#404
Jun 28, 2026
Books
This week I read:
Volume 21 of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime by Fuse
I think I’ve run out of things to say about this series now. Every new volume is the same: battles against incomprehensibly powerful enemies are had and won somehow both narrowly and yet without any real danger of losing, then a new, even more powerful, enemy shows up. Power levels are numerically quantified and used to justify why one guy is a bigger deal than another guy, and the underdog wins every time and the narrator comments that it just goes to show raw power isn’t everything. I’ll see it through to the end, but the author kind of spoiled the series by dragging it out for too long. It’s run its course.
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegot
This is such a great book. It’s short, funny, pokes fun at both religion and science, and there’s a few different morals you could take from it, but I think the one I like the most is that false, but harmless, comforting beliefs are a fine thing to have. I’ve only read one other Kurt Vonnegut book, The Sirens of Titan, and I recall that being similar; I should read more of his stuff.
Roleplaying Games
Hot Springs Island
This week the players returned to the Lapis Observatory, along with their new NPC friends—Gretchen the adjunct professor / research mage and Wild-Eye the barbarian who doesn’t know a lick of any local languages—to go actually do some dungeoncrawling.
I’d decided that Gretchen had been having weird dreams about being trapped in a strange mirror-world, which she’d tracked to this place and she wanted to go in to find out why because she’s an academic who makes bad decisions (a previous decision in her backstory, in just the recent past, led to the companions she came to the island with getting torn apart by crystalback wydarr).
After a bit of exploration and combat they ended up finding the nereid painting and, while the party were trying to get a giant 15ft-tall magic mirror down a 150ft cliff without breaking it, Gretchen figured out a way of basic communication with the inhabitant of the painting, and that it was a nereid! One of the players suggested poking a small hole in the canvas with a dagger, which was actually what I’d decided in advance would work (tearing the canvas) and they got the nereid out! Nobody could speak more than a few words of Water Elemental, but they did manage to get across that they had another painting they’d left on another island, and arranged to meet back here in five days time.
Five days later, the players returned, with their nereid painting. Meanwhile, the druid of the party had levelled up from recovered treasure and opted to take Water Elemental as their next language. Anyway, they got the nereid out of their painting, and started to hear the story of Meltalia and the Fifty Visions… and then we ran out of time just as we were getting to the good part!
I’ll need to figure out where all the nereids are, as I don’t think the island map has all fifty of them. Some nereids are free, some are enslaved, but the majority are in paintings and as I recall only a handful of those are explicitly placed on the map. But one of the fun things about the nereids is that it will inevitably draw them into conflict with Svarku, and so into the wider Fuegonauts / Night Axe faction conflict!
Also, the players missed the magic shortsword I’d placed in the dungeon for them. Oh well, hopefully they’ll go back some time.
Miscellaneous
It’s been so hot!
Link Roundup
Roleplaying games
- The Five Kingdoms of the Icemark: