Found Objects

Okay, I’ve found a voice. It’s mostly Athal’s (hence first person), but a bit more detached than the bit I wrote in Dutch and got stalled on. I blame it on ascribe it to the character questionnaire. Also, it’s not in Dutch, so the whole world (well, almost) can read it if they like.

Technical announcement: comments seem to have stopped working again, so if you have something to say please do it by mail.

Story behind the cut so people who don’t like game writeups can easily skip it. I may post an executive summary of earlier events but that’s not what I want to write now.

Read more ...

Trying to find a voice for writing up roleplaying sessions —I’m playing a former NPC now Boudewijn has taken over the campaign— I distracted myself into playing with character questionnaires. I now know that Alysei Athal astin Velain has a tenor voice, his eyes are nondescript brownish (from his father’s side; the slight build and thick dark red hair are from his mother’s), he’s fond of fruit, prefers beer to wine and the meat of birds to that of quadrupeds, and doesn’t care for fish much but will eat it when it’s on the table.

But there the trouble started. The first questionnaire was obviously made for characters in modern mainstream novels, not kings of Valdyas.

Read more ...

In about a month we’re moving to a house in the town centre. An upstairs house on top of the Orthodox church. No garden, no shed, no yard, no cellar (that’s the church’s community room these days), not even a hall except a little bitty entrance that a huge green door opens into.

We have five bicycles.

Read more ...

Some things that distracted me in church today, but didn’t distract from the glory of God, quite the contrary.

• When our priest read the Gospel, St. Lebuinus’ Church across the road rang the bells, probably because their service was just beginning. At the sermon, when the Gospel was explained, the bells rang again, probably because their second service was just beginning.
• At quiet moments during the Liturgy I could hear a blackbird singing. It’s very heartening to think that I’ll be able to hear that blackbird singing much more often when we move into the house above the church in about a month; the window I could hear it through this morning is in our roof terrace.
• A small spider was busy weaving a web between the choir music-stand and the lamp that sticks out from it. The regular page-turner being absent, I turned the pages, careful not to damage the web. The tremor seemed to trigger the spider’s something-in-my-web alarm, because it came running every time I turned a page, but there was nothing I could do about that. I didn’t draw attention to it, because I know that one person in the choir sees spiders as the embodiment of evil and wouldn’t have tolerated even this little peaceful one. At the end of the service, the spider had caught a tiny fly.