#353
Jul 6, 2025
Books
This week I read:
Volume 2 of the Rozen Maiden anniversary edition by Peach-Pit
I really like how well the translation portrays all the Rozen Maidens’ vocal tics and speech patterns, e.g. Suiseiseki ends all her sentences with “desu”—which the fansubbed anime just left at that because that works with an audience composed entirely of weebs—translated here as ending all her sentences with “yes?” which is basically the same thing.
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
One hundred sessions! We made it!
This week the war against the Cult of Set began in earnest. We decided to get a taste for the mass combat rules by the players going after a few outlying bases, which they smashed with ease since they sent all their best troops and they were facing one or two squads of regular guards at a time. I think collectively the Cult of Set’s forces outclass the players’, if you don’t include the PCs themselves which have a huge impact due to being so high level and well equipped.
However, there aren’t really any outlying bases left, and the players have managed to shut off their access to the Temple of Set (they sealed one entrance with an explosive, and the Cult of Set will collapse the other in response to a strike by the players), which reduces their approaches into the Forum.
We left the session in the middle of a night-time raid to free the slaves in advance of the main invasion tomorrow. Due to an unfortunate random encounter roll, they were spotted emptying out the third of four slave pens: or at least, the slaves were spotted escaping via a magic teleporting rug, as the players themselves are invisible. I need to figure out how quickly the Guild rouses itself in response to this breakout, but it’s hard to see how the players could get to the fourth slave pen without breaking cover.
In any case, due to their attacks on the Cult’s teritory in the day, and the escape of the slaves in the night, the Cult will be on high alert tomorrow with all their troops ready to go. The players have had a pretty successful time of it so far, but will they continue their streak of zero casualties once several powerful magic-users are blasting them with area-of-effect spells?
Miscellaneous
This weekend I had the urge to play Guild Wars, so I picked up a few expansions I was missing and logged in for the first time in three or four years. I’ve been working through the End of Dragons expansion, which is pretty fun as it brings back Cantha, the fantasy-south-east-asia region which wasn’t available at release time due to it being 100+ years into “totally not Sakoku”. I didn’t actually complete the previous expansion, it didn’t grip me for whatever reason, so I’ve missed a chunk of the story, but not so much that I can’t make sense of things. It’s just cool having the region back.