Bjørn Røyrvik's page

11 year necro.

I prefer Tinker gnomes or Mystaran sky gnomes (Tinker with less innovation but competent) or Dark Sun gnomes.

Finished them and was generally pleased. Looking forward to more episodes.

I'm not disparaging people for liking it; goodness knows I like some dumb/bad stuff. D&W just wasn't my kind of dumb/bad.

The TVA is supposed to be a multiversal entity that for some reason looks and acts like a 50s/60s American government organization. The showrunners had the opportunity to go wild with their imagination but what they manage to produce is boring humans with a very overused aesthetic which makes no sense for the setting (unless there was something in their history I missed/forgot).

They are supposedly very competent but get tripped up by the dumbest stuff, and as time wardens go they fail slightly worse than most such organizations I've come across. The only thing they managed was to show that with a lot of time and pratice, Owen Wilson actually managed to be funny.

That's because usually such effects state the target 'die' without explaining\care for how much damage it took (if any), and breath of life return one to life by fixing the damage (so with no damage value to fix it's ineffective).

As such while not as 'per written' it's reasonable to allow it to fix death caused by damaged caused by a death effect.

In 3.5 maybe but most death effects in PF1 were reduced from SoD to mere damage. There is no point in the restriction of BoL or Raise Dead on not being effective on creatures killed by death effects if you say they can work on death effects. I mean, you can house rule it however you wish but the intention and balance considerations are clear.

The PCs head down the stairs and find themselves in a tunnel which they believe to be recently created, certainly within the last decade or so. After a short walk they find a large room with an obelisk made of strange rock that looks a bit like black granite with green specks. An eeire yellow light suffuses the obelisk and it fires off a bolt of energy at the PCs when they get too close. They decide to run through the room. On the way one of the elves notices a secret door. She decides to investigate, trusting her formidable AC to protect her from the energy bolts. This turns out to work but she cannot find a way to open said door. The PCs continue down the other tunnel for more than an hour before reaching another cave. Here they easily dispatch some carrion crawlers, with only Marianya getting paralyzed. Soon after the fight a secret door opens and a collection of nasties emerges to fight. The worst of the lot is carrion moths, horrible beasties that looks like someone took the tentacles from carron crawlers and transplanted them on to giant moths. The
paralysis is not as bad as their wings, which Confuse those who hear it. Marianya and Thorg are confused and start killing each other while Aurora and Almithra try to take on the cariron moths, a chuul and a psurlon. Aurora is quickly paralyzed, leaving Almithra to face everything alone. Her exceptional AC prevents most damage and unlike last session she makes every save but one this encounter, ignoring the psurlons attempts to kill her with strange mental powers. Almithra exhausts her spells killing the chuul and nearly killing the psurlon before Thorg and Marianya recover ennough to take out the last carrion moths.
Almithra fails her last save and collapses dying on the ground just as Thorg comes, saving her from a coup de grâce. Marianya, casts a healing spell on Almithra and the three PCs manage to hunt down and kill the psurlon and its final minion.

They decide to go back to the manor and resting there but the GM did his best Gygax impersonation and asked if they really wanted to do that. They then recalled that only one of the people at the Mathens was encountered and the rest were unaccounted for, and they instead decide to exit the caves here and rest in the forest.

No new sessions until the new year.

If we are speaking of the RPG, the spell, at most, deals 200 hp of damage. A character killed by it can be brought back by Breath of Life

Breath of Life cannot help creatures killed by death effects, and WotB is a death effect.

Saturday evening I ended up playing a bit of Space Marine II (Her Furry Highness having graciously given up the lap for an hour) that my GF got me for our 20th anniversary.

I give her flowers, which are about as boring, impermanent and cliche as you can get, she gets me SM2.

I got about a third of the way through and gave up. I was never the biggest Deadpool fan and the writing was bad enough that even Renolds' passion couldn't keep it afloat. The TVA was s~%# and dumb in Loki (it was a big reason I didn't bother with season 2) and it was worse now.

Work. Then home to spend the rest of the evening with the cat on my lap.

"Heltene i Hungerholtet" ('Starvation' or 'famine' might be a better translation than 'hunger') was OK as a slice of life to a time and place not too long ago and not too far off, but was frankly rather poorly written. Not so much the minimalist writing but the constant use of full stops where convention would put a comma or a conjunction. Like "He was big. And angry." Not that this is a bad thing in itself. Because it gives a slightly interesting emphasis. But the author would do this multiple times. Per page.

Like that.

I'm not sure I want to pass it on because frankly I don't think kids these days will find it particularly interesting.

Harrison's writing undoubtedly improves as the Viriconium stories progressed even if I tend to prefer the older stuff. The city is less a distinct fictional world than it is a collection of familiar names to write different types of fiction around. Much like Terry Pratchett used the Discworld as a soapbox to poke fun at different things, Viriconium is a backdrop to write different types of fiction around.

And now for something completely different, Vidar Sandbeck's Heltene i Hungerholtet (The Heroes in Hunger Grove), a kids story with strong autobiographical elements. It's been languishing in my parent's shed for years, and I haven't read it since I was gifted it for my eighth birthday. I'm rereading it because I can't remember anything except the cover, and in a few years I will pass it on to my niece and nephew.

After that I will start on Elizabeth Gray Vining's Windows for the Crown Prince, an account of the author's time spent as a private tutor for Japan's crown prince in the wake of WWII.

Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! is getting a movie. I don't see how they could continue or beat what they already did, but I didn't see how season two could top season one and it mostly did. Time to get my totally-not-yaoi on.

I'll probably watch it at some point. If they turn it into something more like I Am Legend and have some infected have greater self-preservation instincts that most of the ones that died, it could work.

I suspect the success of Space Marine II may have influenced this. I would have loved if we got old school WH40K/Rogue Trader stuff with the obvious humerous satire instead of the super-serious stuff we have now, but I suspect that isn't happening. Failing that I would like them to lean into just how miserable, dystopian and hopeless everything is but I suspect that won't happen either. I also doubt we'll get anything showing my religious extremist nutjob best boys the Black Templars purging xenos, witches and heretics (or suspected heretics, or anyone who knew a heretic, anyone who looks like a heretic, or just some passing world that caught their eye because they were bored).

As long as they can resist the temptation to make organizations heroic and show the futility of actual heroism I guess I'll be pleased.

I greatly enjoyed the first three episodes, especially the Aelstrom (Ahnold) episode. So far it seems exactly like Prime's version of Love, Death and Robots. More episodes tonight.

I would have a larger map showing the town and general disposition of forces and if necessary use a smaller local map for individual encounters.

Like any big unwieldy issue, chop it up into smaller bits. Make sure you have a rough idea of the tactics and goals of the NPCs and figure out how the battle will proceed without the PCs' involvement. Make a rough time table with events and if necessary make a list or flow chart or something similar. It's been a while since I read the AP but IIRC it should be possible to divide it into a number of smaller encounters which you can run individually.

If the party splits, run one encounter at a time and just say the PCs cannot interact with each other until that encounter is over.

The PCs do not push the issue with the coin as Milo Mathen makes an appearance and questions them about the mines. Again he seems absolutely sincere and trustworthy. He offers the PCs a quick bite and a couple of rooms for the night. The PCs accept and immediately start poking around, finding a number of secret doors and hidden passageways in the house. They poke around the place, finding a secret laboratory of horrors on the top floor. Some lucky rolls and good builds and positioning by the PCs mean that apart from a lucky roll by the mad scientist wizard hurting Almithra and Aurora being paralyzed the whole fight everything went smoothly. The laboratory was a bigger, fancier version of what they found in the mines, dedicated to warping poor victims into horrible monstrosities. The players are somewhat pleased to have finally found an actual example of 'a wizard did it' as an explanation for all the horrible monsters in D&D.

They examine the rest of the house and find none of the family, but they do find the cold storage, where a bunch of humans, halflings and orcs are hanging, gutted. They find some pickled offal, salted meat, and promptly vomit up the remains of dinner. Marianya does comment that at least it wasn't cannibalism since she hadn't eaten an elf.

They get ready to descend the hidden stairs they find behind an idol in the family chapel. The idol depicts a large worm-like tentacled creature. None of them are familiar with it and have no idea what Immortal this could represent.

"Hiero's Journey" was good and now I want to find the rest of the books because the story is definitely not finished. Perhaps Thriftbooks has them. I'll wait until after Christmas because my 'unread' pile is too big as it is and will increase come Christmas, and I keep interspersing with rereads.

Speaking of rereads, I will finish off the Viriconium stories with In Viriconium and A Young Man's Journey to Viriconium. It's interesting to see how the nature of the titular city changes over time, from a distant and vaguely described but very definite existance to more and more probably modern time but vaguer existance.

I still think I prefer the less 'artsy' and more story-focus stories to the more personality-focused stories.

Saturday was a belated Thanksgiving dinner, and Sunday was game night. The players and PCs were appropriately disgusted when they found the meat locker in the house they are staying at.
*grin*

The best Captain America movie to date IMO was The Winter Soldier, hands down.

My favorite, perhaps my favorite Marvel movie of all, was TFA. It was silly, very comic, had the most charismatic and amusing of Marvel villains on screen, and that wonderful musical number.

I've loved pinnekjøtt ever since I moved on to solid foods and could suck on a bone. When my grandfather and uncle kept sheep they made their own, which was always superior to the store bought stuff.

These days my family mostly gets packs of turkey breast in the store rather than a whole turkey. Far easier, especially when my we don't eat as much as we used to, but I do miss the drumsticks and the turkey soup Mom made of the leftovers

The mine is cleared easily even when I mash several scripted encounters into one and the PCs interrogate the baddie, whom they took alive. The baddie reveals she is a mad scientist wizard obsessed with altering normal humanoids into bigger, nastier monsters. The PCs suspect she is influenced by the presence of the Burrower the Ice Elves told them of, and the baddie confirms this indirectly. After getting a few answers but hitting a metaphorical wall on certain others, the baddie is dispatched with a bullet in the brain and the PCs turn their attention to the current experiment. said person has had his arms removed and tentacles grafted in place, and eye plucked out and a giant compound eye, like a house fly's, put in, and giant pincer fangs like a spider coming out of his cheeks. Needless to say he's in pretty bad shape and the PCs consider just putting him out of his misery but decide to spend a charge of Heal from their Staff of Life to mend his broken mind. This works but the victim, Roarch, is still not particularly happy about his situation and needs some convincing to come along in hopes of a more permanent fix later. The PCs then return to the Mathen estate.

They are once again shown in to the trophy/waiting room. This time around they find a secret door in the fireplace. They investigate and see the peepholes on the other side. They then meet the children of the house again, Miya and Marko, who seem a bit odd for 10-year olds. Miya, on behalf of Marko, asks if the PCs want to see his coin. They humor him and everyone makes their Will save against a sudden compulsion to own the coin at all costs. I was glad they did because the item in question is rather nasty and Marianya had an unfortunate streak of failed saves this session: on being poisoned she nominally had a 55% chance of success on the saving throw but proceeded to have a total of 20% success rate over ten saves. Fortuntately it was Dexterity damage and Aurora had previously invested in a wand of Lesser Restoration.

Speaking of classics getting something new, Lupin III is getting a new movie in 2025, and I am SO HYPED!!
I believe it is meant to tie off the Jigen, Goemon and Fujiko specials

I like most of what Oslo Mikrobryggeri does but I think my favorite is their Vienna lager. Other than that I think Lomb is my favorite brewery. They have too many good beers to list but I will mention that seveal of them use things like crowberry, Norwegian angelica and juniper as flavorings, which is unusual but very good.

Short version, Christmas dinner is very traditional in Norway, with only a few dishes being common. As the video points out, pinnekjøtt* and ribbe** are by far the most common, and who eats what depends greatly on where in the country you are or where your parents/grandparents grew up. The regional differences are primarily what sort of meat was most common in the area back in the days before modern just in time logistics and easy cargo transportation. In the Oslo and central Norway region ribbe is most common. Pinnekjøtt is more common in western Norway. Various fish dishes are common in coastal areas that relied heavily on fis. Lutefisk is fairly rare but extant, and some have Christmas cod.

My paternal grandfather was from the west so Christmas eve is pinnekjøtt. My paternal grandmother was from the north so we have reindeer on Christmas day and halibut on the 26th.
Since my mother and sister are not particularly fond of pinnekjøtt we also cook medister (suet) sausages for the 24th.
Most of my girlfriend's family is from the Oslo area so they have ribbe, though they have taken to the heretical practice of having both ribbe and pinnekjøtt in recent years.

*Pinnekjøtt, literally "stick meat", is dried, smoked and salted mutton ribs. Soaked for a day then steamed with birch sticks (hence the name). Traditionally served with potatoes and surkål (lit. 'sour cababge' - cabbage cooked in vinegar and caraway).
**Ribbe is pork belly roasted with scored hide to get crackling.

If you had that sort of meal all the time it wouldn't be special. Same with Christmas food here.

This is a rather recent printing under Gollancz' Fantasy/Science Fiction Masterworks series, which has given me a lot of good stuff that I haven't had to track down used. Which is to say I don't think the sequel will be as easy to come by as this. I'll keep an eye open for it in any case.

No. The only thing related to that holiday we've imported is Black Friday (Black Week, rather, because why the hell not?), but my mother is American and Thanksgiving has a lot of good food we like.

Turkey day will be moved to next Saturday here because anything sooner is a pain for our schedules and anything later is getting dangerously close to Christmas.

Oh, I know why the carrion crawler and others didn't get official PF1 stats. I still would have found existing easy to find stats slightly more convenient than having to spend a few extra seconds converting the 3.5 stats myself.

I had intended to finish the Viriconium stories in one go but again I only read a couple of the short stories, "The Dancer from the Dance" and "The Lamia and Lord Cromis", before wanting to try something else. They are good stories but I suspect I mostly just skimmed through the last (and first) time I read them and but they are depressing enough that I want to read something else before diving into "In Viriconium", the third novel.

Something else is Sterling Lanier's Hiero's Journey. Lanier's most notable achievement is probably getting "Dune" published after a score of publishers refused it. "Hiero's Journey" is set some five thousand years after the Cold War went hot and civilization is putting itself back together. It is one of the inspirations for Gamma World, a fact that was made clear by the psychic powers, roaming mutants, empathic moose, telepathic bears and anthropoid wolverines. And that's just the first chapter.

So far the greatest sticking point for me is not the blatantly unscientific psychic abilities but the idea that the names of the areas are basically the same after five thousand years of change, five thousand year old knives are still perfectly servicable, and a variant of the Catholic church is still a thing though less recognizable than the one in, say, "A Canticle for Leibowitz". People are strange.

Carrion crawlers came up in my game last session and I realized they didn't have a PF version. Not that grabbing the 3.5 MM off my shelf and using that was much of an issue but it would have made things ever so slightly more convenient to have PF stats ready to go.

After healing the poor farmer lying on the ground, the farmer's wife and kids come running out from the cottage and are profusely grateful to the PCs. The farmer is a bit gruff and embarrassed and tries to pretend that things aren't usually that bad. His wife takes him to task and indicates that they should have left ages ago. The PCs get the story, that while occasional odd monsters do exist they generally don't result in more than a couple of lost sheep or crops each year, but the last couple of years have seen a steady increase in attacks. Half the 'village' (an ambitious name for a cluster of farms totalling no more than a couple hundred people in the valley) has already left and the rest are not far behind. While the farmers pack up their stuff the PCs follow the tracks made by the beast and come across a pair of trolls resting at a campsite. A brief fight later and the PCs find out that the campsite was made recently by Thunder Knights - the remains of the armor strewn about but disturbingly no corpses are found. The PCs head back to the 'village' and find a fairly new pallisade surrounding the largest farm and the few remaining farmershuddled inside. They acknowledge that they had seen a small band of Thunder Knights pass by only a couple days ago and assumed the PCs were attached to them, considering Thorg's armor. They said they had been complaining to the local 'lord' for quite some time and assumed Milo Mather had finally done something about their complaints.

The next day the PCs set out to find this lord. The journey is easy and uneventful and they come, in rather bad weather, to the Mathen estate. The place is surrounded by a large, solid fence, practically a wall, and everything inside seems pretty calm. They are met by what looks like the most archetypal farmer imaginable who shows the PCs inside to a waiting room. A fair few minutes later the master of the house arrives and apologizes for the wait, saying he had to make himself presentable first. Milo Mathen is charming and likable and the PCs (or at least the players) are instantly suspicious of him but cannot find anything in his demeanor or words that seems suspicious. He claims to be ignorant of the Thunder Knights that were summond, saying he and his family have been virtual prisoners of their estate for several months. Attempts to leave have seen several servants fall prey to the monsters in the area and the family barely making it back to their house. All communication with the outside has been severed. Now that the PCs are here he hopes they can perhaps clear out the area to make it safe for his family to escape. He suggests they look into the local mines, since he heard something about the miners getting attacked before losing contact with the outside world. In the mean time he invites the PCs for a sumptuous dinner and gives them a chance to dry off and warm up before heading back out.

The family seems very clean and refined for being so far out in the sticks, though the children, about ten years of age, are a bit suspicious, with one being overly stiff and genteel adult and the other making a few alarming comments that the adults hush away. In any case, the PCs think that problems in the mine is indeed something to investigate and head out. They kill a surprising variety of aberrations in just the first few tunnels before we call it a night.

Tieflings and ratfolk?
GOOs/Far Realm stuff?
No elemental priests?
Are you sure this is Dark Sun?

Anyway a water cleric is the traditional healer, but this seems houseruled/homebrewed enough that I don't know what to recommend. As for enjoying DS without liking dark and gritty...you probably won't. At least not without ruining it for others who do like the grit by making a joke of everything.

Remake coming in 2025; Cat's Eye

This is probably one of the earliest anime I ever saw as a kid. This a few others would run on CBC french (along with Harlock, Cities of Gold and an anime of Anne of green gables of all things). Being the latest series to get a modern remake is great to see. Can't wait for it....but looks like I'll need to restart my Disney+ subscription

Only thing I've seen of Cat's Eye was the Lupin III crossover last year.

The anime that really had me hooked as a kid was Robotech.

Whipping Star is a 1970 science fiction novel by American writer Frank Herbert. It is the first full-length novel set in the ConSentiency universe established by Herbert in his short stories “A Matter of Traces” and “The Tactful Saboteur”.

I liked that one better than the Dosadi Experiment.

What is the connection between an archpriest of Vanya, cultists of Thanatos, a city trapped in stasis and the Etheral plane, the appearance of strange warped creatures, and the strange dreams that have been affecting people for far longer on the ADri Varma plateau than they have realized?
And how will this propel Othariel to divinity?

The PCs are finding out.

*wonders briefly if he's living in Hot Skull*

"Gridlinked" was fine. A bit predictable, let a couple characters off a bit easy, and I thought the 'start every chapter with an in-universe history book excerpt' was handled rather inexpertly, but overall a decent timewaster. Not enough to convince me to seek out more of his stuff but I might pick up more stuff if I find it at the used bookstore.

Back to Harrison.

Looks like AI bot posts to me.

I tell myself I've made peace with adaptations to source material when translating to another medium. There's no way they could adapt everything in the book in two movies and sometimes you need to reduce complexity to make certain aspects clearer. Chani is getting the Arwen treatment - giving her a role she didn't have in the book for conservation of characters and to give a face to one important element the greater theme.

I tell myself this every time I think about the films. I like the films and I think their about as good an adaptation as you can get within the limits of two films and the realities of Hollywood prodution, but there are definiately aspects I wish had been handled a bit differently.

On their way to Gulluvia the PCs overtake two armigers of the Thunder Knights heading in the same direction. Not wishing to seem overly suspicious, especially since one of their number is to all appearances a Thunder Knight, the PCs talk to the armigers. The armigers start to talk to Thorg, see Marianya, and turn pale and nervous. They demand to know what Thorg is doing in the company of 'that woman'. It turns out these two armigers were part of the group that Marianya Fireballed in the back when they tried to run, during PCs' attempt at escaping captivity at Citadel Thunder.

A tense standoff occurs where Marianya tries to lie about the circumstances of the event but is caught in the lie. She eventually mumbles an entirely unconvincing and frankly insulting apology. The two newly raised armigers do not want to risk her ire so they say no more on the subject. They choose to be concerned with Thorg's presence and when the half-orc more or less admits to leaving the Order they warn him of interesting times in the TKs. Thorg for his part wonders why the armigers were raised. It is not unheard of for the most powerful and influential Thunder Knights to be raised if they should die in battle but it is unheard of for young nobodies like the armigers to receive such a blessing. Why they should be heading towards the Citadel as if they came from Nurestani is also a puzzling question, and the young warriors are reluctant to shed any light on either subject.

Before their death the armigers would have reported Thorg's behavior to their superiors - the Thunder Knights do not take kindly to those who abandon their oaths to the Order - but after having been raised by Othariel and given a bit of a crash course on how the Order of Thunder was supposed to operate they are questioning their place in the Order.
In any case the two groups part ways peacefully and the PCs continue to Gulluvia.

Though Marianya is a wanted criminal she was last seen in the company of a bugbear, a half-orc and very pretty man, so a little disguise is all that is necessary for her to enter the city without trouble. Here the PCs go on a shopping spree, buying tons of stuff with the money Othariel unobtrusively deposited in their midst before they left Nurestani. They then seek out the sages.

One of the them, and elderly elf who invites the PCs in on the strength of their letter of recommendation, promises to look up three things: any reference to the Dreamkeeper, anything about Tuma, and anything related to the 'evils' on the plateau.

This takes some time as she has to go through a buttload of texts, and in the meantime Marianya seeks our Viron Red Oak, who hired them to go to Thorold not so long ago. The PCs make sure the letters they were supposed to hand over were delivered, which they were, and they catch up on things. It turns out that Aurora and Viron were acquatinted and had even gone on an adventure together once, clearing out the black pyramid the PCs found in the marsh. They also question Viron about the 'evils'. He has encountered a couple of the monstrosities during his time on the Adri Varma but only one at a time and with a lot of time and distance between the incidents. The issue of dreams is something he notices - that he doesn't sleep quite as well here as he did in Wendar. He put that down to age and experience changing a person but the PCs' interest in dreams makes him wonder if there is something more to it.

When the sage has finished preliminary research the PCs are moderately more englightened. They don't learn anything new about Tuma - the notes the wizard-lawyers had taken were quite extensive. The is so far an unknown entity - there may be more somewhere in an obscure document hidden under centuries of other stuff but it will take time to dig through everything.
The evils are also not particularly well documented. They are documented but very little is known about them other than that they seem to be unique to the Adri Varma plateau. The evils do not seem to be concetrated in any particular area on the plateau and what few corpses have been recovered and autopsied showed no reproductive organs. Some seemed warped versions of natural creatures, some like no creatures recorded elsewhere. The sage makes clear that she has more stuff to go through but that will take a long time.

Viron helpfully mentions that the only other people he knows of that might be useful are the Thunder Knights - the PCs are reluctant to go to Citadel Thunder and ask to use the library - and possibly the so-called ice elves in the Dark Woods north of Thorold. Viron met them once when he entered their woods. They told him to leave and not come back. He didn't want to make a scene so he acquiesced.

The PCs head north and reach the Dark Woods without any trouble. The PCs wander about for a few days in what appears to be ancient forests, untouched by civilization. Eventually the local elves make their presence known by an arrow at the feet of the party and a disembodied voice telling them to leave. Marianya immediately turns invisible and flies away while Almithra draws her sword. Aurora is the only one who can vaguely understand what they are saying because the dialect is very 'inbred'. My favorite scene from Hot Fuzz is brought up for the Nth time, as well as my GF grumbling about what it's like trying to talk to my father's side of the family.

Some issues aside the PCs manage to convince the ice elves (so called by Viron because of their chilly reception of visitors, and not to be confused with the ice elves in southern Davania) to talk to them, which will happen a a couple days' time on the edge of the forest. When the meeting finally happens the ice elves thankfully have a Tongues spell active so communication is not an issue. The elves are cool and remote and ask for many details before they offer up any information themselves. Once they are satisfied with the PCs' current goals they ask for a proof of competence before they give any aid or information. The PCs are told that there is an artifact of Nyx in Thororld, one which was used to capture some of the elves some centuries agod. The elves want the item. Marianya is pretty sure this was the mirror she and her companions destroyed the last time they were in Thorold. The elves question her thoroughly about the incident and seem to accept the result even if it was probably not quite what they were hoping for.

In return the ice elves tell the PCs of the Burrowers. Gigantic wormlike monsters that created the multitude of underground tunnels and caverns that fill the planet. The existence of the vast underground network of tunnels is new to the PCs but they accept it. The Burrowers were stopped by the Immortals and one of them is sleeping under the plateau, one that exerts a strong mental pressure even in near-stasis, one that warps the bodies creatures that get to near it. The ice elves blame the 'evils', what they call the Warped, on this sleeping Burrower. In the past couple of centuries the Burrower has started to stir, and the Warped have become more common, to the point where a concentration of them occurred in Nurestani (and the PCs took care of that).

The players and PCs immediately think 'adventure hook' and are ready to go find the Burrower but the elves assure them that they are in no position to do anything about it; after all if direct intervention by the Immortals was required to stop these creatures in the first place the PCs are unlikely to be able to do anything other than possible make things worse by encountering it. However the elves have encountered a few Warped coming from the north and encourage the PCs to go there to investigate.

The PCs head north in appropriately ominous weather. Ever since they left Gulluvia the weather had been warm and sunny but the moment they head north to the Moorfowl Mountains it turns dark and cold. They soon come across a small farm under attack by a horrible warped giant creature with oversized tusks and a third weird tentacle-like arm protruding from its chest. The PCs engage and take it down without much trouble, though Thorg is severly weakened by its poison.

Moose wanders into company's garage, tramples BMWs

This doesn't strike me as 'weird'. More like 'barely newsworthy'.

"A Storm of Wings", and the Viriconium stories in general, were a lot bleaker and more depressing than I remember. I don't know if it's faulty memory or me just somehow not picking up on the setting and people and focusing solely on the action the first time I read them.
Still damn good stuff.

On to Neal Asher's Gridlinked, one of his Polity novels. This is first of his works I've read. So far it's entertaining. We'll see if it's memorable once it's done.

In between Harrison I'm reading Night's Dark Masters - A Guide to Vampires for WHFRP by Steve Darlington and Jody McGregor. So far so decent. A lot of flavor text, which is good. Other than that it's pretty standard D&D-adjacent stuff.

Aurora and Marianya gather their wits and once again make sure that the captive lawyers are still thoroughly bound. They poke and prod at the psurlon a bit to see what sort of monstrosity it is but do not come away much wiser. Then Marianya runs off to find the town guard and Cirion, while Aurora watches things here. The captives express extreme distress at the death of the worm-thing.

Cirion comes and uses the Staff of Life to raise Thorg, and otherwise sees to Pattinathar's corpse. The guard are close to despairing at the carnage here but are grateful that adventurers were around to fix things. After some questioning and transfer of the captives into Cirion's care. The next day the wizard-lawyers are seemingly recovered and tell of how some months ago they all started getting dream visions to go and seek out Tuma and study it. They eventually did so on their time off but soon the dreams became mental compulsions and they did so to the exclusion of other things. Cirion's ministrations last night seemed to have cured them of their mental affliction.

They are happy to be free even if they are slightly resentful of the deaths caused by the PCs. Even so, they swallow their emotions and give the PCs all relevant information. Fortunately, they have kept thorough notes, which the PCs skim through. They realize that someone far more knowledgable and powerful than themselves needs to look at this and see if they can make use of it. Phaendar seems the obvious choice. Cirion decides to head back to the Rift with Patti's corpse, and takes the copious notes to Wizardspire. Before they can depart the city they are summoned before the local lord to report on things. They are honest about everything, including their goal to depose Thrune in the Rift and dismantle or reform the Thunder Knights. The lord is happy to hear that, since though the town needs to have a good working relatinship with the Knights, she dislikes them personally and wants greater autonomy for her town and the Adri Varma in general. Friendly merchants will give discounts to the PCs and their allies in the Rift.

Before they leave town what can best be described as an emo-weeb elf shows up and says she got a vision from her Immortal patron Tomokato that these people need help. Cirion mutters something along the lines of 'm$$#+#*!**#!!', sighs and says "fine". The new PC is introduced to the party and the goals and Cirion takes off, muttering something about interfering old busybodies.

The party decides to head back to Gulluvia. Only Marianya is left of the group that is wanted by the authorities and some disguise should go a long way to avoiding issues. Gulluvia is the largest city on the plateau and the wizards in Nurestani suggested that any more inquiries into the local evils and the Dream Tender they were introduced to in Ravenmoor should be directed to the sages in Gulluvia.

Fantasy Monster: Unbound Ba

When mummification goes wrong.

Neat.

On a related note, I've been slowly working on a D&D theory of personhood based on the Egyptian concept of the body/soul, including its various parts. Undead are various parts of the whole. For instance all undead are missing the ka, while unintelligent undead are missing the ib and the ba. Zombies would be mere khet, and they need their sekhem to have any sort of powers beyond raw bodily strength.

The exact point or use of this exercise is beyond me, other than making things needlessly complicated.

They were probably infected with rage.

people just need to track their PC changes per level as some simple book keeping can solve all the "I don't remember what happened" lame excuses. Snap a pic of your character sheet, or scan it, or just copy to a new character sheet every couple of levels.

The word 'just' is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I know people who are pathologically incapable of doing this sort of thing. One of them, interestingly enough, is a programmer. Another is a math teacher.

Now reading Harrison's A Storm of Wings.
Also reading Lichemaster by Carl Sargant and Rick Priestly. So far so good. I'm quite impressed with the amount of detail they give NPCs to make them easy to GM and vivid for players, especially for what amounts to be a pretty straightforward stop the baddie adventure.