The First Page

A prologue to Sam's passion project, a Kingdom Death digital garden.

A tiny beacon of light, a single droplet within the infinite inky depths, yet somehow you’re here.

I expect you've ventured this way because we share something; an intrigue into Adam Poot's world of death.

A new lantern year - InkOfViolet

My curiosity of Kingdom Death began in 2016 along with 19,000 others. Since then, its presence has accompanied me in two ways. It's a dormant, formidable entity that creeps in both the back of my shelves and mind. Then, when released from captivity it spreads, consuming days of my life at a time; crafting, painting, playing and infecting those around me. Monster is an odd game, one that we all experience and interpret differently, but it is almost always infectious.

I was a 90’s teen with an imagination fuelled by the discovery of Brom, Giger and Vallejo. I dipped my toes into D&D, but most of my time was spent playing Warhammer Quest. I’d home brew dungeon tiles made of cereal boxes and kit-bash proxy models like Sid from Toy Story.

On its 20th anniversary, I revisited the iconic game of my youth and created an online hub and expansion, Beyond the Grey Mountains. The website evolved into a great space to reminisce and held open the gates to new warriors joining the party.

Not long after, the coffin-sized matte black box of Kingdom Death arrived. My fiancé and I played our first campaigns together. We followed the rabbit hole of horror, accumulating expansions whenever we could afford it, even symbolising our survivors in a diorama at our wedding.

My usual tick, a compulsion to expand every game I enjoy into some kind of personal project was already appeased. Kingdom Death by design, is a project. One that thematically and mechanically I’ve always dreamt of.

I built a small site, The Founding Stone, to share my new fascination of the game, but our campaigns became fewer and further apart. The curse of knowing that Team Death was cooking something. Subconsciously we reserved our appetite to the wafting smell of bigger and better. Patiently, we waited while the planes of screaming faces continued to reach into the abyss - I recommend avoiding the KS comment section!

Then it appeared, the biggest expansion of any board game ever made. The Gambler’s Chest had awoken that dormant beast on our shelf and the return of Kingdom Death was upon us.

Branching ideas

A homage to the world of death and a celebration of all those intrigued by it.

Over the last year I've been exploring Kingdom Death more so than ever. As fresh content is sprouting around us, it felt like a great time to plant a new digital garden. KDM Ink is that sapling, growing in the dark, waiting to be discovered.

Violet will be blessing us with more of her art, while I'll be focusing on developing helpful tools and files. We also hope that like-minded content creators might want to share their knowledge here too.

- Sam