Welcome! Below are links to things I've made or just enjoy.
Umbral Gaze 6: The Monoeye
Arriving back in Waterdeep after a hectic day at work, our heroes stop at Laeral’s home to discharge their mission’s final obligation; Cisconian’s corpse goes through the sallyport. A note arrives late that evening by household courier— Lord Silverhand is pleased, her words carrying a tinge of sympathy for the party’s predicament. Ambling to their rooms through narrow streets, cloaks cinched and jackets buttoned against spates of dusk-born drizzle that force vermin and adventurer alike to dart from overhang to lamp-lit awning in trying to keep dry, the party are surprised to find Tasha— dressed in the robes and pointed hat of her profession— lurking in the lobby to accost them.
Umbral Gaze 5: The Deathrun
Clementine, Carmal, Gottlob, Louisa, and Almuth find themselves again in the sheltered forecourt of the Open Lord’s official mansion as evening dews gather on waxy leaves of the garden from which afternoon’s tepid luminance has fled. The mistress of the house stands framed in the way of a flung-open door, her figure a silhouette as eyes try to adjust to the spill of light that issues from bracketed lamps in the foyer. She rests one hand on her hip and thrusts the other outward in accusation; she grips a fine chain at the end of which a thurible1 bounces with her gesture. Swirls of stormy reproach and half-mitigated aggression color the Open Lord’s expression, and our brave heroes feel a tickle of apprehension creep up the backs of their necks as Laeral delivers a beating, smooth and measured as always.
Umbral Gaze 3: The Cyclone
The island-city of Ruathym lies midway between Waterdeep and the first expanses of open ocean that reach to the west. It is home to a Northlander people, a company of pillagers and thieves who raid the near Coast in accordance with what they see as their natural right and dominion.
Umbral Gaze 2: The Witness
Earlier this morning, Almuth, Carmal, Gottlob, and Warren met Laeral Silverhand in her courtyard as Clementine set out to retrieve the party’s missing1 wizard. The Open Lord teleported our heroes onto the slopes of Fourthpeak Mountain, a hulking vertebra of the world’s frozen Spine lying at Faerûn’s northernmost extent. Deposited among cliffs and gulleys, Gottlob felt his mountain-goat instincts kick in, right home, and Warren too breathed a contented sigh at what were, to him, familiar surroundings. From those stony slopes, the group hiked a mere half-hour to the proud and ancient mining city of Mithril Hall deep under the mountain, where they kept a rendezvous with the dwarven Harper “Brugrock”— or “Toolshed, as Warren calls him and which he seems to prefer. Following their Harper guide’s briefing, and after breakfasting on some local cuisine, the group struck out from civilization en route to the Underdark, intent to find and quell the Witness in its lair.
Umbral Gaze 1
Two years have passed since our intrepid adventurers fought and defeated a five-necked terror near Venron in what villagers now call “the hydra incident” and those less informed know as “that thing at M. Pteey Lake”.
Umbral Gaze ½
It’s early morning; our intrepid adventurers are just beginning their day. They awake in Venron, a small inland village equilatitudinal to the southern Sword Coast, where, for one reason or another, each wound up stopping for rest the night before.
Woes of Gottlob Graal: Umbral Gaze 0
Gottlob Graal is a level-{five,ten} Watchers’ Oath paladin, a satyr, bent on avoiding a faery card sharp he pissed off years ago during a regular visit to the Feywild. He fled that plane and his native Chondalwood for Waterdeep, half a continent away, where he took up defenses against any and all extraplanar pursuers. At first he just wanted to avoid his creditor, but later, finding purpose and fraternity in the city as never before, the satyr began to feel at home. A jovial fellow, Gottlob is energetic in his late middle-age, but finds the reckless carousing of his youth a bit beyond him now.
Derived Implementations
Messing around with OCaml a bit a while ago, I discovered a nice concrete way to show the relationship between functors, applicatives, and monads as they’re understood in functional programming. The OCaml functor implementations are basically proof terms for the implications that exist between those classes.
Reading Order of The Culture
I’ve generated a reading order dependency graph for books in Iain M. Banks’ unsurpassable Sci-Fi classic, the Culture series. The idea is that if there’s an arrow from book A to book B, then to get the most possible enjoyment from either A or B, A should be read before B.
Typical Coronation Chicken
This recipe is adapted from the original recipe used for Queen Elizabeth’s “Coronation Luncheon” in 1953 and faithfully incorporates elements of several variations served around London in 2023. Most of the changes I’ve made are to ratios, but I’ve also included more fruits, omitted watercress, and used a mayonnaise/milk combination in place of whipping cream.
Unassailable Slow-Cooker Chili
This is a simple recipe of beans, tomato, and ground beef, refined across generations into the local maximum you see before you.
Amaretti (Chewy Almond Cookies)
These are genuinely excellent and surprisingly undemanding to make, particularly if you don’t beat the egg whites by hand. From start to finish, the process should take less than an hour.