Bjørn Røyrvik's page

Picking up from last time, the PCs wander along the northern coast of the island and find a cave with a pile of assorted bones outside, including those of merrow and shark-kin. Being adventurers, the party enters, ready for combat. Almost instantly Tibor triggers a trap which takes out a third of his hit points and alerts whatever is hiding in the cave to the party’s presence.
Sylvia heals him up just in time for the enemies to arrive. These are probably merrow, by the looks of them. They smell terrible, and not just in a fishy way. The pile of obviously gnawed-upon merrow bones outside indicates that these are probably cannibalistic. They attack but don’t do very much against Tibor’s impressive AC. Josephine Bo-bi and Aidu are slightly easier to hit but the fight goes pretty well, though the party is concerned to hear spellcasting further in the cave. The first group of merrow is partially killed and the rest run away, allowing the party to recover some hit points before going to find the spellcasters. The cleric and the bug thing that tried to get Tibor to attack Vår are both there, and call out to Atzanteotl. The fight goes fairly well, though the cleric and the bug are hard to hurt, thanks to Blur and DR in the case of the bug. It manages to escape, leaving the merrow to die.
The place is looted and the shrine to Atzanteotl (whom the party recognizes as a god who delights in corrupting people) is destroyed, and the merrow corpses thrown into the ocean for scavengers.

The party explores a bit more of the northeastern bit of the island, a bit warily in case the bug shows up again. They follow the river inland and come to a nice waterfall that looks very idyllic. Not being complete noobs, Bo-bi and Tibor automatically assume there is a hidden cave behind the waterfall. They and Aidu enter the water to investigate and are set upon by a chuul. Bo-bi has no hope of winning against it but Tibor and Aidu manage to get it to flee, and they manage to kill it before Bo-bi drowns. Vår spent most of the combat on shore not being able to help much and Sylvia got pulled away by the current when she waded in to help, but managed to save herself by gulping a Touch of the Sea potion.

Once Bo-bi is healed back up the party makes their way behind the waterfall where - lo and behold! - there’s the entrance to a cave. The party finds the chuul offspring and eggs and easily takes them out. Fortunately no one makes their Knowledge (dungeoneering) checks to determine that the chuul is intelligent and they settle down to their meal of sorta-lobster once they’ve explored the rest of the cave. The iron ore that suffuses the cave is interesting enough but the cave paintings of humans fighting giant snake-people and the one of Terra and Ixion bringing fire and agriculture to them has Tibor in as archeological tizzy. These seem even older than the Azcan ruins they have found so far. He wants to avoid telling the colony of the resources here to preserve the paintings. The rest of the party make non-committal noises to this suggestion.

This place thoroughly explored, they head to the red forest and are amazed at the weird look and vibes of the place. We have to end the session there because there will probably be another big fight and we are nothing if not very slow in combat.

So, Bo-bi is back with a little handwave to retcon so Josephine stays in town on this particular expedition. The player is getting pretty tired of D&D and had hoped to find the Skald more interesting to play but it wasn’t, and he realized just how badly the party needed more damage output, so Bo-bi is back. The downside is that we don’t get all the lovely skills she has. The upside is our chances of survival have gone up considerably, especially since Aidu is now useful in combat. The usual jokes of the PC being accoutrement to the mount are made.

"Mostly Harmless" was definitely the weakest of the HHGttG stories. Still entertaining but I don't really feel I'm missing out on much if I read the others but give this one a miss.

Currently reading a recent translation of Norway's first national lawcode, by Magnus the Lawmender. It's mostly a mass-market book, with a brief introduction to the time and major characters, the history of the laws, and their predecessors. There are numerous footnotes, which are nice, but now I'm regretting picking up this verions instead of the deluxe edition because the deluxe edition has a synthesized/normalized text of the originals as well as a translation. Ah, well.

"Gifts" was good, and now I'm sad that she didn't write any more stories in the setting.

Now finishing my reread of the Hitchhker's Guide to the Galaxy with Mostly Harmless. I know I read it when it came out but I don't think I read it since. I remember precious little of it other than the Perfectly Normal Beasts.

It was good to read these stories again. Some of them I've read since in other collections, others I haven't read in nearly thirty years.

On to le Guin's Gifts, the first book in The Annals of the Western Shores, a series of three books of what these days would probably be called YA stories. I managed to read the other two in the wrong order, but the stories are self-contained so it does not matter much. It's le Guin and the worst she has written comes out at pretty OK. This is much better than her worst.

Sylvia summons a couple of hippocampi to ferry the three mammals across while Tibor just swims. He’s slower than the hippocampi but it is a short trip. The party is slightly concerned they might be attacked on the way over but they see no signs of birdpeople on the way. On the shore of the tiny island they are met with two notable things: the first is the giant blue crystal that dominates the hill on the island, the other is the grisly sight of a dead, mostly devoured and decomposed kna hung on a pole, with its gear piled next to it. The party takes this as a sign that the birdpeople do not want visitors, or at the very least do not like kna, so they talk about how to proceed. The option of returning without attempting to make contact is discarded, even if this means a greater likelihood of combat. What takes a lot of time is the discussion of how to make contact. Sylvia and Tibor argue for staying on the beach and trying to attract attention from there. Vår wants to sneak up into their home and make contact that way. Sylvia and Tibor argue that staying on the beach rather than coming into their home is less threatening and easier for the party to escape into the sea than if they get into the middle of the island and piss the locals off by intruding on their home. Vår doesn’t want to give the obviously dangerous bird people a chance to organize and hunt the party by giving them advance warning. Josephine just stands still and silent, looking vacantly into the air.

The high-Wisdom couple prevail and the party builds a small but very smoky fire on the beach to announce their presence. Pretty soon the locals arrive. Only one shows themself - a tall, willowy winged elf - while the rest hide in the forest. The description of the elf made me think of the Gliders from ElfQuest. Peaceful contact is established and Vår, the only character Diplomacy worth a damn, uses a Tongues spell and starts talking. The players of Sylvia and Tibor soon wish their characters could join in the conversation because Vår has a tendency to ignore questions posed, make comments that could seem threatening, and show an utter incomprehension that anything she says or does could be anything less than perfectly OK. This is a constant issue with her player. We know that the point of skill systems is to allow characters to do things players cannot, but some players make it really hard to get behind.
Fortunately the winged elf looks at Tibor and asks in heavily accented Slag if he is related to the tortles of the Savage Coast, because she seems to recognize the Red Curse he suffers from. Tibor is happy to find people from his neck of the woods and they talk a bit about the old country. Sylvia finally offers to cast Share Language so everyone can take part in the discussion, and the elf accepts.

The winged elves, faenare as they call themselves, are a colony that came to the island some 70 years ago from their homeland on the Arm of the Immortals, which is not far off from Zul, where Tibor was born and raised. They moved here after one of their Windsingers had a vision that they needed to come here, specifically to the big blue crystal that reflects sea and sky. Conversation then comes to the dead kna. The faenare claim it was a case of mistaken identity. They thought the kna were skum, and did not realize their mistake until after they had killed the scout. They put his body and his belongings on the shore for the other kna to recover. After this they just kept to themselves. The party is relieved that there was nothing worse about this affair. The faenare invite the party to their hamlet and help the party into the trees where their ‘nests’ are. The mammals are easily lifted by a single warrior each but three have to strain to get Tibor up. A young, blind faenare is the only child in the tribe and she is ecstatic over encountering actual outsiders for the first time. She and Vår hit it off and talk up a storm. Other than general introduction of everyone and sharing information about the presence of the Thyatian colony on the larger island, trade negotiations are opened. The PCs are curious about the big blue crystal and the faenare are thankfully cool with that. Sylvia and Vår investigate it to the best of their abilities but are unable to find out anything other than that it once was very magical. Tibor wonders idly if it used to be an ioun stone for the entire world.

The next day the party decides to return to the kna and the faenare send an emissary to the kna and Thincol’s Jewel. The kna are a bit skeptical of the winged elf but are willing to accept the idea that the death of their scout was due to mistaken identity, though they are insulted at the idea that anyone could confuse skum and kna. Tibor points out that yes, it is strange to us [reptile and fishfolk] that anyone could make that mistake but just look at those mammals and see how hard it is to tell their races apart, especially when they are not standing next to each other.
The kna and the faenare are probably never going to be friends but they are willing to meet with a neutral third party, the colony of Thincol’s Jewel, to work out issues of diplomacy and trade. The kna then give a small reward and offer a number of useful items for sale (“special price for you my friend”) as thanks for the party’s aid in this matter. Unfortunately, the interesting items are well outside of the party’s means, but the kna assure them that the offer will not expire and they are welcome to come back later.

The party briefly contemplates exploring the rest of the island but that idea is quickly nixed because they have an emissary to bring to town and while the elf says he will accompany the party on whatever route they took, it would be a bad look if they got him killed on a stupid adventure. They return home, make introductions, and are immediately asked to go out and take care of a few monsters that attacked the town militia and are probably behind the disappearance of a fisherman they were out looking for. The party does this, and Vår, as usual, runs ahead of everyone else in her eagerness to get places. This time the rest of the party and players just let it happen, and Vår seems surprised when she runs headfirst into the monsters and gets attacked. Fortunately the monsters only reduce her hit point total by a third on a single attack and she survives to fall back. Tibor uses his Hokuto Hyakuretsu-ken once each on the monsters and a Burning Hands from Sylvia (who just took one level of Wizard, on her way to Mystic Theurge) ends the encounter.

The PCs look around and find no signs of the missing person but return to the colony and make their report. Then they head off north again to continue their investigation of the island. On the beach past where they met the kna, they come across a fairly recent construction of whalebones and hides. Abandoned and old enough to be of limited use to anyone attempting to use it now, but far more recent than most things they have found here. They suspect it might be of merrow make, an aquatic humanoid race found in many seas throughout the world. While investigating, Tibor gets the urge to kick Vår quite hard but resists and informs the rest of the party that he was just under some form of mental attack. He spots what seems to be a big fiendish grasshopper some distance off, but it disappears. The party looks around for a bit but finds no sign of it, shrug, and move off cautiously. They note they may have to come back here later. The party, sadly, has no method of seeing invisible creatures.

Then they come to a strange twisted forest with red leaves and a smell of burning permeating the air. They find nothing of worth and realize that staying there for a protected amount of time would be bad for their health, and they make their way through as quickly as possible. On their way out they see some strange lights in the woods and are filled with a desire to follow them. Fortunately, the party makes their skill check and recognizes will’o’wisps and decide to just avoid them. Vår thinks we could take them because she has Magic Missile. Questions about this idea are asked, like how many Magic Missiles it takes to take down one wisp, how many wisps they will encounter, how much damage can the party take while Vår shoots her spells, and what use the rest of the party can be, and how they are going to even see the bastard things without any way of seeing invisible?
Eventually Vår sees the metaphorical light and the party just ignores the wisps, putting them on the map and noting Do Not Enter on the forest. The GM is secretly relieved and not a little surprised at our sensibleness.

The session ends here, somewhat early as the next encounter would end up in combat, which would take too much time considering I had to get up rather early the next day.

My impression is that there are four common answers "Can AI do X?"
1) No
2) sort of, but poorly and you have to make sure you get the right answer, thus negating the point of having something else do the work for you
3) yes, but you'll have to do a lot of expensive and focused training to do what you want reliably, so you're better off doing it yourself in any case
4) yes, but for so limited sets of things that you're still most likely better off doing it yourself

Is this a fair assessment?

Unlike Azothath, I'm a fan of communal spells. 1 9th level spell instead of four 8th level spells can be a good trade.

How is your group on spells from earlier editions?
Because there are some very nice Witch spells from 2e you might want.

"House of Flying Daggers".

The wife and I need to rewatch that one; it was our first date movie. We didn't realize it was a date at the time, funnily enough.

Started watching it Monday, finished it yesterday. It was OK+. Some decent action most of the time, fun ideas for D&D encounters in the flora of Planet. Didn't care for the happy synth and the remote-controlled legs or the 'I'll find my own pack' idea or instantly taming and training some of the fauna.

SLaTfAtF was fun, so was "Young Zaphod Plays it Safe". It's depressing to look at it and see Adam's dislike of Ronald Reagan, then wondering what he would have made of the Cheeto in Chief.
It's good to revisit Douglas Adams, and I will make my way through the Dirk Gently stories in time.

Currently rereading The SF Collection. It's one of the earliest collections of 'proper' SF I got and it's been years since I read it. The stories are a brief history of the development of SF from its earliest modern entries to the most modern stuff as of 1994. The first story is "The Mortal Immortal" by Mary Shelley, a story I remember not liking much when I first read it but can appreciate much more now. Part of it was the language, part of it was the lack of knowledge of Western Esotericism which is central to the plot.

Another notable story is Edward Page Mitchell's "The clock that went backwards" from 1881, which is probably the first time travel story that involves a machine. The book has many great stories and was my first introduction to many authors I like, such as Simak, Sturgeon, and van Vogt.

After the harrowing experience in the crater/communications hub, the party heads up the east coast and comes across some more ruins. These are far newer than the Azcan ruins, probably only a few centuries old at best. The party investigates and first comes across an unpleasant drowning sensation as they near the water. Tibor again shows the difference between player intelligence and character intelligence, and stays in the area and approaches the water. He is unsurprised by the surprise undead northmen who pop out to kill him and the rest of the party. They hit fairly hard and the lack of combat power in the group is again driven home. One of them even manages to energy drain Tibor, and his player is filled with conflicting feelings on the weak-ass energy drain of PF1 compared to pre 3.x versions of D&D. The party manages to vanquish the undead even so.
The party also encounters a big pig and some smaller but still big piglets, which they mercilessly butcher and eat.

The party decides to take a brief trip back to the colony. As far as they know they are not on a timer, though the metagaming players assume we are. A few days back to report and make a few new potions, divvy loot, get reports from other scouts, which report of fish people and bird people to the north-west. We briefly consider checking out the volcano in the middle of the island but Sylvia’s player insists that it screams ‘boss area’, and we put it off until last. The original plan was to take the easternmost section between two rivers but the existence of actual (presumably) people to interact with pushes us to go to them first and try to figure out their intentions. The fish people, or kna, turn out to be quite friendly and can even speak decent Thyatian. We exchange information, learning about several important plot hooks, including an evil witch on the island, a beleaguered water naga in the ocean, a bunch of sharkfolk that the kna dislike, and something nasty called an tooth (?) or aboleth - a foul creature that steals your will away from you. That sounds familiar….

The kna also voice their displeasure with the bird people, who apparently killed one of the kna on their way here, and now the kna feel trapped on the island. (I don’t see how, since the kna could presumably just swim underwater, a place fliers tend to struggle with)
The party agreed to look into the matter, and this set the stage for future trade.

Yet another session with very little actual plot development or, well, much of anything. Half the players showed up late and we spent a lot of time faffing about, especially when it comes to loot.

Later, the DM expresses concern at the group’s general suckiness. She asks me if she should run the encounters as they are and have a very real of a TPK, or if she should just reduce difficulty. I lean towards the former but say she will have to make that decision on her own, possibly getting input from the rest of the players.

Me neither. Maybe I should pick some up on the way home.

If I only had a dollar for everything I've been doing wrong for years at a time....

....I wouldn't be rich but I'd have more money than I have now.

Um, yup it's a death effect, even in its nerfed PF form.

Wail of the Banshee
Source PRPG Core Rulebook pg. 365
School necromancy [death, sonic]; Level arcanist 9, psychic 9, shaman 9, sorcerer 9, witch 9, wizard 9
Casting
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V
Effect
Range close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target one living creature/level within a 40-ft.-radius spread
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw Fortitude negates; Spell Resistance yes
Description
When you cast this spell, you emit a terrible, soul-chilling scream that possibly kills creatures that hear it (except for yourself). The spell affects up to one creature per caster level, inflicting 10 points of damage per caster level. Creatures closest to the point of origin are affected first.

"Fury" was decent, and I didn't see the twist coming, which is good. I'll definitely pick up more of Kuttner's work at some point.

On to So long and thanks for all the fish. I remember a lot more of this one than I did of LtUaE.

Steleleye Span: The Lark in the Morning

Set up: My wife and I were watching Berserk and she made a comment how while there were t$@* in the show they made sense in context and weren't in there just for titilation.
Me: "you can say the show isn't gratuitits."
Wife: *chokes on dinner* "....I love you."

That shouldn't work, since a banshee's wail is a death effect and Breath of Life doesn't fix those.

On the whole I enjoyed "Historier fra dypet", but there was one annoying issue: after giving us an entire story the editor would often give one or two other similar stories but condensed to a couple of sentences, which really irked me. Either give us the whole story or nothing.

Apart from that, and what I have previously mentioned about issues with translation and distance from source material, I appreciated that every story was listed with a source and there was an extensive bibliography at the end.

On to Henry Kuttner's Fury. About a young dude on Venus trying to make his way in the world. It starts off strong and I am invested in the main character and the world building pretty much from page one.

The party travels east on their grand exploration of the island and turns south once they hit a river. The trip is mostly uninteresting. Lots of jungle and insects but nothing particularly dangerous. The most notable landmark is the small mountain - mound, really - that looks like it’s missing its top. The picture of Mount Saint Helens after it blew is a good impression. The party investigates and finds ruins of statues and buildings, overgrown with plant life. A small inscription in dwarven runes on a fallen pillar at the lip of the crater intrigues us but no one can decipher it. It seems much newer than the ruins, most likely from the dwarven adventurer Carver Hastings had mentioned earlier.
The party goes into the crater to investigate the big hole in the middle of it and spend some time looking down into it. They drop some Light into it and see how far down it goes, and see some water at the bottom. Considering how there are some streams feeding into the pit (never mind that this is the highest point on the map, so how can there be actual streams forming in the few feet from lip to pit?) but the hole isn’t filled with water, they assume there is some way for the water to drain out. While staring into the hole the party almost entirely fails to notice how the sky darkens and turns on ominous flame color. They do notice the faint, almost shadowy figures that appear and run in terror. Then they look up and see the incoming Rain of Fire. Tibor assumes this is a harmless psychic imprint, similar to the poltergeist they met upon first arriving in the colony, and does nothing but observe what is about to happen (later he meditates on what 18 Wisdom actually entails). The other three PCs leg it. Fortunately for Tibor, he has Evasion and avoids the psychic fire damage, while the others take a little damage. Pulling back from the crater, the PCs notice the sky lightens to its normal blue, and they discuss things. Tibor wonders why such haunts don’t exist all over the world after the GRoF, and it is pointed out that maybe they did but were exorcised by places where people settled in the four thousand years since.

The party decides to check out the rest of the southern tip of the island and spend some time deciphering the inscription before tackling the Pit. The inscription is deciphered and it warns of undead in the pit, and the party wonders why a warning is in a cipher. Surely, if you want to warn of something you make the warning as clear and easy to understand as possible. We are told not to worry our pretty little heads about that.
Working on the hypothesis that there must be another way into the Pit from closer to the sea, Sylvia, wildshaped into a dolphin, and Tibor check along the coast for any underwater tunnels into the Pit. The two find no obvious tunnels into the Pit but they do find a blue shark. The shark is fairly full (which in shark-think means it is only considering eating you rather than determined to eat you) but Sylvia convinces it to back off without combat.

After a night’s rest they make their way back to the Pit, well prepared for the trip. Sylvia protects Josephine with Resist Energy Fire, then the rakasta and the tortle tie a knotted rope to a stone to facilitate easy ingress and egress to the pit, and jump in. Sylvia and Vår follow once they see the rope is secure, running across the burning haunt. Once they get to the bottom the party is almost immediately set upon by some undead. They are surrounded by a cloud of ash and flames, which makes hitting them very difficult (50% miss chance) and deals fire damage to adjacent creatures. The undead also hit back hard, regularly overcoming Tibor’s AC of 25, never mind everyone else.
The fight is long and brutal, with everyone but Josephine going down at some point. It was a perfect example of how in combat healing is a poor way of winning a battle but how it occasionally is necessary. Without Sylvia and Vår healing what they could, people would have died. The group really isn’t good at combat, especially now that Bo-bi was replaced by someone whose main contribution to combat is to slightly buff Tibor rather than out-damage him. The GM noted that the undead actually had a 5d6 damage death throes, and made sure to rub it in that she had removed that. Even with the GM nerfing encounters for our sake we managed to prevail only by the skin of our teeth. Nearly all our resources were gone and a few tactical blunders (and an unfavorable arena) had drawn the combat on far longer than necessary. We deduce that the burning undead might well be connected to the larger haunt and could possibly regenerate after a while. While this might be the case, we determine we have used up way too many resources to continue and pull back for the night.

The next day we go back even better prepared, with tailored spell choices and better tactics, and the encounter is handled pretty easily. The party then investigate the ruins, find an Ioun Gauntlet and another ioun stone (the extra benefits that it and his Wayfinder grant keep trolling Tibor by being useful only to spellcasters). The final door is obviously opened by using an ioun stone to plug into the magic circuitry, which we do, and we easily defeat the last blasthaunt (which is what Tibor has taken to calling these undead nasties). The party watches the recorded message, and discovers how the area seems to have been a broadcasting station. There is not much left of it and the party loots what there is to loot, and exits. The GRoF haunt seems to have been banished with the destruction of the blasthaunts, and the party heads east and north, to explore another bit of the island.

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

quibblemuch wrote:

Unless your species is one of them there 'hive minds' don't be using the phrase 'group selfie'.

One might argue that the definition of a 'selfie' is that you take it yourself of yourself with a handheld device, not that it must contain only yourself as a singular subject. So 'group selfie' is merely a convenient way of saying that one 'took a picture of oneself with a handheld device with onself as subject + (other subjects)'.

One might... except the British have thoughtfully coined the phrase "ussie" to refer to that exact situation. There WAS a solution, people chose not to use it. WILL SAVE FAILED!

There are plenty of good solutions to linguistic demands that are not widely employed despite their usefulness. Tok pisin has some very nice inclusive/exclusive pronominal constructions which not used by the rest of the English dialectal spectrum, for instance. While I agree that 'group selfie' is a suboptimal choice, it isn't without internal logic and precedent.

I don't think so. Certainly not so far as I've read.
Considering this book is about marine life how humans relate to it, not geology, I suspect we won't be seeing anything.

Unless your species is one of them there 'hive minds' don't be using the phrase 'group selfie'.

One might argue that the definition of a 'selfie' is that you take it yourself of yourself with a handheld device, not that it must contain only yourself as a singular subject. So 'group selfie' is merely a convenient way of saying that one 'took a picture of oneself with a handheld device with onself as subject + (other subjects)'.

I forgot to mention that the book also includes a bunch of superstitions from Norwegian fishermen. Some are general supersitions, some what what we call 'kjerringråd' (old woman's advice/solution), i.e. little cures for minor issues. Most are pretty much what you would expect from local superstitions, like how to kill a fish properly and do a few ritual things with its blood to ensure a good catch in the future.
Others are more...well... a cure listed for both muteness and stuttering is smacking the afflicted person in the mouth with a live fish. Doesn't say what kind of fish but I'd love to lead trials to test this out.
I suspect the logic is as follows: the urge to loudly and clearly say "stop smacking me in the mouth with a live fish" would be some incentive to stop stuttering.

"The First Men in the Moon" was fun, and reminded me why I like Wells' more SF stuff rather than, say, Tono-Bungay.

On that subject, I looked at one of my copies of "The Time Machine" and the little blurb on the back noted something to the effect that while the book showed Wells' imagination, he would be remembered for his literature like Tono-bungay, Love and Mr. Lewisham and a few others, with the subtext being that SF was nothing more than a passing and lesser fad compared to 'real' literature. I need hardly mention what he is most famous for these days.

Anyway, on to Tor Åge Bringsværd's Historier fra dypet (Stories from the deep), a collection of folk tales from around the world about sea creatures. Bringsværd. I'm pleased to see that each chapter (each type of creature gets its own chapter) has a brief introdcution to it commenting on similarities, and each story has a briefer introduction about where and when it came from, including the literary source. I suspect there is at least two layers of translation lying on most stories, never mind whatever interprative lens the original source of the written form had, and....
I feel like I'm expecting too much rigorous scholarship from what is obviously meant to be an entertaining collection for the masses.

After tying up the unconscious villagers we loot the tower properly and wake them up to interrogate them. Vår is very willing to believe her friend and assume she is mostly harmless now, but the rest of the PCs are less inclined. Fortunately Sylvia recognizes the effects of a dominate person and we want to try to save the unfortunate victims instead of executing them. After some mostly fruitless questioning we decide to bring them back to the colony and put them under watchful guard in hopes that the Dominate effect will expire eventually.

It does, and the two, especially Rabio, collapse into rather pitiable messes with the trauma of having been mentally controlled and used for foul purposes. Questioning them gives a few more answers to what happened to the colony: Arlia was exploring the island, found the tower, found something in a stasis tank and released it. Her logic was that it was something from before the Great Rain of Fire, and how cool wouldn’t it be to talk to someone from that time?
The predictable result of releasing an ancient evil was that evil things started to happen to the colony. She got Dominated, Rabio got Dominated and they helped ruin the town. Sadly, most memories of their time in thrall were gone. When the supply ship next comes, Ramona packs Rabio and Arlia off to the mainland in hopes that some more powerful clerics there can help them overcome their trauma and their fishy skin.
Bo-bi decides to stick around the village to train the soldiers and raise his horses rather than go on adventures, withdrawing from the campaign. By pure coincidence, an adventurous rakasta Skald by name of Josephine comes on the latest ship and thinks that adventuring sounds fun, so the colony’s troubleshooters are still four in number.

We start upgrading the colony, and some questionable choices are made, such as a road to the old Azcan religious site and excessive time spent there, as well as a bathhouse and gaol, instead of more sensible things like a better docks for easier loading of cargo, or improved agriculture.
The rest of the session goes to spending waaaaaaay too much time going over the loot list trying to decide what to sell, and waaaaay too much time trying to decide what to buy for the money. Tibor settles on a Headband of Wisdom +2 and Vår goes for a Headband of Charisma, both of which Sylvia crafts. We also bought a few potions from her. Once this is done, Ramona calls the troubleshooters to her and reveals that Carver Hastings was not Thyatian but instead from Karameikos. For some reason Thyatis didn’t want Karameikans in the colony but were fine with a tortle and a rakasta from half a continent away. Carver shares some information about an explorer that had previously visited the island, seen a lot of things but investigated very few and he had run away from basically everything and everyone, then returned home and written about his adventures. When Tibor comments that this showed poor adventuring spirit, Sylvia points out he stayed alive, unlike most other adventurers.
Ramona indicates that she would appreciate it if we explore the rest of the island, especially the sites mentioned in the old adventurer’s journal. The players let the DM know which area of the frankly ridiculously small island they intend to investigate first, and we end the session there.

Finally, we are done with Book 1.

I read a ton of Bradbury in high school, haven't read much of anything since. Yet another thing on the immense list of 'should re-read at some point'.

In July (IIRC) we are getting a new Ghost in the Shell series, this one ostensibly far more in line with the original manga. The art certainly indicates that, at least, looking very much like Masamune Shirow's work.

I'm a big fan of the first GitS film and the Stand Alone Complex series, and I am also excited to see this. Crossing my fingers in hopes it will be good and faithful.

Still enjoying Douglas Adams stories on the reread. Once I'm done with the Hithchiker stories I should reread the Dirk Gently ones.
On to H.G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon, which I am reading for the first time.

"Nightshades" was very good. I'm more familiar with Lee's long form fiction so it's good to see she mastered short stories as well.

Currently reading Life, the Universe, and Everything. I notice that I remember less of this than I did of RatEotU (and much less than the first book), so this makes it more enjoyable, at least so far.

Before the session begins the DM mentions that she leveled us to 4th ahead of when the AP intended us to do so, because the tower was a bit tough. She also said that the session would either be over quickly and we could get on to book 2 that evening, or we would spend most of the session and perhaps the next one faffing about with some potentially tricky parts.
I looked at her and said something to the effect of “you know which way it will go”. I was right.

We entered the tower and immediately got Aperture Science or VaultTec vibes from the art and infomercial stuff on the walls. The first room saw the PCs ambushed by a couple of skum, which went down without trouble. The second room looked fine but we fortunately noticed the tiny holes that dotted the walls, indicating something to look out for. Tibor, in what will be a running theme for the evening, puts his 18 Wisdom to work and cautiously steps out into the presumed Danger Zone. He quickly steps back after being pierced by several arrows. He pulls them out and licks his wounds.

The PCs determine that they can open the doors on either side without entering the confirmed Danger Zone, and do so. The first one opened on a pair of constructs that told us that the room was restricted access and we had to close the door (with us on the outside) or be eliminated. We chose the former, and tried the other door. That one opened on a couple of skum that were looting the base.
“Hold on,” we said. “We thought the skum were supposed to work for whoever is in this tower. Why are they looting it?”
At least that’s what we were about to think before the skum attacked Vår who, for reasons the rest of us cannot fathom, has a tendency to want to go first into dangerous places despite having the worst saves, AC and the fewest hit points of the group. Once combat is engaged Sylvia hits upon the brilliant idea of pulling the constructs into battle on the assumption that they can attack the skum and we can fall back while they kill each other. Of course what actually happens is that they attack us, so now we have twice as many enemies to fight. Tibor tells everyone else, especially Vår, to fall back and he will keep them busy. Needless to say Vår doesn’t even consider this option, electing instead to, over the course of several rounds, do minimal damage and take several attacks that threaten to fell her in a vain attempt to avoid provoking a couple attacks of opportunity while moving to actual safety.

Fortunately the encounter is not particularly difficult, just time-consuming. With more damage taken than would have been necessary due to poor judgement on several fronts, we confront the trapped hallway, which I correctly identify as the ‘either or’ obstacle the DM spoke of earlier, and we proceed, as I predicted, to faff about. Tibor elects to continue the trend of dumb ideas, picks up one of the dead skum (who, the PCs noticed, did not trigger the trap) and holds it in front of him in the hopes that he will register as a skum instead of a tortle. He does not.

Taking a bad idea and running with it, Tibor dashes across to the far end of the hall where the PCs had noticed a panel which they assumed would control the trap, holding the dead skum all the way. The GM was gracious and said that the corpse granted cover. Tibor still takes a few hits and is now at about half HP. On the far side he opens the panel and cannot make heads nor tails of the inner workings and decides on the Star Wars Solution, i.e. destroy any control panel you come across in hopes that that will do what you need it to do. It does not.

While Tibor meditates briefly on what exactly 18 Wisdom entails and how running into arrows unnecessarily isn’t that, the rest of the party check out the rooms off to the side. They take a couple of arrows each but manage to scout things out. One room is boring and empty, the other has corpses and body parts, which we assume come from the missing colonists. Tibor drinks a healing potion and runs back to the others, taking a few more hits. This is the point where the DM figured we would faff about, and faff about we do with lots of discussion about how to find the mechanism (no one has Disable Device, so that’s a no go), whether everyone should just run across and hope that the pain is spread evenly across the group, or wilder ideas. Then I hit upon the idea that we should just pull back and make a rough testudo from stuff around us and avoid the arrows that way. There are no convenient wooden tables or benches inside but there are trees outside. Most players think this sounds like a good idea. We’re running low on hit points anyway and want to top them up before facing whatever is up the stairs. Then a long discussion follows about how we should go about making our box. We do not have an axe, adze, nails, hammer or anything like that, just rope and a magic sword. Should we go back to the colony and get supplies? Should we send Aidu, who can fly? Should Sylvia go alone since she can travel faster without us hanging on? Should we try making a wicker weave basket and Metal Gear Solid our way across? After much talk Sylvia realizes she is a druid and can do other things than make healing potions, and so suggests she use Wood Shape which would make everything easier. Then there follows a discussion about how thick to make the box, what sort of wood to use, should we try to make wheels, etc.

All this takes well over an hour, and is exactly the sort of thing my old(ish) school self likes - creative answers to problems that aren’t just solved by a die roll. Bo-bi gets fed up with this dithering, takes charge, and nearly runs us into problems by charging us across the Danger Zone before the rest of the PCs and players say, “y’know, we’ll stick with the smart plan instead”. The Smart Plan is enacted and Sylvia casts Obscuring Mist in the hall as well, and we all make it across unscathed. We were, it turns out, triply protected as the Obscuring Mist obscured the targeting magic, the testudo box would have stopped any arrows, and boxes were not on the magical trap’s list of valid targets.

Faffing about done with, we go up to the next floor and we almost immediately get into a fight with a slightly more powerful skum, who goes down brutally fast. We look around and Tibor gets a brief surge of joy as he sees the second floor is a library and then his heart is dashed when he sees nearly all the books are rotted away. There are a few remaining and Sylvia tries to read one, amusingly titled “I prepared Explosive Runes this morning”.

The surviving books are put safely in Tibor’s pack, away from careless readers and they look around. Apart from the normal bits one would expect in a library, there is a strange bust with a spindle-shaped depression in it. We quickly suss out the purpose andput the spindle-shaped crystals they looted on the floor below in it. Some interesting scenes recorded from just before the Great Rain of Fire play out, and after a brief discussion about them we turn our attention to the big set of double doors in the middle of the tower. It appears to be a ‘holding tank’, which purports to be full of water. We are at the lower observation point, so a sign says, and not wanting to take the chance of dumping a ton of water on us, we forgo opening it. It may be empty, there may be some force field holding the water in, there may be a ton of nasties in there waiting to be released. It can wait. We then go up to the third floor.

There are two humans here, who apart from looking rather inhuman with slimy, almost transparent skin, immediately raise suspicion when they claim to be prisoners. We expected prisoners but for some reason do not find it credible that said ‘prisoners are fully armed, not guarded nor locked up, and give off weird vibes. When one of them introduces himself as Rabio Arcturus, the DM is surprised and gratified to see one of her players actually remember a name introduced earlier and what it did: kill Silas, the poor priest who became a haunt. The other ‘prisoner’ is Vår’s missing friend Arlia. No one is fooled by the claims of the two ‘prisoners’ and combat is joined when Tibor asks Rabio about his ‘friend’ Silas and gets a muddled and factually weird answer. The PCs try to do non-lethal damage while the enemies try to kill the PCs. The fight is long and difficult. Sylvia and Vår are both reduced to negatives and Bo-bi takes some damage but Tibor is mostly fine due to high AC, lots of HP and being ignored for most of the fight. The PCs prevail and we bless the Immortals (DM) who thought the fight would be too tough for a 3rd level party and let us level early.
We end the session there, so wrap-up of Book 1 and the start of Book 2 will be next time.

While I will admit that 9th level spells should be nasty, and Meteor swarm as written is a bit underwhelming overall, but the potential to deal 40d6 to a single target (much less 160d6) seems a bit over the top.

Considering how nasty other 9th levels spells can be, this isn't particularly overwhelming, at least in our experience.

It is a free action to draw an item from a bandoleer when combined with a move action. Requirement BAB +1

I do this one too

I don't think scarecrows have death effects. Fear and fascination effect, sure, but not death effects. I'm AFB so I can't remember if the scarecrows in the AP were non-standard, but considering how Paizo doesn't like SOD, I doubt it.

In PF1e, once you reach precisely 0 hp you are staggered (can only take a single standard action or move action per round, fall unconscious if you take a standard action). Below 0 hp you have a number of negative HP equal to your Constitution score, so someone with Con 12 could suffer damage to bring them to -11 hp and still live, but dying when they reach -12.

From the Monstrous Cohort list, CR3 creatures are generally around Level 7.

I am going with CR3 because Harpies and certain common trolls are CR4, and you propose to count your Monstrous as 1 CR lower.

Level 7 + 2 class levels = Level 9, so i propose Level 9 as the most RAW answer. That said, the Monstrous Cohort level list is bad. Edit: i see 4 levels for the troll, so possibly 11, but would need to know what kind of troll to determine.

This is how I handled it in my game, at least. It worked for us.

Maul should have stayed dead after TPM.

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

- Meteor Swarm functions as it does in 5e

I like that! Word-for-word exactly as 5e, or just the save-once-damage-once aspect?

Dealing 40d6 points of damage per sphere rather than 8d6, primarily, but also the fact you can only be affected by one sphere per casting, however fun it would be to dump 160d6 damage on someone.

Over the course of several days Tibor scours the site of the recorded illusion for more information but finds little else of note. Other than this, life for the colony seems to be going well but there is the underlying tension from the fact that we still do not know what happened to the first wave of colonists.
Tibor spends his time split between farm life - farmers never lack chores - and spending a little time with Petillia to try to find clues to what happened to the missing colonists. Vår does minor chores around the colony, Sylvia makes potions and builds up a shop with Dora, and Bo-bi trains the militia.
Petillia notes that there are a couple missing pages in the log book, pages that were carefully excised to try to hide their lack. While interesting and almost certainly a lead to the mystery of the missing colonists, both assume that the missing pages were destroyed since we haven't found anything in the village and it makes sense for them to have been destroyed.

While Tibor and Petillia are going over documents, the other PCs are called down to the dock. There they spy some hunched fishmen that threaten one of the hapless villagers who was doing some fishing. Successful Knowledge checks indicate that Sylvia and Vår, as well as the rest of the women in the colony, are likely targets for 'reasons'. The battle is swift and in favor of the PCs though Vår took a few hits. Bo-bi suggests putting the heads of the skum on pole near the water's edge to warn off future attempts, and everyone agrees. Interestingly, the skum were carrying a map of the island with some landmarks hitherto unknown to the colony and some interesting writing that said 'Bring captives here'. If the skum were interested in - how to put it delicately? - getting to know the local women, they would probably not take them on land and far away from the water. This leads us to the conchat there is yet another party on the island that is powerufl enough to convince the skum to work for them and might be where our missing colonists have ended up. Ramona and the PCs decide that this is something that needs looking into sooner rather than later. The PCs decide to take a couple of days to prepare, then leave. Personally, I suspect the GM put this Very Obvious Clue to push her oblivious and passive players to going to the right place to advance the adventure.

During this time a cargo ship from Davania docks and people can buy some stuff. Ramona arranges some credit for the PCs, which they end up donating to Sylvia for 'supplies' and Sylvia can do some crafting for the group. She makes two Cloaks of Resistance +1, and promises to work on Bracers of Armor for Tibor when she has time. The PCs tell Ramona to expect them back within ten days, and to assume the worst if they are gone for more than fourteen.

The trip to the mysterious tower is interesting. They see signs of something that makes them think of a swarm of little things that tramped a nice big path through the jungle. This is what we call 'foreshadowing'.
Before reaching the tower, the PCs find a ruined glade with signs of overgrown pavement leading up to a circle of divine images. Tibor's player recognizes nearly all of the Immortals in their persona as Azcan gods, but Tibor himself does not roll well enough on the K. (religion) roll to do the same. When the two celadons animate and try to talk to the PCs we get a little nervous. Ramona had seen fit to give the party a potion of Tongues and two scrolls of Comprehend Languages. Again, I suspect divine GM intervention to make the adventure easier. Vår uses Comprehend Languages and manages to strike up a conversation with the constructs. The party quickly learns that someone else is active on the island and was here 'not long ago'. More importantly and interestingly, they learn the ruins here come from the time of the Great Rain of Fire (also known as the 'Blackmoor's Big Oopsie'). When the constructs indicate that they wish the PCs to stay here and learn, Tibor is elated though the others are less enthusiastic. They bring up things like 'we're on a mission' and 'duty to the colony', and 'I don't wanna be stuck here the rest of my life' and silly things like that. Vår manages to convince the celadons to make a compromise: the party will stay with the constructs and accept their tutelage for two days, then be on their way and come back 'soon'. The party gets an intensive and divinely augment course in the Azcan tongue, which is suspiciously similar to what another world would call 'Nahuatl'.
The party levels to 4th and Vår, again oblivious to any suggestions or foreshadowing, chooses Scorching Ray as her 2nd level spell. After all, she has Point Blank Shot.

When the party reaches the tower and see the warden jack swarm, they get that shocked Pikachu face and wonder how they could have ever predicted they'd meet a swarm.
The fact that it moves faster than Tibor is a problem, but fortunately Vår remembered she had a wand of Flaming Sphere, and the swarm was taken out with only a few hit points lost. We end the session here.

Not nearly as many as I am tempted to, because at some point it would be less a few house rules and more a rewrite of the game.

Some of the more noteworthy are
- all classes with 2+Int skill points are increased to 3+ (considering bumping them to 4+)
- Meteor Swarm functions as it does in 5e
- Protection From [alignment] does not shut down an entire school of magic
- Chains of Light is Evocation with SR, as it always should have been
- Crafting does not require a Item Creation Feat, but you cannot ignore all other requirements. Crafting without ICFs increases base DC by 10, and you cannot enhance any item you haven't created.

"Through wolf's eyes" was entertaining, to the point that next time I'm at the used bookstore I bought the it I will keep an eye out for the sequel, possibly more by the author.

Currently reading Tanith Lee's [b]Nightshades - thirteen journeys into darkness[/url]. The first story is the title - Nightshade - and is a novella with, as best as I can see, no magic or science at all. It's still a great story, one she wrote rather early in her career, I believe.

Visited my parents on Saturday and made them Chef John's red lentil soup. My mother was recovering from a fever and very phlegmy coughs that had lasted for over a week, and my Dad had a bit of a cough as well. Dad took care of Mom as best he could but, as my mother said, he was very willing to do the cooking but not terribly good at it.

She was very pleased with the soup.

I found and tried the Fazer Salmiakki from Finland.

Weirdly, I think I'm hooked. One piece is sufficient, though. The strange, salty, almost medicinal flavor resonates with my general mood.

*muttermutterfreakofnaturemuttermutter*

More seriously, I'm glad you like it.

He may have been a dick but there are few individuals I would wish cancer on, and he was not one of them.

RIP

Here

If you want the least offensive, you can go for Tyrkisk Peber [Turkish pepper]. I'm not familiar with any other products here because A) I don't like the stuff, and B) it's Danish.
I'll be nice and assume it's not as bad as the Swedish or Finnish stuff.

If you want the really nasty stuff you can get the stuff called 'salmiakk' here, if they ship to your neck of the woods.

'Salmiakk' is the common name for household ammonia, and the name is well chosen.

For those who haven't tried Nordic salt licorice, imagine ammonia in candy form, with extra salt on top. It's the most vile excuse for candy I've come across.

I've tried licorice in teas and even that's too much for me.

I love licorice.

Are you one of those freaks that likes salt licorice? Or just the sweet kind?

The only kind of licorice I like is the red stuff that tastes nothing like real licorice, or the Bassets All-sorts type of thing that sandwiches the licorice between tastier substances to the point where you can mostly ignore the licorice flavor.

Fist of the North Star: Elegy for Ken-Oh's army grunts is a series of short animations about what it's like to be one of the many nameless mooks Kenshiro kills throughout the series.
The episodes are short, and the animation is barely worth being called animation. It looks like it's just a step or two up from If the Emperor Had a TTS Device. Still, I'm amused. I suspect this is just a way to ease people into the s$!% animation that the series will be subjected to in its upcoming new incarnation.

You would have thought that they learned after FotBS: Regenesis that no one liked the animation.

The holy grail of Eris A young lady finds herself the target of aristocratic plotting and as her life and reputation crumble from the false accusations she begs anyone to save her. And a Ghost agrees to do so. Handily crushing her rivals with the wiles of one who is an expert at courtly games the ghost allows the young lady to leave with her reputation intact and her nemesis now the target of malice.

The young lady awakens to find she is now expected to uphold her end of the bargain, and aid the ghost in her revenge against those who executed her.

A new Scarlet ready to deal out justice. Though this one is less into fisticuffs and more the a mastery of vicious social manoeuvring. Looks like fun

We gave it a shot and before the first episode was over the wife told me to turn it off and put on Berserk. It wasn't so much the lack of violence that turned her off but the, according to her, terrible dress choices and how the people all acted as though they were dumb middle schoolers.

"The Metamorphosis" was OK, though perhaps I'm too literal to get much of the deeper meanings literati and philosophers go on about. Yes, it was farcical but frankly I don't think I would have . I have a problem that I often take works of fiction at face value and like them more than I do once I find out what's really going on in the story. Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-paper" was a perfect example of this.

Currently reading Albertus Magnus' Egyptian Secrets. Found this one kicking around in long-unused folders on my computer, downloaded ages ago and forgotten. With my recently revived interest in the occult, I started reading it. It's a scan of someone's copy and there are occasional brief notes in the margins. I hope I am reading too much into things when I interpret the notes as someone actually commenting on the efficacy of the remedies.
I have a feeling I will skim through it rather than read in detail. It seems a strange mix of the type of magical formulae we might expect ("eye of newt, toe of frog" type of thing), short stories about someone, usually Jesus, healing a similar affliction, and straight up "the power of Christ compels you to go away, [insert affliction]" type incantation. I'm sure someone might (and probably has) try to see if there are any underlying theories that determine what sort of cure is applied to an affliction

For fiction with a story, I'm reading Jane Lindskiold's Through wolf's eyes.

After City of Delights, which was fine, I started Kafka's The Metamorphosis on the bus to work today, and am nearly done with it. It's a short little thing, under 100 pages, so I can pat myself on the back that I'm making good headway on my ever increasing To Read pil. Counting in units of books rather than pages, obviously.

After a couple of days of hard work but no adventures, one of the colonists reports being attacked by a horrid creature that tried to choke her. The PCs do some snooping and find tracks that lead to the well just outside their new home. They descend and find a tunnel. Entering they encounter a few chokers. The PCs engage and some questionable choices occur. Vår forgets she is a spellcaster and moves so she can get a clear shot with her crossbow, gets charged and is quickly reduced to negatives by a choker.
Tibor decides to increase his damage by letting the chokers hit him and hope they impale themselves on his spiky hide. They do but don't care and deal a lot of damage in the process before going down. The PCs fell two and the third runs off. Fortunately we had a good amount of healing so we could heal up before heading further in. It turns out we had been fighting young chokers and the parents were nastier. Fortunately the dice were more in our favor this fight and despite taking some damage, we prevailed without too much difficulty.

Once the chokers are killed, the rest of the 'dungeon' is easily cleared. The crysmals are not obviously dangerous and seem concerned with protecting the precious crystals rather than outright murder, so Tibor convinces the others to avoid killing things merely protecting what he conceives may be their eggs. Fortunately, they agree. Possibly influenced by the fact that healing is running out and they don't want to tempt fate.
The last arm of the cave sees a couple of darkmantles attack. Tibor again allows them to attach themselves to Tibor, take damage, and this time it has the desired effect of making the creatures disengage and run off. Once their darkness effect runs out they are picked off by ranged attacks.

The PCs exit the cave through the back passage, hide it, and decide to not tell anyone about this place. They are sure that if word gets out there are valuable crystals down there, some greedy person will go down, bug the crystal creatures, and probably get themselves killed. They return to the villlage and report that they killed the monsters and everyone is safe now. They tell the whole story to Ramona and she agrees that keeping the crystals secret is a good idea.

This done the PCs hope they can get back to being good little colonizers. This lasts another day or so before Ramona asks them to do some scouting. There are other colonists scouting the area but she wants a more complete picture of the island than she has. The PCs agree and just before they head out a breathless scout comes running to inform the village that her partner is stuck in quicksand. The PCs run headlong all the way, only barely getting stuck themselves in their haste to save their acquaintance-they-totally-knew-before-he-was-introduced-for-this-adventure- segment. Bo-bi had the best plan: tie a rope to his horse and send Aidu to fly out with and drop the end on the poor guy. Milo had conveniently waited until the PCs were there before failing his checks to stay afloat, and so cannot grab the rope. Sylvia and Tibor jump into the quicksand to try to help but Sylvia has the better potions to help and Tibor waddles back onto safe ground and grabs the rope. Sylvia manages to grab hold of Milo and the rope and drag him up enough for him to get some air and grab hold of the rope. Getting him out after this is easy. When it becomes known that Milo makes fermented beverages, three of the PCs are extra glad they saved him. Tibor never acquired a taste for rotten vegetable juice, so he's only regularly glad to have saved Milo.

After escorting the two exhausted NPC scouts the PCs do some scouting of their own. They come across some ruins which are only partially covered with vegetation. Tibor gets very excited at what little is shown and runs ahead of the rest of the party to find more architecture. As they approach what appears to be a stage of some sort ringed with pillars, they activate a magical effect. An illusion of a human appears and says something in a language unknown to the PCs, though Tibor wonders if it is related to Minean. The player spend some time ribbing Vår's player for not having Comprehend Languages. When leveling up he had asked for recommendations for his 1st level spell, and had been given CL. He was just about settled on that spell when he saw Snowball and chose that instead.

At the sight of the illlusions, Tibor's excitement dies a little. He had hoped this would be tortle ruins but it appears to be human. Still, it's somewhat exciting. The PCs do not have much time to poke around before they notice a small group of monkey goblins approaching. They try to hide but are noticed. Tibor steps forth, spreads his hands and tries to sound calm and non-threatening. They attack anyway. The battle is pretty easy though Vår is again reduced to negatives. When leveling Vår's player had asked for tips on what feat to take, and Toughness was mentioned. He chose Point Blank Shot instead, and the GM had to point out that if he had chosen Toughness he would have still been standing by the end of the combat. Cue some more ribbing of Vår's player.
He gripes a bit about feeling useless at compared to the martials and we tell him to just let us have this because in a few levels' time he will be outclassing us easily. Thus mollified the PCs check out the rest of the area. Tibor makes rubbings of all the writing he can find, does some sketches of the area, and makes a bunch of notes.

They return to Ramona, and she accompanies them the next day to look at the place and translate the languages. The recording turns out to be some form of proclamation about how everything is fine and people should just get on with their lives. The scene from the Naked Gun about how there is nothing to see comes to mind, just replace the exploding building with the Great Rain of Fire.

With our first real Clue to the AP's plot in hand, we end the session.

An unexpected sequel to a guilty pleasure: the reluctant yuri harem There's no freaking way I'll be your lover! Unless... is back.

Kaya-chan isn't scary is about a young girl who can see ghosts and punch them. The ghosts are pretty nasty, similar to what we see in Mieruko-chan.

Wash it all away is a slice of life story about a girl who likes cleaning. Goodness knows why, but it's a relaxing story.