Empire of Bones: The nightmare sequel to The Painted Wastelands

Agamemnon Press has returned to Kickstarter with a project that promises to leave the dreamlands behind and plunge players straight into a nightmare. Empire of Bones is the “jumbo-sized” sequel to the award-winning adventure The Painted Wastelands, offering a massive hexcrawl through a world ruled by the dead.

The project has already smashed its funding goal, raising over £30,000 against a £3,600 target. We’ve got until February 17th to back the campaign.

[Back this Campaign]

For those who want to dip their toes into the horror before committing, Agamemnon Press has released a free preview on DriveThruRPG.

If the original game was a surreal dream, Empire of Bones is described as the waking horror. The adventure takes place in the Lands of Dust and the Unholy City of Zeb, a polluted metropolis run by necromancers and “mummified politicians”.

The scale of the book is significant, weighing in at twice the size of its predecessor. It features a sandbox campaign structure that includes:

• The City of Zeb: 21 exploreable areas and 4 distinct dungeons.
• The Lands of Dust: A 36-hex region filled with ghoul-infested ruins and ancient horrors.

The campaign embraces a weird-fantasy aesthetic, offering add-ons that range from a “Deck of Dead Things” (holographic cards used for divination) to “Zebbite Ecto Bank Notes” – legal currency in the setting, backed by real ectoplasm.

You have left the real world far behind you. Welcome to a completely different and all together horrific nightmare. You are surrounded by the gnashing, biting, and tearing fangs of a thousand horrid ghouls hungry for flesh. You are lost in the darkest shadows of the Painted Wastelands. If The Painted Wastelands was a dreamland then Empire of Bones is a nightmare!”

Agamemnon Press has kept the pledge tiers straightforward, with options for digital and physical collectors:

• Pledge $20 (approx. £15): The Digital Pledge gets you the PDF copy of Empire of Bones and all digital stretch goals.
• Pledge $55 (approx. £41): The Physical Pledge includes the hardback copy of the book plus the PDF.
• Pledge $85 (approx. £63): The Limited Edition Pledge upgrades the book to a black leather cover stamped with gold foil and gilded edges.
• Pledge $175 (approx. £129): The All-In Pledge is a hoard of loot, including the limited edition book, the Deck of Dead Things, the Wizard Gulp T-shirt, the Necromancer Dice, the Ecto Bank Notes, and a Giclee art print.

For those who missed the previous campaigns, there is an option to pick up the original The Painted Wastelands and other back-catalogue titles as add-ons.

The estimated delivery for the campaign is June 2026.