Listen to the Rain

I've been reading Worlds Without Number recently and of course, as I do with basically every gritty fantasy setting that I find, I think, "Oh, I should convert the mechanics over to Exalted 2e! This is a game where an ambush could take out even a well-equipped but unprepared party, where every spell is a puissant working, and where bizarre monsters and hostile creatures abound! Perfect for Exalted." It works for years for Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom.

Anyway, this isn't as much about that, it's about the way Worlds Without Number does fantasy races. The default setting is Dying Earth, so far in the future that all records of the past have been totally lost--the book drops hints that it's the same continuity as Stars Without Number, the sci fi game from the same company, but enough time has passed that the star-spanning Terran Mandate is no longer remembered even in legend. Humanity was confined to the homeworld and ruled by capricious aliens collectively called Outsiders), who placed most humans in subterranean "Deeps"--the worldbuilding excuse to have dungeons to adventure in--and experimented on others. Fantasy races, then, are the descendant of these experiments.

Worlds Without Number then does all the traditional fantasy and sci fi niches with these. Dwarves are humans adapted to underground Deep living and with a deep psychological commitment to a particular ideal they call their "Plan"--I assume the author has borrowed this from Dark Sun dwarves' Focus. Elves are self-reincarnating immortals, who are reborn as another elf when they die and in extreme circumstances can commit identity-suicide and call on a mighty warrior or powerful archmage prior incarnation to slaughter their enemies. And orcs are the "Anakim," warriors engineered by the Outsiders to kill as many humans as they can.

It's obvious that the game is going for orcs that you can kill on sight without any moral questions, and so the background is that the Anakim were engineered with what they call "the Hate", an instinctive and overpowering revulsion and disgust response when in the presence of baseline humanity (and human-similar demihumans). Couple this with reduced inhibition and increased aggression, and it means that Anakim react to nearby humans with unprovoked brutal violence. Peace isn't possible because only the strongest-willed Anak can even be in the same room as a human without immediately trying to murder them. The only reason they aren't a larger threat than they are is because all of that poor impulse control and violence means that Anak society is a patchwork of squabbling tribes led by the strongest and most violent leader whose leadership only lasts so long as the rest of the tribe is afraid of them. Warlords who can manage to unite multiple tribes are rare and have to lead the Anakim against the hated humans before one of their underlings pulls them down.

The book does say that there's a certain kind of player who, when confronted with this, will make it their goal to cure the genetic engineering in the various "Blighted" species, like the Anakim or the Houris (who are beautiful and graceful and never suffer from old age but experience immense contentment and satisfaction from obeying orders, no matter content or issuer of the order) or the Zakathi (who are immensely strong but need to completely exhaust themselves with physical labor every day or wither away and so usually die in their 50s when their bodies give out). And it is possible--one group of Anakim slaughtered their Outsider overlords, stole their tech, and managed to modify their psychology using it and selective breeding so the Hate is expressed as contempt against the unruly humans and their aggression is all social status-jockeying rather than an axe to the face. These Anakim call themselves the "Aristoi" and think they're better than humans. Maybe your PCs could do the same thing! They can certainly try.

I really like this approach because it sidesteps most of the questions players ask about always-evil orcs--they weren't created by the gods and they aren't naturally evil, they were created as an anti-human weapon by asshole aliens and they used to be human--and provides an epic goal for players who are bothered by this. And if they're not bothered by it, they can just attack first because almost every Anak they see will attack on sight with no quarter asked or given. And it explicitly says some Anakim do have the willpower to resist the Hate, so there's room for backchannel dealings, accompanying a merchant clandestinely dealing with some Anak warlord looking for an edge against other tribes, etc. That's excellent worldbuilding that is directly applicable at the table, and we can always use more of that.

For most of June it's been cool and rainy, and we've only really had to run the aircon for a couple days. Well, now we have this:



It's only for a few days and then we get down to 27°C, but it's hot. Even at 8 a.m. when I left this morning it already felt like 35°C. And of course it's happening on the two days that I'm going into the office. Definitely not walking on the riverwalk today.

I do have to bring the CSA box home, though. Going to be rough.

Didn't realize until I checked my calendar that I hadn't posted in over a week and making that post about DDA made me think I should write about what else is happening.

I wrote a while ago about our attempts to stop Laila from waking up at 5:30 a.m. and I am pleased to report that it's working! She'll often wait until 6:45 a.m. or 7 a.m. to come into our room now, all pleased that she waited until "Jake said wakey wakey!" She's then very insistent that we get up, but that's fair--it's just us upholding our end of the bargain. Even on days where she doesn't make it, it's not as bad as before. Today she came in at 6:05 a.m. and I had to remind her to wait for the alarm, but it's still not 5:30 a.m.

We started her alarm off at 6:15 a.m. and have been gradually creeping it back. Not too far back--she's five, she's going to wake up early--but we also tell her that she can play in her room or go potty or whatever she likes, she can't just come to get us too early. Just need to keep hammering in the message.

The weekend before last (13th and 14th June), Laila was out in the suburbs with both sets of parents, so we had a lot of free time. I went to services on Friday evening, sashagee and I went out with lisekatevans and afschifler on Saturday night (after my long walk), and went to Midsommarfest with rubyleon1090 and her wife, though we spent most of it either at a bar or at a pizza place. And then sashagee spent the next feeling not so great even though she passed off her extra drinks onto me. But it was a great weekend! And it reminded me once again that I actually do really like pizza as long as it doesn't have a lot of sauce on it.

Just got back from a building event where they gave us all free ice cream. It was actually pretty nice, with a toppings bar nearby and a full-sized cone for free. Unlike the previous time I went to the ice cream popup on the south plaza (where they had disappointing gelato), this was extremely good soft serve. So good that it started melting immediately and I had to gulp it down before it just turned into goo. I do feel bad that the previous experience manager for the building seems to have been let go and they turned to An App but we have gotten more free food since we switched to The App. On the other hand, they no longer do online meditation on Thursdays, which is annoying. It's just not the same watching videos or listening to An App. The human element is why I made it a point to go to Mishkan's meditation group before the Plague Years.

The weather has been mostly lovely for the past week. It's currently 19°C, which is around what it's been the whole time. On the other hand, it's been pretty rainy, with multiple flood warnings and plenty of standing water. A couple days ago I took Laila out to splash in puddles and we ended up going to the park and I watched while she tried to clear off the water droplets from the slide. A passing worker commented how much he missed those days, which is a comment I get a lot when out with Laila. A couple days ago she gave sashagee and me a hug and said "You're the best!"

Alright, time to go home.

For most of yesterday sashagee wasn't feeling well, so I had a lot of free time. Around 4 p.m. I thought it'd be nice to go for a walk, so I put on some flip-flops, walked out the door, and headed for the north side of the lakeshore trail. I started walking, kept walking, kept walking, and, well:


It's something I've always wanted to do, to walk along the lakeshore on a warm summer evening, but there was never previously a good time. This weekend, Laila is at the grandparents and sashagee, so I finally had the time. I initially only planned to walk to Belmont, about half that distance there. But around Belmont I thought, "Oh, I could walk to Fullerton, it's only a few more blocks" and then when I got to Fullerton I could see the skyscrapers of downtown in the light of the setting sun and I thought, "...you know, those don't seem that far away. I bet I could make it there without taking too much time." And so I walked the entire way.

After I had been gone an hour and a half sashagee texted me asking if I had met up with someone and I was like "Nope! Still walking!"

I took the bus home and got back around 8:30 p.m. (the Red Line had a lot of weirdness since it's not running underground on weekends currently). sashagee was really worried that my feet would hurt the next day, but they don't. After I got back, we went out to a bar with lisekatevans and afschifler and afschifler was astonished I did it in flip-flops, but as I answered, feet are made for walking.

Maybe I'll do it again later this summer. I should get new flip-flops, though--I've nearly worn holes through my current ones.

Last night as I was prepping my breakfast for the next morning--getting the rice in the rice cooker to sit overnight, cooking the salmon, etc--I realized that I couldn't do my normal salad for lunch since we didn't have any lettuce or spinach or anything, since sashagee used it all last week to make a giant dinner salad to stop it the CSA greens from going bad like they had the previous year. So I opened up the work food app to check what the pop-up restaurant was going to be the next day to see if it was worth just ordering that, and I was happily surprised to see Teranga was listed. Terangais a Senegalese restaurant that's up by where we live and I've been meaning to go for a while, so this was the perfect opportunity.


Tilapia filet with peppers and onions, with a bit of spicy sauce, jollof rice, and an extra--fried plantains, which I hadn't originally ordered but when I got up there the guy told me that I got to pick and extra side. I mentioned that I lived nearby the actual restaurant and I'm glad they were there so I could try it, he gave me some spicy sauce, and it took it back to the AMA part of the building to eat.

It was delicious. The sides were actually the best part--the fried tilapia was tilapia, and as the culinary advice I've seen goes, tilapia "takes on the flavors of what it's served with" meaning it's tasteless. The spicy sauce helped a lot with that, though it was pretty spicy with a slow-heat spice. The jollof rice was flavorful and a bit spicy itself. I did notice that the Teranga menu had a lot of fish on it, though, so I'd love to try again at the actual restaurant. Definitely going again if they come back.

Did some training of a new employee today. We're working on a specific project that isn't really like the other projects--there's a lot of redundant data that we're just skipping past, so we had some time to chat. It turns out she watches anime...just only Solo Leveling and Kaijū No. 8. Not what I would have expected for a woman in her 30s. Solo Leveling has never interested me in the slightest but Kaijū No. 8 did look kind of neat. If only I had time to actually watch much of anything.

Congratulations, Laila!


It went pretty well, all things considered. There was a cute dance performance to Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" that Laila sadly did not get to participate in--we saw her just sitting in the audience and weren't sure why she wasn't on stage until we remembered that she had a fall risk and wasn't even allowed to climb stairs herself without someone holding her hand until the end of May, so dancing and spinning on stage is definitely something that the school wouldn't have let her do. She did okay watching the performance until the certificate ceremony started and she noticed us in the audience, then she wanted to come sit by us and started crying on stage. But she got her certificate and came over to us after. She had a little school bus toy that the bus driver must have given her in the morning.

For a little bit she was shy with her teachers, but she gave them all hugs before we left. Her teachers asked us if she was going to be at the same school the next year and we sadly had to tell them that she wouldn't, since we don't live in the school zone and we'd have to put her into the lottery and try to get her in. They tried to tell us to ask the principle for a special exception, but it's really nice to be able to walk Laila to school and have school be just a few minutes' walk away. And Laila did have a good time at her old school, but I'm glad she had such a good time at her new school for the short time she was there.

Now to Laila's first summer vacation!

Bonus: Two of Laila's classmates, Malachi Faust and Lottie Cornelius, should team up to fight crime.

Yesterday Laila went back to the doctor for her follow-up to her brain surgery after months of healing, and we have some good news from it, and some bad.

The Good

• Laila is cleared for doing flips and spins and other physical activity! That means she can go to the park again, which she's been really missing. sashagee sent me a video of Laila somersaulting in our living room and laughing--it's been months since she's been able to somersault without us stopping her. We're going to sign her back up for swimming lessons.

The Bad

• The doctor isn't sure that the tissue he was unable to remove surgically is benign, and Laila might require a second surgery to remove it. This would be laser surgery, so it's much less invasive, but still. We'll know more after her upcoming MRI and EEG later on in the summer. This might be why she's still having seizures.

Laila herself is doing fine, and later this week I'll take her to the park again. Not soon, though--today after work we're going to the farmer's market, and tomorrow she'll be at occupational therapy. But maybe Friday evening, she'll finally get to run around the park and climb on the equipment again. She can't wait.

I've been watching 真の仲間じゃないと勇者のパーティーを追い出されたので、辺境でスローライフすることにしました (shin no nakama ja nai to yūsha no pātī o oidasareta no de, henkyō de surō raifu suru koto ni shimashita, "Because I was banished from the hero's party for not being a true comrade, I've decided to live the slow life in the countryside", Eng: "Banished from the Hero's Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside") because it's not an isekai, but the background is very similar because they're both drawing from the same well.

In Banished, everyone in the world is born with a 加護 (kago), which Weblio defines as:

神仏が力で衆生を守り助けること, "The protection extended by the gods and the Buddha to all living things"

but the English subtitles translate as "Blessing." Now when I first heard that, I thought back to that passage in Tanakh:

"See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise skilful works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones for setting, and in carving of wood, to work in all manner of workmanship. And I, behold, I have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan; and in the hearts of all that are wise-hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded thee."
-Exodus 31:2-7

But it's not, it's literally RPG classes. You are Assigned Fighter At Birth and it makes you want to go punch things. Seriously, it's a plot point that if your 加護 relates to fighting and martial prowess your personality changes so you become more likely to reach for fighting as the first tool to solve problems.

Now, there are some cool worldbuilding side effects that result from this. We're told that 加護 are assigned completely randomly with no regard for the parents' 加護 or the child's station in life, so the son of a farmhand can get the 加護 of the shōgun and the daughter of a woodcutter can get the 加護 of the archmage, but by the same token, a princess can get the 加護 of the thief. It makes me wonder how hereditary nobility even developed in this world--surely they'd have some kind of caste system that your 加護 sorted you into, right?

Well, maybe that comes into play late in the story, because I'm not that far in, but at the point I'm at we've learned that the reason the main character left the hero's party is because his 加護 is the 導き手 (michibikite, "Guide"), and you might think, "Oh, so he's good at tracking or wilderness survival or-" but you're wrong. The effects of that 加護 are basically "You gain +30 levels when it manifests but you can't gain any extra XP", so his 加護 is literally that he's the overpowered tutorial character you get in the early parts of the RPG but who eventually leaves your party, either because the story makes them or because their stat growth is low enough that relying on them too much will eventually handicap you.

And that's why I'm writing this post, because even in a pure fantasy series it's just based on video game tropes. Anime like KonoSuba literally have people carry their character sheets in their pockets and Banished isn't that bad, but it still has a character that people in the discussion I read kept referring to with a Fire Emblem term because it's such a well-known character type over there. And I think the reason for all of this is that people don't read the original sources. The author of Banished did not grow up reading classic fantasy, they grew up playing video games and reading books inspired by video games (specifically Dragon Quest and games based on it), the same way that modern D&D designers did not grow up reading Fritz Leiber and C.L. Moore and Robert E. Howard, they grew up playing D&D and reading D&D books and modern D&D reflects that--it's based on D&D, not on pulp adventurers. The biggest problem I have with isekai series--and maybe with Banished, we'll see--is that they'll often set up a really cool background and premise and then go absolutely nowhere with it in favor of relying on standard video game tropes. Even Frieren, as good as it is with its exploration of mortality, is still like, "Oh, we need a priest so we have a healer" at one point.

And it's easy to look at the development of fantasy in Japan and say, well, that's just how it is, since they got their idea of elf-dwarf-orc fantasy not from The Lord of the Rings, but from Dragon Quest, which got it from Wizardry. But there are plenty of old Japanese fantasy series like Escaflowne or Magic Knights Rayearth that don't rely on video game logic. Hell, Record of Lodoss War is literally based on a Sword World tabletop campaign and it still doesn't have characters talking about their classes and levels! This is a modern development and while I occasionally look at one of these series and think about playing a game in that setting--I'll admit, Banished reminds me a lot of how Earthdawn took a lot of D&D tropes like classes and monster-filled dungeons and levels and memorizing spells and worked an explanation of them into the world--but I'm getting a little tired of this popping up everywhere. We'll see if Banished does anything interesting with it as the series goes on.

If anyone has any recommendations for recent Japanese fantasy that's not based on That Summer the Writer Spent Playing Dragon Quest III (or worse, reading books by people who spent a summer playing Dragon Quest III) let me know.

Happy birthday Laila!


The last time I wrote we were nervously looking at Laila's upcoming surgery. Now the surgery is over and so is almost all of the recovery. The week after next, she'll be going into the doctor for a checkup to see if she's ready to go back to normal physical activity again. I hope so, because she's ready to spin and flip and go to the park. She's been ready for months. She feels fine and while she intellectually understands the restrictions, which I'm honestly pretty impressed with--for me at least, she's never thrown a tantrum or complained when I asked her not to spin in place or do a somersault or told her we can't go to the park, and she always points to her head and says "it's gotta heal"--I can tell she doesn't really understand the reason for them.

I do regret to inform you all that she's brainrotted, though. Not six-seven, but she has a particular song she'll random want to listen to. Over, and over, and over. I can't find a YouTube video but it's the last track on this Yoto card. At random moments she'll see her Yoto and say, "Yoto!" then turn to one of and say, "Yoooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuu put on Bounce To the Beats" (which is a lyric from the song). She's branched out a bit lately and started listening to Frog and Toad stories and Raffi songs, but "Rhythm of Happiness" is still her #1.

Along with her love of music, she's started singing songs in earnest. She's also started playing ball, though until we're medically cleared it's just rolling it across the floor. She'll come sit over near me and say "Roll" and try to play ball with me even while I'm at work. We also had a fun time sliding her Ariel doll across the floor, that sent her into fits of laughter.

I have no idea how school is going. She's having her IEP served at a different (but still local) school, but we get no updates from the teachers and when we heard Laila muttering "Go back to the classroom" to herself, we emailed and asked if she was running out of the room. They emailed back and told us no, but there was another kid who was allowed to go outside to calm down occasionally and maybe that's what she had overheard. To our questions about how she was doing, they just say she's doing great. Her language is getting better and we can have simple conversations now but she still won't tell us much about what she's thinking and she won't tell us what happens at school. Not really unusual for kids, though--we've heard other parents tell us the same thing about their kids.

The sad part is fortunately only sad for us, our parents, and that's that Laila has been waking up at 5:30 or 5:45 a.m. and coming in to wake us up. She used to do this when she was at the grandparents' house but would wake up more like 6:30 a.m. to 7 a.m. with us, and now it's fully shifted to the later time. We really need to start teaching her to play in her room and wait a little bit, until 6:30 a.m. or so. sashagee told me about some clock for children that used shapes and colors to help teach them when to get up and how long they have. I'm sure it'll take a long while to sink in--we still have to remind her to wash her hands, even though she's mastered the other aspects of using the bathroom--but we won't know until we try.

We haven't really had a party yet, just something small with family. We're going to have a bigger party next month and invite some of the people from her class at her old school. Right now, sashagee is thinking a roller rink party, but that's contingent on Laila being cleared for physical activity. We'll know more later. Laila already really likes the idea of roller skating and sashagee is excited to do it with her.

What other ways will she grow and change?

Ruin has come to our family.

...which is to say, Laila brought home a sickness from preschool. On Thursday poor Laila was crying because her tummy hurt so much and at sashagee's urging we took her to the doctor. They did an X-ray and found no blockage or anything concerning, and she was still eating normally and using the bathroom, so they told us to keep an eye on her and come back if she got worse. She did not, but we did--sashagee spent most of Saturday hunched over the toilet and I spent a big chunk of last night laying on the floor with a cold hand towel on my forehead trying to prevent the same thing.

Currently at work but neither sashagee nor I have gotten much sleep in the last couple of days. Hopefully nothing too complex comes up.

I have no idea how Sweetgreen makes money, and looking online the answer is "they don't." Still, I have the app and they keep shoving deals at me offering like 33% off the price of a salad. People complain that the salads are smaller and overpriced, but at $10 it's the same price as going to the work cafeteria here for food that's comparable, so why not? I can set the app to display dairy and meat separately so I know that I'm getting one or the other, and the Power Greens Bowl had only meat, so I got one. I've seen people complaining about salads getting smaller but the whole bowl was full for me.

Maybe that's because of the location, though. I went to the one on State and there were two production lines, one for the people coming to the counter and one for all the DoorDash and take-out orders, so I went up to the latter one just as my salad was finished and walked it back to the office. I had passed a dozen people coming the other way with salads in their hands on my five-minute walk.

It was pretty good for a $10 salad from a slop bowl chain.

...and it was pretty odd.

So I usually go to Mishkan, which doesn't have a building (the word משכן is usually translated as "tabernacle"), but this Shabbat I decided I would try out Anshe Emet, a long-established Conservative synagogue in Uptown. Mishkan partners with Anshe Emet for some major events like Simḥat Torah, so I know where the building is and I've been there before, I was curious what Shabbat services for like.

Well, the first bit of oddness is that they've remodeled the building. I went around to where the entrance used to be and was just met with a brick wall and a sign saying the entrance is on Grace. Okay, huh, so I go over on Grace and the entrance is next to the parking lot, a small locked door that I have to ask the lot attendant to buzz open for me. The whole place is surrounded by a wall now, with all the ways in guarded. I'm reminded of all these posts online of Jews who grow up in a Jewish environment and finally go to a church when a friend invites them or for some interfaith event and they're like, "Wait, you can just...walk in? There aren't any security guards?" (and vice versa for Christians, who definitely don't have to go through a metal detector when going to Easter services).

The actual service was nice, though shorter than I'm used to--Mishkan is about an hour forty-five minutes on Shabbat evening and Anshe Emet was an hour, so I had the classic experience of "Wait, we're at X already?" When I arrived ten minutes after services started they were already at Leḥa Dodi. I only got through a couple prayers from the Amidah before they moved on! They did do the Haskiveinu, which Mishkan usually skips, though. And on the other hand, there were three people becoming B'nei Mitzvah the next day, so maybe things were different.

They definitely seemed different after the services were over, since each of the families had their own private dinner for them and the relatives. The president of the Rabbinical Assembly was also in attendance, so there was a separate dinner with him. I briefly peered into the room labeled Oneg, and I saw two standing tables set up and most of the floor empty with basically no one in there. Since even after the rabbi had suggested people talk to someone they hadn't come to services with, no one had talked to me--to be fair, I didn't try to talk to anyone either--I just looked into the Oneg room and then left and walked the miles home, like I used to on warm nights after Shabbat services in 2019.

I do want to go back at least one more time, since it did seem an atypical Shabbat. But I had heard that Anshe Emet was a bit insular--there are a lot of multigenerational member families there--and this didn't really do much to dispel that impression.

At long last, we have a new washer/dryer.

This was a month-long saga as we kept having to reschedule. The delivery people misread our address and didn't send enough people--our building uses European-style addressing so we're on a higher floor than it otherwise seems--or there was roof work that we were only warned about day before that blocked the entire alley, or our neighbors selling their condos and a bunch of stuff being stored on on the back and blocking the stairway. But after multiple reschedulings it's all finally handled, our old washer and dryer are hauled away, and a new one is here.

We got a stacked combo unit but it was very important to sashagee that we have a top-loading washer because she was sick of trying to keep a side-loader clean. The drum of the new one is larger than the old one by at least a third, not even counting that you can't load a side-loader as much because it uses less water than a top-loader.

Unfortunately, though I haven't told sashagee this, I think every other part of the new setup is a downgrade. There's no light inside the dryer drum so if I want to turn it on at night I have to turn on the washer closet light, which shines directly into the bedroom; it's louder; the display and controls are analog instead of digital; there's no way to pause and resume the dryer cycle; and it's taller than our previous machine so we had to take down the shelves on the top of that closet and now there's nowhere to put our laundry supplies up there. But, we're stuck with it now so I'll have to get used to it.