Japan
The big news is that my holiday to Japan is imminent!
I’ll be gone for a couple of weeks. Almost all the preparation is done, all that’s left to do is pack (hopefully getting everything into a single backpack so I don’t need to deal with suitcases).
I was initially planning to try and keep up the weeknotes during my trip, but I’ve decided that since I’ll be with friends and doing things most days, to just pause them for now. So there’ll be a big entry when I get back.
Books
This week I read:
The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson
A fascinating read, with an extensive bibliography I’ll no doubt be plundering for future reading. I especially liked the comparative timeline at the start of the book, showing how events in Egypt matched up with events elsewhere: imagine living in a country that predates the domesticated horse by a thousand years! Wow! The sheer time abyss brought back to mind Algernon Blackwood’s excellent short story about Egypt: Sand.
Not only is the history interesting, the book is enjoyable to read: it’s well-written and comes across as a coherent story. If I have a criticism, it’s that the latter few centuries aren’t covered in the same level of detail as the earlier ones; but I suppose there are already many other treatments of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt so it makes sense to focus on more ancient matters.
One thing that I found rather funny is the dearth of ancient mentions of Israel. Considering Egypt is such a big deal in the Old Testament, it really felt like the “You took everything from me!” / “I don’t even know who you are” meme.
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
We’re 40 sessions in! And this week we ended on an amazing cliffhanger.
The party split by an ancient alien teleporter malfunction: half of them on the Midnight Road, one of the few endgame-tier locations in Arden Vul; the other half, returning to the Goblin Warrens to wait out the return of their friends (if they return).
The Midnight Road group found two other adventurers (much higher level than the party, I should add) lost and trapped here as well. For now, they’ve decided to team up to try to find a way out; but the route the NPC adventurers took is guarded by powerful monsters, and the route the party took is sealed off. I fully expect them to die horribly, but it will be an amazing side-adventure.
On the other hand, if they do manage to escape… well, a route into the Midnight Road is one of the most valuable pieces of knowledge in Arden Vul. They could name their price, and also earn the permanent enmity of the trolls if they sell the secret to any other faction.
What a place to leave off the game before our little break due to my trip!