Author: Trip the Space Parasite

But humans never look up!

Read (manga): Mizuno and Chayama (Yuhta Nishio): Two high school seniors forced to be on opposite sides of horrible small-town factionalism by family ties have a purely physical lesbian affair in the abandoned classrooms, but of course nothing is ever that easy. Complete in one large volume.

Written (game design): 198. This is probably not what I actually want here, but if I’m trying to simplify, can I get a character’s combat round down to one roll? I think rolling for initiative and having fixed damage is better than the other way around, but maybe I can combine them somehow. Having both fixed damage and fixed defense seems like it might be less interesting.

Congratulations on your children not getting eaten by angels to all to celebrate, I guess?

Gaming was cancelled due to Passover, so I did some extra work instead. It was not onerous, but it was not nearly as fun.

Read (manga): Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! vol 6 (Sumito Oowara): The (unwilling) advent of Voice Girl!

Read (short): “Loneliness Universe” (Eugenia Triantafyllou): A young woman finds that her relationships have changed in an upsetting way, but it’s actually much worse than that.

Read (short): “Signs of Life” (Sarah Pinsker): Estranged sisters reconnect, but one of them has had a much less explicable life than the other.

Read (short): “Marginalia” (Mary Robinette Kowal): What if some of those weird creatures from medieval margin drawings were crawling around your countryside?

Read (short): “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read” (Caroline M Yoachim): Aliens (faeries? robots?) with very fast and extremely multi-threaded cognition attempt to communicate with humans.

Read (short): “Another Girl Under the Iron Bell” (Angela Liu): Even if you’re a famous monk, enslaving demons is risky.

Read (short): “A Stranger Knocks” (Tananarive Due): A young Black couple in Jim Crow times get an offer that is way too good to be true.

Written (catgirl): 237 of notes, mostly questions and blanks to fill in.

Musk is doing his best to make it suck, but his shitshow is transient.

Once again slept until 1030, then got up and did some shopping.

Ken gave us delicious chicken adobo (probably not cockatrice), and we talked to Ayse about kitchen history because Dave was surprised at the lack of kitchens in Ptolus apartments. It was a nice visit.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 8-9: The undine, and the gnomes and Nomari. So far this seems to be following the manga pretty closely.

Read (manga): Asumi-chan is Interested in Lesbian Brothels! vol 2 (Kuro Ituski): A near-miss with meeting the girl she’s looking for, so she has to have a threesome and cosplay instead. Still completely lacking in redeeming social value.

Written (catgirl): 437 more of worldbuilding notes, but mostly lists of names.

I have some of those! Victory!

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.9-10: The one where they have to save the day with only an airport as resources and the one where Sterling talks them into stealing a technobabble from a chess tournament.

Read (manga): Leviathan vol 1 (Shiro Kuroi): Scavengers investigate a derelict spaceship while reading the journal of one of the schoolkids who descended right into savagery when the ship was damaged.

Written (catgirl): 234 of worldbuilding notes.

That’s probably what we call YA now?

Didn’t go to the office since I had to catch incoming cases in the morning and didn’t want to risk being late from commute failure (even though that rarely happens) and also because I am very lazy and stupid and useless.

Read (manga): Asumi-chan is Interested in Lesbian Brothels! vol 1 (Kuro Itsuki): College student Asumi’s very “helpful” senpai mentions that her childhood crush who she has never gotten over may be working as a lesbian prostitute, and encourages her to take the obvious approach to finding her. Completely lacking in socially redeeming value.

Written (catgirl): 107, but I have once again reached the point where everything is stupid and wrong and I should start over, maybe this time with proper worldbuilding and not so many superpowers and thinking about characters ahead of time. Or maybe just give up forever, it’s not like any of this is going to ever amount to anything. Ghosts on an Alien Wind did the other genre with underlying cosmic horror much better than I could anyway.

I presume they mean the color, not the performer, but who can say?

Went to the office, had the room to myself because Coworker D is out until next week, ate fried chicken guys, was very sleepy, did a small amount of work.

Read (manga): The Tree of Death: Yomotsuhegui vol 3 (Masasumi Kakizaki): Finally, the boss battle! Also difficult decisions, personality erosion, terrible revelations, etc. The End.

Read (novel): Ghosts on an Alien Wind (Moe Lane): Just a few hundred years before humans developed interstellar travel, everybody in the galaxy was wiped out, leaving dead, hella creepy worlds that could have been full of friends but now have only unknown dangers, nigh-incomprehensible tech, and creeping madness. It’s SF adventure with cosmic horror beneath it, which pleases me greatly. Also the [SPOILER] are real [SPOILER], which is amazing.

Read (manga): I Can’t Say No to the Lonely Girl vol 6 (Kashikaze): They finally come out to their friends, everything is great, the end!

Written (catgirl): 170.

Libraries are the best.

Played (Changeling the Lost): Berkeley 1994. We had no Kelsey, but our (new?) rule is that we’ll play if only one person is missing and it’s not the GM. This session, Everett gets his old job at the railroad back (Brookes rolled like eight successes!), Theophania goes to The Other Change of Hobbit to research horror magazines she could submit and covers for Longfingers sneaking upstairs to find a Hedge door and then meeting the fabled Simple John, Beth, and Mary, then Theophania and Thessaly follow the currents of magic through a theater basement and an abandoned 70s department store and find a one-way(?) pool of water(?) which leads to an abandoned grotto full of magical power (which they suck up for +1 Wyrd and full Glamour recharge each). There we leave them, alone in an extradimensional hideout with only bed. What will happen next week?

Read (short): The Knight and the Butcherbird (Alix E Harrow): Post-apocalyptic monster-hunting knight meets immovable librarian, discoveries about the new world are made.

Read (manga): The Tree of Death: Yomotsuhegui vol 2 (Masasumi Kakizaki): Our Cthulhoid undying ex-cop (really, that character design cannot be an accident) has been helping the shinigami and her mysterious blob for a year, and the enemy is finally closing in and using his connections to mortal life against him.

Written (catgirl): 111.

I’d say this one is for Despoo, but actually beavers are being reintroduced in Britain, which is pretty cool.

I did a small amount of work, but the cats really wanted to help.

Read (manga): Adachi and Shimamura vol 1 (Moke Yuzuhara, Hitoma Iruma, Non): Two schoolgirls end up hiding out in the same spot when cutting class, become friends, etc.

Read (novel): Hell to Pay (Rachel Aaron): I thought this was going to be the end of the war against Gilgamesh the King of Heaven, but no, it’s the huge plot twist where everything gets much much worse. Also, listen to the cat!

Written (catgirl): 137.

Don’t drive when you’re sleepy!

Also Jump Over Things Day, which is just Walk Around Things Day in a different plane, and also something you should not do while driving.

Did some shopping, did some more shopping.

Read (manga): After God vol 3 (Sumi Eno): Main Character is depressed because trying to live her life got a bunch of people killed, but turns out in this world, people still get killed even when she hides in the underground base. Also, some explanation of the gods, but it doesn’t really explain much of anything, so maybe that’s for the best. It’s all horrifying and possibly non-Euclidian, though, and definitely squamous.

Read (short): “Albert and the Water-Horse” (Chameleons All In Vermillion): Of all the ways meeting a mysterious violin-playing woman on the wave-washed beach could go, that’s actually near the top.

Written (catgirl): 148.

If only! We could use a nice alien conquest about now.

Slept in as usual but instead of grocery shopping, I went to the rally downtown because seriously, fuck all those motherfuckers. The crowd was pretty old overall, but there were a few youngsters, so perhaps there is hope for the future. I tried leaving my phone behind, not because I expected trouble today, but to see if it worked, and yeah, it was fine. I think I was the only one who did, though.

Ayse is back from her expedition to Nashville, with bonus tornadoes. Er, stories of tornadoes, she did not bring any actual tornadoes.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 6-7: The one where they eat a mimic, and the one where they eat a kraken.

Read (manga): After God vol 2 (Sumi Eno): Less bizarre than the volume that introduced the weird elements, as is inevitable, but more gods and people getting massacred unexpectedly and even more gods and creepy powers and creepy people.

Written (catgirl): 157.

Rats can be cute!

Also Walk Around Things Day, which I guess is for people who normally walk through things?

Read (novel): The Valkyrie Stratagem (Glynn Stewart): Third in the series of civil war (no caps) x missiles in space. The king candidate who escaped the massacre is on the way back with her new allies and new boyfriend, despite the general lack of helpfulness from Earth, but of course it cannot be that easy.

Read (graphic novel): Grimoire Noir (Vera Greentea, Yana Bogatch): A boy in a small sepia town where all the girls are witches tries to figure out what happened to his little sister while the town floods due to his mother’s magical tears, with some help from his estranged, hovering, bestie. Quite a few secrets come to light in the process, as is appropriate to the genre.

Written (catgirl): 267. I think this scene getting bogged down, or maybe was unnecessary from the beginning.

Went to the office, ate a Mediterranean-salmon burrito thing, did some work.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.8: Conning the Mako.

Read (manga): Go With the Clouds North-by-Northwest vol 1 (Aki Irie): A Japanese teenager in Iceland, using his secret psychometry powers to do detective work while his grandpa picks up on the ladies. Lots of Icelandic scenery, people who make the MC’s life difficult, family trouble. By the same mangaka as Ran and the Gray World.

Read (novel): The City That Would Eat the World (John Bierce): In a world where everything runs on the very specific blessings of myriad gods, a god appeared who slowed aging for members of the city watch as long as they were on the walls. A few centuries later, everyone is officially part of the guard and the entire city is walls (except the interstices where the underclass labor and age, but that’s not important) and doing its best to cover the whole world. A disillusioned citizen and an outsider whose home was destroyed by the city’s extractive industries and general capitalist shittiness get stuck taking a god to the West Pole through this bizarre world full of corrupt societies, and doing their best to not suck along the way. There’s a lot of exposition because it’s a very different world, and the main characters are unfortunately straight, but people resisting capitalism is always good.

Written (catgirl): 122.

Another one that’s illegal now, I guess. Also National Walking Day, International Children’s Books Day, and National Ferret Day.

Went to the office, ate some vegetarian curry and flatbread after figuring out which unlabeled lunch was mine, did a work.

Read (novel): To The Bloody End (Rachel Aaron): Conclusion of the faerie vs blood mage in magic cyberpunk Detroit trilogy. Despite gaining immense power in the second book, our heroine still has to figure out how to use it in nonstandard ways to save the world.

Read (manga): God Bless the Mistaken vol 4 (Nakatani Nio): Conclusion of this story about people in a world where reality randomly changes every day. Although does a slice-of-life story have an actual conclusion?

Written (game design): 125.

And Republicans can fuck right off into the Sun with JK Rowling.

Finally did the performance self-review, very badly. I hope the company appreciates it. (They won’t.)

Read (manga): Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! vol 4 (Sumito Oowara): Past the end of the anime! Setting Goblin’s new interest is tanuki, so the crew looks for tanuki treasure and makes a tanuki anime. Also the student council shows off its power to Money Goblin.

Read (novel): The Warden (Daniel M Ford): A fancy city wizard gets sent to be the sheriff-equivalent of a small village full of sheep and superstition, which works better than she expects, despite the large amounts of trouble she gets mixed up in. Very D&D, with orcs and spell levels and underground complexes full of undead, and a cliffhanger ending.

Read (short): “Ragdoll: A Monster’s Soliloquy” (Kiya Nicoll): Some trans girls make more of a transition than others…

Written (game design): 116.

Doctors are great, it’s the rest of the health care system that needs to be guillotined.

Played (D&D5e): Librarians Errant. Reshelving Squad Upsilon is called into the boss’s office to find out that Gladys’s minions got busted swiping all the books from the secret crocodile library and not storing them properly. Since the squad didn’t notify anyone, their punishment is to take the books to the Island of Evil Books that Shoggoth Bob came from at the beginning of the campaign. They do get to use Mesoluna’s portable hole to carry the books, at least. Despite the books technically being in a different dimension, though, they get spotted on the path across the bottomless abyss by a manifestation of eyes formed by books placed on shelves on a minor islet, and attacked by flying books and a horrible flaming book golem. Despite Grumman almost being flung to his death, they defeat the minions of whatever it is, and make it to the island where they begin chaining up the worst books and shelving the others. While they are fashioning Library Standard Containment Podiums, a similar manifestation of eyes occurs in the evil books already there, complains about Godwin not having stopped the squad, and makes one of the books in the stack reveal that is actually a draconic frog, or maybe a batrachian dragon. Whatever it is, it swallows Thaïs, who only barely manages to teleport out when it opens its mouth later, leaps about the island, stinks up the place something awful, and absorbs a lot of abuse from the squad. However, there’s only one of it, and librarians can be very abusive, so the second or third time someone tries to banish it to another plane, it fails its save and uses its legendary save power to not come back. We leave our junior librarians on the Island of Evil Books in a frightful state, but surely nothing will happen before they can go home and get cleaned up, right? Right?

Read (manga): The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor vol 4 (Anko Yuzu, Sarasa Nagase, Mitsuya Fuji) Jill is infiltrating the dragon empire military for not-entirely-clear reasons.

Written (catgirl): 135.

I wrote a little about mermaids before I even knew what day it was.

The busses are back since a court ordered the union to stop striking, so I was lazy about shopping.

Went to watch anime and get Ayse hugs but she was not there! She is in Nashville with her friend.

Watched (anime): Delicious in Dungeon 4-5: The one where orcs murder everybody, but they like Senshi.

Read (manga): The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor vol 3 (Anko Yuzu, Sarasa Nagase, Mitsuya Fuji): FIXME The conclusion of the skulduggery at the port, we find out more about the divine conflict, Jill kicks ass.

Written (catgirl): 212.

Debatable as to how well I do here, but at least I’m not making them part of Something On A Stick Day.

I was supposed to fill out my performance self-review, but did not manage to do so because a) I hate writing about myself, especially when I have to guess what HR wants to see, and b) my actual job duties used up all my brains. I guess I’ll try to do it over the weekend.

Read (short): “The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea” (Naomi Kritzer): It was pretty obvious where this story about a former marine biologist propping up her husband’s career was going from early on, but it’s still a good destination to arrive at.

Read (manga): In The Land Of Leadale vol 2-3 (Dashio Tsukimi, Ceez, Tenmaso, Ryo Suzukaze): Our isekai heroine, in the world of her MMORPG but centuries later, continues wandering around, checking on her “children” and being generally OP.

Written (catgirl): 143.

Didn’t go to the office today, because Marith and I had to go see Jus in Footloose! I knew many of the songs, but had no idea they were from this show or anything about the plot. Yay Jus!

Read (manga): Sasaki and Peeps vol 1 (Buncololi, Pureji Osho, Kantoku): A salaryman decides to get a pet, but the bird he picks out at the pet store is actually a wizard from fantasy world. So far, mostly about interdimensional commerce, but apparently a bunch of female characters are going to show up. Not sure if it’s going to be a harem manga or what.

Written (game design): 170. My ideas for melee combat don’t quite work for sniping or spellcasting, ugh.

I’m not qualified to participate in Good Hair Day.

Went to the office, Boss K is there this week, ate a naan pizza, did a few works.

Read (novel): When the Moon Hits Your Eye (John Scalzi): Suddenly, the Moon is replaced by a Moon-mass lump of cheese. Over the course of a month, this has various effects and humans react to it in various ways.

Read (manga): In/Spectre vol 20 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): The yōkai finish their locked room game, Kotoko starts investigating a new case that looks mundane, Rikka executes the second phase of her prank.

Written (game design): 179. Not sure how to summarize combat concisely. Not sure if any of my ideas are even viable.

Damn Americans, hogging all the pecan waffles! (Do other countries even eat pecans?)

No gaming, Ken had to teach at 4am and Vivian just didn’t sleep.

Read (manga): Summer Ghost omnibus (Yoshi Inomi, Loundraw, Hirotaka Adachi (Otsuichi): Three high-schoolers with varying levels of suicidal ideation summon a ghost, which causes discord but eventually it all works out. Complete in one volume.

Read (novel): Does My Body Offend You? (Mayra Cuevas, Marie Marquardt): A Puerto Rican refugee girl in Florida gets body-shamed by the school administrations, which she and her new friend decide has to be dealt with, but they aren’t actually good at getting things done, because teenagers. Also there are cute boys and they are both inexplicably straight, which causes more drama. The end comes together a little neatly anyways, but probably fine for the intended audience.

Written (game design): 292. Tried to summarize into one-page rules, which did help some but also exposed places where I have to make decisions. Decisions are the worst.

Apparently one I am unable to celebrate, because I am too horrible.

Read (graphic novel): We Called Them Giants (Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, Clayton Cowles): Two girls try to survive in the post-apocalypse, which goes different than they expected. Not a happy story, but only a normal amount of sadness, I think. Could get taught in school.

Written (catgirl): 161.

Another one that should be every day!

Ate a Thai lunch, did a shopping, decomposed at the bottom of a pit.

Read (manga): The Tree of Death: Yomotsuhegui vol 1 (Masasumi Kakizaki): A cop imprisoned for killing the murder of his family finally gets out, and immediately finds out everything he thought about what was going on is wrong, it’s actually worse and more supernatural and it’s up to him to fix it all because apparently everyone else involved is a monster. Extremely dark, CW everything.

Written (catgirl): 150.

I hear humans are mostly made of it!

Also Young as You Feel Day, which should obviously have been yesterday. Today I have to acknowledge that I’m mumblemumble.

Tried shopping with the cart, which I haven’t done in years. It was definitely easier on my hands, but I think slower on my walking even though it’s not really any encumbrance due to the miracle of the wheel.

Cleaned up more browser tabs, found a list of SFF shorts by trans authors.

Read (short): “Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue” (Charlie Jane Anders): Pretty sure only the bit with zombies is different than what Republicans are currently doing to trans people.

Read (short): “The Shape of My Name” (Nino Cipri): Time travel adds an extra level of stress on top of being trans.

Read (short): “Of Warps and Wefts” (Innocent Chizaram Ilo): Magic surrealism? Once you get married, at night you become a different person of the opposite gender and are married to the night version of a different person. Oddly, this does not cure all marital strife. Also sometimes children grow roots or learn to read minds.

Read (short): “Everquest” (Naomi Kanakia): I have never played a female character in a video game, so of course I would not have any feelings about this.

Read (short): “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time” (KM Szpara): Interaction of vampire immortality and trans body modification, plus general gay vampirism.

Read (short): “Three Points Masculine” (An Owomoyela): Instead of forcibly detransitioning trans people, the government has standardized tests to determine gender and required scores for various jobs. This is not any better.

Read (short): “To Balance the Weight of Khalem” (RB Lemberg): A nonbinary refugee gets shuffled around magical cities but meets magical creatures along the way.

Read (short): “Want Itself Is a Treasure in Heaven” (Theodora Ward): CW: body-sharing brain implants, drug use, severe mental health breakdown.

Read (short): “The Venus Effect” (Violet Allen): Metafiction about black lives cut short by cops.

Read (manga): Cthulhu Cat (Pandania): The Great Old Ones manifest as cats, cute hijinks ensue, sanity is blasted, bystanders are harmed in the making of this cult, etc. For some reason I liked this better than most cutethuloid works.

Written (catgirl): 178.

D’oh, I completely forgot!

Randomly took the day off work, since I was owed a day from working on President Day. Meant to get up and listen in on Friday morning training anyway, but completely failed and ended up sleeping in until I felt bad about not feeding the cats. Then I was moving so I fed myself with Pakistani-Indian Fusion Cuisine, spicy chicken qorma and less-spicy samosas and butter garlic sesame-seed naan. It might have been sufficiently celebratory.

I could possibly have done something useful, but mostly I cleaned up browser tabs, quite a few of which were short stories I had been meaning to read. Watched some TV with Marith, who is sick as well as having no computer. Probably I didn’t catch her cold. I hope my computer didn’t catch anything either.

Watched (live-action TV): Leverage 4.7: The one with shady funeral home family, where Parker has an honest-to-something feeling.

Read (manga): In/Spectre vol 19 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): A bunch of one-chapter stories. Kuro tried to star in one, Rikka played a horrible prank, assorted yōkai caused trouble.

Read (short): “Victory Citrus is Sweet” (Thoraiya Dyer): A spacer who is actually kind of a jerk gets himself and his apprentice in trouble by cutting corners to show somebody up.

Read (short): “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” (Caroline M Yoachim): A future in which the current American medical system is still in place. Story in the form of a choose-your-own-adventure.

Read (short): “When the Yogurt Took Over: A Short Story” (John Scalzi): Definitely a different spin on the “enough computers together form a mind” trope.

Read (short): “Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor” (Grady Hendrix): Did you want your AI to be useful? Sorry, your timeline stems from the Trump-Musk presidency, you only get a chatbot.

Read (short): “Wikihistory” (Desmond Warzel): Everybody who gets access to time travel does it, then some long-suffering admin has to revert their changes.

Read (short): “In the Forests of Memory” (E Lily Yu): A sad story about an old lady in a cemetery of holographic grave markers, living off the offerings.

Read (short): “Presence” (Ken Liu): A sad story about an emigrant visiting his dying mother in the old country via telepresence.

Read (short): “The Thief of Memory” (Sunyi Dean): What is identity but memory? Also not a happy story, although you can’t blame a desparate teenager for making a rookie mistake.

Read (short): “The Dark House” (AC Wise): A haunted house, a haunted photographer, haunted photographs.

Written (game design): 136.

Also Frog Day, Sparrow Day, Storytelling Day, Atheist Pride Day, Extraterrestrial Abduction Day (it was a bum rap), etc.

Went to the office, ate a cold beef sandwich, had to play icebreaker games with the rest of the company, maybe did a little work.

Read (manga): In/Spectre vol 18 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): The Edo-era kenjutsu style yuki-onna arc continues. As is typical with Kotoko, there are at least two possible explanations at every point in the story.

Read (novel): How to Survive a Slasher (Justine Pucella Winans): An enby whose family was on the wrong side of the serial killings that made her small town famous is just trying to survive high school and their mom’s hardcore anti-serial-killer training and their obnoxious little brother and the yearly serial killer fan convention, which should be more than enough for anybody, when the past refuses to stay past yet again.

Written (catgirl): 142.

Does maniacal cackling count?

Went to the office, had the room to myself, ate a Mediterranean chicken burrito, did a little work. Probably didn’t hydrate enough.

Watched (live-action): Leverage 4.6: Elliot saves a small girl from a carnival.

Read (novel): Stars, Hide Your Fires (Jessica Best): A small-time crook from a crapsack world infiltrates an upper-crust ball to pick pockets, but although she meets a cute girl, the upper crust has problems of its own. Very Star Wars setting: blasters and spaceships, but social structures including security procedures are stuck in Three Musketeers era at best.

Read (manga): In/Spectre vol 17 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): A different yuki-onna mystery, with extra historical sword school shenanigans.

Written (game design): 104.

I’m much more suited to that than to Goddess of Fertility Day.

Played (Changeling the Lost): Ken’s 90s Berkeley game. Siddy figures out how to get glamour from crafting for people, and gets a recruitment(?) feeler from King Mark’s goon Jack Horner while everybody else finishes up pillaging the . Thessaly is off doing something so the rest of the group mostly kicks around discussing the philosophy of monarchy and deciding that going into the mysterious telecom(?) building with no windows or doors would be a bad plan.

Read (manga): In/Spectre vol 16 (Kyo Shirodaira, Chashiba Katase): Conclusion of the cliffs and ghost giraffe and idiots.

Written (game design): 171. New Plan! No levels, no XP, only experience and suffering!

Didn’t do a great job of that, much too sleepy.

Read (manga): I.L (Osamu Tezuka): Very 70s, and not in a particularly good way. A failed film director is granted a servitor by ??? who can assume any shape, and uses her to get involved in random mysteries and skulduggery. To the extent there’s a plot that runs through the whole, it’s the servitor developing her own opinions.

Written (catgirl): 132

I presume US National, so imported pandas.

Jus went to Davis for a robotics competition, and her team got second place! YAAAAYYYY JUS!

VTA management has not gotten their act together since yesterday, so I walked to gaming. Fortunately, it was not raining. The app for that said it would take 1:34 to walk there, and I felt like I have been getting slower since I stopped leaving my apartment, and then since I got Covid, so I allowed two hours. It actually took me somewhere between 1:05 and 1:10 to get there, which was very surprising to everyone except Dave.

On the way back, I walked with Dave, which was faster walking but we deviated from the app route to see other streets in Northwestern San Jose so it took a little longer.

Played (D&D5e): Librarians Errant: After a night of crocodile dreams that are surely not important, the Reshelving Squad decide to backtrack the purple worm to see what else might pop out of that hole to annoy their kobold friends. After numerous ups and downs, and many dents shaped like bullywug helmets, they find a huge cavern with a literally Cyclopean ruined city. All the treasure has been taken, but whoever was there before kindly left the swarms of stirges and brains-with-legs in place. This is annoying, but the real problem is that the last brain-with-legs ran off toward the exit with a definite Timmy-fell-down-the-well vibe. (It’s a brain with legs, all it has is vibes.) When Lilli scries out the area with sketchy divine magic, she spots some mind flayers, which nobody likes. Since the brain-legger didn’t deliver its message, they don’t seem to be coming into the cyclopean ruins, and nobody wants to pester them. Unfortunately, while the Reshelving Squad is finding the dead end, the mind flayers do advance, and set up for an ambush at the tunnel entrance. Since sneaking past is obviously not going to work, even not counting Grumman and his Steam Colossus, they decide to have Grim teleport to flank them, carrying Thaïs to a position where she can freeze all three of them. Of course the mind flayers knew to the minute when Lilli’s scrying magic would give out, and changed position, so they and their attack brains are able to counterattack more effectively than planned, but it’s not enough to save them.

Read (novella): The Orb of Cairado (Katherine Addison): Also in the world of The Goblin Emperor, soon after the Big Airship Crash, but it’s a sketchy academic solving murders and looking for lost treasure.

Read (manga): Call the Name of the Night vol 3 (Tama Mitsuboshi): Cursed Girl has some more magical adventures and develops a little more self-confidence when it could involve a book signing.

Written (catgirl): 165.