#377
Dec 21, 2025
Work
Done with work for the year now, I’m back on the 5th.
The big news is that my employer is being acquired. Nothing material changes until the deal completes around mid next year, but one very nice upside of this is that the CEO has taken back his mandate that everyone needs to be in the office three days a week as of June, to align our working policies with our new owner, who leave that decision up to individual teams. I find it a bit disappointing that the policy being wildly unpopular isn’t what changed things, money is, but it’s still a welcome change.
Books
This week I read:
The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe
This is a collection of three stories set on a pair of closely orbiting worlds, one of which had a native population of shapeshifters. Or maybe it didn’t, maybe they were stories made up by the settlers. Or maybe the aboriginals killed and replaced the settlers, because how would you even be able to tell with a shapeshifter? Along with colonialism, mimicry and identity are big themes in each story, and some characters are arguably just different aspects of others.
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
This week we opened with the fight against Meskenit: he won initiative and immediately killed six of the party members with a magic item. No save, just dead. That’s pretty much what I expected to happen. Then the remaining three members of the party beat him up as, due to some lucky initiative rolls, they managed to make him lose his next turn, and prevented him from casting any spells.
After that, a few weeks of downtime to bring the dead party members back, followed up by more exploration of the Set necropolis area. One of the players said they felt we were getting close to the end of Arden Vul: they can have most of the party die and shrug it off like it was nothing, and also they’ve achieved most of their big goals. Triv-Lok has left, Kerbog Khan going with her. The Varumani have been restored. Lankios healed. The Cult of Set vanquished. The Temple of Thoth restored. What’s left?
One player wants to finish the Trials of Arden, another wants to find out what’s going on with the heqeti. After a bit of discussion I gave them the hint that they should do the Trials of Arden before seriously going after the heqeti. So that’s what they’re going to focus on first.
The campaign is finally coming to an end. A bit later than I expected, but still via the route I thought it would.