#387
Mar 1, 2026
Books
This week I read:
Veins of the Earth, by Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess
I’ve been rereading this as I had an idle thought about maybe running a game set in the Underdark. It’s a very evocative book, but I once heard that Patrick Stuart doesn’t actually playtest anything, it’s all just vibes and I can really see that. There is good stuff here, but it’d take a lot of work to actually use. A lot of it is needlessly edgy too, like one of the monster descriptions says that there’s only one of these creatures ever, in any of your campaigns, so if it dies rip out the page and throw it away. Come on.
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
It was a pretty big session this week.
The players decided to scout out the path to the Ziggurat of Kauket, but quickly found that it was blocked by a portcullis and guarded. So they hung around for a while to see if anyone passed through who they could sneak in behind, and instead they saw a group of heqeti coming out with a captive goblin in some sort of man-shaped cage full of blades. They waited until the heqeti were distracted with their sacrificial ritual, then jumped and killed them all, saving the prisoner. Unfortunately, his tongue had been ripped out (before this whole thing started), but at least he wasn’t sacrificed.
They didn’t really have any idea for how to get through the portcullis, so the next day they decided to follow up on another lead: the rumoured resting place of the bodies of Priscus Pulcher and his lover, the dragon Yasidoranicil. They knew from a book that “the Villa of Ysadora” was a potential site, so they spent two days searching the outskirts of the ruined city for it, eventually finding it and discovering the secret basement. One PC fell through an illusory floor into a vast underground space (and survived), falling 110ft and slamming into the sandy ground next to a life-size solid gold statue of a dragon with an inscription about how Yasidoranicil loved Priscus and rescued his body after his death. Cue one player “ohhh, Isadora is the dragon”.
I don’t think they’ve realised yet that the statue isn’t really a statue; it’s also the dragon…