#350

Jun 15, 2025

Books

This week I read:

Roleplaying Games

The Halls of Arden Vul

This week we picked up from last time’s cliffhanger: the players had found a route into the caverns of the Cult of Set, found the escaped slaves, and brought them back to the brink of safety; they just needed to get past one last guardpost.

Which they did, easily, though at the cost of a powerful illusion scroll.

We then spent most of the rest of the session engaging in diplomacy with the goblins and the varumani. This is part of the grand plan to destroy the Cult of Set: they need to ensure the Sun-Scarred Knights won’t show up to kick their asses for disturbing their precious status quo, so they’re getting the goblins, beastmen, and varumani to back them up when they go to negotiate with the Knights right before the war kicks off.

Since this is a big thing, I asked for a plan from the players a while back, and I spent some time thinking it through. I’d decided that the three factions would basically back them up (unless they asked for something ridiculous), though they each have their reasons (they’re cashing in some pretty big favours with the goblins, whereas the beastmen and varumani have their own ulterior motives to participate in this meeting), and the Knights would grill them pretty harshly (I’ve prepared a list of questions intended to cast doubt on the moral high ground they’re justifying this all with) but ultimately accede after demanding some heavy concessions from the party; and then we get to the actual war itself!

For the war we’re going to use the By this Poleaxe mass combat rules, which we’re all really looking forward to as we’ve not done any mass combat in any campaign so far!

Miscellaneous

This week I baked my first loaf of bread after the move, and maybe it’s just the general sense of change in my life right now, but afterwards while munching on a delicious sandwich (corned beef, onion chutney, and sundried tomato) I felt like trying out different sorts of bread. So I’ve ordered some spelt flour to try out in my next loaf. I think I’ll also have another go at making a rye bread—I use a rye starter, but typically with white bread flour—which I previously dropped after a few disappointing loafs.

House Buying

I think this will be the last “house buying” update, as the process is really all done now.

This week I got my internet connection set up, though I seem to be having problems with torrenting and with yt-dlp which could be related to my ISP’s use of CGNAT. I’ve got a support ticket open asking about static IP addresses—so I bypass the CGNAT layer entirely—which they advertised on their website when I first looked into them, but oddly enough there’s no mention now.

I also returned to work. Unfortunately, the 4G signal here isn’t great, so tethering from my phone would have been difficult (coincidentally I’ve decided to upgrade my phone, and have a Pixel 9, which has 5G support, on the way), and the internet didn’t get enabled until Saturday due to a need to send out an engineer, so I ended up commuting to the office 4 out of 5 days this week. The journey is long, but not so bad as the bulk of it is a train journey, on which you can just sit and read. The cost was the worst part, as I’d budgeted assumed buying 1 or 2 tickets a week, and those in advance to take advantage of the lower prices; but this week I ended up buying 4 tickets all on the day.

I’m still largely living out of boxes, as I want to redecorate first. I’m still waiting for the paint samples to arrive (Dulux are so slow at sending them out I wonder if they even want to sell paint), but when those finally get here and I make up my mind, I’ll book in the painting work. The carpets are all ready to go the week after next. So hopefully I’ll be fully unpacked and settled in by the mid July.