#341
Apr 13, 2025
Books
This week I read:
Volume 1 of the new Rozen Maiden anniversary edition by Peach-Pit
It’s been a long time since I read, or last watched, Rozen Maiden. I don’t want to say it’s just nostalgia that makes it enjoyable, I think it does have some inherent worth in it, but if it came out for the first time today I don’t think I’d pick it up. I wonder how many things I would enjoy that I overlook these days because the premise doesn’t immediately grab my attention.
Volume 19 of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime by Fuse
I think this series is definitely suffering the Dragonball Z problem now, as the defeated enemies get replaced with new ones a tier higher, and the good guys power up to overcome this new threat, which awakens the next tier of ancient evils, and so on. This volume we saw the pretty rapid defeat of the most powerful angel in all of creation, the one multiple books had built up to the the big bad of the series, and oh wait: another evil sensed this disturbance in the Force and has started to stir!
At this rate the final enemy will be god himself (or the main character will become god, something that has been hinted at).
I think it doesn’t help that the author admitted in the postscript that he doesn’t really know where the story is going. He knows how many volumes there will be, but has now got so far ahead of what he planned that he’s making it up at he goes along. It’s still fun, but it’s definitely not as good as the earlier volumes.
Volume 12 of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End by Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe
I was a bit negative on the last few volumes of Frieren, but this one returned to what the series is best at: the passage of time, and what that means for people. Volume 11 ended with a cliffhanger: Frieren somehow got sent back in time, swapping places with the Frieren of 80 years previously in the party of the Hero. This volume is about trying (and failing) to get back home, but it’s also about how Frieren, changed with experience, suddenly reunited with the friends she has missed so much but knowing she has to be careful to avoid changing the future, adjusts to this unexpected situation.
Cities that Shaped the Ancient World by John Julius Norwich
I wouldn’t recommend this book. I picked it up because I like ancient history and I enjoyed John Julius Norwich’s history of Byzantium, but this book was a bit of a disappointment. Each city gets only a few pages, most being 2 or 3 pages, and it’s just not enough. Reading a series of brief introductions just isn’t very interesting.
Let Us Build a Tower by Caleb Wimble
This is a “depthcrawl”, like the Gardens of Ynn or Stygian Library by Emmy Allen, where locations are randomly generated based on how far you are into the dungeon. In this case, the setting is a mythic Shinar, incorporating a mixture of Biblical, Akkadian, and Sumerian mythology, to present a Tower of Babel after the gods afflicted man with the curse of languages for their hubris.
A cool twist is that there was war in Heaven between Enlil, king of the gods and the one who opposed the Tower, and the others: so the other gods are now wandering the Earth (and the Tower) as greatly diminshed, but still incredibly powerful, spirits. There’s a lot of thematic overlap with Godbound, and I don’t think it would be too hard to combine the two.
Mythic Babylon is definitely up there in terms of future campaign settings I’d like to run, but there are so many potential games!
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
It was a pretty eventful session this week. The party completed the First Labour of Arden (nearly dying in the attempt), which has got them one step closer to meeting the deified Arden herself, whose cult chambers they’re in the process of looting. That’ll be an interesting meeting for sure.
After that, following up on intel they’d gained about the location of the remains of Gennadius, fabled first leader of the Beastmen, they went to negotiate with the Cult of Bastet. They played it smart and brought a lot of food for the cats, to get in the priestess’s good books, but were tasked with finding a stolen relic first. This is all in pursuit of their goal to eliminate the Cult of Set, so if you’re keeping track here’s the quest tree:
- Eliminate the Cult of Set
- Summon a holy army
- DONE: Get Ethelflad to level 9
- DONE: Clear out a stronghold
- Ensure the Sun-Scarred Knights don’t interfere
- Get other factions to put pressure on the Knights
- DONE: Befriend the Varumani
- DONE: Find a cure for the racial degradation of the Varumani
- DONE: Return the Varumani to their ancestral halls
- Befriend the Beastmen:
- DONE: Find the relics of Rex
- Find the relics of Gennadius
- Find a stolen relic of Bastet
- DONE: Befriend the Goblins
- DONE: Eliminate the Halflings
- DONE: Find the Goblin Sceptre
- DONE: Befriend the Varumani
- Get other factions to put pressure on the Knights
- Summon a holy army
One of the players realised they’d seen this relic before so they were able to fetch it pretty quickly. Unfortunately for them, Gennadius’s restless spirit materialised and said he would not permit his remains to be taken to the witch who enslaved his men: he wants Deino dead. The beastmen, however, love and revere Deino as their “mother”. We have a bit of an impasse.
The players are now thinking about bringing Count Skleros, the head of the beastmen after Deino, to meet the spirit of Gennadius and foment a rebellion against Deino. They’re also considering just assassinating Deino, so that Count Skleros takes over, and then presenting him with the remains of Gennadius. Interesting times ahead!
Finally, they accompanied Sir Sixth back to the cave where he wandered in his madness, to complete his quest to check up on the weapons pod of the Beacon. There, they saw the partially eaten bodies of Sir Sixth’s varlets, and he realised pretty quickly what had happened. They didn’t bring anywhere near enough supplies to keep him alive all the time he was crazed…
Miscellaneous
House Buying
This week I received the mortgage deed and other paperwork to sign, and have sent that back to the conveyancer. I’ve also arranged building insurance.
Other than agreeing on the date (when the seller and both sets of conveyancers are ready), that’s my entire side of the legal process done! And once the date is agreed, I can arrange the move itself.