May Exclusive, and update to come :)

Hey everyone! ✨

Here’s May’s exclusive image!
I wanted to try something that feels almost real — this picture took me hours, but I’m really happy with the result. I hope you’ll like it too. :)

As for S26, it's currently in final testing (Thanks Jammy and SBBD, as always 🙏).
It will be released to Vanguards and Architects subscribers in the coming days, and Junior patrons will get access about 10 days later. So don’t worry — it’s coming!

To let you know, we’re almost done with the Fabien/Mat route, which I’ve been focusing on lately. I’ll open a poll for Vanguards & Architects to help decide what comes next: Should I pause this timeline (Fabien & Mat's first ending) and go back to earlier parts of the game to work on other routes? Or should I continue straight ahead with the canonical Fabien/Mat route until it’s fully done (which is very, very close), and only then go back to flesh out the alternatives? The choice will be entirely up to them :)

🖥️ On a more personal (and technical) note…

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I planned to release this update sooner…
But my PC decided otherwise.

For the past few months, I’ve been battling constant crashes — and I mean constant:

• Sometimes during renders in Daz (when you have 30 pictures to render overnight and it crashes at picture #4... well, it's not a great way to start your morning 😅),

• Other times right at startup, with those lovely BSODs (usually vgk.sys (Yes, I play League of Legends :p) or “Exception Not Handled”),

• And occasionally, just randomly while doing absolutely nothing.

Basically, I couldn’t trust my PC anymore.

So I went full detective mode:

• Checked temps, swapped out a hard drive, reorganized everything (which was a good excuse to upgrade — I bought a new SSD, but that meant opening the case and unplugging... everything 🫠),

• Ran memory tests, clean-installed drivers...

I was honestly starting to think I’d need to build a new machine.

But after weeks of frustration, I finally found the real culprit: my CPU.
More specifically: an Intel 14th gen chip.

Turns out, there are known stability issues with some of these CPUs at stock frequencies.

The fix?

• I went into the BIOS,

• Manually underclocked the CPU (lowered "Sync All Cores" ratio to 55 instead of 57 - which was not easy to find !!!),

• And voilà — no more crashes since. 🧘 Hope I won't have anymore!!!

So if you’re using an Intel 13th or 14th gen and facing weird BSODs, try this trick — it might save you months of headaches. It definitely saved me.

Anyway, that’s life.
Thanks again for your support and patience — it means a lot.

See you very soon with S26!

– Erwin