background.
• All current mutant feats have seen some rework or overhaul, and additionally there are three new mutant feats! You can see all of the updated text for the mutant feats in the Feats Index.
  •  (NEW!!) Eagle Eye
    • Allows for greater visual acuity, increasing your ranged distance from 30 to 35.
  • (NEW!!) Wounded Animal
    • During Bleedout, stabilise yourself for free once and escape without halved movement.
  • (NEW!!) Ambush Predator
    • Gain a bonus attacking those with lower initiative than you on the first Round
  • The following mutant feats have been updated
    • Inhuman Resilience
    • Pounce
    • Unyielding Reflex
    • Adrenal Rush
    • Rage
    • Precise Senses
    • Acidic Blood
    • Corporeal Weapon

Teasers

• Loreable Alchemy Products
  • The back-end work for adding lore ability to alchemy products is done and it should be coming soon.

Technical Updates

Website Backend Upgrade

• Avalorians are simply too powerful!! (It's probably all the woglets ) With all the traffic that Avalore gets, we've had to upgrade our website hosting services.
  • The website should be very stable now, but if you tried to post something on March 27th and you do not see it, try again. The website should be all good now!

1.21 Modpack Beta Testing

• Updating the modpack to 1.21 has been a frequently requested project by our players. We can now confidently announce that it is currently being worked on!
  • The modpack is being packed for both Prism and Modrinth.
• @lumiscosity has been working very hard to make us a new modpack for 1.21.
  • Currently, the main things that need updating at this point are the custom in-house plugins made by our amazing tech team.
  • We are also taking the opportunity to review various performance mods to find the right mix of mods and settings to fit the needs of our server.
• The pack is available to contributors and staff for beta-testing to make sure all mods and plugins work as intended.

Chat Colors and Scene Emotes

• Chat Colors
  • Chat channels are now hex values instead of the standard minecraft colours. They have all been tweaked slightly.
  • When switching active channels, it now says how many people are in range when you join the channel.
• NEW!! Scene Emotes
  • Introducing scene emotes! When you own or are a member of a region, you can set a scene emote using /scene set <id> <emote> and clear it with /scene clear <id>.
  • When other players walk into your region, they will be notified that there is a scene emote available. You can change this notification with /scene <text/sound/chat/off>. Text will display the notification above your hotbar, Sound will play a small chime, Chat will post the notification in chat, and Off will turn it off completely.
  • Use /scene to display the scene emote for the region you are standing in.

Cards and Coins

• Deck of Cards and Dealing
  • Use /card deal <username> to deal a card to someone (card hidden) or /card dealup <username> to deal a card with the card visible in chat. Players can look at their cards using /card look but it will also warn everyone in chat that you are looking at your cards.
  • Use /card take <username> to take back your cards from someone, or /card takeall to get all cards back in the deck.
• Divining Cards
  • Use /divining (or /div) and it works the exact same way as /card commands but for divining cards. 
• Coin flipping
  • Use /flip to flip a coin ICly. It'll give you a cute IC emote along with.

Initiative Plugin

• An Initiative plugin is now in open beta.
• General Usage 
  • Start a turn order. Use /init roll <username1> <username2> <username3> etc. to automatically roll initiative for everyone in the turn order. It will automatically roll tiebreakers as well if there are ties. Alternatively, you can manually set a turn order with /init manual <username1> <username2> <username3> etc.. If you specify <username:initiative> it will use that initiative; otherwise it will simply do 20, 19, 18, 17, etc. for each name you put in order.
  • Add new players. Once a turn order is going, you can use /init add <username> to add them to an active turn order. It will add them to the end, with one lower initiative than the current lowest.
  • Add and rename NPCs. If you want to have NPCs in your turn order, use /init addnpc <name> <initiative> where the initiative is optional (if excluded, they have an initiative one lower than the lowest current initiative). If you want to rename a current NPC, use /init rename <old-name> <new-name>.
• Starting Rounds and Skipping Players
  • Rounds. At the start of each round, the DM is prompted to type /init startround. This is so if you want to do anything in between rounds, you can. It will automatically prompt you at the end of each round.
  • End of Turn. When it's your turn, you will be prompted - when you are finished, type /eot. If it is not currently your turn it won't do anything.
  • Skipping a Player. If you are DMing, you can skip the current player with /init skip.
• Stopping and Leaving Turn Order
  • Use /init stop as the DM to stop the turn order entirely and delete it. As a player, use /init leave to leave your turn order. The DM will be notified. Please note, being disconnected won't remove you from the turn order automatically, to avoid issues with internet lags.

Player Events & Projects
Player-lead events and projects of Avalore, curated by the editor and Community Team to feature for the month.

• Player Events
  • The Midnight Circus event line by @BirdmanDean
• Player Projects & Writings
  • The Spire Weekly by @paolumu
  • Early-Snowmelt Stewardal Decree by @Pyrias
  • A Preliminary Report on the Fungal Disease at Albern's by @DocEukaryote
  • Greenrain Fashion Competition by @Starfle

Player Photos
Players are able to submit photos through our Photo Album forum (via our Discord server) to be featured in our newsletter, and even used as promotional material for Avalore!

A Shining Spring Morning - @CelestialMochi

Tourney Grounds at Night - @CaitTheGr8

Heads of Government - @Megladon

The Knights Enter The Grounds - @stqted

A Captivating Performance - @Megladon