The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has released a huge number of images to the public domain, for use by the public.I don't have any use for them myself right now, but others might, and maybe in the future I will. It will be good to have available in that event.

Meanwhile, here's an interesting question as yet unanswered: a request for a timeline of when people ceased taking particular items for repairs and started outright replacing them instead. Suspect there is no clean answer on that. Don't know why I'm sharing that either, but apparently I felt like doing so.

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A lot of the time I suspect I am not actually faceblind, that it is actually just some label I latched on to when in fact I recognise people just fine. And then there are times when this post gets predictable.

I've been watching Midsomer Murders recently, as it airs on television. From looking at the show's Wikipedia page I knew that later on the lead actor had resigned from the show. Not until tonight and looking at the season listings in detail did I realise the two seasons I've been watching in parallel actually spanned that changeover period.

Oops.

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Filter: chipper

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About a week ago I was listening to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe episode wherein they interview Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain about their podcast, Astronomy Cast.

I only relatively recently got access to enough bandwidth to make listening to podcasts practical, have been catching up as far back as the various feeds I've subscribed to will let me, so this particular episode was from the first half of 2007.

It was quite disappointing from my perspective six years in their future to listen to them rattling off lists of future space missions which would hopefully be able to better characterise exoplanets and say of each "Nope". All cancelled or delayed or otherwise have not eventuated.

On the other hand, no mentioned that I noticed of NASA's Kepler mission, which has produced amazingly fantastic results over the past few years. So not all bad news.

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Excel Saga Volume 1, Mission 6: The Untreatable Unbeknownst Disease by Rikdo Koshi

Originally published 1997 by Shonengahosha Co.. Ltd; this edition July 2003, September 2003 printing

Publisher: Viz

PG

(D, V, L)

Drug References {G}

Cartoon Violence {G} {Excel being dropped down the trap-door again}

Coarse Language {PG} {nothing stronger than 'bastard'}

Representations

Gender:

Excel and Hyatt continue to talk to each other. Male characters balanced out with Sumiyoshi and Watanabe and, of course, Il Palazzo.

Sex:

No role in this piece

Race & Ethnicity:

As per usual, an all-Japanese affair.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Plot revolves around Hyatt and Watanabe each being sick and bedridden. By this point, Excel is making jokes about Hyatt's close relationship with death.

Notes

Felt like the series is getting its feet here. Maybe because this is the first chapter without any character introductions, so we can focus on the humour: Hyatt, whose existence is as precarious as ever, Il Palazzo's capricious callousness, Excel's insecurity about her favour with Il Palazzo, and suspicion of everything outside ACROSS, plus Watanabe's suffering under Sumiyoshi's folk remedies. Plus, Excel breaking the fourth wall a bit "let's see... I twirled twice about the tobacconist at Second... after having the flashback, I spun thrice more for joy upon the pedestrian bridge..." while trying to remember where she might have dropped some money - said flashback being where we learned she even had the money.

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Excel Saga Volume 1, Mission 5: Those That Burn, Those That Get Burned by Rikdo Koshi

Originally published 1997 by Shonengahosha Co.. Ltd; this edition July 2003, September 2003 printing

Publisher: Viz

PG

(V, L)

Cartoon Violence {G} {Excel is repeatedly dropped into the pit by Il Palazzo (on the second occasion, being attacked(?) by cave crickets).}

Coarse Language {PG} {A pun; a couple of 'sad bastards' exchanged in argument between Sumiyoshi and Iwata}

Representations

Gender:

Bechdel pass, with Excel and Hyatt discussing their looting of the neighbourhood trash and the subsequent fire.

Sex:

Watanabe's ongoing infatuation with Hyatt, leading him to abandon his own salvage to her. Hyatt appears to remain oblivious to his interest.

Race & Ethnicity:

Sumiyoshi speaks with an accent from the Okayama area (and without speech bubbles) (rendered in translation with a northern England accent).

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Nothing particular.

Notes

Title page features Excel in a parody Nazi uniform, with a blushing romantic expression, kicking the Earth behind her. Just so we're under no illusions here.

Excel accidentally starts a fire, which she and Hyatt then exacerbate through their cluelessness. I didn't quite feel right flagging this as violence, since it is accidental (although Excel claims it was arson directed at them) and no one was hurt.

Felt like a short episode, serving to introduce Sumiyoshi; mainly we learn that he is a bit technically savvier than Watanabe, and maybe poorer.

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Angband V4
Was going to skip this one the first time around, but changed my mind.

V4 is a fork of Angband by the devteam of Angband themselves. Over the years they've copped a lot of flack from the player community for various changes they've introduced to Angband - many seem to believe that Angband is and ought to be an essentially complete game, which should be receiving maintenance and bugfixing, rather than development. Or disagreements about the pace or style of changes introduced.

The idea behind V4 is that in this branch the devs can trial more radical changes which, once they are polished and perhaps come to be well-regarded, might get ported to the main game, 'vanilla' Angband (also known as V (this terminology greatly pre-dates V4 itself)).

One change from Angband that I was playing previously (but which is in the latest official releases also), is the inclusion of a high quality tileset provided by Shockbolt as the default presentation, rather than ASCII. Wanting to surprise people with that is one reason I intended to skip V4 for the time being, before coming to what passes for my senses.

There is a handy text file available from the new game menu which explains the main changes in V4 from Vanilla Angband, most of which boil down to object generation: As best I can tell, objects have been streamlined so that there are now the basic object types and then variations magical or otherwise are applied to these as modifiers. E.g. there are no longer the objects 'fur cloak, mithril plate, blade of chaos'. Instead there are cloaks, plate armours and swords which might be generated with the corresponding affixes and thus possess the appropriately modified properties. This applies all the way from the very mundane items to the very powerful, but not to artifacts, which are the same as ever. More or less.

Item identification has been adjusted so that player characters, once they learn about properties on a particular item, will recognise those same properties on other items without having to go through the identification rigamarole again. Referred to as 'rune based' ID.

Combat revisions have been made in an attempt to force decisions to be more interesting - players now have 'finesse' and 'prowess' skills, and weapons have 'balance' and 'heft' qualities, which work best with particular combinations of these skills. Monsters now have an 'evasion' rating which affects how well they evade attacks, and instead of its former role in evasion, monster armour now affects how much damage a monster will absorb from hits.

Nope, can't describe those any better. Haven't played it yet. Let's find out!

Looks like our first victim will be a female hobbit mage, named Ezelin. All details randomly selected.

In the town, Ezelin buys a cloak from the general store before heading down into Angband. It may be foolhardy, but it seems easier to learn item changes by exploring instead of shopping. Apart from her new cloak, Ezelin carries only a book of basic magic spells, three rations of food, a scroll of Word of Recall, three wooden torches, and a dagger.

Level 1: This seems a quiet, peaceful place.

Here we learn that as an incentive to exploration, level feelings have been split. Rather than appearing all at once when you enter a new level, we first get a sense of how dangerous the level is, and only after exploring for a bit do you get the part of the feeling for how valuable the treasure is.

The first life Ezelin encounters in Angband is a white icky thing. It sleeps in the corner of a room and, seeing no need to disturb it, Ezelin leaves it be. The second is a grey mushroom patch. Unsure in the dim torchlight exactly how close her path comes by, Ezelin accidentally steps beside it.

The grey mushrooms release spores reflexively, confusing Ezelin. She attempts to retrace her steps, but in her confusion walks into a wall instead. The grey mushroom patch continues releasing its spores. Ezelin almost immediately dies from the toxic effect they have on her body.

Hobbit mages. They're vastly more fragile than Half-Troll Priests. Although there has been a concerted effort to make the game harder since version 3.2.0, I don't think that had anything to do with Ezelin's untimely end. Possibly that the radius of torchlight has been reduced, leading to her fatal misstep.

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Excel Saga Volume 1, Mission 4: Everyday Living Permissible by Rikdo Koshi

Originally published 1997 by Shonengahosha Co.. Ltd, Tokyo; this edition July 2003, September 2003 printing

Publisher: Viz 

M

(L, V, D)

Coarse Language (PG)

Violence (M) {This time Watanabe is doing the off-screen beating up of Iwata, although Iwata gets his revenge}

Drug Use (M) {Once again Hyatt getting buzzed from an assortment of pills}

Representations

Gender:

I think this is the first story in Excel Saga to actually pass the Bechdel Test, as Excel and Hyatt are finally in the same place and talking to each other. Gender representation is split about 50/50 in this one.

Sex:

Watanabe gives Hyatt some of his excess stuff, possibly because of his interest in her.

Race & Ethnicity:

Back to an all-Japanese affair.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

We also find out Hyatt's eyesight is quite bad.

Notes

Almost a single-room story. Excel and Hyatt spend the entire time in the flat they now share. The rest is Watanabe and Iwata's interactions in two adjacent flats and just outside. I suppose it is a further characterisation sort of episode.

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After much delay, I finally bought myself my promised post-semester reward in the form of first-person puzzle game Portal 2, during the holiday sales on Steam. Also bought a copy of that and the first Portal as gifts for Ami.

So those have been most of what I have been playing for the past few weeks. I played through the first Portal game a couple of times previously after finally getting hold of it. Since then, I've been unable to play it since 2009 on account of running Ubuntu for that laptop period. Now that I have a Windows computer again, Valve has released a version of Steam for Linux so I would have been able to play Portal again anyway, probably.

Sooo. I finished Portal again, taking rather more time than it ought to take, on account of trying to get some of the achievements on offer for it. Mainly the ones for detaching cameras from the walls and finding and taking radios to discoverable locations. I wanted to try and finish all the advanced test chambers before playing the sequel which, as the name suggests, are versions of the puzzles from the main game which have been made more difficult. But, because they are indeed much more difficult, by the time I got up to the last I realised it would take possibly quite a long time. And I wanted to finish the single-player campaign in Portal 2 prior to playing the co-op mode with Ami, so for now Advanced Testchamber 18 remains undefeated by me.

First thing I noticed about Portal 2 is how much improved the graphics are. And, the first Portal was still one of the most recent and graphically advanced games I had played prior to its sequel, so this was very impressive to me. Also helped that the first environments you go through are also the beginning of the original Portal game, so you get to see directly how much the look of the game has been improved.

Overall it feels like a lot of work has been done and lessons learned in the meanwhile to making games more playable and more fun. The tumbling as Chell emerges from portals in various origins has been taken out, making it vastly easier to navigate situations where the player needs to re-position portals on the fly. The display has also been cleaned up a lot and even though I already knew the controls from the previous game, the on-screen guide to the controls at the beginning was still nice to look at. Audio cues have been added for interaction with the various puzzle pieces (the different gels, at least) which greatly simplifies interacting with them and knowing when you are under the effect of their various properties. I might be mistaken or misremembering things too, but I think using objects has been simplified also.

There was a lot more story and several more characters than in the first game. Story was a lot of fun, very amusingly driven by the character interactions, although the player is more of a bystander since the player character Chell is mute throughout the game and she acts only through the game being played. I ended up lingering a lot in various parts of the game just because it was fun to hear the various characters monologuing and I wanted to find out what else they might say.

As much fun as the story is for Portal 2 in itself, I was disappointed a bit by it in relation to the previous game. Mainly, that Portal 2 takes the events of the previous game at face value, whereas I had thought a less literal interpretation made better sense of events. But now that interpretation has been canned, which in my eyes diminishes GLaDOS and the entire scenario a bit. Also a little disappointed that where the first game had a 99% female cast, all but one of the new additions are male.

The first Portal game was already pretty good at it, but I think the designers have learned a lot about teaching players how to play as they play, getting skills learned, developed and applied. I am looking forward to playing through with the developer commentary on.

Although, maybe because of that, I was also disappointed the puzzles weren't harder. There were a few different 'testing track' sequences in the game, at the end of which some dramatic event would happen and you would be forced to begin a new track designed by a different character, and using new skills. I tended to only feel much engaged with the puzzle-solving toward the end of each of these, and then it was over too quickly. Maybe the advanced versions of the chambers will be more interesting, or maybe I was too distracted at the time to really appreciate the puzzles.

Probably, going to play through both games again in the relatively near future. Plus there are still the co-operative maps to try, and the Perpetual Testing Initiative, which makes for easy access to user-created maps. Am looking forward to those.

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Filter: happy

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Got some good news. Ultrasound collected earlier this week, no abnormalities found. Took the results to my GP and he stil believes it is something inconsequential, such as a burst blood vessel, no further investigation needed. I am still a bit unsure about, e.g., if it happens again, do I pursue investigation again? I suspect it would not be best to presume innocence of similar symptoms to a previously innocent occurrence. But still, perfectly normal thing which occasionally happens to folk and does not signify serious health issue, I am told.

Going to hope that is indeed the case.

Had an appointment with my endo in the middle of the week (told him about the bleeding issue, and will fax him a copy of my ultrasound results). In the waiting room I was approached by another trans woman, who I think wanted to offer me support and transition advice, and gave me her email address. I am feeling cautiously optimistic. It would be helpful to have an ally in this city, someone I can maybe get feedback or encouragement from. I was feeling especially fragile that day, and trying not to cry, so maybe that showed.

Tonight, I am feeling upset and hurt. Tried to make some caramel cream omelettes for everyone tonight, which requires setting the frying pan under the grill a couple of times (once to set the omelette itself, once to set the cream and caramelise the sugar). I hadn't been able to find any other pan of the right size, but when my mother saw what I was doing she insisted the handle would melt. I had made a few similar omelettes by this method previously, according to their recipes, and not had any trouble previously, but maybe she was right. We could not find any other suitable tool to cook the omelette with, so I put what I could back away and threw out the uncooked egg mixture and partially cooked omelette because I could not think what else to do with that and did not want to leave raw egg laying around.

Afterward my mother came into my room and yelled at me that I am a waster of food.

Since I have to get my HRT refilled tomorrow, I will also purchase a new carton of eggs (we had only seven left). I have also removed all of the ingredients for future cooking that I placed on the shopping list; will buy those tomorrow afternoon also. I was only putting what I needed to cook with on the family shopping list anyway at my mother's insistence. I am hurt, but at least I will not be further accused of wasting other people's food. I'd buy a new skillet with a metal handle so it can be safely used under the grill also, but my offers to buy a spice rack or electronic scale for the kitchen have already been vetoed on grounds of not having space for them.

On the bright side, my sister appreciated the birthday gifts I got for her, and Pazi helped me sort through my clothes to prune them of those that don't fit or otherwise suit me. That's a bit better, those are good things.

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Excel Saga Volume 1, Mission 3: Today and Tomorrow for Encounters by Rikdo Koshi

Originally published 1997 by Shonengahosha Co.. Ltd, Tokyo; this edition July 2003, September 2003 printing

Publisher: Viz 

MA15+

(D, V, L, S, H)

Drug Use (MA15+) {anything lower is "drug use should be justified by context". in this case Hyatt was apparently dead for three hours, revived, and injected herself with something that gave her such a rush she lay on the floor twitching for a while afterward. she is also seen later getting buzzed on a large supply of various pills. if this falls within the realm of 'justified by context' then I accuse that term of vacuity in the context of these ratings. really I think this category is made less interesting by the lack of nuance available, even after I have tried adding some. on the other hand, if I am keeping the rating for violence a bit lower than otherwise it would be because it is played for comedy and no persistent injuries are sustained...}

Violence (M) {Excel sets off some explosions and uses the other prisoners in the immigrant detention centre as sacrificial decoys. the guards say things like "Fire at will" and joke about breaking restrictions on the degree of force they are permitted to use, but the actual violence happens off-screen. Excel is attacked by Shinto archers after stealing their horse. Iwata beats up Watanabe off-screen again.}

Coarse Language (PG) {just the occasional 'bastard' and 'hell'}

Sexual References (G) {Watanabe's infatuation with Hyatt begins, implied by the panel focusing on her chest from his gaze, which casts his friendly actions toward her.}

Supernatural References (-) {Watanabe, believing he is being haunted, spends the night chanting the lotus sutra in an effort to fix this}

Representations

Gender:

About even on number of people with lines. Perspective follows the two main women, Excel and Hyatt, but they don't much interact.

Sex:

Only heterosexual interests present.

Race & Ethnicity:

Once again, everyone Japanese except the sacrificial immigrants.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Hyatt's bizarrely fragile, intermittent health and tendency to cough up blood may count, but her condition is a matter of comedic invention and not reflective, I am fairly sure, of any actual condition.

Notes

May as well dispense with awards after not finding any the first time. This chapter introduces Hyatt, so maybe Il Palazzo can stop promoting inanimate objects over Excel now.

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On recommendation from various sources I purchased a copy of Guild Wars 2, a recently released MMORPG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_multiplayer_online_role-playing_...). One of my partners had been playing and speaking enthusiastically of it for a few weeks, and I came across a rather glowing review from a source I tend to trust (local game review television show, with roots in a magazine I subscribed to when younger). Plus, it had the advantage of not requiring an ongoing subscription fee to play.

Previously I had only played World of Warcraft for a while, eventually quitting when the size of the update and installation downloads exceeded the size of the household's monthly data limit. So, I don't have much to compare Guild Wars 2 against, but the developers seem to have gone out of their way to fix all the interface annoyances and inconveniences that plagued World of Warcraft. The kind of thing which, by not having, causes one to realise how burdensome its existence had been.

Apart from interface stuff like being able to autosell junk and automating depositing useful items in the player's various storage locations without having to trek all the way to those physical locations every time - apart from that, it is also a lot of fun to run around in the game world and play.

Also like that one does not have to formally accept quests (although one can in dialogue agree to them), but for the most part it is structured that events are going on in the surrounding game world, and one can participate or not, and be awarded automatically for participation based on one's actions, without having to formally claim completion (or attempting, if it failed).

Well, I've only been playing intermittently, and I haven't developed my so far single character very well or far, but it has been plenty of fun. And not having a subscription fee means I don't have to fret about wasting money if I don't pick it up especially often (it is not uncommon for me not to let myself have much gaming time at all for months at a stretch - the last few months have been unusually game-heavy for me).

Like World of Warcraft, I do find Guild Wars 2 wearingly intense if playing with someone else. My normal pace in games is quite leisurely, with many pauses, but when I am with another player I feel obligated to push a bit harder, to keep up with em and to keep things interesting.

Probably have more to say on this after I have played more. But so far it is nifty getting to run around helping people out. Especially since that was the core of my character concept (a useful one for a game like this). I didn't actually expect it to be so fantasy; for some reason I thought the game would be more science fiction. No disappointment tho.

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Have been playing some other games of recent also. First of all, been playing through Doom 64 again courtesy of the Doom 64 Ex port - I don't think my N64 is working any more. Started out as an attempt to find all the secrets I've missed on previous playthroughs (not many) and ended up making a rule for myself that I could only make at most one attempt on a map each day, which has been fun. Mostly a string of easy victories, with occasional interludes of particular maps that take me as much as half a week to beat. I do wish I had been taking notes as I played, as I had what I thought were worthwhile things to say about several of them, but I no longer recall the details. Maybe next time.

At the moment I am working through the penultimate map of the story, "No Escape". That one starts with a cyberdemon marching around an obstacle course of a courtyard, littered with nightmare imps and with mancubuses in high positions to keep you on your toes. There is a cage with another couple of cyberdemons (which I accidentally unlocked early on my last attempt) and true to its title the level only ends when they are both defeated.

A few weeks ago I bought a PS3 to act as a Blu-Ray player, since it can be frustrating trying to source DVDs that will play in Australia and Blu-Ray region locking is much more lenient. I didn't buy any games for it because I am mostly disinterested in Playstation games, but since my sister's boyfriend also has one, she has borrowed games from him whenever she is staying here, and consequently I have been occasionally playing Assassin's Creed.

Fun game, although I found the controls a bit difficult to adjust to. Definitely enjoy getting to clamber over everything and the combat can be fun if timed right. But it also feels like rather a simple sort of game. Despite all the running through and over cities you do, there is no interacting with doors of any kind - something is either an open passageway, or you can't get in there. The sneaking is also mostly a matter of blending with crowds rather than remaining unseen (admittedly I have a history of not being good with that), and weird decisions were made about what is considered suspicious or unsuspicious actions, mostly via use of the 'blend' button.

Riding a horse, for example, even slowly, will cause soldiers to attack you unless you are holding down 'blend'. Likewise, when you rescue a citizen from harassment by guards (by killing all the guards in the area), any guards who walk into the area where the bodies lie will immediately attack you unless you are holding down 'blend' (which means the player character lowers his head and raises his hands in a prayer posture), in which case they will leave you alone. In one case, a character is killed after the player character has interrogated in a cutscene; subsequent to this I got a bit lost in the city and walked back into that alley behind a guard, who upon spotting the body immediately turned around and attacked me. Now, while 'I' had killed the guy, this guard had no way of knowing that, so it felt weird to be attacked in the street for it.

Death animations for characters who have been killed can be quite disturbing, with writhing and gurgling for a while after they have been stabbed. I've been considering quitting the game on account of this graphic violence; the more closely gameplay resembles murdering humans, the less comfortable I am with it. The appeal of a game like this for me is more in the puzzle aspects, environment and skill mastery, and the story. Decision on that still pending, but I expect I will keep playing. Still want to see what happens next, etc.

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Today I finally got round to baking the strawberry cheesecake slice I've been planning to make for the past few weeks. Was orignally going to make it Xmas Ever for the family but despite my inquiries about kitchen availability beforehand, plans got reshuffled and various things kept coming up until today. So there it is and now it is made, sitting in the fridge as yet untouched.

Am looking forward to eating some of that. I made it last year as well, but felt like with everything going on it got overlooked that time around (for one thing, it didn't get touched until the morning I left for my own little vacation). Worried the crust may be a bit uneven, but it smells good.

Meanwhile, since reading this article on the meal at the beginning of The Hobbit, with accompanying recipe links, I am wanting to try a week of cooking to culminate in a dinner party of sorts. Am sure it would be more exhausting than triumphant, but it isn't likely to happen either, so I don't need to worry about that.

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First of all, nifty article from Bad Astronomy on the Moon's youngest known natural crater. This was not present in Apollo 15 images from 1971, but was present in images from the Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter dating to 2009. So that is very new! The actual object responsible would have been tiny, and harmless to Earth thanks to our atmosphere, but still. Isn't it cool that things still change in the solar system? Not even our moon is static.

Second of all, I don't know anything about them but these planned ESA missions sound like they could provide us with a lot of exciting information once they get underway. Particularly the LISA precursor - I'd had the impression that LISA, which might get us our first direct detection of the gravity waves predicted by general relativity, had been canned.

Finally, here is a pretty video of the sun:

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[this and the previous post were intended to go up last night, but connection difficulties interfered]

20121228
Finally died in Angband. Game version was 3.2.0, been playing that particular character since January 2010 and several updated versions have been released since then with the goal of making the game harder.

3.2.0 is supposedly the easiest version of Angband in its history, and I find that easy to believe. None of the characters I tried in previous versions did anywhere near so well as Marash, nor did any of the quick games I've tried on later releases do well (or they wouldn't have been quick). The half troll priest is also considered to be an especially easy combination, due to robust health, good regeneration and access to healing spells, although in this case that was a random selection.

In this case I definitely died to inattention. Relief at reaching the end of that flood of ants got me focused on "just need to kill this last one and it will be finished". Marash had plenty of options for getting out of that situation before it killed her. Merely drinking a healing potion would have done it, and she had plenty of those.

Can't help wondering how far she would have gone had I not gotten her killed so carelessly, but the avoidable death due to inattention or carelessness is practically synonymous with roguelikes, so if it wasn't this it likely would have been something else similar.

I did find myself getting a bit frustrated toward the end with the low turnover on Marash's gear. As a priest, she had limited attack spells, and her weapon was only dealing, I think, 24 damage/round (including criticals). She was also hampered by being limited to detection of evil monsters, which made it harder to evade nuisance monsters like those hounds on the previous level. Ended up being focused on targetting monsters known to drop treasure, in hopes of finding something more useful than what Marash currently carried. Although that sort of quest for improved stats is also a large part of the roguelike experience (that, and tactical combat itself).

Suspect Marash may have been unlucky in not finding her next prayerbook either. She had the capacity to learn several more prayers, but not from any of the books she already had. If she'd found that, she may have been a bit more effective.

Was lots of fun overall, and the source of many hours of nail-biting consideration of potential moves to make. Am a bit annoyed I lost the game so carelessly, but looking forward to exploring the changes made in more recent versions.

Other games in the roulette will likely go much more quickly. Angband is notoriously long for a roguelike, and this is by far the most successful run I've had in any such game. Excepting a couple of wins on easy in DoomRL, but those only took a couple of hours of play.

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Level 36: This place looks uninteresting

Marash's first action is, of course, to detect evil in her new surroundings. She finds a werewolf, a mature white dragon, and a cloud giant (all asleep), as well as a giant white ant and a crow (not evil, but near enough to be visible).

The ant and the bat are from so near the surface, and Marash has grown so powerful herself, she can almost ignore them for now. Praying for trap detection and a map of the area reveal something troubling, however - that cloud giant is near by to the only door out of here. If she is to walk, Marash will have to pass close by it to leave.

Perhaps now is a good time to discover exactly how dangerous cloud giants are. One quick slash of her main gauche disposes of the pesky crow.

Unwisely, maybe, she calls upon the Phial of Galadriel to illuminate, and determine at once if there is anything she desires from this room.

Nothing, except some stairs leading deeper which she wishes not to take just yet. She creeps along to the door, harried by the ant, and the giant does not stir.

Another crow greets her in the doorway and though she misses her first strike it goes down quickly. She destroys the ant, also, in order to clear the doorway so she can close it behind her.

As she heads south down the corridor, she finds herself growing hungry again. A quick prayer takes care of that.

Just a couple more steps down and she hears the door opening behind her. The cloud giant has woken and now is in pursuit. There is no clear shot for her from where she stands, with her rods, and taking a step back puts it out of sight, so Marash continues along until the giant begins to catch up with her.

First fire, which hits fine, then lightning, which it resists. Perhaps to be expected, in retrospect. She fumbles her rod of drain life, and the giant hurls a boulder at her.

On her second attempt, the giant is visibly weakened, but now has caught up entirely with her. Marash activates her gauntlets, projecting acid at the giant. Its fists arc with electricity each time they strike her.

Marash prays for an orb of draining, hitting the giant hard, but it continues to pummel her. A few strikes with her main gauche, and finally it falls. The giant hit hard.

At the end of the corridor, a door. Marash detects no evil on the other side, but in the distance, something called a 'shadow drake'.

The room behind the door is dark. Marash illuminates it with the Phial, revealing the room to be empty save for a mistletoe staff of teleportation.

More corridors, more rooms of nothing. A growing sense of foreboding. The only path onward lies through the white dragon and the werewolf she sensed earlier, or by descending into more perilous depths of Angband.

Rubble blocks her path. On clearing it, Marash discovers some elvish waybread buried beneath the stone, still fresh after however long it has been trapped here.

Marash pauses around the corner from the dragon, praying for protections: from evil, from heat and cold, and to be blessed.

So-protected, the dragon falls to a barrage of rods and gauntlet and prayer without managing a single attack on Marash. The werewolf behind, with the aid of arrows brought from home, falls quickly also.

Marash ends up replacing her corroded wicker shield of fire resistance for a shiny new metal shield of acid resistance. She is already protected from both elements by other sources, but at least this shield won't be damaged so easily as the old one.

There is a potion that would restore any of Marash's life that may be drained, also dropped by the white dragon. To make room for it, she foolishly eats the elvish waybread she just found. It is so filling that Marash feels quite gorged, and she cannot move as freely as she is accustomed to.

Fortunately, a second prayer for her hunger to be satisfied cures her.

More roaming through uncomfortably empty corridors, until at opening of another large, dark chamber, Marash detects fresh evil. Snagas, which she no longer fears, werebears, which make her nervous, and a grave wight, which definitely does. Further to the east, a kobold and a guardian naga, which also do not concern her.

Greed, greed is bad, right? But here is a concentration of evil creatures known to carry useful items. Very tempting to pursue and slay them.

A moment of pause. Between Marash and her blood treasure lies another cluster of fire ants. She no longer fears them so much as before she fought them, but approaching closer and realising there are not merely six ants, but at least fourteen.

Marash experiences a moment of selfish worry - those ants are clustered around the snagas. If they trample the snagas to death trying to get at her, she won't be able to loot the snagas' corpses.

First protection from fire; second blessing herself. Third, centring an orb of draining on the nearest snaga. Snagas: dead. Various ants enraged, and a couple of grizzly bears in pursuit.

A fire bolt from her rod sends the first bear fleeing, her main gauche strikes down the second, and a blow from it sends a cave bear running too. Then at last she sees the reason for all these bears - Beorn, the Shape-Changer is here.

He shrugs off lightning and acid. Drain life hurts him a little. Fortunately he is mostly missing her with his many attacks, or she would be in dire straits already.

Though it is attuned to evil creatures, and Beorn is not evil, an orb of draining does help... but not as much as she'd hoped. In desperation she turns her wand of teleport other on him, disappearing Beorn, a werebear, and a giant fire ant.

Other ants soon arrive to trample the remaining bears to death. A lengthy battle of attrition ensues, with Marash low on health and mana after facing Beorn, and giant fire ants swarming in to attack her, trampling to death all the bears that were Beorn's escort.

Whenever her rods recharge, except the here-useless rod of fire bolts, Marash blasts the nearest ant with them (or the nearest healthy one if that might be overkill).

Eventually she runs out of mana entirely, and her protection from fire fades. The ants have been destroying her staves and scrolls and prayer books throughout the battle, though Marash has not lost her entire stock of anything. The ants crush underfoot any snagas or werebears foolish enough to try and involve themselves in the fight.

As she nears death, Marash drinks a potion of Cure Serious Wounds, restoring herself to her strength at the beginning of this drawn-out ant battle, and fights on.

One last burst of protection from heat and cold as her mana recovers enough. One last bolt of lightning from her rod, and one last ant left the slay before she can scour the wreckage of this room for anything of use.

But, she neglects to consider herself, and as the ant's jaws close upon her, flames erupting from its bite, Marash is finally burned to death.

So ends her lengthy, heroic quest to brave the depths of Angband and slay the dark lord, Morgoth.

Everything Marash has learned about Giant Fire Ants so far:

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Batman's Helpers by Lawrence Block

Originally published 1990 in Playboy, this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

MA15+

Considered unsuitable for persons under 15 years of age; legally restricted

(L, D, S)

Coarse Language {MA15+}

Drug Use / References {PG} {alcohol}

Representations

Gender:

A single mention of a black woman as receptionist is all the presence of women in this story, alongside a character claiming he knows a woman who'll like a purse he stole.

Sex:

Implicit 'people will think you're gay' joke, came across as more banter than malice, but the same character later says he thought of Batman and Robin as 'fags' and speaks derisively of S&M.

Race & Ethnicity:

Main characters all white (unmarked). First character we see is a black woman in an incidental role as receptionist. Content of story mainly features confiscating unlicensed Batman merchandise from Senegalese, Pakistani and other mostly PoC street vendors. Two characters refers to black people by a slur.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

No mention

Awards

None found.

Notes

Here's one with no murder, in fact with only the threat of violence at a couple of points. Superficially light piece with darker undertones about copyright enforcement on the streets of New York. Apparently this story features one of his major series characters (who turns out not to have the heart for this work), which I did not realise the first time around.

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Level 36: You are unsure about this place

Detecting evil finds little to fuss about. Only a shade and thirteen hill orcs sleeping in the distance. And a sabre-tooth tiger - since when are those evil?

Ah, but it is not evil. It has merely charged Marash from out of the darkness in her first moments here. She turns her rod of fire bolts upon the tiger and immediately its charge becomes a scramble to escape.

The rod has recharged just in time to send the tiger fleeing again upon its return, while Marash explores the dark room she has been recalled into. On the sabre-tooth tiger's third return, a quick jab with her main gauche disposes of it. A shame the Enemy has twisted so much life to his service, so that it can no longer be dealt with peacefully.

As she trudges along the northward corridor out, the only path out, Marash looks longingly at some treasure trapped within a quartz vein. Beyond her ability to pry loose.

She is interrupted by something in the darkness casting a ball of cold at her. Though not seriously hurt, she is worried, and retreats back to the room, around the corner to await the arrival of this mysterious foe. It does not register as evil, but at least blessing herself will help.

But nothing comes. Cautiously she steps out again, then a few steps forward until she is back where she was. Marash holds up the Phial of Galadriel, hoping to illuminate her foe.

No luck. But something out in the darkness is trying to magically blind her. So far it has not proved capable of seriously harming her, so she presses on, and finally the source of trouble is revealed: a potion mimic.

Keeping her gaze fixed on the mimic, Marash reaches to her right and closes an open door. No sense being vulnerable from additional directions. Then, she aims her rod and almost shatters the bizarre creature with a single firebolt.

It is overkill, but a follow-up lightning bolt finishes the job.

Heading north, a white wolf bursts through a door behind her. Satisfyingly, she pursues the wolf and its packmates through some winding corridors, slaying many, until she is brought up short by the sight of a giant fire ant trampling a white wolf to death.

This is a vexing development. Never has Marash faced such an ant in battle before, and she has no wish to do so now. Yet, it is right before her and not quite so fearsome she believes she must bail entirely.

She calls upon her staff of sleep, and the ant looks drowsy momentarily (while the white wolf behind it collapses to the floor), but shakes the spell off. Its bite envelopes Marash in flames.

That failing, Marash blesses herself and prays for resistance to heat and cold. The ant is not so tough as she feared, though tougher by far than she'd like, and soon loses the exchange of blows. Not even another wolf attack from behind distracts Marash.

She attempts to finish off the white wolf sleeping in front of her, but it flees around the corner, where she discovers another six fire ants lie in wait.

Immediately Marash sends a lightning bolt through the line of ants, then heals and re-blesses herself before joining melee.

With re-blessing and renewing her heat resistance every time they falter, along with a lightning bolt every time her rod recharges, Marash gets through the ants almost unscathed. Her only casualties are a scroll of phase door and a scroll of recall, and even when a hill orc joins the fray she is free to mostly ignore it in favour of the more threatening ants.

Finally, a bolt of lightning kills the second to last ant at back, and her main gauche sends the last fleeing around the corner. Marash pursues it... into still more ants.

Luckily this turns out to be just one more ant, or so Marash thinks until, when it is nearly dispatched, another giant fire ant wanders over to join the fray. Not so worrying, even at the cost of a staff of sleep lost to fiery ant bites, nor even when a hill orc and a couple of white wolves come after her from the other side.

Worry comes when a new beast follows behind the latest ant, a dark brown form rippling with power as it stalks the dungeon. An impact hound. She does not think it will be alone. Nor does she know what manner of damage this forceful form might do; she is only sure it will be unpleasant.

She turns her attention north, trying to carve a path through the hill orc and out of harm's way. Of course, as soon as she strikes the orc down, the wolves take its place.

No hope there, especially as now there are three wolves clamouring for her. Marash turns her attention back to the ant. Slow going there, until at last the hound breathes.

Pure force tears and stuns her. The wolf nipping at her heels dies instantly; another wolf and the giant fire ant are both dazed by the blast. This is... not good.

She steps into the space vacated by the recently deceased wolf. At the same moment, her rod of lightning bolts recharges. She celebrates by toasting the three wolves blocking her line of retreat.

Her head clears. Marash decides she is best off elsewhere. Perhaps chasing those hill orcs... she heads north. The hill orcs are just to the north-west, while there is a young multi-hued dragon to the north-east. Orcs first.

The path leads to another large, dark chamber, and what appears to be a solitary white wolf. Two white wolves, when the room is illuminated. Marash takes long enough attempting to dispose of them that hill orcs begin pouring in.

She steps back into the corridor to deal with them. No need to get surrounded.

The first two orcs flee quickly enough, so Marash presses into the corridor from which they emerged. A lightning bolt weakens several severely, and none of the orcs tax her. Very little they drop is of use to her, however. Only a potion of Restore Mana.

She must choose a next action. To the southwest are at least four cave trolls, and the young multi-coloured dragon remains. Since the trolls are near where she encountered the impact hounds, it may be best to avoid that area. Marash heads for the dragon.

One step and force buffets her, stunning her. Unseen hounds. She steps back. It would be very useful if she had some way of remotely detecting these, so as to better avoid them.

If that direction is off-limits, she will take a different path back around to face the dragon. In preparation she protects herself from evil, fire and cold, and blesses herself.

A couple of steps away, Marash uses her rod of drain life on it. The dragon flees to a corner immediately, then breathes lightning and fire at her. As Marash pursues, it retreats around the corner before making its stand, main gauche against claws and teeth, lightning and fire and frost.

After some fierce trading of blows the young multi-hued dragon retreats down the corridor. Eventually it turns back to fight, its escape cut off by a pile of rubble, just as Marash's rod of drain life finishes recharging.

She fails to use her rod properly and suffers under another round of sharpened, angry dragon. Finally, one last jab with her blade does the creature in.

Its treasure, sadly, is nothing much. Marash attempts to clear away the rubble blocking the passage, as her various protections fade with time, until finally she spots an impact hound approaching her from behind.

No good, no good. She prays for a portal... and finds herself in an unknown part of this floor.

Nearby evil: a young gold dragon, a shade, and a hardened warrior. None of these hugely frighten her; she wonders if they might be worth tangling with, if she might extract something of value from them before leaving this place.

It seems inevitable that she must leave this place, soon, if she is to be pursued by hounds everywhere she turns.

She hears a door burst open, and rounds a corner to find herself face to face with a spectator, a large, fanged floating globe with eyes on the ends of stalks. Not something she has faced before, nor something she wishes to face now.

Marash blesses herself in preparation for combat with this non-evil monstrosity. As she does so, a water hound stalks into view behind it. She steps to one side, hoping to keep out of line of sight of the water hound, but the spectator's gaze confuses her.

She zaps herself with a rod of curing, clearing her head. One of the water hounds - out of Marash's sight - breathes acid. Fortunately the spray hits her acid-resistant armour, and she hopes the spectator is hit harder than she.

Marash then tries to turn her rod of drain life against the spectator but fumbles the activation. The spectator attempts to paralyse her with its gaze, fails, then succeeds at confusing Marash again.

She uses her second rod of curing, then fumbles with the rod of drain life again. Fortunately this time the spectator doesn't confuse her again. Finally Marash's rod works and the spectator falls to the ground in a lifeless heap again.

A water hound took its place immediately. Stabbing away at the hound only gets Marash's shield damaged by its acid breath, so she finally concedes to the inevitable and reads a scroll of recall.

Long, tense seconds pass, of stabbing hounds to death, her equipment being corroded by the seemingly endless stream of hounds that flow in to replace them, until finally she feels herself yanked back up to the surface.

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Gravy Train by James Ellroy

Originally published 1990 in The Armchair Detective, this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

MA15+

Considered unsuitable for persons under 15 years of age; legally restricted

(L, S, D, V, N)

Coarse Language {M} {slurs}

A Sex Scene {M}

Drug References {M}

Violence {MA15+}

Nudity {M}

Representations

Gender:

First-person male narration. Female characters evaluated in context of their attractiveness to him.

Sex:

Narrator responding to women primarily through the lens of his attraction to them. One character is a lesbian; another character fakes attraction to con her.

Race & Ethnicity:

Narrator casually introduces the people he supervises via a list of anglophone racial slurs (no names). Also uses some Yiddish racial slurs. In fact, ethnicity entirely marked by slurs and slang terms, including the narrator's marking himself as Jewish.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

No mention.

Awards

None found.

Notes

Despite what the rating may suggest, this story was a lot of fun (one source found while writing this described it as a spoof of hard-boiled fiction from the '40s and '50s, which seems apt). Probably give his books a shot on my reading tour.

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Bonding by Faye Kellerman

Originally published 1989 in Sisters in Crime (ed. Marilyn Wallace), this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

R18+

Legally restricted to audiences 18 years and older

(D, S, L, T)

Frequent Drug Use {R18+}

Sexual References {MA15+}

Frequent Coarse Language {M}

Themes {Crime, Family breakdown}

Representations

Gender:

First-person perspective of female protagonist.

Sex:

Primarily heterosexual; protagonist does sex work for kicks, enters relationship with her adoptive father. Strongly implied in prison she forms lesbian relationships for protection.

Race & Ethnicity:

Unmentioned, characters presumed white.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

No mention.

Awards

None found

Text

There is detection going on, but mostly outside the view of the story. I liked this one despite it being thematically similar to a lot of stories in this collection that I didn't like. Does leave me wondering if there are any stories in this collection that don't involve murder (can think of one very early one actually (Round Trip)).

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Level 36: "You are unsure about this place"

First, detecting evil. A mature green dragon sleeps just out of sight in the very room where Marash has descended. To the south, a dark elven druid. North, at least ten stone trolls and further north a mummified human.

All of these she has faced before. The greatest threat is clearly the nearest, the green dragon, the only of the nearby evil Marash has disengaged from rather than fight to the death. Could it be the same dragon? Marash is suddenly acutely aware she has no resistance to poison.

Protection from evil, blessing herself. One step forward, the dragon in sight. Still asleep. Immediately Marash turns and leaves the room. She passes one of those weird electric blue ants on the way. The druid confronts her as she makes her escape.

Marash takes one step toward him, letting him get a single hit on her. The other of the druid's strikes is turned aside by her protection from evil. This time the druid is much tougher to take down, healing himself, confusing Marash, but fortunately forgetting to do much of either.

She takes care of a sudden air elemental, then walks a wide arc north around the green dragon. Preparing to head back west, Marash caasts detect evil just as a non-evil basilisk comes into view (meanwhile there is a non-sleeping mature gold dragon out there).

Marash blesses herself. She learns the basilisk is faster than her and breathes poison. Enough to hurt her badly. She takes it on with her whip and soon realises this fight is not going in her favour.

Marash turns her rod of drain life against the basilisk, persuading it to flee. She launches a bolt of acid from her gauntlets at its back. The basilisk turns and fills the air with poison, advancing on her again. Marash is unsure if she can survive another close encounter with the beast. Lightning and fire and finally down it goes.

The basilisk was carrying a book of magic spells, useless to her, but the true prize is her survival. Marash's first action is to pray the poison out of her system, her second to call upon the Phial of Galadriel to illuminate the room and hopefully any remaining threats. There are none she can recognise in the immediate vicinity. So her next action is to rest.

Healed up, Marash crosses the lit room to inspect an aquamarine ring laying on the floor. At first she puts it on, before remembering she has staves of identification to use more wisely. As she puts it away she finds herself suddenly terribly afraid.

Must be the dragon, casting a spell on her. Marash flees for the corridor by which she entered, hoping to narrow her exposure.

Protection from evil, bless. An ill-advised ducking back out and finding the dragon almost atop her.

The first round is uninspiring, each taking a minor chunk off the other. Bad bargain for Marash, so she brings out the rod of drain life. That puts things much more in her favour. Lightning, fire and acid to round it out and... meanwhile the dragon's carved her up into a similar state of damage.

Will she have to flee? Marash experiments with an orb of draining and finally sets the gold dragon on the run. Now the dragon is near-dead and fleeing, Marash finishes it off with a second orb. This is not an environment for showing mercy to one's foes. Particularly those so fearsome as a dragon.

Nothing the gold dragon left behind is useful to her. But she does realise that aquamarine ring grants resistance to poison. This is a dilemma. Protection against poisonous attacks could easily save her life, but what to give up for it? The ring which grants her strength or the ring which enhances her constitution? Tempting to keep both and swap one for poison resistance as needed, but what if she needs it before she realises or can act?

Well. If the goal is to stay alive as long as possible, then strength can go... except now she lacks the strength to carry her kit unburdened, and her ability to damage her foes is drastically reduced. So back on goes the ring. Perhaps if she stowed that useless heavy crossbow she's been carrying around, it would work. But Angband is not a safe place to be slowed by one's burden.

On the floor she finds an awl-pike which her staff identifies as enchanted to slay undead. Not useful to her. A mummified human attacks her, giving no trouble, and when destroyed leaves behind an axe. This turns out to be an Axe of Westernesse.

At first, it looks tempting, until she compares more closely. Sure, she could hurt orcs, giants and trolls more with it, but everything else would suffer less. She'd lose her stealth, and her resistance to cold and electricity. No deal; Marash leaves it on the floor.

In her wandering, Marash confusedly completes the loop she had been travelling in and nearly stumbles back to the green dragon she has been avoiding since she arrived here. Hastily, she backs away and puts a closed door between them again. It appears to still be sleeping, which is to her benefit.

Wandering west instead, detect evil reveals a gang of trolls just to the south, right on the other side of the corridor wall. Further west, in her direction of travel, is a baby multi-hued dragon. Something she feels more comfortable tackling. Farther along lurks a master vampire and another gang of cave trolls.

Two strangely moving puddles in the room ahead of her, black oozes. None have have touched her yet and she means to keep it that way. Marash activates one of her staves and for a moment thinks these puddle-creatures look drowsy, but it does not work. She sighs and boils one away with a bolt of fire from her rod.

On the second, she turns her rod of lightning, but fails to activate it properly. The ooze approaches. A second attempt sends electricity crackling across its surface. Not quite enough; the viscous fluid rears up beside her, but Marash shatters its cohesion with her whip before it can strike.

They leave behind some silver and a useless teleportation amulet. Marash continues on, pauses at a door, detects evil. Sure enough, the baby multi-hued dragon lies directly on the other side of the door. Beyond it, she senses not only the vampire and cave trolls from earlier, but also a banshee, a werewolf, a dark elven mage and a batch of gnomish mages. Fortunately all asleep, these creatures of greater or lesser danger.

After some thought Marash decides to head back and confront the nearby stone trolls. Those are, if memory serves, not so tough. More importantly, she believes they have an unimpeded path to her. She would rather not be attacked from behind by nearly a dozen trolls.

An unwise decision. Heading back east, Marash hears the door behind her open. Soon after a cloud of poison washes over her, seeping into her system. The baby dragon, it must be. Quickly she scoots around the nearest corner, praying her defences into place.

The poison fades before the dragon arrives. The battle is not long, Marash hardly touched thanks to her wards against evil. She collects her prize in garnets from the dragon's corpse, then learns her surmise about trollish accessibility was incorrect. No path that way from here to there, she should have girded herself and gone directly after the baby dragon.

What's done is done. Marash continues west.

At the very moment her protection from evil fades, the banshee appears beside Marash. Immediately she prays for its restoration, and not a moment too soon, as the banshee is repelled from attacking her. Marash blesses herself and... the banshee teleports away.

Marash continues exploring the chamber she is in, watchful for the banshee's return. But what she finds is a nest of black oozes just to the north. Their density worries her. Are they multiplying while she isn't looking?

The last, the fifth, leaves behind a main gauche when dissipated. Expending an identification charge over it reveals the blade to be a defender too. Almost just like her whip, but slightly better at striking back. When she hefts the main gauche she feels uncomfortable with it in her hand; there is no difference in her capabilities she can discern however, so she resolves to keep and use it.

Her trusty whip, Marash would rather not leave to rot on the floors of Angband. She abandons her staves of monster-slowing instead, with regret. Probably she never would have used up their charges anyway.

Marash finishes her rounds of this large, oddly-shaped chamber, and settles beside a rubble pile blocking one exit to check again the local disposition of evil.

It seems the Enemy has sent reinforcements. There was no sign of Bolg, son of Azog before. He is escorted by nine black orcs, with a further nineteen uruks backing him up. And just nearby, a full dozen forest trolls. Perhaps it is recklessness, but she feels she can take them. More importantly, she feels she can escape if the confrontation turns nasty.

Another closed door, another pause to check for evil. At least one gnome approaches, awake. The flood of orcs is held back by an unwitting troll skeleton. And the region is being visited by Mîm, Betrayer of Turin. Many unknowns in the region. Perhaps she will be best off waiting here, letting them come to her. At least her path of retreat looks relatively clear.

Marash protects herself from evil. She waits. And waits. And eventually tries the door, discovering it to have been locked until she picked it open. One gnome mage was waiting for her there; she fells it easily.

Another quick check for evil shows nearly all the nearby creatures still at their positions. So perhaps she will indeed have to go after them.

Marash girds herself, steps out into the corrider where the gnomish magi have been sleeping. The banshee appears before her; she strikes it down. Its dissipating form leaves behind a potion of intelligence restoration, valuable for one such as Marash whose intelligence has been drained to almost nothing. Her rod of fire bolts does in another gnome, just as one of the others summons reinforcements.

Khîm, Son of Mîm. Father and son here to hunt her down.

Marash takes a deep breath. She prays that the evil around her be dispelled. The Gnome mage she can see is dissolved before her eyes; she hears the sound of others meeting a similar fate in the darkness of the corridor before her. Khîm, as she realises too late, is not evil and strides toward her unaffected.

She sends an orb of draining his way but he shrugs it off. So she follows up by reading a scroll of Phase Door. That gets her trapped between Khîm and the skeletal troll that in its sleep holds back a horde of orcs from assailing her.

A second scroll lands her in the corridor from which she approached, so she scurries back behind her resting door, closes it behind her and attempts to rest. No good. Khîm opens the door soon after. Marash speaks the prayer of Portal.

Relief. She has landed in an unexplored, apparently quiet part of the area. Nearby evil: an invisible stalker, also a single Gnome mage and Uruk at the far range of her awareness. The stalker could be dangerous. She knows it is normally found about this deep, which means it is probably very dangerous.

The room she is in turns out to be large, but safe for her to recover in. As she leaves north, the uruk approaches. Although she no longer regards those dangerous, she girds herself against surprise that may be lurking behind it.

The uruk is struck down easily. Another, behind it, is sent fleeing when Marash's bolt of fire takes it to near death. Finally, the remaining gnome mage shows itself, leaving a useless merely magical lead-filled mace with its corpse.

Denizens of the depths begin to filter in from the north. A black orc, then the skeletal troll. It must have woken and now, not blocking the flow of orcs hunting Marash, they come for her. Worse, Khîm has found her again.

She heads south, pursued by the skeletal troll and Khîm behind. Her path leads her to the invisible stalker, so fast it can pursue and fight her as she runs. A single orb of draining takes care of it, and hurts the skeletal troll so badly her next blow destroys it. Leaving her now with Khîm again.

Another scroll of phase door takes her to the far corner of the chamber in which they are now fighting. A prayer illuminates it. Khîm meanwhile attempts to slow her with his magic. Behind him she can see a black orc, harbinger of the potential flood to come.

From her rod of fire bolts Marash learns Khîm is fire-resistant. He shrugs off a lightning bolt, doesn't seem to notice a dose of life drain, and although damaged by acid from her gauntlets, is not hurt enough. Nor can her staff put him to sleep, although the two orcs at the back of the room drop off immediately.

She tries her wands of wonder. A few doses hurt him, one heals him, and when one of his strikes disenchants her boots that is the final straw.

Marash prays for an earthquake, only to find that though his former location is now a column of solid rock, Khîm himself is barely scratched and continuing his attack. In hope that he may be trapped, Marash reads another scroll of phase door and attacks the sleeping orcs.

But Khîm is not trapped, attempting again to slow her from the darkness behind. Marash runs, attempting to cut herself a path through orcs to safety. They are too many, and not frail enough. Khîm catches up with her, disenchanting her further. She portals away...

...landing beside his father, Mîm, Betrayer of Turin, who gets a flurry of blows upon her and disenchants her cloak. Another portal, this time landing her in what looks to be a safe north-east corner.

Time, perhaps, to head back to the surface.

Marash reads one of her scrolls of recall, then waits patiently for her return to the surface. There she drops off the useless and weighty heavy crossbow she has been lugging around, along with the whip she is no longer using as her weapon. This lightens her burden enough that it becomes practical to cease wearing her ring of strength and to wear the ring of poison resistance instead.

But, she will keep the strength ring handy in case she needs that.

While in town, Marash also buys a pair of recall scrolls to replace the one she just used and the one she is about to use, and a cloak to replace the uselessly tattered one she still wears. But, having forgotten how she has conditioned herself to react to such things, she instead immediately tosses aside the cloak she has purchased as useless.

Finally, she buys both scrolls at the alchemy shop that promise to enchant her weapon for accuracy, reads both of them to no effect, then reads another recall scroll to take herself back down.

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Junior Jackson's Parable by James Hannah

Originally published 1988 in Desperate Measures (published by Southern Methodist University Press), this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

M

Not recommended for persons under 15 years of age, but no legal restrictions

(L, D, S, T, V)

Frequent Coarse Language {M}

Drug References {M} {Alcohol, tobacco, unspecified pills}

Sexual References {PG}

Themes {Crime, Drug Dependency}

Violence {M}

Representations

Gender:

Some women in background, most prominently as protagonist's mother and wife, who seems mainly a passive locus of trouble.

Sex:

Story centred on a heterosexual triangle. Prison rape a danger.

Race & Ethnicity:

Characters presumed white, on basis of protagonist's prejudiced upbringing about 'Arabs, Jews [and] nigras'.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Protagonist suffered a chronic leg injury as a teen. Protagonist's employer also disabled. Backstory character suffered damage from acid of exploding battery. Protagonist's father disabled by workplace injury; protagonist's mother suffers from arthritis.

Awards

None found

Text

Dreary and depressing the whole way through. Poor kid gets injured working with cars in his teens, dishonourably discharged from the US navy, his wife does drugs and spends all her time with her convicted murderer ex-boyfriend and, when he goes to kill the guy, chickens out at the last moment and accidentally kills him with a ricochet anyway. Almost walks anyway, until a moment of hope is turned against him.

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It's a Hard World by Andrew Vachss

Originally published 1987 (could not identify initial publication), and Born Bad (1994); this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

PG

(D, L)

Drug Use {PG} {Tobacco}

Coarse Language {G}

Themes {M} {Crime}

Representations

Gender:

Mostly internal to male protagonist's head, significant characters male, except woman operating desk at airport boarding.

Sex:

A non-event is noted in the implicit context that women might desire to attract the gaze of men. Otherwise irrelevant.

Race & Ethnicity:

Unmentioned; assuming characters white US citizens.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Appearance-altering plastic surgery off-screen, otherwise unmentioned.

Awards

None found

Notes

Very short, sharp piece featuring the sacrifice of apparently innocent if obnoxious bystander by the anonymous protagonist.

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Level 35: "You have a very good feeling..."

Not enough energy for detections. Marash elects to sit and wait, nervously. When she does detect, she is glad she waited. There is a lot of nastiness around.

A death mold not too far away, whatever that is. To the north, ten ghouls and a mummified human and a zombified human. She suspects there is more of that group outside her detection range. To the southeast, Draebor, the Imp lurks with his escort: a trio of ordinary imps, a couple of tengu, five quasits and a whole twenty-two manes.

With great treasure comes great danger. Or so Marash hopes, since great danger is evident. After careful consideration she decides that, as she is protected from paralysis, her safest start (that is not attempting to evade all foes) is to head for the undead.

A suspicious pile of gold on the ground proves to be just a pile of gold on the ground, as do the garnets further north.

Pausing for another scan reveals Marash has nearly wandered her way the undead, now known in full to be comprised of a ghast, twelve ghouls, and a mummified human, a zombified human, and a zombified orc. To the northeast a werewolf is revealed. More distantly an evil eye and a young white dragon lurk to the west.

She has never faced a ghoul or ghast in battle before. Stepping nervously forward, her path is blocked by a giant grey ant. Not as deep as the blue ants, but surely nothing to laugh at. Marash takes her whip to it and... not so tough after all. The ant flees. Around the corner she pursues and it dies.

A couple of doors opened and... crebain! A flock of crebain. If she does not dispatch these birds quickly the situation could become disastrous; the cry of the crebain is known to aggravate The Enemy's minions. Worrying enough a situation that she prays for an orb of draining with which to smite these foul birds.

Five, instantly dead. More flow in to take their place as if it never happened. Not wanting to waste her limited mana when there are deadlier foes about she turns her whip on them. Marash keeps no count of how many she slays before their numbers are thinned.

The human zombie filters in to the corridor from the south. She waits on its approach, preferring again melee for weaker foes. After it is down the zombified orc approaches next. Marash prays for protection from evil, blesses herself. Her hand tightens on the grip of the whip, wondering how this encounter goes. A steady trickle to come? Or a flood? Or will she have to go in after the undead?

With the orc down, Marash strikes down the last crebain, lurking in an alcove, then continues on. A couple of ghouls meet her in the corridor, try to paralyze her with their gaze. Fortunately she is immune. She falls back to a tunnel where they can only approach her single file. After a few blows one ghoul is destroyed. That does not feel quick enough. After trading blows with the ghast awhile she calls forth another orb of draining and it hits hard, but nothing, not even the mummy is destroyed by the spell.

Momentarily panicked by the damage wrought against it, the ghast briefly flees, but returns to the fight almost immediately. Marash is concerned that so far the undead have not hurt her - has she so badly misjudged the danger? Two ghouls down and their ghastly leader badly damaged, and she is as fighting fit as at the start of the encounter. Though they have struck her, none of the damage done has outpaced her own healing.

In the struggle, the ghast manages to bite her. Marash feels it drawing strength from her body. The ring of constitution she wears grows warm; the ghast releases its grip, thwarted, and she finally destroys it.

Her reward for her victory is a paltry pile of silver and the knowledge that one minor leader of Morgoth's forces is no more. She heads west, aiming to clean out the rest of this foul nest.

One of the crebain has survived, interrupting the fight with its shrieks. Or rather, once Marash turns her attention to the birds, at least three survived. One zapped with a lightning bolt, another with a fire bolt, and the third whipped out of the sky.

Increasingly Marash suspects the strong feeling of this area was due to the death mold that she will have nothing to do with. She decides to head north-east, take out the werewolf lurking there, and head down again.

Suddenly, an angel attacks. Marash finds herself abruptly less certain of the holiness of her mission. Its spells confuse and frighten her, rendering Marash unable to fight or pray. Her devices seemed to go off wildly, doing nothing for her.

Eventually she remembered her rods of curing. The first misfired. The second eased her confusion. Immediately Marash blessed herself.

By now her gauntlets Paurnen had recharged from her first attempt at the angel. She reactivated them now, only to learn angels resist acid. Marash turned her rod of drain life on it. The angel screamed in pain. Nearly half dead now. This reassured her.

Turning her staves on it now, Marash learns that angels cannot sleep, or apparently be slowed. A lightning bolt from a recharged rod, a hail of blows from her whip. The angel hits hard too. Marash is taking damage, but not enough to panic over.

Confused again, another dose of the curing rod fixes that. Following up with a bolt of fire from yet another of her rods and the angel flees.

One last blast of acid from her gauntlets fails to kill it. The angel responds by blinding Marash. Marash calls upon her rod of cure light wounds to heal her vision, a pattern repeated a couple more times until at last she is near enough to strike the angel down with her whip.

Triumphantly, Marash claims her prize... another banyan staff holding sleep spells.

She heads off to fight the werewolf, only to learn there is no direct passage to it that way. So perhaps she ought just head down. A quick scan for evil reveals Azog, King of the Uruk Hai to the south-west, along with his escort of 50+ cave orcs and uruks. Tempting... orcs are profitable. But no. Marash has cold resistance, she will attempt to take out the young white dragon, and then she will descend.

Unwise greed. In the single corridor between her and the dragon, she encounters an earth elemental. She catches an acid bolt on her wicker shield, corroding part of it. The elemental resists her lightning and fire bolts; an orb of draining hurts it, but not critically. Marash closes to melee with the elemental, which launches another bolt damaging her iron helm.

As soon as she has cleared away the rubble leading to the dragon, Marash prays for resistance to heat and cold, for protection from evil, and to be blessed. By the time she is done, the dragon stands in the corridor before her.

Acid, lightning, fire. The last damages best. She strikes the dragon with her whip until it flees, then one last bolt of acid from her gauntlets brings an end. On the dragon's remains she finds only a pile of silver coins.

Nothing here commands her attention. Marash descends.

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Been trying for the past couple of days to arrange to visit my grandmother, with my sister, but have not yet succeeded. The day we had selected, when I wasn't working, turned out when I called to be a day she'd had to be taken in to the hospital early in the morning for observation.

Didn't know which hospital, overlooked the possibility of asking. She was still in when I called the next day, also, although in expectation of being released home shortly. So I settled for merely picking up my sister and getting her back home, which took about two hours overall in itself.

She should be home now, but if our next attempt at visiting finds her en-hospitaled again, may have to go see her there. I don't want my memories to include her in a hospital setting, but it would be better than not visiting her at all. People keep suggesting she would be especially happy to see me, but the last time my family went to see her, I was working.

In happier news, made a tasty meal of tofu florentine for the family tonight, out of recipes from The Veganomicon. Have not cooked a proper meal in too long. Trying to keep momentum up with that, so as to keep improving, so have gone straight into planning and shopping lists for next meals.

Am glad that one was received well. Often I panic while cooking that it will turn out badly. At one point realised the yeast I had got was not the kind needed for the recipe, and dashed down to the shops to try and fail to find the correct kind. Fortunately found out afterward that my sister already had some, which I could use. Then got further confused and added a teaspoon of Shaoxing cooking wine to the braising sauce before realising it was not soy sauce (too lightly coloured and watery-looking). Still it all turned out fine in the end which was a huge relief.

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Meant to post this last week or longer ago (time is confusing), but was having connection difficulties and then got distracted and forgot about it for a while:

Finished this semester a week ago, with one last maths exam. Am fairly sure I failed that, and fairly sure I passed the Indigenous Studies elective I was taking.

Am left uncertain what to do about next semester. Can try re-enrolling in this class to attempt passing it again.

I'm worried. Don't know how I would do trying it again. But, attempting two classes in a semester + working casually I found to be very difficult. This suggests that obtaining the degree I'm after will take a lot longer than I expected, more like four or five years. And this pushes back the length I have to wait before being able to move. It feels too long a wait already.

So I am feeling a bit of panic. Wondering about other options, like could I get an astronomy degree via distance education? Would it be feasible to get qualified as a full librarian first, and could I find an affordable option for studying astronomy in an accredited way afterward, perhaps after moving? Degrees in the USA are so much more expensive than here that I don't want to think about going to school there.

And speaking of national schooling shifts, I'm worried about my ability to get work over there even if I did get qualified as a librarian here, because in Australia it doesn't require a Master's degree and accepting my qualifications as a foreigner would be at the discretion of anyone considering hiring me.

My plan isn't working out as well as I hoped.

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Level 34: "This place seems reasonably safe"

Nothing, indeed, worrying in the immediate area. Marash decides to hang around for a while.

A young multi-hued dragon donates some treasure, not very interesting without a shop around. A bit further south, a squad of novice rangers foolishly throw themselves at Marash.

With them was an ogre mage which, despite her not having enough energy to put up her defensive prayers, goes down easily enough. Not quickly enough to prevent it from creating traps.

Marash waits in place until she can pray for trap detection, but still ends up setting off a pre-existing trap door and falling another level deeper into Angband before she could collect anything interesting.

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Rattle-tattle, rattle-tattle. In darkness misty shrouded, world closed in, small dome surrounding Peering ahead for haloed lights, red-glow show too fast or slow. Yellow and orange scattered around, passing by, hints of wider world in darkness. Light arcs blue and white overhead, showing momentarily a sky there still be, silent flashes unheard under-

Rattle-tattle, rattle-tattle.

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To Florida by Robert Sampson

Originally published 1987 in {unstated, could not find}; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

MA15+

Considered unsuitable for persons under 15 years of age; legally restricted

(D, H, L, V)

Drug References {PG}

Supernatural References {No weight}

Coarse Language {M}

Violence {MA15+}

Themes {M} {Crime; Family Breakdown}

Representations

Gender:

One female character, mostly terrorised into going along with the protagonist.

Sex:

Unreferenced; the two leads may have been in a relationship, but implied at best.

Race & Ethnicity:

One black child passed by as a background detail.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Protagonist is depicted as abruptly and excessively violent. I think we are supposed to believe he suffers from some sort of mental illness.

Awards

None found.

Notes

Did not enjoy this story. It is bleak and depressing and disturbingly violent. Like a shadow falling across one's soul.

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Deadhead Coming Down by Margaret Maron

Originally published 1978 in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

PG

Parental Guidance recommended for audiences under 15 years of age

(L, V)

Coarse Language {PG}

Violence {M}

Representations

Gender:

Women mentioned in dismissive comparison relative to men.

Sex:

Unmentioned.

Race & Ethnicity:

Unmentioned.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Unmentioned

Awards

None found

Notes

Another, very short, serial killer story. Unlike the previous one, 'Graveyard Shift', I didn't much like it. Probably because the motive is boredom and the victims innocent (yet blamed for getting killed, so well-framed is the crime).

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Level 33: "You have an excellent feeling"

Another dark chamber, a horrible radiation eye sleeping nearby. Detect Evil reveals a couple of ghosts, a couple of minor zombies and skeletons, and three young dragons each of different kind. No great peril to go with great treasure, perhaps?

She zaps the radiation eye with a lightning bolt, glad to be able to dispatch those easily.

A ghost begins harassing her soon after she starts moving, draining her life force with its touch. Her whip sends it fleeing, but it soon returns and is destroyed.

Next, Marash goes after a young red dragon, only slightly inconvenienced by its claws and fiery breath. Its treasure is nearly worthless to her, so she turns her attention to the young gold dragon.

Her life-draining rod is recharging, but her other ranged attacks make a strong dent in the young dragon, as does her whip. The battle is going well until the dragon renders her magically afraid. Merely a brief hiccup for such a priest as Marash.

The young gold dragon is a slightly more profitable foe, yielding a scroll of treasure detection. It is also seems to be located in a dead end, and Marash is attacked by the other ghost as she makes her way around. In the process of destroying it she learns that ghosts can terrify as well as drain one's life force, wisdom and intelligence.

She smashes a kobold skeleton for good measure, then continues on her way. She is surprised by the arrival of a gang of black orcs, who have conveniently shut themselves behind a choke point.

Disappointingly, they too occupied a dead end. Marash trudges around yet another way, getting into a fight with a doombat over a wooden chest and losing several scrolls to its fiery bite in the process.

The chest contains a curing staff which she deems superfluous and a small metal shield which she tosses on realising it is merely magical.

For such an excellent-feeling place, a surprising amount of disappointment. Marash continues after a young bronze dragon.

This dragon yielded a ring of constitution the equal of her current one, not deemed good enough to replace the ring of strength that keeps her moving easily, and a flail.

Marash destroys a blue jelly with satisfaction as she continues south. Her next scan reveals a minor demon, an imp in that direction. She is hopeful, and moreso once she realises the ex-dragon's mace feels excellent. She puts it at her hip, waiting to test it at the first available opportunity.

A potion revealed by the detect treasure scroll is drunk from the floor, undoing the damage to her life-force done by those ghosts. Sadly, a bit of quick testing reveals Marash's new flail won't reveal the invisible to her. Its testing must wait until after the imp is destroyed.

Instead, she finds a werewolf to try the flail out on. Verdict: not worth expending an identify charge on. Likewise a sabre lying on the floor is ditched for not being special enough.

Marash wanders north, finding herself in a narrow corridor with a four-headed hydra. The hydra is a tough fight, made tougher by it fleeing out of her sight whenever Marash gains the upper hand, but soon its treasure is hers. A giant salamander tries to claim some of the treasure for its own, which Marash proves is a bad idea.

And just a little to the north, a battle axe found laying on the ground...

Testing that out reveals it to be suspiciously similar to her whip. An identify charge from her staff reveals it, too is a Defender. Not quite as useful to her as the whip she already has, so it gets tossed.

There are trolls down south, but they look a bit nasty. Better to go round and see if there is anything else to do.

Of course, there is not. A pack of water hounds does serious damage to her armour before being put down, giving nothing but yet another dead end in return. No choice but the now-woken trolls, or leave and never know what is so great about this area.

A sleeping mummified orc handily blocks the trolls from getting to her just yet, giving her time to prepare herself.

The trolls give her a hard fight, putting her in dire straits more than once. She is weak when they are all dead and her prize is a pair of iron-shod boots. Perhaps they will be able to replace her Boots of Stability, now so badly damaged by the water hounds?

She is wary of moving while still so injured. A quick Detect Evil reveals nothing nearby, but an orc captain with an escort of black orcs and cave orcs to the west. Could be trouble. Marash checks out a chamber the trolls were guarding first, hoping there will be no surprises.

First surprise: a giant red scorpion which flees her attack. Second surprise: a purple worm cuts off her escape when she pursues the wounded scorpion. The worm is tough, eating lightning and fire, but trusty drain life gets it fleeing, buying Marash some more time to heal and recharge her rods. She is relieved not to feel its bite.

Picking her way over to the orcs, she get the feeling her new boots are worth trying out. They feel encumbering, might still be worth wearing.

Marash is attacked from behind by a young multi-hued dragon, not quite getting her defences up before it reaches melee range. The dragon resists lightning, fire and acid, but her rod of drain life hurts it significantly. She follows up with an orb of draining that hits it nearly as hard.

The battle feels less worrying after that, and soon the dragon is cut down as it flees, getting off only a single lightning breath. Among the clutter was a ring of strength not quite as good as the one she was wearing. It seems harder and harder for finds to excite her interest.

She continues after the orc captain and eir escorts, finding nothing of interest in their remains, nor the wolves which got in her way.

More trouble to the northeast; she heads that way. Stone trolls and a ghost. She focuses on the ghost first, the trolls after it is cut down. During the long battle her boots self-identify as boots of stability, just like her old boots but thus far undamaged.

A little more wandering finds her a mace of disruption. Could this be the source of that excellent feeling? It is very heavy, and sadly turns out to be only magical. A noticeable improvement in damage, but to wield it would mean sacrificing many of the benefits of her whip, including seeing the invisible, regenerating, and precious elemental resistances. Not a good enough deal, although it does prove handy for taking down a swarm of manes.

Marash continues her descent.

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Graveyard Shift by James M. Reasoner

Originally published November 1978 in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine as by M. R. James; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

M

Not recommended for persons under 15 years of age, but no legal restrictions

(D, L, V, T)

Drug References {PG} {alcohol, tobacco}

Coarse Language {PG}

Violence {M}

Themes {crime, death, vengeance}

Representations

Gender:

The only specified woman is the protagonist's dead wife.

Sex:

Implicit heterosexuality in references to aforementioned dead wife and to couples buying late night infant supplies.

Race & Ethnicity:

Unmentioned; as usual characters presumed white US citizens.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Unmentioned.

Awards

None found

Notes

Very short, sharp tale of undetected, vengeance-driven serial killing.

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The Saturday Night Deaths by Michael Kerr

Originally published July 1976 in Mystery Monthly; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

MA15+

Considered unsuitable for persons under 15 years of age; legally restricted

(D, V, T)

Drug References {PG} {alcohol}

Strong Violence {MA15+}

Themes {MA15+} {crime, corruption, suicide, death}

Representations

Gender:

Female characters existing in relation to men, but distributed on a continuum of innocence to vice.

Sex:

Heterosexuality only.

Race & Ethnicity:

No mention, US characters presumed to be white.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Scars as relics of organised criminal violence.

Awards

None found

Notes

Another non-detective story I liked. Satisfying in a vengeful sort of way, with a strong sense of melancholy in the latter half. I suppose the appeal of the recent set I enjoyed despite not being 'detective stories' is they were still clever, decently executed short fiction. Not merely another bleak tale of human darkness. Interesting for at least one of plot or craft.

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Level 32: "You are unsure about this place"

A dark chamber of unknown size. Just to the south of her, a sleeping manticore, a creature she has yet to measure herself against. Nervously, Marash detects evil. There is none about, except the manticore itself which has now awoken.

She protects herself from evil, then blesses herself as it approaches.

Her whip does almost no damage to it. Her ranged attacks do, however: acid from Paurnen, lightning and fire bolts from her rods. But the manticore's attacks are hitting her hard. She turns to her trusty rod of drain life, and after a nerve-wracking misfire she is granted some respite.

She takes a breather, then calls upon her detections. No traps in the area. The passage out of her chamber was blocked by rubble, and after she cleared that, briefly obstructed by a fire spirit. Just as she destroyed it, she heard something else destroying a door nearby.

A  cautious step, and semi-relief - the door-destroyer was merely a cold vortex. She guards her potions and lets loose with her rods.

Wandering, exploring, she detects evil again and discovers more algroths, and more worryingly a dark elven lord and a skeletal ettin. A further scan reveals these creatures inhabit one of those moated quartet rooms. They don't have immediate access to her or a direct path however, so she continues.

Up north is a sleeping earth elemental, and she doesn't dare face it yet,  leading her to wander down into the mess she'd been avoiding. The skeletal ettin hurt her badly, but not as badly as she had been expecting.

The first creature to give her big trouble was not even evil - a colbran. Immune to her rod of drain life, expectedly resistant to electricity, and its own electrical attacks jolting her unpleasantly.

After a rough battle she took it down, but the colbran had been shielding a giant flea, and by the time it was downed their infestation had thoroughly set in. Marash had to carve a path all round and through the quartet to finally be rid of them, and she got no respite. By then the algroshes were woken and coming after her.

They proved again surprisingly little trouble, and Marash's prize for persisting was another identification staff, to replace what she'd left behind. The ruby ring she was carrying proved to be of Bodykeeping, protecting her physicality from being drained. Her new armour, meanwhile, had only the power of conferring acid resistance. It still was a worthy successor.

Marash wandered north-east, spying via Detect Evil a cluster of ogres escorting their leader Lokkak. Maybe she can't kill him, but she might get something nice out of his followers. Maybe nice enough to do the job after all.

An ordinary ogre wandering ahead of the rest boosts confidence, until she runs into a solid wall of (one) ogre chieftain. Not something she can stand up to long at all, but with pluck and luck she takes it down. Then, the second chieftain comes after her and Marash discreetly teleports elsewhere to heal.

Being the hardy half-troll she is, that does not take long. And being the sort of leader he is, Lokkak has found his way to the front of the ogres and is ready to meet her.

Still hopeful, Marash zaps him with her wand of teleport other, catching the surviving chieftain in the beam. She takes down a few more ogres, including, with some frustration and shattered potions, one of their mages.

Optimism strikes. Then Marash spots the hated dwarf Nár amid the ogres. Tempted to bail on this area entirely, immediately, she reconsiders.

So far, nothing valuable has come her way from these ogres. Nothing catching her interest strongly. So why not engage in a bit of reckless devastation?

Neither magical sleep nor slow have any effect on him, though they definitely get to the ogres she can see. Marash pulls out her wands of wonder...

After a lengthy battle Marash lets out a whoop of joy, triumphant. Finally Nár is down. She had been brought to the edge of death mid-way through, saved by a desperate heal. Nár had healed himself up too, multiple times. Several ogres died in the backwash of energies Marash directed at the dwarf before he himself succumbed. If she could take Nár, perhaps she could take Lokkak too. Perhaps.

Marash trudges back and recovers the identify staff, using it to learn she doesn't want much of anything dropped by the ogres or Nar, only an amulet of wisdom.

She runs around in a burst of confidence halted by the sight of a mind-flayer. A reputationally fearsome creature she has never faced before, it drops immediately to her rod of drain life.

A shock, perhaps they are not so tough?

She wanders south, knowing the longer she lingers the more chance she has of running into Lokkak again. The prospect worries her.

Instead she finds a supply of ice trolls and some more manticores. Apparently, when you reach 1600 feet below the surface, manticores become standard.

Those beasts drop nothing and the ice trolls drop nothing of interest. She feels she is wasting time.

Another Detect Evil, still no sign of Lokkak. Instead Marash becomes aware Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings is about. He seems a more fearsome foe than the ogre chieftain, and she decides it is time to bail.

A mage attacked on her way to some stairs down, but a couple of blows with her whip sent it teleporting to safety.

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The Old Pro by H. A. Derosso

Originally published December 1960 in Manhunt; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

MA15+

Considered unsuitable for persons under 15 years of age; legally restricted

(S, D, V, L)

Mild Sexual Activity {PG}

Drug Use {PG} {alcohol, tobacco}

Violence {MA15+}

Coarse Language {PG}

Representations

Gender:

One woman in story, a symbol of what is good in life and worth fighting for.

Sex:

Only a single heterosexual relationship.

Race & Ethnicity:

Unmentioned; characters presumed white US citizens.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Disfigurement by acid as a threat.

Awards

None found. Was adapted as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Notes

Despite being more a crime story than a detective one, I liked this. Retired contract killer discovers you can't get out.

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Forever After by Jim Thompson

Originally published May 1960 in Shock Magazine; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

PG

Parental Guidance recommended for audiences under 15 years of age

(V)

Violence {PG}

Representations

Gender:

Viewpoint character is female, plotting murder of her husband because divorce wouldn't get her money.

Sex:

Heterosexual only. Potentially sex as tool of manipulation.

Race & Ethnicity:

Unmarked, presumed US-white.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Character is disabled, fatally injured by her own scheme.

Awards

None found

Notes

Self-thwarting crime, another tale of darkness.

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Level 31: "You are unsure about this place"

Hope it's not anything like the last one. Looks like a few dragons around, of a more handleable sort than the last. Looks like another moated room to the west too, but nothing evil in there so her senses can't get a grip. The unknown is a worry.

Weirdly, it turned out to be nothing much, it's only contents a single killer fire beetle, which didn't kill anything.

She kills another baby multi-hued dragon, then falls carelessly into another encounter with Angamaitë of Umbar, who somehow survived her prior act of destruction. Perhaps time to try and do away with him.

Long battle, badly even - they both miss a lot. But Marash has damaging magic on her side which he seems not to, and prevails. Her prize is an ordinary pair of magic boots, worthless to her.

Carelessness leads easily to death. Having used up the last of her frost bolt wand, Marash is trying out weapons she found laying around when she lets herself get cornered between a hill giant and a young bronze dragon.

Thanks to the dragon's confusion breath, she manages to lose track of which is which and nearly dies, thinking she has just about slain the dragon when in truth it barely has been touched. Fortunately self-rescued at the last moment with her rod of curing and a quick Portal elsewhere, to rest up and recover.

Of the spear she obtained from destroying a shade, her suspicions bore out. It *slays* dragons, as she proves upon the body of a young gold dragon.

This place is getting far too busy. All she wants to do is try out stuff on the floor and discover whether any are useful, but instead she is being beset by uruks, various trolls and repeatedly that young bronze dragon until finally it dies. Now, an unexpected wall of ice trolls keeping her from trying out a new whip and maybe being done.

Trolls out of the way, now a summoning priest. More trolls ahead, Earth spirit behind. Maybe she should just abandon this place. Not much space to carry anything, and could there even be anything to find here worth the trouble?

She uses one of the charges on her staff of slow monsters, rendering the earth spirit and priest easily dispatched. The last two stone trolls follow quickly, leaving Marash to sort out what, if anything, that they have dropped is worth more to her than the gear she already carries.

After some consideration she settles on dropping her wand of fire bolts for the time being, in order to carry around and think on a pair of leather boots. It is quickly discarded when she senses it to be merely magical and thus worthless. A beaked axe meets the same fate.

While wandering about aiming to get a feel for a whip she is set upon by two more stone trolls. Doubtless they are stragglers from the previous pack. Marash retreats to the relative safety of a corridor, blesses herself and zaps the nearest troll with her rod of lightning bolts.

A priest and an earth spirit set upon her also, and she finds herself low on divine energy. A lightning bolt from her rod dispatches the priest. She trades blows with the remaining creatures, feeling she has health to spare for the moment.

Her whip dispatches them and she drinks one of her potions of enlightenment, becoming aware of this area's layout. Very nearby she sees an interesting quartet of rooms, such as she has found often to be well-stocked in both foes and treasure.

She makes her way to the east; the nearest room begins disgorging a stream of novice rangers. A green glutton ghost approaches too, and she focuses her attention on that, with several incidental ranger deaths before the ghost is destroyed.

Spying a potion mimic in the distance gives her pause, but it appears to be immobile, so she disregards it for now.

The second room contains stone trolls, which she wakes with the Phial of Galadriel, then pulls back to the corridor for a convenient choke point. One of the novice rangers regained enough foolish courage to attack her again, so she spares it the moment's attention it takes to kill.

Then, the mimic attempts to magically blind her from a distance. Marash curses her inattention and withdraws somewhere safer.

The upper rooms of this quartet are uninteresting, as is the treasure she is so far identifying. From somewhere, a trickle of stone trolls continues to harass her.

Marash continues to feel misgivings about this area, but Detect Evil reveals only a Forest Wight, a Grave Wight, and a pack each of Uruks and Algroths.

Her crossbow downs the potion mimic and prompts the forest wight to flee in a distinctly un-menacing way. Feeling quite capable, she headed up north and cleared some rubble to get at the grave wight, between them crushing an unfortunate bloodshot icky thing.

The Algroths seemed less fearsome than she recalled, and frequent lightning bolts from her tin wand hurt not only them, but the otherwise uninvolved uruks still in the room from which they came.

A lead rod dropped by the grave wight proved to conjure fire bolts, a very welcome device for clearing out this little horde. Even the killer slicer beetle which joined the fray proved no cause for concern.

With the mopping up in progress Marash feels confident enough to begin scrounging. She empties out her wand of fire bolts in a shower of death to replace it with the renewable rod of same she has found, and her augmented chain mail is replaced with some enchanted chain one of the trolls had dropped. Almost as protective, and harbouring as yet unrevealed abilities. But especially, freeing up her divine energies for further use. She leaves it on the floor to gain some more carrying capacity.

A bit more roaming around, finding and killing nothing exciting, and Marash decides it is time to head elsewhere. Down? Down.

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The Merry, Merry Christmas by Evan Hunter

Originally published 1957 in Manhunt; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

M

Not recommended for persons under 15 years of age, but no legal restrictions

(D, L, V)

Drug Use {PG} {alcohol}

Coarse Language {M} {homophobic and misogynistic slurs used as calculated taunts}

Violence {M}

Representations

Gender:

No women present. Stereotyped aggressive protectiveness of men toward the good name of their mothers used as a weapon.

Sex:

One character accuses another of being queer in a hostile, suspicious response unwanted generosity. Homophobia used as tool of provocation and to express dislike.

Race & Ethnicity:

No mention; characters apparently white + US citizens.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Victim dismissed by witness, murderer, and officer on the scene as a nut.

Awards

None found.

Notes

Another story of the impersonal injustice of violence, found it more strikingly crafted than many of the others. An apparently perfect murder committed motivated by irritation with the victim, with speech used as the weapon as much as any physical violence.

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A Piece of Ground by Helen Nielsen

Originally published 1957 in Manhunt; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

M (not recommended 15 years and under, no legal restriction)

(D, V)

Drug Use {G} {alcohol}

Violence {M}

Representations

Gender:

One woman as major character, implicitly presumed sex worker by the male lead; malevolent manipulator along with her partner in crime. Off-screen, the patient, hopeful wife.

Sex:

Heterosexuality only.

Race & Ethnicity:

Unmarked presumed white US only.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

No mention

Awards

None found

Notes

Dreaded doing this one because I remembered it being so depressing the first time around. Makes me feel sick with upset for the protagonist being so taken advantage of.

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Level 29: "You feel a little lucky"

Calmer? Not so busy be this area. Only a hill giant and a human druid for evil in the area.

The giant is downed easily, even with a giant spider at her back. The druid however, insists on fighting Marash among the columns of a large hall, summoning animals to eir aid.

She does her best to force a path to the druid direct, focusing on the major threat here.

Druid beaten down, focus shifted to the next-greatest threat - the giant tick that smokes and burns with heat in its attack.

Too much on all sides. She forces her way back into the corridor she emerged from, hoping to keep each summoned animal focused on her long enough to put down, rather than the carousel she'd been facing out there.

It worked well enough. With the druid's allies down Marash is free to roam most of the area with little incident.

Wereworms, werewolves and now werebears? Morgoth has been up to something, clearly.

Khîm, Son of Mîm and Angamaitë of Umbar. Some 'luck'. Time to leave.

Level 30: "This seems a quiet, peaceful place"

Looks like any other level. Quasit just south, Marash protects herself from evil and steps out to squash it.

Something in the darkness breathing nexus at her, making the quasit scream in collateral. Blessing herself, calling upon the Phial's light, there is a vortex of nexus in the chamber. Not evil. Must remember things that aren't evil can still be dangerous.

Frost bolts down a killer red beetle for convenience, don't damage the vortex much. It's immune to having it's life drained... vortices don't live. Acid bolt from her gauntlets, not much either. Crossbow bolts finish the job, one more vortex destroyed.

Her prize is a battle axe she hasn't room for. Up north she destroys a giant white ant, a green naga and a pseudodragon to secure a wand of fire bolts, with which she hopes to replace her frost bolt wand after it is used up. And now there is a group of gnome mages awaiting her.

A gnome summoned blink dogs. Perhaps Marash has not thought this rampage through.

All fun and games, waiting for a break in the bouncing to hit the nearest blink dog and slowly whittle them down, until eventually one of the gnomes summoned Angamaite of Umber to the fray. Time to start thinking exits.

Wand of Wonder time. She activates it and is instantly blinded by a surge of power, the sounds of the earth twisting and buckling around her. When her eyes clear, she sees she is now encased in solid rock. The entire surrounding area has been reshaped by the wand's power. No sign of any foe.

No desire for sticking around, she uses her last scroll of identify to verify that she has no interest in the axe from earlier, grabs the fire bolt wand and looks for a way down. Surprisingly elusive, that.

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So Pale, So Cold, So Fair by Leigh Brackett

Originally published July 1957 in Argosy; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

M

(D, L, V)

Drug References {M} {Alcohol - getting drunk for grief, Tobacco}

Coarse Language {PG}

Violence {M}

Representations

Gender:

Women as people. Viewpoint character is male, but it is friendship between women that delivers the final impetus to get the story going. Although a woman is the victim of the piece, she was not a passive one.

Sex:

Heterosexuality only; development of chemistry under pressure.

Race & Ethnicity:

All characters US white so far as could tell.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

One character has strong facial scarring from an attempt to silence him.

Awards

None found.

Notes

I was relieved and excited to turn the page and see Leigh Brackett's name as she was a noted genre author (mainly of science fiction) , although I suspect these days she is mostly known for her work on the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back. The story itself was a relieving return to the detective-style story I have been preferring, rather than crime fiction as depicting the grim darkness of humanity, crime without resolution or 'hero'. The puzzle, more than the grime in the soul.

Liked this one a lot, and the writing while rating I quoted parts to friends, delighting in the logical menace laid out so skilfully by Brackett.

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Home by Gil Brewer

Originally published March 1956 in Accused; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

MA15+

(L, D, N, V)

Coarse Language {PG}

Drug References {M} {Alcohol - frequent public drunkenness, leading to menace}

Nudity {M}

Violence {MA}

Representations

Gender:

Women present as family members, agents of racism (indistinguishable alongside men), and as instigators of racial violence vindictively or to divert from apparent sexual shame.

Sex:

Only heterosexuality mentioned. One woman (partly self-) sexualised in a pitiably malevolent way.

Race & Ethnicity:

Protagonist is African American from a poor family. Story is driven by racial violence in 1950s USA and the difficulty of surviving same as a young black man. Story passes Johnson Test. Black characters portrayed as poor

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

None noticed.

Awards

None found

Notes

Yet another difficult story to read, for its tension and tragic inevitability. Guy goes off to study to be a doctor, comes back on vacation to a home he is no longer used to and has lost from disuse the skills to survive in.

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Level 27: "This place seems reasonably safe"

Marash trundles idly around, until she spots Khim, son of Mim and starts backing away. She was intending to leave and let him be, except that one of his firebolts destroyed one of her teleport level scrolls.

Back around a corner, protection from evil, bless, protection from heat and cold.

... he isn't taking much damage. Drain life again barely dents him. Marash definitely needs a heftier attack.

He can heal himself? This will take forever! And disenchant items? Time to get out of here. Marash portals herself out of the way.

Rest, recover, re-scan surroundings for a path down. Scurry quickly.

Level 28: "You have a superb feeling about this level"

Death. Gotta be death.

There's Draebor the Imp off to the northwest along with his escort. Worryingly, multiple tengus. But he probably is not the source of this foreboding. Marash heads opposite anyway.

What else? Blink dogs? Full of pain, those. Bouncing her around among wolves. Once Marash is sure she's taken care of most of those she heads off to kill a gang of black orcs for fun but, sadly, not profit.

She was mistaken about having taken care of all the blink dogs. Fortunately none show up while she is otherwise occupied and are again disposed of.

Time, now, for her first encounter with a dark elf druid, who managed to confuse her at range in advance.

First action: Marash zaps herself with her rod of curing. The druid counters by summoning two vampire bats, a killer white beetle, a giant red scorpion, a giant white dragon fly and a giant black ant.

Second action: The bats and druid are evil, so Marash takes a step back and prays for protection from evil. Then, blesses herself.

A couple of rounds exchanged between herself and the scorpion, and Marash takes another glance at the dragon fly and prays for resistace to heat and cold.

Unnecessary. The scorpion is defeated and the dragon fly soon after. Now, only a vampire bat between her and the evil druid, Marash calls upon an orb of draining. Most of its remaining allies wiped out immediately, the druid emself softened up nicely.

Just to be sure, Marash finishes the elf off with her rod of draining. No great prize, sadly, just some trap detection scrolls.

Roaming, still no sign of what is so superb about this place. Wait, a mature white dragon? Could that be it? With protections up and successfully activating her rod and gauntlets she manages to take it down easily enough, so perhaps not.

At least the dragon dropped an intelligence potion, so she can proceed with another with about her.

At last a potion of enlightenment reveals an interesting-looking room off to the west. Perhaps that will finally resolve this mystery. Her first shambling mound cut down on the way, and detect evil once she gets near enough.

That's it, definitely. Troll pit. One Olog, eight water trolls, a dozen each of algroths and stone trolls, eighteen water trolls and a full fifty forest trolls! Who knew there were so many troll-kinds in the world?

This is a battle she expects to retreat from. But if she wins, oh, wouldn't that be a blow against Morgoth's forces.

Toward the end of the first wave she is re-gifted with the prayer of Turn Undead. Carefully she collects her ammunition from the floor and waits for the second wave to arrive.

Much, much tougher. The rod and gauntlets help take half-trolls down but while they charge she is worn down slowly. Finally, broken through a line of half-trolls, weaker forest trolls behind. Might be able to heal up while dealing with those.

A brief gap in the trolls gives her moments of respite, used to read a scroll from the ground and enchant her whip for greater accuracy.

The olog is down easier than feared. Water trolls and half-trolls see off the last of her lightest healing potions. Resources going down as the third wave approaches.

She manages to avoid using so many potions on that wave, with luck, rod, gauntlets and even risking an orb of draining despite the ongoing mana drain of keeping herself protected.

On the fourth wave there are more forest trolls again. Marash uses those as breaks in the action, where she can regenerate faster than they can hurt her. She has grown in power twice over the course of this battle, and by its finish needs far less to resort to desperate measures to survive. although it helps that only weaker trolls are left at the very end.

Now her biggest problem is what to exit with. Wand of frost bolts? Replace her Defender whip with a Defender maul? It's better at being a weapon, but not so good at providing armour or stealth.

Stealth boots left for near-identical stability boots, weapon left as is, and a new wand to wreak some havoc with. Not bad, although one might quibble about it being 'superb'.

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The Screen Test of Mike Hammer by Mickey Spillane

Originally published July 1955 in Male; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

M

(D, V)

Drug Use (M) {Tobacco}

Violence (PG)

Representations

Gender:

Women simultaneously as infantilised possessions and dangerous manipulators.

Sex:

Only heterosexuality represented (brief story, but suffused with it)

Race & Ethnicity:

All characters unmarked US, presumed white.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

'Crazy' people as murdering maniacs.

Awards

None found

Notes

This was very short and equally off-putting. Really brought to my attention the mistake I'd made in buying a Mike Hammer anthology - I'd got Mickey Spillane confused with Raymond Chandler. Only three pages long but oozing misogyny and one-dimensional macho heroics that would put an '80s action film to shame. Did not like, considering getting rid of the Mike Hammer collection unread.

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Mama's Boy by David Alexander

Originally published May 1955 in Manhunt; this edition 1995

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Collected in: Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian)

MA15+

(D, L, V)

Drug Use {PG} {alcohol}

Coarse Language {M}

Violence {MA}

Representations

Gender:

Viewpoint character is intensely misogynistic and focused on distorted ideals of masculinity.

Sex:

Heterosexual appeal played up by the lead as means of making his living, modelling and conning or robbing women.

Race & Ethnicity:

No mention, consequently presuming whiteness.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

Viewpoint character fixated on his body and taking care of it in a naive, grotesque way.

Awards

None found

Notes

Another upsetting story. Driven entirely by the viewpoint character's hatred of women, to the point of murder as a way of thrilling himself and proving his masculinity. All my sympathy and admiration lies with his victims. In the one case, her canny quick-wittedness that is his downfall, and in the other the futile fight she puts up. Quite upsetting, even to skim for getting this rating up.

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Level 26: "This place seems reasonably safe"

Quiet, empty. The only evil around is Angamaitë of Umbar. He might be the only danger around here, but Marash is wary. Kitting herself out for crossbow has weighed her down. She trudges east.

A vortex, crackling with energy. They close range, she fires. Those bolts are magical alright, magically worse than ordinary bolts. But they are still better than the arrows she had been firing, so she isn't panicking yet. Get rid of the vortex, then get rid of the bolts. Onwards.

She hisses. There is a tengu about. She doesn't see it, but that yanking sensation is familiar. A bit of bouncing and it's gone somewhere else. She doesn't know if she got a hit in yet.

A snaga? Oh, don't worry about the tengu then. Marash has stumbled upon a pit of orcs. An orc captain, surrounded by eight uruks on guard, flanked by thirty black orcs, a dozen cave orcs and forty-three snagas for flavour. Good grief. And Angamaitë is awake and after her too. This is liable to go badly.

Now she throws away her bad bolts. They had been useful enough to fire, but right now she needs to be unburdened. Lack of speed could kill her.

Orcs, it turns out, are much easier than Marash remembered. Her main moment of panic came from carelessly drinking a potion that enhanced her constitution at the expense of wisdom, driving two prayers out of her mind. Little else does she find but some fresh sources of identification and a wand of wonder. Hopefully she can soon fix her foolishness.

A forest wight attacks, seeming uncertain, as likely to retreat as press on. Would be nice and easy except when it is wounded it draws upon Marash's mana to heal itself.

A mess, a mess. Carelessness gets her in an open fight with a gnome mage, summoning wyverns and other creatures to harry her. More carelessness, stumbling into a group of Crebain and Mirkwood spiders. The evil crows' harsh shrieking sending the spiders into a frenzy of speed, until Marash had to portal herself to safety even having blasted wave upon wave of them away.

Level 27: "You feel a little lucky"

Lucky? Directly south of her are more than a hundred of Morgoth's creatures. Another pit of orcs. One of their captains, a half-dozen half-orc warriors, a pair of uruks, a full eighteen shamans, with twenty-four cave orcs and a full forty-four snaga flanking. And on the far side of the pit is Uglúk, the Uruk with his own escort, a half-dozen hill orcs and another four half-orcs. Somewhere, beyond that, a black knight in Morgoth's service lays waiting.

Lucky. Will she be lucky to survive? Or lucky this is all she faces. At least the entrance is near Uglúk and his escort, so if Marash plays it right she won't have to worry about being surprised from behind.

Interrupted on her march by shrieking in the distance. This won't do - another flock of crebain. She puts them down, but on her return, as soon as she opens the door nearest the stairs a hill orc pushes through. Already? Worrying.

A couple of hits gotten in and the hill orc flees, revealing Uglúk right behind. Marash tries her rod of drain life, but fumbles its activation a couple of times and then, disappointed by its effect on the Uruk.

Uglúk is fortunately not a complicated foe, and Marash heals swiftly. He flees, she re-blesses herself, and turns her attention to the latest hill orc.

The first wave is past. One of the orcs had dropped a scroll which Marash uses to enchant her Maul of Westernesse for greater damage. Successfully this time.

More orcs than she imagined, supplemented by novice rangers and another hydra. She re-enchants her shield with a scroll from the resulting clutter, drinks a potion to enhance her appearance further.

The black knight is upon her as she mops up, conjuring darkness around her. A quick dose of drain life renders him vulnerable to violence, swiftly dispatched in the end.

Uglúk took Marash by surprise while she sifted through the treasure and trash dropped by his fellow orcs. Another dose of the rod and she soon had him on the run again, this time without an endless stream of orcs in support.

He dropped a shield when he died. To make room for it, Marash reluctantly put on an iron helm she had found previously and discarded her Hat of Beauty. The shield turned out to be worthless to her, but she soon after found a powerful whip which granted enhanced defence, stealth and the ability to see the invisible. Perhaps that, and the orcs, is enough to account for feeling lucky, but she continues exploring.

Another of her many mistakes? She stumbled upon a quythulg, a heap of inchoate flesh, a pulsing mound on the dungeon floor. Waiting to see what such a monstrosity could possibly do, it teleported itself away to the next room. She followed and found a gang of trolls waiting. Cause to back out already, and then the quythulg summoned a large group of novice mages to harass her. It disappeared again immediately after, leaving Marash to clean up.

Mages are annoying. Not even slightly tough in battle now, they persist in magically blinding and confusing Marash, forcing her to use up healing potions to stay aware of the battle.

Just when she's nearly finished mopping up, she sees the quythulg is back. It summons a pack of energy hounds as if contemptuous of Marash's efforts, and that is intolerable. She prays, launches an orb of draining into the room. The quythulg and a stone troll dissolve immediately. Numerous hounds howl in pain and flee, but they live. Not good enough.

A second orb thins the pack more definitively. Then she sets to work with her crossbow until she has the energy for a third orb, and finally more bolts until she is almost entirely out of ranged death. No bolts, no mana to power her prayers. There's the wand of wonder, but that risks destroying the room and everything in it.

Absent-mindedly she scoops a set of gauntlets off the floor before wading in with her mace... Paurnen? Artifact gauntlets? Quickly replacing her old magic gloves with those, she stalks into the chamber with menace.

The room falls silent. Only Marash and a rot jelly in the corner persist, and neither is going to trouble the other.

Better defence, better accuracy. More damage with every blow. The ability to conjure bolts of acid at intervals. Further details yet unknown, but no mere magic gloves will suffice for her now. She will make better use of these than that unfortunate novice mage ever would or could.

Anything else in this place before she moves on? Her first four-headed hydra, apparently. How many heads can these things get? It seemed to be guarding a room of not much. Nothing evil detected inside, and it turns out hardly anything non-evil. Just a cave bear sleeping on a ring of the dog.

Then, the phase spiders come after her. They must have used that straggler novice mage as bait, and now half-real arachnids close in upon her. She takes a step and they bounce her around like tengu. At least they aren't very fearsome in themselves.

She is set upon by a sabre-toothed tiger. It doesn't stick around very long, so she uses the peace to get some identifying her whip and the last details of Paurnen. The whip turns out to be a Defender, and might be even more useful than her maul.

Up ahead she spies a wereworm. Looks like exactly the sort of acid-drenched monstrosity she wants nothing to do with. Time to leave this place.

Carefully, she weaves a path away and manages to reach a set of stairs down without seeing it again... until she realises, if she is keeping the whip to use, her maul is now a huge burden on her movements. Time for another brief trip to town to stow it.

In town she drops her Maul of Westernesse at home, stocks up on scrolls of recall and identify, and zaps herself back down again.

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Level 25: "Looks like any other level."

The only evil about is an imp, a priest, and a kobold, all sleeping. Marash is wary.

She heads south, picking up an interesting-looking cutlass from the floor. Soon she gets the feeling it is merely magical and tosses it aside.

A silver mouse falls to an arrow, and then Marash comes upon the imp she detected earlier. It is still sleeping, so she lets it be and passes by.

Unfortunately the imp had other ideas. It woke in the darkness and conjured up illusions to terrify Marash. A mistake on the imp's part - Marash cleansed herself of fear with prayer and quickly struck the demon down.

Soon afterward she finds a magic shovel, which disappointingly does not dig better than her maul. She heads north again, to an interesting-looking room with a corridor moating it.

A novice priest patrols the outside and falls quickly, dropping an amulet of lightning resistance. This does not seem worth swapping her acid-resisting amulet for, so she leaves it be.

As Marash completes her circuit of the room, disarming traps along the way, a giant spider bursts through the door to attack her. She makes sure she is blessed, and meanwhile a blue dragon bat follows the spider and begins breathing lightning at her.

Perhaps it was a mistake to leave the amulet. Perhaps not. Once the spider is down, the dragon bat falls to a single arrow, and Marash is free to claim the room's treasure.

Another room holds two more amulets, which Marash uses her staff to identify. The first is a cursed amulet of wisdom, the other, a worthless amulet of adornment. In doing so, she is reminded she has been carrying around a scroll of unknown use for a while now, and expends another charge to learn it can enchant her weapon for greater accuracy.

Marash of course immediately uses the scroll on her maul, but the enchantment fails, fortunately to no ill-effect. She scoops up another unknown scroll, titled "calaudo tatus".

Heading south Marash comes upon a hill giant and a three-headed hydra right behind it. The hydra pushes past the giant to get at her, and Marash backs up.

Her maul barely dents the hydra. Time for another dose of trusty drain life. Immediately the hydra shrieks and flees, pushing past a centipede and a guardian naga to escape and looking much the worse for wear.

The centipede is out of place her, and dies immediately. Marash tries to duel the hill giant but something out of sight casts a spell to terrify her, wasting her time.

This is just the sort of fight the Maul of Westernesse was made for. Each blow hitting the giant harder than Marash is accustomed to, deeply wounding a creature she might otherwise fear to face... until the hydra, courage recovered, pushes its way to the front again.

It is a tough fight, but Marash is winning. The hydra tries to regain the upper hand by magically frightening her again and fails. It flees.

A guardian naga takes its place, infuriatingly difficult to hit, but not so tough when Marash connects. The hill giant is finished off quickly, and then there is only a brown yeek, which barely survives the first blow and immediately runs too.

Marash pursues, dismissing the hydra's illusions as fast as it can cast them and finally striking it down.

She uses the last charge of her identification staff to discover a ring on the floor is of escaping, and not something she is willing to use.

A priest attacks, proving not to be the threat Marash had feared. She wanders onward, dropping her cedar staff of identify in exchange for some studded leather armour.

The studded leather is magical, but proves to provide less protection than her damaged suit of augmented chain mail, and reluctantly is left behind.

A water vortex corrodes more of her equipment. Marash vindictively takes out her annoyance on a nest of more than a dozen Mirkwood spiders before continuing her descent.

Level 26: "You are unsure about this place."

A dilemma. To one side she senses Gorbag, the Orc Captain with an escort of 37 black orcs and an orc shaman. To the other, 18 cave orcs and 7 cave ogres. Each monstrous cluster with a relatively clear path to her, should they awaken and come chasing her down. So which would she rather face first? Which would she rather be caught from behind by? A Maul of Westernesse is a powerful weapon, but even with it she cannot down even a cave orc in a single strike...

After some indecision she settles on the cave orcs first. If she is caught out there she has a more defensible position available. Just better hope Gorbag's escort doesn't scatter meanwhile.

The cave orcs fall easily to light, arrows and her maul. Marash is rewarded with a ring of protection better than the one she had been wearing. But as she heads back out, she finds the cave ogres have woken and now come after her. She falls back into the corridor, waiting around a bend for them to come to her.

Those are tougher than cave orcs, but fewer. She gains another potion of cure critical wounds and a granite ring of light from them. A ring of light... seems less useful than a ring of protection.

She swaps them back, heading off on her way to confront Gorbag and co., when unexpectedly she spies a dragon following her. Large, with deep green scales, this seems no baby. She hurries onward, fearing to be caught in the open.

It enters the corridor behind her, she turns the rod of drain life on it and... fails to use it correctly. The mature green dragon disappears from view. Unseen, the dragon tries to terrify her, but Marash resists.

She ducks around the corner and waits for its approach. This time her rod does its damage, and priest and dragon flail at each other, until finally the dragon lets loose its poisonous breath. Badly wounded, Marash sees only one viable option. She turns her rusty wand of teleport other upon the dragon, and fails to use it correctly.

Another swipe from the dragon's claws, and this time the dragon vanishes.

Carefully, Marash clears a path to an exit and rests up in preparation for confronting Gorbag's gang.

She is not quite ready when the first black orc opens the door in front of her. Numerous of them fall to her beams of light, but Gorbag himself resists. The rod of drain life does make a dent in him, but he is still in good condition. Marash fills the distance between them with arrows as he closes.

He is weakened when he reaches her, down that long corridor, and it is not long before Marash has beaten him down.

She wins a magical heavy crossbow off his corpse, drains most of her wands of light and nearly runs out of store-bought arrows taking out the remainder of his escort. The other arrows she had been carrying prove to be usefully magical, and others found in the wreckage of the orcs even moreso. She ditches the remaining few of her ordinary arrows in favour of magic arrows and an excellent main gauche.

A rosewood staff, unknown function. Torn between taking it to identify or the main gauche to sell, a pursuing skeleton ettin convinces her to read a scroll of recall and get out of here quickly.

In town she buys a couple of identification scrolls, learning the main gauche slays demons and her hard leather cap is of beauty, protecting her charisma. She scurries off to her home, hauling out the bastard sword of also slaying demons she found long ago, the better to sell, and some magic crossbow bolts she found, the better to put holes in her enemies.

Leaving her bow and arrows at home, exchanged for crossbow and bolts of unknown magic, plus some more ordinary and magical bolts bought from the weaponsmith, Marash uses another scroll to return down.

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Let's say it quick.

Exhausted, don't know why I haven't let myself get to sleep already, except maybe a fear of not doing things when I could be doing things and thereby wasting irretrievable moments of my brief existence.

Finished reading The Power of One on the train in to work this morning, should say more about that when I have the consciousness for it. Borrowed Chronicles of Crime: The Second Ellis Peters Memorial Anthology of Historical Crime from the library, presumably start reading tomorrow on breaks.

Also this year's Classic 100 Countdown began today, this year's subject being the music of France. Bit frustrated I haven't yet been able to get the Listen Again feature working for the parts I missed, especially as I am liable to miss many hours more over the coming week. Not best pleased by this, as these countdowns have become a highlight of the year for me, and opportunity to broaden my musical exposure.

Indirectly made me think of writing a mash-up: Batman meets The Music of England. To be titled The Lark Knight Arising. Which is probably as far as that idea will get.

Work was kind of lousy today. Kept getting stuff I wasn't sure how to handle, and phone calls from council and senior staff members, it was pretty quiet except for people with enquiries about stuff I had no involvement or experience in. So I ended up handing what felt like a lot (but was actually maybe four things over four hours) to more senior co-workers, trying not to spiral in anxiety or to wonder what good I was doing there. Probably went okay really. Am probably never as excellent or disastrous as I think I am.

Also did some shopping trying to secure the final ingredients for the Winter Soup I have been trying to make. Grabbed a tube of pre-chopped dill because that was the only dill available (that single little tube in the whole shopping centre). Despaired briefly of finding lima beans, but discovered they are also known as butter beans, which I could then grab right off the shelf.

All seemed well until I got home and found our sour cream has been expired since the end of June. Had a texture more like ricotta (which I have just learned in the process of writing this sentence is not a cheese) when I scraped it into the organic waste bin. So now I've got to procure more of that. Hopefully nothing else will go bad by the end of the week, so I can get this dish done. We are running out of appropriate weather for Winter Soup this year.

Alright. Exhausted now. I follapse.

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Feeling anxious and worried about sleeping tonight. Thought writing something might help with that.

Is it not tradition to begin with an apology for not writing more? In this case, been beset by ongoing struggling with schoolwork, a shortage of staff at the library seeing me work several weeks on full-time hours, and an unfortunate incident of tripping over my laptop and knocking it to the floor, rendering its screen useless.

Have gotten around that last by hooking it up to our old desktop PC monitor, which works well enough but ties me to my desk or some other suitably large, stable location. Pretty fortunate it is still working as well as it does, although there have been some worrying signs of further instability, including a few days where it couldn't load /., and a few days after that where I had to make do without a GUI.

Fortunately my computer is looking a bit more stable for the moment, and on Thursday and Friday I managed to turn in a couple of assignments that had been giving me a lot of stress.

Momentarily, we look up.

I'm feeling a bit desocialised, which says to me I ought to be better at responding to what others post. Who, after all, enjoys engaging with someone who does not engage with them? But it is hard, I worry I will come across as cheesy, annoying and insincere. Most especially, I just don't know what to say, and fear being inappropriate. An intrusive stranger.

Tend to think maybe I ought to find some interest community, join in and conversate. But I suspect I would not do much participating  Perhaps worth trying anyway?

Menace follows me, hiding in the gaps where I cannot see.

So, let's talk. Yesterday I made a nice dinner for myself. "Pan-fried scrod in butter sauce", the book called it. Very straightfoward, very quick. No ingredients except only cod fillets, butter, nutmeg and lemon juice. Too insubstantial without a side dish unfortunately. Also unfortunately, no one else to share it with. Sister was at a late night barbecue with her boyfriend, and the rest of my family in Canberra for a flower show.

And I've just realised it is nearly midnight yet I've eaten only breakfast and lunch today. No wonder I keep feeling hungry. Well rats.

Better go take care of that; need to be up early for the library.

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Good thing of the day: the spinach and mushroom strata I made for dinner came out well, if a bit late.

Bad thing of the day: as I left for work this morning, I tripped on a cable and knocked my laptop to the floor. Found out on returning home, the screen has been broken and is useless.

Neutral things of the day: managed this morning's shift no problems; dug up the monitor for our old desktop PC and got that working with my laptop so as not to be computer-less for the time being.

Also, I feel exhausted. Should go sleep, another early day tomorrow.

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