#328
Jan 12, 2025
Books
This week I read:
Moorcock’s Multiverse by Michael Moorcock
Which is a collection of three early stories that isn’t at all the same thing as Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse, confusingly enough. While I liked the stories they’re much more different to the Eternal Champion stuff than the blurb made me expect, so that was a bit of a failure on the publisher’s part I feel. They should have just marketed it as a collection of early stories.
That aside, The Sundered Worlds was my favourite.
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
I found this classical Latin cover of “everybody wants to rule the world” and I can’t stop listening to it, I’m sure this is the sort of thing they enjoyed back in the Archontean Golden Age.
Anyway, back to the game… last week the players found the Lost Chambers of Arden and their greed was piqued by seeing so many valuable statues. Well, we talked logistics between sessions (moving 500lb statues up 350ft of stairs and then deadlifting them into a teleporter is not easy), and this week the players spent 19 days carting out one statue a day. They used the time to do some spell research, too.
They made a fortune, but there will be consequences for dropping all their other priorities for the best part of a month… The Priscians they rescued and raised from the dead recovered from their fatigue and returned to Arden Vul without the party’s help, so that’s a valuable opportunity to befriend a powerful faction gone (at least for now). I think, too, that the Varumani will be a bit cool to the party as they’ve not been helping Triv-Lok with her goals in that time, and Triv-Lok is the only one the Varumani know of who can halt their racial decline. I had decided that the Set Cult were hiring assassins to go after the party: those assassins are hired now, and I upgraded how tough they are. I’m sure there are more things that happened in that time, I’ll think about it.
Delta Green
This week I broached the topic of when we were going to start the next campaign, and we’ve decided to keep Arden Vul running for the foreseeable future, with the occasional pause to run a Delta Green operation. This works well because none of us want to end Arden Vul before we’re done with it (and gods know when that will be) and the Delta Green campaign will be very episodic (though with an overarching story). Also two past players who have had to drop out of the Sunday game because they can’t commit to the schedule have said they might be able to join something more sporadic.
I suppose I need to stop sitting around and finally iron out the details of that first operation, then.
Akkadian
Back into study this week. I realised why I was putting it off: I find doing the exercises really boring. So I’ve decided to drop those for now (but still read through the textbook) and just do more actual translations to get the practice in. I need to pick something to go for, but I’d like it to be a short cuneiform text, maybe a royal inscription or something. I’ll seek one out.
Miscellaneous
Attended the birthday party for my friend’s toddler yesterday—there were several 2-year-olds running around a soft-play area—and also got to see their newborn who’s just a few weeks old. Also in attendance was another schoolfriend, with her husband, her 2-year-old, and was pregnant again herself with the baby due in a few months.
I’m happy for them all, they seem to derive a lot of meaning out of parenthood, and obviously liked it enough to have a second one, but wow these past few years have really reinforced how much I don’t want children. It instantly takes over your whole life. “How does the child fit into this?” becomes a consideration in everything you do. I value my freedom too much to want any part of that.