#302
Jul 14, 2024
Books
This week I read:
Von Bek by Michael Moorcock
Which contains the stories The Warhound and the World’s Pain and The City in the Autumn Stars. I’ve been going through the Michael Moorcock collection in order, so I had actually started on The Cornelius Quartet but found it really hard going—the Jerry Cornelius stories are weird—and put it down for now. Von Bek, on the other hand, was like a breath of fresh air. It’s pulp adventure in the vein of Elric, Corum, and Hawkmoon, but this time set in Germany (and the fictional neighbouring nation of Waldenstein) during the various European wars of, I think, the 18th century.
All of Moorcock’s characters have their own unique thing, and the Von Bek stories have alchemy and a much more overtly religious theme, being about God and Satan and the Holy Grail. Interestingly, both the big recurring human villains of Moorcock’s stories, Gaynor the Damned and Klosterheim, are German, and both are damned to eternal struggle due to betraying their respective masters (the Balance itself, which is more-or-less god; and Lucifer). I guess Michael Moorcock just likes Germany.
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
I’ve been looking forward to this week’s session since the beginning of the camapign: the players finally explored the Beacon, something they’ve known about since session one, as the very first thing you see when entering the surface ruins is an obelisk with the following inscription:
The Beacon shall be revealed to those who bring midday life to the Sun, the Moon and the Stars.
There was very little action this session. They managed to slowly beat to death a couple of animated statues which couldn’t fight back due to clever positioning, but other than that it was all exploration.
The Beacon itself is a small area of around a dozen rooms. It’s also the bridge of the ancient alien spacecraft that crashed into this world some 3000 years ago, and has valuable information about them (largely in the form of research materials left behind by scholars 1200 years ago when the city was evacuated due to the civil war). They spent some time talking to a “weird ghost” (the holographic projection of an ancient alien AI) and now have two new quests:
- To find more aliens than just the two they know about, and let the AI know how they’re doing
- To wake up one specific alien from the cryopods they found way back in session 34
But before that they’re planning to take an extended period of downtime to learn the alien language, cure some cursed toad-people, and build an extension for their new tavern that they opened up in goblin town.
Fun times ahead!
51 sessions in and the players are still learning new things, still finding new things to do, and still actively engaging with the world and its lore. Arden Vul is great.
The One Ring
We had to postpone session 0, as one of the players had had their internet knocked out until next week by Hurricane Beryl (they’re fine). But next week, the other player can’t make it! So we won’t be starting this campaign until the 26th now.