#246
Jun 4, 2023
Books
This week I read:
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison
Another instalment in the Cemeteries of Amalo murder mystery investigation fantasy series. I hesitate to call it a murder mystery really, since the reader couldn’t possibly figure the answer out from the information presented, it’s more of a character drama with murders as the backdrop.
Once again I found myself really impressed with how Katherine Addison mixes in fictional words in a way that both makes sense without needing explanation, and feels like words from an actual other language. Unlike, say, Elric where none of the Melnibonean names (e.g. “Elric”, “Cymoril”, and “Yyrkoon”) really sound like they come from the same culture.
Roleplaying Games
Dolmenwood
Since last time, there’s been yet more talking, and now we have decided to end our Dolmenwood campaign. Well, we gave it a good shot: we played for close to a year. It was fun while it lasted, and I’m very much looking forward to the kickstarter for the finished books (which I’ll no doubt run for a different group) in a month or two.
The Halls of Arden Vul
Sadly, the only remaining original member of this group (other than me) decided to take a break for a while (I’m sensing a theme…). But I managed to recruit one of my Dolmenwood players to this game, and another player who was having a break last month has said they might be up for joining in again. So, you win some, you lose some.
This week the party—to my surprise—didn’t go to either of the other not-guarded-by-halfling-thugs entrances they found last time. Instead, they went right back in the normal way to go investigate a secret tomb they’d heard about. They kind of found it, but got chased off by a pack of ghouls that were nesting in there. Oh well, at least the ghouls will keep the treasure safe from other adventuring parties. For a little while.
We also did some carousing, in which one of the PCs rolled that they burned down a tavern and an NPC knows. I don’t know who that NPC is yet, but that’s a fun twist for when they’re next in town.
Miscellaneous
This week I got a security issue filed against resolved, which is a first. Since resolved responds to an unexpected “response” message with an error response, an attacker could craft a message with the source address of resolved, forcing it into a reply loop: the attacker sends this initial packet, resolved replies, the reply goes to itself, resolved replies again, ad infinitum.
Pretty neat little problem, not one I’d considered, and perhaps explains why Cloudflare is so aggressive about dropping not-strictly-valid queries: any leniency in what you accept is a potential vector for a clever attack.
Thankfully not exploitable in my use-case, since I run it on my LAN only, but it’s a very simple fix.