#357
Aug 3, 2025
Books
This week I read:
Tales from the End of Time, a collection of stories by Michael Moorcock
In which we return to the End of Time and get up to wacky hijinks with the denizens. My favourite was the first, Pale Roses, in which Werther de Goethe, a gloomy man who craves drama and emotion is tricked by his fellows into following a path that leads to him leaping from a cliff in despair. But it’s ok, because they can just resurrect the dead at the End of Time, and the emotional payoff was worth it.
Volumes 13 to 18 of The Journal of the Traveller’s Aid Society from Mongoose Publishing
These have the usual collection of new animals, sophonts, ships, equipment, adventures, and lore. Very little of which I’ll use (I’m not really sure who these GMs are who want yet another playable human-with-funny-anatomy race), but there are some good ideas buried in there. In particular, there were a few articles about the aslan, which I always like to see, and The Hkirerao Passage sounds like it could be the foundation of a trade and exploration focussed campaign.
Issue 5 of Knock! from the Merry Mushmen
As usual Knock has more hits than misses, and I appreciate how it’s now almost entirely new content rather than rehashed blog posts (like the first edition was). There were some especially good articles this time about dungeon creation.
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
Last time I had High Priestess Stephania flee to the kaliyani to escape the party, but I decided to change that a little for this time. Firstly, the players had been talking all week about having a dramatic showdown with her, so it would be a bit mean to rob them of that; and secondly, I knew that if they found she’d fled to the kaliyani they would march their army down to fight them too, and I wasn’t ready to run mass combat against the kaliyani.
So, upon reviewing the kaliyani / Set Cult faction relationship again, I decided they’d abandon Stephania. The kaliyani don’t like the Set Cult, they merely regard them as useful. If they’ve lost their territory and most of their members, their usefulness is significantly reduced: they’re certainly not useful enough for the kaliyani to stick their necks out for. So instead I decided that if the players pursued Stephania down the stairs to the kaliyani domain, they’d find her and her attendants trapped on the stairs trying to break the door, which the kaliyani have sealed, down.
They did pursue, and they fought: they blew all their spells in the first two rounds of combat and managed to capture Stephania and her guards alive, yay!
We then spent the rest of the session exploring the Set domain and cleaning up the last pockets of resistance.
Miscellaneous
The house, I am very pleased to say, is nearly done.
Yesterday I assembled the bedside tables and chest of drawers for the guest bedroom, and had hoped to do the mirror too but the delivery hasn’t come yet. I have a new chair coming for the living room next weekend, and then that’s all the furniture done! Sure, there’s art pieces still on their way, but those are extras: everything important will be in place.
It feels like I’ve been buying house-related things every week since I moved in, so it’ll certainly be nice to stop that. I will need some more gear for the garden, but that’s a few months away yet.
This week I started watching Thunderbolt Fantasy, after being shown one of the films when I visited friends the other weekend. It’s… really good. I’ve been aware of it for some time, but never looked into it because it’s a puppet show, how good could it be? I was wrong, it’s amazing. The story and characters are good, and the puppeteering is incredible: they make really good use of camera angles and motion to offset the static nature of the puppets, and they swap out components like hands and mouths to add variety, it’s really really well done.