Summer Turns to Spring

Yesterday was the first day of spring. It's a pleasant relief to be done with summer and moving into spring. The temperatures in California have dropped noticeably. Locally today the high is 79° F (26° C), quite a relief from the highs around 90 (32C) we had up through Friday. Even so it's still warm for the start of spring.

...Oh, are you wondering "Where TF does spring come after summer?" Yeah. It was crazy hot last week. Summer-y temperatures in winter. The heat broke after Friday. Yesterday and today have been merely pleasantly warm... though still 16° above the average for this time of year here.

And what's this I see at the far end of the 10-day forecast now? A 50% chance of rain on the 31st. I guess when summer becomes spring, it only makes sense for winter to follow.

D&D: Starting a New Adventure

After wrapping up my D&D adventure, The Collector's Menagerie. the group said they liked the game and the characters and wanted to adventure more. So I put together an encore adventure. This is what happens next, after capturing— and, since it's D&D, by "capturing" we mean killing— the escaped monsters in the dead guy's mansion.

The monsters escaped after the old guy passed away from natural causes. His household staff did not know how to work his magical talisman to recapture the monsters— or were unable to get to it, as it was guarded by a shape-shifting spider with giant spider minions. And the staff tried to keep the situation hush-hush, avoiding calling for the city guard's brute squad as they were trying to preserve things for the decedent's heirs to arrive from the capital city, Lentria, hundreds of miles away.



The heirs, Fumio and Seigo Asano, arrived a day or two later, landing via teleportation magic. They spent a week in Durendal settling affairs. Among their to-dos was thanking the heroes for pacifying their father's monsters. The heroes responded to the invitation to the mansion expecting... well, a heroes' welcome, but found instead the soirée was mostly about two middle-aged men fêting themselves.

In short, the heirs were assholes. But the group couldn't say much against them because they're lordlings. They introduced themselves not with their late father's surname, Asano, but with their grandmother's married name, Sujin. That perked up the ears of a few in the group as Sujin is the name of defeated house.

House Berenar, the ruling clan of the realm, defeated House Sujin 60+ years ago. The elder Asano, related only via marriage, disavowed the name to be permitted to live. Yet now these two were permitted to take the name Sujin in the emperor's city?

Otonio, a member of an actual noble family, House Tashara, a ruling coalition partner with House Berenar, was perplexed. Ryuu-Han, himself secretly descended of a defunct noble lineage, House Hannam, was livid. 106 years ago Sujin conspired to take down Hannam and killed most of his family. What did it mean that these self-important jerks are toddling around beneath the emperor's nose using that name?

Ah, but enough of the history lesson. There was soon a business proposition for the heroes. The brothers wanted the contents of their father's mansion transported to their homes in Lentria. As their father collected exotic items (as well as monsters) for 50+ years there was quite a bit to move— more than could be teleported with the help of the cleric of the God of Trade the brothers brib—donated money to to help. The goods would need to be transported via wagon caravan. And with such an extensive exotic collection moving, every thief in the city was sniffing around. The heroes would help guard the caravan.



Guarding the caravan meant coming face-to-face with some of the group's old nemeses. For example, they had to guard the harpsichord. Fortunately it wasn't the harpsichord with lots of eyes that tried to kill them. It was the actual harpsichord, the one the mimic was... mimicking. Though they kept staring at it sideways to make sure!