Hi folks! We have a message from Matt, CEO of Iron Realms. One difference is
that Imperian has created two minipets rather than one, and we've made them
extra fancy! You will find details on the website and at the bottom of this
post.

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Greetings, citizens of the Iron Realms,

I hope everyones doing as well as they can in these plague times. I feel like
were living through a really badly-run event in one of our games, and whoever
is running the event has completely forgotten that theyre supposed to be fun.

In any case, while people are being laid off left and right (my wife was laid
off last week), Iron Realms is in a position where our work hasnt really been
disrupted. We all work from home offices anyway, and remotely working together
is baked into our companys DNA. We havent had to lay anyone off because of
Covid, in fact, for which were all grateful.

So, we want to do something to help. We looked around, and decided that we want
to support a charity called RIP Medical Debt. It got some fame a few years ago
when John Oliver bought $14m in medical debt for $60k and gave it to them to
retire.

What they do is buy and pay off the medical debt of people for whom it is a
large financial burden, at 1 penny on the dollar. In other words, $1 can pay
off $100 of someones medical debt. For those of you who dont live in the US,
our health system here allows people to go into crippling debt because they got
sick or injured, to the point of financial ruin. According to one study from
2019, about 530,000 annual bankruptcies in the US are at least partly-caused by
medical debt.

In this case, RIP Medical Debt recently started a fund  the Helping Covid
Heroes Fund - that specifically buys up and pays off the medical debt of
healthcare workers and first responders who are seriously financially burdened
by the debt (so a doctor making $300k isnt getting her student loans paid off
by this, for instance).

I saw that and immediately thought, This is what we want to support. The
impact per dollar is just so high.

Were going to be doing two things for the rest of this month:

1. Each game is creating a minipet thatll be for sale on the website for $5.
100% of revenue from these will go to the Helping Covid Heroes Fund.
https://ripmedicaldebt.org/campaigns/

2. Were going to donate 20% of our revenue (minus revenue from the minipets
as were already donating 100% of those), up to a max of $12,000, for the
rest of this month.

If we raised $12,000 from #2 and another $3000 from #1, thatd pay off $1.5
million in medical debt for Covid heroes!

Well announce how much was raised after the bookkeeping is done in early-ish
June, and donate the money raised then as well. Its not a world-changing
amount, but it could be life-changing for the people whose debt is paid off.

Finally, were also going to increase daily free credits available each day
until the end of the month  your game producers will post details themselves
there.

Stay well,

--Matt/Sarapis/Aurelius
CEO, Iron Realms

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Here are some details on the available vanity pets:

The giant murderous hornet will allow you to SEND <hornet> AFTER <person> to
begin a very slow channeled instakill. This can be stopped by nearly anything,
and the person must remain in the room during the channeling, obviously. Should
it succeed in its attack, there is a 15 minutes cooldown before it can sting
again.

The miniature white unicorn foal grants the ability to BESEECH <unicorn>.
Should you not have performed aggressive actions in the past sixty (60)
seconds, it will heal your health, mana and cure all afflictions instantly.
There is also a 15 minutes cooldown before it may be beseeched again.

You can also ASK <unicorn|hornet> TELL <person> <message> to have it deliver a
message!



Penned by my hand on the 25th of Tenebrae, in the year 222 AM.