Hi everyone, Cabela was nice enough to allow a guest post, so here goes...

Brady Bell, producer for Undying, swung by and posted a really nice message to fans on Halloween. Here's just a piece; click the link above to read the entire thing.

I met yesterday with Clive for the first time in 5 years and it's like a day never passed. The brilliant and incredibly generous Clive hasn't changed a bit, still holds Undying dear to his heart and loves when people attend his book signings and ask about the game / ask for autographs on the Undying box / show-up in costume. He refers to the game as a 'cult classic' and I can't disagree... it's the piece of work I'm most proud of and an experience I'm most thankful for.

Our old friend Hellen, creator of other Undying masterpieces, has sent us another great picture of Lizbeth. As always this is an excellent piece of work and we thank verry much for sharing this with us, Hellen.

The Covenatn story continues, this time with Bethany.

Eternal Autumn needed no description. The words themselves were ample enough to detail what this land was, a mountainous, valley scarred place that hovered in that seasonal time when all things became snared at a point between life and death. Grasses were a lighter shade of green here, bordering on yellow and were coarse to the touch while trees growing on the eternally dying landscape were snarled and clung desperately to the brown leaves hanging from limbs bobbing in a near constant ethereal wind. The skies never cleared and hovered over the land in a ceiling of gray, ever-shifting clouds. In this strange and terrible land, the temperature was damp but cool, penetrating to the bones. .

Click below for our FanFic section, then scroll down to the Deathscythe section.

Fanfic Page

A special end of the year story, the fourth in a series.

The old book, cover tattered and bent at the corners, lay facing up at Ambrose from the old table. Table and book were out of place in the dank cavern; a taste of class in a rocky, murky shell of nothingness.

Click below for our FanFic section, then scroll down to the Deathscythe section.

Fanfic Page

With the release of Clive Barkers Jericho just a short time away, I thought I would put together a small info page. This page has a couple you tube videos, a press release with all the info you always wanted to know on the game, and links and screen shots. Be sure to check this out!!

They have released a short demo of Clive Barkers Jericho.
http://files.filefront.com/CliveBarkersJericho+Demoexe/;8646443;/fileinfo.html

Download the demo then check out our forum thread here.
Jericho Demo Thread

Deathscythe has just finished another fanfic instalment about the Covenant children. This one is a great story about Aaronclick here, then click on the Deathscythe link).

Dr_Coma, a long time forum resident has just finished Part two of his Edens Sorrow Series. Check it out in the Fanfic Eden Sorrow section.click here, then click on the Edens Sorrow link). This is the actual part two to Edens Sorrow. The fanfic in July was reported to be part two, but was really just a Vignette.

Dr_Coma, a long time forum resident has just finished a vignette based on his Edens Sorrow Series. Check it out in the Fanfic Eden Sorrow section.click here).

Deathscythe has sent in another great story about the Covenant siblings and their mother.Check it out in Deathscythyes area of the fanfic section.click here).

New Fanfic by Dethscythe One stately young lad, his heavenly sweet sister, their pugnacious brother and mischievous twins played amongst the circle of standing stones, beneath a lunar plate of silver. Playing a game of chase, they encircled the stone alter at the circles’ heart laughing and shouting to no one but themselves...

Hit the thread for this map here to see four new screenshots, further down the page. Nice!

Oh, happy happy day. Forum readers will have known about this for a while, but it's worth a big update anyway... Osiris is working on a new user map! This will be the first one in a really, really long time and will be an incredible treat for the community. You can visit the work-in-progress thread here for fullsize screenshots and also discussion on the map from the man himself. Make sure to post how much you appreciate his efforts.

Here's another piece of news I was too lame to actually update about. But lameness is behind me now, so feast your eyes on a few samples of an upcoming super detailed guide to Undying. This is put together by longtime forum regular and SUPERFAN WTWASP and will be awesome when it's done. Here's WTW's description of the project:

The first one in the works (and getting primary attention), as Gwog mentioned, is the one for the original CBU. It's actually being designed as an all-inclusive CBU User's Guide, which will have everything you want, and probably even stuff you don't need, among these things being a meticulously detailed walkthrough. The walkthrough itself will include the steps for discovering the Easter Eggs and even offer some strategies that one may or may not already consider themselves. The other features in the Guide will include all the other basic info, like overviews of all characters, enemies, pickup items, weapons, spells, cheats, realms, etc., complete with illustrations for each.

After this behemoth of a project is done (and somehow converted for online distribution - the current format is being designed for a physical full-color printout, and assembly to look like Patrick's Journal Smile ), I will be tackling a similar concept for the "sequel/prequel" mods such as FAMILY GRAVE and TWO STAND ALONE, which tie-in to the storyline(s) of the original.

I also plan to compile walkthroughs for the other mappack mods that stand on their own as "spin off" adventures, such as SINS, SEUL CHOIX, VENGEANCE, et al.

Characters Preview - Enemies Preview - Realms Preview - Walkthrough Preview

I've been off duty for a month or so, so I missed this new story by Norn and posted to the forums. The fic is entitled The Cousins of the Covenants. Here's a clip:

Her smile went away just like it started. Arms back down to her sides and posture crooked. She growled and fist. Running towards him to delivery a powerful slap breaking his spine and neck. She scream with fury wanting to slap him again but her brother Aaron appeared in front blowing a powerful gust of wind sending her to her back. She groaned in pain she could feel. Curse to feel.

The recent resurgence in interest in Family Grave, along with the reappearance of the two authors of this fantastic user-created map pack, prompted us to finally get around to putting together an information page for the pack, which includes screenshots. If you have never played this pack, then you're missing out!

• Wow! Be sure to grab this 1152x864 sized wallpaper!

• The Undying game fonts, you've asked for them, and here they are in a collection provided to us by WTWASP.

• In Hellens words...

Yeah! I knew that this would be on YouTube.... below is the imbedded link to a video on the GooTube showing every single fatality animation in Undying. Sweet!

• Fixed image links on the screenshot page and the NPC page.
• Added sigil graphic to all 13 (woo!) subsections of main Undying info section
• Updated Macintosh subsection by removing dead link, changing to present tense, adding mac forum post link.

As dumb as it is, I've had a totally cool piece of Undying history on my harddrive for more years than I care to count and have never posted it... until today. Back in the day, Marcus (writer for the glorious fan map pack Family Grave) had gotten some pages from the original Undying design doc from one of the game developers clarifying a story point for him. Marcus scanned those and sent them to me, and here they are! Take a look, it's pretty cool. We'll have a transcription up eventually, for those on modems.

Not much news, you may be surprised to hear, but I put in some time tonight to continue to clean up our Files section (what I am guessing is the most important part of the site for the majority of the visitors). Did you know that for a lot of the user maps, we have separate pages that include story information and screenshots, in addition to a download link? Might make for some fun browsing... sure brought back fond memories for me. Anyway, here's tonight's worklog.

• verify links for utilities
• fix shots and verify links for all user maps
  • in extremis
  • keisinger's place
  • Made In 3 Hours
  • The Village part ii
  • sins
  • blackspear
  • The New Beginning, Day 2 (fixed bad d/l link too)
  • Undying Ghost House
  • The Big Head (fixed bad d/l link too)
  • The Dark Queen
  • The Village part i
  • The New Beginning
  • The Trsanti Lair
  • Return To Madness Part 1
  • Vengeance
  • UNDX10
  • Deadisle
  • The Journey Part 4
  • Hartly Mansion
  • Corrupted
  • Lunacy
  • TIUndying1
  • jdund01

Pretty cool... in the many years since I made the Files page, COmposer Bill Brown's website has had four new Undying songs added to it. You can download or stream nine songs total now (I would direct link but they don't allow it... just click here).

Site maintenance worklog - Update by Gwog

Files page: fixed demo and patch FilePlanet links, uploaded the map editors and fixed the link, updated song list, fixed sigil graphic.

Undying programmer Keebler hit this thread to reply to some people. This one was interesting:

Yes, in preparation for Undying PS2 we cut up ALL the levels so we could share the assets between both SKUs. Trust me, it pains me to see all those loads, especially knowing that the PS2 version was cut :(

Yanked the IRC link from the sidebar menu; the chat channel hasn't been active in years.

Cabela suggested I put together a little info page for this latest game, so here it is. Not much there but I figured that it should do the trick for now, considering there's not much information out there yet anyway (and considering that the very first released in-game screenshot shows one of their Supar Speshul Forces women fighting with knives while wearing a tight leather outfit revealing her hips and breasts... sheesh).

Hey, did we mention that Richard "Keebler" Benson, programmer on Undying, hit the boards recently to say hello? Take a minute and tell him thanks for his great work on a great game.

I just wanted to say "Hi" and let you know that I'm still around. I'm glad to see the community is still alive!

I can try and help with any questions/problems that you have with Undying.

Honestly, the scheme I had come up with for the site's news archives has always been utterly idiotic, so I took a whopping ten minutes tonight and made it just as dumb, but different, and maybe a little easier to peruse. Cabela and I will probably be doing a fair bit of housecleaning on the site like this, so hopefully everyone will suffer through the posts about it, heh.

News archived - Update by Gwog

See above!

Gwog back on Standing Stones - Update by Gwog

Cabela suggested that if I was interested in coming back and participating in Standing Stones activities again then he'd be okay with that, so here I am after about a year's 'vacation'. I'm hoping that with Barker being involved with Jericho, which looks to be a big-ish budget title, people's attention will return to Undying for a while and give the site a boost. See ya on the forums.

Great news for our Undying Mac users. One of our forum members, Pinkapak a Macintosh user, has played every map pak made to date. Check out the topic at the link below.

Undying On A Macintosh

The old forums were lost, and we were all saddened by the loss, but now it is time to move on. Check out the new Standing Stones forums here:

http://undying.3dactionplanet.gamespy.com/phpbb2/index.php

Please stop by, register and check them out.