Steamy Ink Publishing: A Player’s Guide
Steamy Ink Publishing is a publishing house headquartered in Maplewood and run by Poppy Marianus. The house maintains offices beyond Maplewood: one in Ember, managed by Poppy’s cousin Servius Katullin, and another in Glowing Hills near the Evenandran border, run by hired manager Ophirion Vayle. Reporters and correspondents file from across the Freelands, so when a byline reads “Gershan Correspondent,” there is, canonically, a desk somewhere with that person’s name on it. Poppy is the CEO and Editor-in-Chief, and every submission routes through her managers and editors.
The house is backed and funded by the Breaking Bulletin Consortium, an arm of the Merchant’s Guild of Civen. SIP’s stated mission to the Consortium is twofold:
- To carry Civen’s values of knowledge and integrity into the Freelands and beyond, and
- To bring the Freelands home to Civen. Civenite readers have a healthy appetite for stories from the frontier, and SIP keeps it fed.
This is the mission as pitched to the people holding the coin purse. How closely any given issue resembles it is an editorial matter.
Before you dive in, take a look at the Consent Form—it covers what the paper will and won't print about you.
The Papers
Steamy Ink Publishing currently puts out two newspapers. Readers will refer to both as SIP in casual conversation, but they are not the same paper.
Steamy Ink Press: The gossip paper. Madam Mapleleaf lives here, along with the couple updates, the etiquette complaints, the polls, and every pun-based headline you’ve ever winced at and then repeated to a friend.
Special Investigative Press: The serious paper. Sourced, formal, reports large world events. Its credibility is the entire product—it only works because it doesn’t joke around.
The publishing house is bigger than its newspapers. SIP also produces research papers, pamphlets, commissioned documents, and other printed material. If your character needs something published, designed, or put into circulation, that’s a conversation worth having with Shauna.
The Rest of the Guide
| Page | What’s There |
|---|---|
| Consent and Source Protection | What the paper will and won’t print about you, how opt-out works, and what the editor does when people come asking. |
| How to Submit | Bylines, word counts, and where to send things. |
| How Editing Works | What the editorial pass changes, and what it doesn’t. |
| Compensation | What the paper pays, what happens when a story gets killed, and how to collect. |
| Bribing the Press | The several ways money changes what runs. |
| Advertising | Ad rates, what the desk needs from you, and how to place one. |
| Writing for Steamy Ink Press | The gossip paper’s house voice, how to roast someone without being a jerk, and why planting gossip about your own character is one of the best plot tools in the game. |
| Writing for Special Investigative Press | The serious paper’s house voice, attribution, and what kinds of pieces it runs. |
| Madam Mapleleaf | How to feed your favorite society gossip. |