October in Review

Gaming
My Wednesday night 5e game has continued to be a blast. They’ve been dealing with a town besieged by a small hobgoblin army. It wasn’t big enough to take the town, and the party managed to take out about a third of the town with some magical assistance in the form of the bard’s invisibility spell, and the warlock’s ability to telepathically speak with anyone. They used this to drive a hill giant kinda nuts, and in the confusion dropped some flaming oil from the paladin’s giant bat, and then an assault from the town’s small unit of knights, assisted by the adventurers. Things were looking as the hobgoblins pulled away from the town, but a day or two later, a flight of a dozen wyverns being flown by hobgoblins was spotted. Commandeering the town’s half dozen hippogriff’s and flew to intercept…

It turns out that even split into 2 waves, a dozen wyverns is a nasty thing to toss against 6th level characters. With a bit of luck, and a lot of good use of their abilities, they managed to defeat them all, and in the process took 2 of the wyverns for themselves. They’re now set to explore their magical hat…

Meanwhile in Stonehell, the party is continuing their assault against the hobgoblins, though now they’re mostly exploring empty chambers, as most of them have fled or been killed already.

I also got in a game of Lord of the Rings SBG at ReaperCon. Fun game, though it took a bit to remember the rules, and the guy running the scenario was the dad of the guy who wrote it, and wasn’t as up on the rules as he could have been.

Painting/Hobbying
Oh boy… With ReaperCon in the middle of the month I was painting like a mad-man! Only some of it was actually for ReaperCon, while some was to distract me from Halloween. I did not finish my goal of getting the diorama done, and instead switched gears. I ended up painting the King in Yellow, which won a bronze. Also got some good feedback on both my OSL and faces.

In addition to the King in Yellow, I also painted up 2 grave hounds, a bat, cat, and crow familiars, and the the snow leopard and hawk from the Animal Companions set. I’m also in the middle of painting the pumpkin-headed Halloween Knight figure (almost done), Lady Sith (converted from a Bones Paladin), the 4 Paranormal Investigators from Crooked Dice, and a Bones Eye-Beast.

I also completely reorganized my paints after ReaperCon. Sadly they now span 3 full paint cases.



Why is that sad? Mostly it’s just more difficult to get to various paints as I switch colors. Otherwise, it’s awesome! Definitely need to clear out some of my doubles… and triples…


Reading
Busy month with a lot of short stories!

The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers - Reading this because I was painting the King in Yellow. Most definitely Cthulhu adjacent, at least some of the stories in this collection. There’s also a war story and a couple of romance type stories which… don’t actually seem to fit in with the horror/ghost tales centered around, or at least mentioning the King in Yellow. It made reading them a somewhat disjointed experience. This collection would probably not have been published today given that.

Unnatural Creatures edited by Neil Gaiman – You know when Gaiman puts together a collection of stories about unnatural creatures written by some very interesting authors, you’re going to get a weird collection of stories. Ranging from traditional fantasy to science-fiction, with a smattering of contemporary fantastic fiction, it’s an odd but enjoyable collection. Bit of a mixed bag, but enjoyable.

Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe – Coming of age story that I would have loved when I was 10-12.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Not sure I’d ever read the original, so I did. Fun ghost story, and well worth having taken the time to read it.

Terribly Twisted Tales edited by Jean Rabe & Martin H. Greenberg – As with most short story collections, this one is a mixed bag. I enjoyed most of the twists on classic tales, but some were done better than others. I think the snow white story was my favorite.

Currently Reading: The Valley of the Ten Crescents series (books 1-3) Another one of those random things on my Kindle.

Goals for November:
Finish off the minis listed above
Put together a small “Paint at work during lunch” kit. Then actually paint during lunch!
Practice things learned at ReaperCon
Read Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago