Dan Barrett, or @dangerawesome on twitter, brought it to our attention. A new gaming product ‘Healing Blade’ has a piece of art that has some interesting similarities to a well known Magic card. While the art is obviously heavily inspired by Radha, Heir of Keld, it cannot be called plagiarism as it is clearly a different drawing.

Yup. There she was.  Ceftriaxone.  Our beautiful Ceftriaxone.  And Radha, Heir of Keld, of the awesome Magic: The Gathering.  Our thanks to the folks at ManaNation being as civil as possible, but let’s call a spade a spade.  From the posing, to the background to the subtle detail, there can be no doubt that there was malfeasance on the part of one of our subcontracted artists.  Phonecalls were made, voices were raised and apologies were given.  This post is our somewhat poor attempt to apologize to the community of the card-battle players and artists that set forth the high bar of excellent work that is Magic.  Without you guys, NCL wouldn’t exist, and we take any and all issues regarding intellectual property very seriously, as we’re well aware that for small companies such as ourselves, IP is our livelihood.   Our solution?  A ground up re-design of the third generation warrior from the cephalosporin family that we’ve come to know and love as the mighty Ceftriaxone.   Without further ado:

Please let us know what you think.  Perhaps more importantly, (and I’m looking at you, you MTG, card battling, fellow fanboys and fangirls) if you find any more *ahem* similarities between our art assets and those that already exist – we would be eternally grateful for notification so that we could address the issue.  But! Wait! Theres! More!  If you do find something that ultimately needs to be updated, we will work with you to design the appropriate replacement Apothecary / Pestlience, giving you credit on our site and in the game.  (and perhaps a little schwab bag for yer troubles too:-)

We’re all in this together.

In parallel to the beastiary development lies the task of creating a compelling universe for these creatures to reside in. Furthermore, we are also looking at the process of developing inter-relationships between the Apothecary mage families that closely tie to the familial structures of the spells or antibiotics they wield.

And LASTLY, we are working on a overarching story that narrates the epic struggle between the forces of Pestilence and the Apothecaries. Perhaps most intriguing of all is the role that the player takes within this story, traveling through both worlds prior to being able to claim mastery of the art. Dude, this is about the most exhilarating project we’ve ever worked on!