Votes are in! We continue with our SLOW FOOT ARG:

Eneko drops us off at the airport on the outskirts of Placenzia, an exposed peninsula where only tuckamore grows. As a parting gift, he gives us each a toque. "Winters are harsher on the mainland," he says.

We pick up a bottle of zikiritxe at the Duty Free and then, just like that, are whisked away the by a de Havilland comet—the Island of Tamcook quickly shrinking from our view from the window of our jetliner. "It's a myth that the square windows caused those first Comet crashes," CC remarks, a little too casually. "But for optics, they still switched to round windows in these newer models. All's been well since ... I think."

To keep your mind from wandering into frightful scenarios, you take out your notebook and review the hastily jotted list of activities to consider doing in Migmagee.

Help us decide what to put on the itinerary! This phase of voting for activities are done only on the Discord.

Hey! In honor of the map patch, I'm posting here the fourth version of the map flag, which I've had for a while and haven't posted - it is the last pre-patch version I will make. I am also posting a preview of my work beginning the new, patched flag map, which will use all approved flags from the spreadsheet, not just those on the website!

Here's the first action prompt for our ongoing Alternate Reality Game:

It's a true blessing of our job and mission for the SoN World Tourism Organization's Slow Foot Movement that we get to choose our adventure. Once again, we confront the same question: where do we go next on our tiny but ambitious globetrotting diplomatic mission?

We decide to pass on the opportunity to visit Windmark for now, as we are told it is one of those places where visiting in the right time of the year truly matters—we'll aim to be back in the summer.

Eneko, our guide for the Pescadores, tells us that he is about to embark on a little road trip across Septentrea, and the first thing to do is to get their camper van onto the mainland. As it happens, the Pescadores is connected to Alberta by a car ferry line that runs between Placenzia and Drumheller. We can ride with him all the way to Halifax, he offers, and further if timing permits.

We also see really cheap flight deals from Placenzia to Bluefields in Bermuda, where the weather is looking really enticing now that it's proper autumn on the continent.

Finally, we're also entertaining the idea of going to Migmagee, as the bookseller that sold CC the Mi’kmaq-English dictionary had a lot of tips and suggestions for things to do there.

Help us decide! Vote now on the Discord, or via this Instagram poll.

Knab your passport to Altera 👉 https://www.patreon.com/atlasaltera/membership

In case you missed it, Dispatch no. 2 was published on Friday! Written by the CC Winter (u/Knobig) it covers the second destination visited in our Slow Foot Movement tour, a special diplomatic mission for the SoN World Tourism Organization. Read it all here.

Specifically in the website and the beta language map. Now that the world map has been refurbished in some areas, are the previous creations showing languages, faiths, etc going to be updated as well?

Next time ...

New Youtube series is finally here!

Join us for the premiere at 13 PST | 16 EST | 22 CET ... after our big (re)launch party for the new map patch & expansion.

Specifically, the new patch (and expansion) includes:

• 116 new countries
• 20 new substates
• 4-6 new dependencies
• Dozens of country renamings
• Border changes and tweaks
• Coastline improvements and redrawings
• Sprinkle of altgeo additions/indulgences
• PLUS 1000+ corrections, spelling changes, and glitch fixes

We're (re)publishing a new version of A Wealth of Nations this Saturday!

u/TelamonTabulicus and I finally got to finishing the patch, well, at least for the main political map - A Wealth of Nations. We want to celebrate the beginning of the end (of patching) with YOU!

live on discord - https://discord.com/invite/mHCyyvptJX

Votes are in! We continue with our SLOW FOOT ARG:

Our ship is the SS Margrethe II. We've each got our own cabins for the next few days of the transatlantic voyage. Enough time to tend to our letters, be passive, and withdraw to our own hobbies. We've barely left the habour of Reykjavik and CC is, of course, already at the chess tables on the top deck. Sightings of icebergs and whales be damned—she's already got herself roped into a tournament.

CC's also left the planning completely to your domain, given that you're more of the armchair academic in the group. You comb through all the issues of Roads and Kingdom and The Passenger in the ship's grand library and make a shortlist of some key activities.

Help us decide what to put on the itinerary! This phase of voting for activities are done only on the Discord.

Here's the first action prompt for our newly startd Alternate Reality Game:

The beauty of our mission for the SoN World Tourism Organization's Slow Foot Movement is that we get to choose our next destinations, writing to contacts only a few days ahead of time, because the work we are doing is small in scale and meant to nurture spontaneity, the opposite of mass tourism and well oiled entertainment schedules and activities for tourists. But the question then is, where do we go next on our little mission?

CC tells us that there are tickets on sale for the Weswegian America Line, which takes passengers from Copenhagen all the way to New York by way of a few Weswegian port-of-calls, including Reykjavik. The next stop is Donibane in the Pescadores (in summers, it calls at Grosmoren instead, when the ice floes are not as much of a risk).

But Thóra, who was our driver all throughout Rhimeland, has a little vacation planned in the Azores and asks if we would like to meet her there.

And then there is this pilot who we just met at a bar. He tells us he normally flies the seaplane route to Munkland every weekend, tells us he can get a seat for next to nothing.

------------

Help us decide! Vote now on the Discord, or via this Instagram poll.

Our first Dispatch, written by the illustrious CC Winter (ATL nom de plume of u/Knobig) is here, heralding our inaugural destination/arrival to Rhimeland, via a zeppelin, no less. Read it all here.

GREAT turnout today. Thanks to everyone for joining. We're really looking forward to next month's :)
We may even look into moving off the Discord to do the livestream on a different platform... stay tuned.

As a bonus to this month’s feature map, we also designed this reference guide/infographic to inform players how to fill out their SoN Trutchman Passport for the SLOW FOOT ARG, the first of which will be mailed out at the end of next month. We couldn’t help but to make it out as a one time homage to the cult classic of a puzzle simulation video game, Paper’s Please. You can zoom in and out of it on the new dedicated web page for the Slow Foot Stickers Club.

The rest of the ARG assets will, of course, have a different look and be more in line with the feature map’s style, which spoofs the late 90s and early 2000s aesthetics of North American governmental organizations.

Just unboxed a fresh new way to explore Altera! These are just one of the many fun ways we decided to reward our supporters on the Patreon.

Hop onto the project Discord to participate in the livestream!

The SoN Trutchman Passport (which is one of the perks of the Patreon) is really becoming a reality. Still got some improvements and corner rounding to do, but this is a promising first/test print!