#315
Oct 13, 2024
Books
This week I read:
Volumes 13 and 14 of Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui
The end. These two volumes wrapped up all the open story threads, neatly finishing everything off: the demon was defeated (and we learned some more about what it actually was and why it acted the way it did), and Falin’s humanity was restored. And they did it all by eating things.
Dungeon meshi. Ah, dungeon meshi!
Volume 10 of The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan by Puyo
I somehow missed this volume when I read the manga as it was coming out: I read volume 9 in 2016. Though, this last volume focusses on Asakura, Nagato’s friend, deciding what to do about her future. It’s almost a side-story, so it was easy to dive back in. It was a nice conclusion to the series.
Volume 18 of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime by Fuse
It’s getting a little tricky to keep up with all the characters, as the author’s still introducing multiple new major characters in every volume. This is supposed to be the final arc, and it does feel like we’re building up to a climax; but I wish new enemy lieutenants didn’t keep popping up.
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
We were down a player this week, but it was still an eventful session.
But let’s take a step back. Last time, the players agreed to take Triv-Lok to the Varumani. I had already decided that the Varumani would be predisposed to accept Rudishva rule, as they’re a genetically engineered species who the Rudishva turned into loyal troops and good workers: much of their behaviour today can be (and is, in the module text) explained as the lingering effects of this genetic engineering.
So why not control, too?
In that case, it’s a given that Triv-Lok will ultimately take control of the Varumani if she stays with them for long enough. But what’s not a given is how they would react to first meeting Triv-Lok, before she’d taken over. I had previously portrayed the thegn as concerned, but would he maybe be so concerned he would refuse to meet with her? Would he send assassins, to stamp out a problem before it develops?
I wracked my brain thinking of how he would handle this. I’m not a 200-year-old intelligent troll-king faced with the prospect of my old masters returning and relegating me to a mere servant once more.
Then I remembered that the game already has a solution for this: reaction rolls.
So I gave Triv-Lok a bonus from the genetic predisposition, rolled a few dice, and quickly determined that the Varumani’s initial attitude would be cautiously optimistic. And so that’s how I played it when the meeting happened.
Don’t overthink things!
The One Ring
We wrapped up the campaign this session, a week earlier than originally planned due to one player being unavailable next week.
The players tracked the orc war-band back to their fortress, and then returned home to raise an army of dwarves to slaughter them all and rescue their enslaved kin! It worked beautifully, I tied it into what came before with the main party, and left some open threads in case we ever do return to this campaign.
It was only 11 sessions long, but all in all a very fun campaign, and I would like to play The One Ring again some time.
Akkadian
This week I’ve been studying Huehnergard’s A Grammar of Akkadian. It’s much more “classroom-style” than Worthington’s Complete Babylonian:
Complete Babylonian exclusively has translation exercises, with real historical sentences. It introduces the material slowly, and explains all the words and grammatical constructs it’s not covered yet in the exercises, so you can just translate the bits it has taught so far to get the overall answer. It also doesn’t really teach vocabulary, though you do start to pick up the more common words.
A Grammar of Akkadian has a mixture of pronunciation exercises (breaking a word down into syllables and marking where the stress is), translation exercises with synthetic sentences both from Akkadian to English and from English to Akkadian, and grammatical exercises (conjugate this list of words in this way). It also teaches vocabulary: each exercise section starts with a word list, and the only words you need are the ones from that list or the ones from prior sets of exercises.
To sum up the difference, I’d say Complete Babylonian is more fun, but A Grammar of Akkadian is better for actually learning. It’s good to have both, I think from now on I’ll switch between them depending on my mood.
I’ve continued working on my translations this week, I got a few more lines of The Descent of Ishtar into the Netherworld done, and I’m very nearly half-way through Nanni’s complaint letter to Ea-Nasir. I have a week off work coming up at the end of the month, so I hope to make some serious progress on both of them then.
Miscellaneous
It’s the new anime season, though there’s slim pickings this time. Dandadan, Uzumaki, and NegaPosi Angler seem the most promising.
Also, it’s crazy that I’ve written over 300 of these posts now. It all started back in 2018 as an experiment, I wasn’t sure how long I was going to keep it up, and now here we are.