Prince of Dogs

by on June 19, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The second book of Crown of Stars definitely suffers from a fracturing of the plot, with eight different viewpoint characters, most of which get turns from the get-go. Only one of these is a completely new character, and Anna’s story serves as something of the spine of the book, covering the plight of a pair of orphans after the taking of Gent. Unfortunately, even though her arc moves from a unstable equilibrium to a new, much better one at the end, it still feels partly unresolved, keeping Price of Dogs from having the same ‘tied off’ feeling that King’s Dragon did (that isn’t necessarily bad in book two of seven, but it feels like it was supposed to feel more complete at this point).

Between snippets of continuing threads, and much of the more developed portions centering around politics and the royal court, the book lacks the energy needed to really sweep you along, even though there’s plenty here, and some more of the worldbuilding becomes evident. Then ending suddenly, and surprisingly, picks up in tempo and sends you through the last hundred pages in a rush. Mostly though, Eliott does a great job in juggling all the different pieces of her story, keeping them moving along, and threading elements of each part into the others, so that you never feel that you really should be reading two or three different books.

The worst problem Prince of Dogs has is that the two main characters of the series, Alain and Liath, continue to be among the least dynamic of the cast. Liath’s arc continues with some important steps—as long as she can stay away from Hugh—and it’s shown that her helplessness is being imposed on her. Alain… mostly spends the book trying to grow into his new role, and having the predictable problems, as well as less expected ones. But, it doesn’t really feel like his story does much, except perhaps help weave much of the rest of the book together.

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The Eastern Realms

by on June 15, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

In 1985 TSR released Oriental Adventures, a new AD&D hardcover geared towards adventuring outside the normal tropes of Western Medieval Fantasy. Unusually for TSR and AD&D, it also contained the outline of a setting, called Kara-Tur, instead of saying as little as possible about locales outside of specific products.

Some of this reticence about particular settings carried over, as it was still designed to be able to be dropped into any existing campaign, although it was assumed to belong at the far end of the continent featured in the World of Greyhawk. With the discovery of world-building as a new class of product line, a full boxed set was done on Kara-Tur in 1988, setting it in their new hot property, the Forgotten Realms.

In general, the contents resemble the Forgotten Realms boxed set, with two 96-page booklets, and four poster-size maps (with no grid, and the same clear plastic hex-grid sheets as in the former box set). Past the pure physical contents, it gets stranger. The books are purely a two volume guide to the lands of Kara-Tur, instead of being split between a general use guide and DM’s materials (in fact, the page numbering continues straight through both books). The four map sheets are double-sided, and much more scattershot than the systematic presentation the Realms were getting between the main set and the FR-series supplements. One sheet gave two overview maps of Kara-Tur, one political and one topographical, each at a scale of 580 miles per inch. (The two full-sheet 90-mi/in maps of the original set cover about 12 million square miles; the single Kara-Tur map covers roughly 125 million square miles, or more than 10 times the area.) From there, there are three 90-mi/in full sheet maps and one half-sheet one, a 30-mi/in full sheet map, a 30-mi/in 3/4 sheet map (the remaining quarter is used for a city map and some building plans), a half-sheet 30-mi/in map, a 30-mi/in inset map of an island, and a couple small 30-mi/in maps on the same sheet as several city maps and a couple of building plans. These maps generally do not connect to each other or (with a few exceptions) detail an area covered in larger scale, giving a somewhat disjointed sense of presentation.

Despite being in two physical parts, the books break down into three rough sections, with the beginning being Chinese-inspired countries, the end being Japanese-inspired countries, and the stuff in the middle being more of a variety of other Oriental influences. China and Japan have decided top billing here, with the middle chapters being shorter, much less detailed, and not as well written. Each chapter supposedly written by a different in-world personality describing the area to Elminster, and actually written by a different contributing author. As with any anthology, this leads to a variety of styles, presentation, and quality.

The first part of “China” is Shou Lung, a fantasy version of ancient China which gets a pretty good introduction in about forty pages, including a gazetteer of the provinces, a cultural guide, Chinese-style renamings of the largely Japanese-influenced classes from Oriental Adventures, secret societies, religion, history, sample NPCs, and some details on a typical example town, complete with social tensions. These forty pages are packed. Of course, since this is the country that takes up most of the overview map, there’s plenty of room for invention as well.

If Shou Lung is fantasy Lawful Good China, T’u Lung is its Chaotic Evil mirror, where the bureaucracy hinders every action, taxes go uncollected, many towns are ruined by unrestrained bandits, etc. This overstates the case, as neither country is full of people of a particular alignment, but it’s not a bad assessment of the character of the countries. Overall, this section gets a bit more lost in details, such as having even more NPCs than given in the longer Shou Lung chapter, but since this is the Southern Song to Shou Lung’s Imperial China, the cultural notes from both chapters can be of help for both countries.

Kara-Tur transitions from China with Tabot, a little too obvious fantasy Tibet. With only eight pages, if you already knew something of Tibetan history, this might be enough. For me at least, this is where the boxed set starts strongly saying, ‘there’s China, and then the rest of the world is boring’. There’s just not enough here to get a real feel of the place. Sure, there’s some history, and short bits about architecture, language, religion, etc. But it is all breezed through, there’s no touches like Tabotan-culture class names; nothing more than the barest overview.

This too-short treatment dogs the next several chapters, starting with The Plain of Horses, which is obviously the home of the fantasy Mongol/barbarian horde stand-ins before you even read the chapter. And… it’s pretty much a fastball straight down the center of those expectations. Almost everyone is a barbarian (in the class-mechanics sense), everyone rides, etc. That said, while there’s a number of different tribes that fight with each other, many of them have apparently permanent cities that serve as their central meeting spot, up to the largest, Li-Raz, that has a 15,000-man (barbarian) standing army. Still, this feels a little more like a place to flesh out and adventure in, rather than visit, than Tabot, though it probably comes down to relative existing knowledge for me.

The Northern Wastes (out past the Plain of Horses) is another sparsely-populated area with no central nation, and no overriding culture either, leaving the area undeveloped in text as well, a home of lone mysterious places, and a primary place to find non-humans (more on that later). The Jungle Lands to the south of T’u Lung with multiple nations are broadly-Indonesian in flavor, but this ten-page chapter is ill-served with pages of short city descriptions crowding out broader concerns of what the area is like, with the three peoples presented are given the barest outlines. The Island Kingdoms… yes, technically, there are kingdoms (multiple) here. But the chapter spends its time purely on the island of Bawa (too-obvious renaming—Java—strikes again). With such a tight focus, the island is actually fairly well developed, and this is one of the better places to have adventurers visit and interact with, but it’s hard to imagine a campaign starting here. I’d like to complain about ignoring the rest of the region the chapter should be about, but this product needs more focus like this.

Then Kara-Tur transitions to Japan with Koryo, or fantasy-Korea. While Korea has often suffered from being stuck between China and Japan, Koryo is much more influenced by Kozakura than Shou-Lung. The ‘narration’ of this chapter is schizophrenic, supposedly written by the author of the Shou-Lung chapter, but with parts also from a brother/sister pair. They offer nicely contrasting views in one part, and the entire chapter could have been much stronger with more use of the technique.

Kozakura is a chain of islands modeled after waring states Japan, with Wa being an adjacent set of islands modeled after the Tokugawa Shogunate (down to persecuted Chauntea cultists in place of Christian missionaries). Like the pair of ‘Chinas’ earlier, these chapters have a decent amount to offer each other in terms of crossover society and background. Thanks to the increased coverage, and the smaller geographical size, they’re probably the easiest to digest for adventuring in, pointed up by the fact that most of the OA-series adventures happen in these two countries. They also feature a lot of color by way of Japanese terms and titles. I’m happy with it, but I can easily see someone being severely overwhelmed by all the foreign names and terms, and having a lot of trouble with this section.

Conclusion

In many ways, the Kara-Tur boxed set is just crammed full of possibilities, and can serve as a great inspiration to a DM. But it also suffers from overreach. It would be easy to take any one part of this product and turn it into something deeper and more focused, and still be giving the barest outlines of world-building inspiration. However, the worst omission is actually the absence of any sort of timeline. There are history sections, and many parts refer to an event happening in ‘such-and-such a year’, but the current year is never stated, making all those references nearly useless (and they’re obviously not in Dale Reckoning, and probably are in different calendars in different countries).

For me, the boxed set lived entirely on its Forgotten Realms tie-in, and that is a place that it also runs into trouble. While Kara-Tur has plenty of high-power, high-fantasy elements that make it fit into AD&D well, it does not fit with the Realms so well. The Realms are an ancient land that have been dominated by dragons, dwarves, and elves in turn, where the human era is still getting going with the wreckage of former empires scattered about. Meanwhile Kara-Tur is a very human-oriented land. There’s no signs of this backstory here. No elves, and only peripherally dwarves (if you count korobokuru), and no great pre-human empires. It’s possible they just didn’t get out this far, but it clashes with the tone of the main Realms.

The fact that the regions and cultures are all closely modeled after Earth equivalents comes in for some criticism. I’m generally fine with it (I’m a fan of Mystara, which uses that technique for much of the world), but there is the problem that as alluded to before, they the ‘fantasy’ here is largely powered by the actual myths of these cultures, and not by the implications of AD&D style-magic and the like. For instance, Shou Lung has some very nicely Chinese ideas of a Celestial Empire and heavenly bureaucracy that is reflected in the mortal realm by Shou Lung itself… but this has no place in the ‘great wheel’ cosmology of AD&D that has such an influence on the Realms. It’s not even explained how it works in relation to the other countries in the boxed set.

All of this is probably why Kara-Tur remained almost unexplored in further products. There were a few more OA-series adventures released after this, and The Horde would tie the eastern and western parts of the continent together, but there were no KT-series modules to expand on the setting, and when WotC released a new Oriental Adventures for 3rd ed D&D, and included a setting in that book, it was Legend of the Five Rings‘ Rokugan, not D&D‘s Kara-Tur. It remains a good foundation for adventure settings, but is too much to just visit, and needs too much work to base a campaign in.

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Studying Magic

by on June 11, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: GURPS

A common problem with generic role-playing systems is that they often have non-generic answers to important questions.

For instance, Traveller was originally meant as a generic SFRPG, before it started generating a setting that pretty well took over the line in later iterations. But even sticking with the early, non-setting specific materials, it still has a number of assumptions built into the basic rules. Most notably, a severely range-limited hyperspace FTL system keeps it from feeling like, say, Star Trek, without going in and completely redoing that section. Similarly, for some time GURPS had a single magic system, that while very good in its own right, had its own flavor. Other systems got introduced in various worldbooks during 3rd Edition, but it would take a 4th Edition book to really look at the problem.

GURPS Thaumatology is a big book about magic systems (plural). It has a number of different systems to use, and some general talk about the ways magic can work in a world, and how this might be reflected in the game, all so a GM can have a system that feels right.

Variations on a Theme

Thaumatology starts out with a chapter on how magic works in general (magic as art vs as engineering, Law of Contagion, etc.), and then goes on to an extensive chapter that just deals with tweaking the normal GURPS skill-based system.

Just doing that provides a lot of food for thought, with a vast array of options. This ranges from different tweaks to the advantage that allows spell-casting, to the possibility of basing spell casting on something other than intelligence (say, willpower). There’s discussion of changing around the spell lists (including one thorough worked example), and prerequisites, and even a look at what types of shapeshifting fit with different background cultures. And there’s a too-brief look at how to enforce the ‘mages wear robes’ trope (the two methods looked at are skill penalties for encumbrance or for the amount of iron worn). In all cases, the options get the usual GURPS thoughtful look over, complete with the likely effects on the game.

The chapter after that presents bigger variations on the standard system; these are sections that deal with an overall rework of the system, instead of a bunch of little options. The first one is the idea of using the skill-based system for clerical magic as was presented in GURPS Religion, with a few more notes added.

After that comes a section on Ritual Magic, which is an expansion of a system suggested in Basic Set. There, it got about half a page, and here it gets four, which goes much more in-depth as to how to make it work. In this case, it simplifies the skill system down to colleges, with all the spells in the college attached directly to that. Then comes Threshold-Limited Magic from an early issue of Pyramid, which replaces the fatigue cost with a tally that limits casting by putting the mage at personal risk when he does too much.

Then “Mandatory and Significant Modifiers”, are more of a tool kit again. It proposes giving skill modifiers for various astrological or symbolic concerns, possibly being used to overcome a flat overall penalty (or they may be needed to be able to cast at all!), and several tables in the appendix give details. Finally, “Assisting Spirits” has the idea of a character getting a large break on spellcasting… by making a contract with another being that provides the bulk of the power—at an appropriately steep price.

Physical Magic

The next chapter takes a look at the use of physical objects for magic, first looking at the inherent properties some things may have, and how they could be used as another system of modifiers for a regular spell-casting system. Then about seven pages are given to alchemy, including thoughts on allowing characters to come up with new concoctions, or even treating it as a gadgeteer advantage.

After that, there is a serous look at enchanting items, starting with the standard systems given in Basic Set and Magic, and how they can be tweaked for the needs of a campaign. Some more serious alternatives are looked at with the idea of age granting power to items (after all, all the most powerful items in fiction are immeasurably old…). Also covered are all of the possibilities of great deeds, regular use and the like causing an item to become magical on its own. Finally, there is a discussion of items with a will of their own, from how they are created under the normal enchantment rules, to how to write them up as a character.

The Path of the Book

After this Thaumatology finally starts going further afield. The next chapter covers what’s called Path/Book Magic, which is based off a Third Edition system that originally appeared in GURPS Voodoo. Meant to act like a lot of real-world magic traditions, all ‘spellcasting’ is in the form of rituals that generally involve gathering energy, and then expending it for the particular effect. This is still effectively a skill-based system, but it concentrates on one skill: Ritual Magic. That skill, and skills for each particular tradition—a ‘path’ or ‘book’—makes up all the skill entries on the character sheet, which is a lot more compact than the normal system.

However, each tradition contains a limited number of particular spells, which are then cast at a specified penalty to the base skills. These are also more general spells than the standard ones, with the area of effect, duration, or number of targets being decided by the caster, which modifies the skill, energy, and time needed. The system is arranged around wider-ranging, and more subtle, effects than the usual ‘mage as artillery’ systems seen in many RPGs, though very high skill levels can allow a character to shortcut many limitations. After a fairly thorough grounding in the system, the chapter concludes with ten sample paths and three books.

How to be Flexible

The next chapter then gets to the idea of cutting loose from pre-defined spells completely, and gives a couple major versions of that idea. The first is the use of symbols, or runes, which give a set of concepts to work with, which are then combined into a spell. This allows for inventiveness from the player, and the use of Symbol Drawing skill and skill in each symbol used (which means a character can easily be better at certain types of effects). Thaumatology then gives a couple of sample traditional systems, and gives ideas for using rune stones or drawing symbols fresh and the like.

Then is Syntactic Magic, which works similarly, with everything split up into categories, which need to be worked out by the GM, though two general schemes are presented: First, ‘Verb-Noun’ magic, where every spell consists of what is being done to whom. It’s mentioned that mages can potentially leave some normal parameters (like duration) undefined, and let his margin of success determine it. To that end, there’s also options as to whether certain effects take more energy or more skill to pull off, and lots of advice and tables for modifiers, depending on which way the GM goes. Second, ‘Realms and Power’ focuses on how much a mage can do with any particular realm as defined by leveled advantages (one side box also discusses the possibility of recasting this entire idea as a power structure from GURPS Powers, which would be mechanically much more complex to work out, but would tighten up the mechanics and definitions—which is great for consistency, and horrible for letting the GM insert plot-appropriate easing and tightening of restrictions). In both cases, the emphasis is on flexibility, with characters/players defining what they’re doing as they go, with the system defining what the limits and costs are, instead of working with a rigid list of spells.

Magical Advantage

The last ‘crunchy’ chapter points out that many of the advantages presented in Basic Set could easily have a magical origin. There’s some good discussion of how some traditional magical powers are represented in advantages, and there’s a couple pages of recapitulation of the basics from Powers (which is good for not requiring that book for this, but is the type of repetition that 4th Ed has tried to avoid). There’s good advice on supernatural servants (bound demons, spirit familiars, etc., done as Allies and Patrons), and spirit vessels (someone possessed by a spirit), effectively the methods where a character gets magic from another character.

My Kingdom For a Mage!

At the end of the book, Thaumatology returns to the discussion of magic instead of magic systems it began with. In this case, the chapter is about the nature of a campaign dealing with magic, and magic’s place in society and the like, instead of general thoughts of how magic works. One of the first sections notes that it probably not worth the GM’s time to work on an elaborate magic system unless magic is going to be a central pillar of the campaign. …It would have been best to present that advice up front, before going through two hundred pages of just that.

The more social discussion is then followed up by thoughts on particular game styles, most clearly when it comes to emulating how magic seems to function in a lot of superhero stories. The chapter then finishes up with four different campaign frameworks, describing settings where the nature of magic has much to offer in terms of adventure.

Conclusion

One of the brilliant moments of GURPS Space was boiling every form of FTL travel down to one of three general types and then showing how to vary them to produce anything ever seen in science fiction. Of course, how FTL drives work doesn’t really have any real influence on game mechanics the way the intensely personal nature of spellcasting does. Still, I consider it a missed opportunity that Thaumatology, for all of its wide-ranging discussion of a number of different systems and their variations, doesn’t even begin to provide a framework of discussion by taking a real comparative look at its own systems, grouping and giving an overview of them.

It is also worth noting that there are four different magic systems that currently get a fair amount of use in GURPS, each with its own distinct mode of operation, and none of them are in Thaumatology. The original magic system (magic as skills) presented in Basic Set and Magic still gets most of the attention. Second is Ritual Path Magic (magic as player/GM mediation) which got its own supplement after being introduced in Monster Hunters, but drew inspiration from several parts of Thaumatology. Divine Favor (magic as Patron) isn’t nearly as popular as the first two, but does see regular use. Finally, Sorcery (magic as Powers) just recently came out, and perhaps won’t see that much use, but so far seems to have a lot of people wanting to use it, and is based off a popular idea.

In the end, Thaumatology is an expansive, wide-ranging book with a lot of ideas for the inventive GM. But, while it has several pre-packaged systems, if that’s what you want, you’re better off skipping this book, and going for one of the ones mentioned in the previous paragraph. If you don’t play GURPS, but want to tinker around with a different magic system, this isn’t as good at cross-system inspiration as some other GURPS supplements, but it does have a lot to say, and there’s very little out there that addresses the the question at all.

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The Four Vassal War Alliance Turn 5

by on June 7, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Four Vassal War

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

The Alliance gained 0.8 VP for holding four Lyran provinces at the beginning of the turn. Three were held by the Hydrans who had been left alone by the Lyrans, while the fourth was held by the Kzinti, thanks to a poor SSC roll last time. That had also stranded an important part of the Lyran fleet out of position, which was to have grave effects.

Construction was fairly normal, though both the Kzintis and Hydrans showed defensive concerns upgrading planet defenses, and the Hydrans built a new Monitor (for 0519), and provided all their monitors with carrier pallets.

Builds:
Kzintis: BC, 2xCL, DD, 3xFF, 3xPDU upgrades
Hydrans: DG, 2xKN, CR, 2xCU, MON, 3xMPV, RN->LM, 2xPDU upgrades

Both raids hit the Lyrans again. The Hydran raid continued to pick on province 0107, but the called up POL forced a retreat. Meanwhile, the Kzintis tried to raid a hex that already had a POL, but I was still able to call up a POL and the pair of them crippled the Kzinti CL.

Movement was brutally direct: Bel moved just about everything available onto the two main Lyran SBs, while avoiding contact elsewhere. On the Hydran border, this was simple, and expected, as major portions of the Hydran fleet were still adjacent to the SB. In Kzinti space, Bel first first pinned my main fleet in front of the SB before moving everything else in. I had managed to pin a couple of his larger scouts out before that, but it was to be of little real use.

This left me with one active reserve (one being pinned in 0404, and all the Klingon reserves were well out of range), which I sent to 0404 in the hopes of saving the Kzinti-border SB.


The Kzinti assault.


The Hydran assault.

Combat:
0705: SSC: Lyran: POL destroyed
0604: Lyran: Crip CA; Kzinti: crip CLD
0404: Lyran: dest SB, 2xCL, 5xDD, 8xFF, (stored) MB, crip BCE, 2xCA, 4xCL, 4xDD; Kzinti: dest CC, 5xCS, 3xCD, CL, CLG, 2xFF, SF, crip DNE, 2xTTB, FF, SF, DF
0504: Lyran: crip 3xDD; Kzinti: crip BC, CL
0411: Lyran: dest SB, DD, DDG, FF, POL, SAS, FTS, (stored) MB, crip CC, CA, 2xCL, CLG, DD, capture LN; Hydran: dest TGB, TGT, DG, PT

0404 went seven messy rounds before I retreated behind the barely surviving SB, with both sides at max BIR, and generally getting high rolls. The Kzinti generally had 9-11 EW available, and I had to boost the SB’s EW just to keep the die shift to -1. I contemplated directing on the CDs to lower the EW deficit, but dropped damage to try and force the Kzinti fleet off. He did self-kill a couple at the beginning, and I should have followed up by killing another after that. Bel should have killed the CLS I put on the line to force the -2 shift, or forcing my SB to minimal ComPot. He did a troop assault every round, and managed to kill the inherent G. As I didn’t have any troop ships in the hex, I bought a G for the SB a couple rounds before letting it go (they both did their job of absorbing a loss/SIDS).

0411 didn’t have sufficient forces on it after last turn’s assault; I had planned for the reserve to go there, but saving 0404 seemed the safer bet. However, the Lyran 2-EW SCs and poor Hydran EW allowed me to generate a -2 shift on the Hydrans. This time I concentrated on killing key units (mostly tugs) for four rounds before retreating behind the SB.

The Lyran fleet is is really bad shape (there are four uncrippled DDs left), but Alliance losses have generally been bigger, and it’s possible for them to get going again. But the Klingons are going to be carrying the war for the Coalition in the meantime. Last turn, I was expecting to see not a lot of major moves; I’m going to have to figure out how to get out of this hole.

Destroying a SB is 8 VPs, and incurs another 8VP penalty in bases that need replacing. Both our totals for enemy ships destroyed have shot up, though I retain a healthy lead there. Technically, my repair needs are down, and the Klingons are about to get to cycle through a number of them, but the Lyrans won’t have much to do.

In all, the Alliance is up to 142.4 VPs, and most of it isn’t going away. With all the ship kills, the Coalition is up to 113.85 VPs. This is near the top end for a Minor Victory for the Alliance, and if they can keep up this kind of momentum, might have a chance at a Major victory.

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King’s Dragon

by on June 3, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Ages ago, I started reading Kate Elliot’s Crown of Stars series, but lost track of just which book I had gotten up to, and so kept putting the rest of the series off. I’ve just started rereading the books to remind myself of what happened.

The general setup of the world is based on actual early medieval history, say around AD 900. The kingdoms of Wendar and Varre (where the bulk of the series takes place) obviously occupy what would be Germany, the Eika (savage non-humans with tough metallic-looking skin, and bony claws on the back of their hands) take the place of vikings, the church is powerful in society, there’s remnants of the Dariyan (Roman) Empire all over, etc.

But, in the details, there’s a lot of worldbuilding going on. The Church of Unities worships a duality Lord and Lady, which promotes more of a ‘separate but equal’ look at the gender divide (generally, women run the household, and therefore serve as all the biscops (sic), but there are warrior women and administrative men as well). There is magic (but of course!), which the church is of two minds about (well, that attitude is historical). A nice conceit is a somewhat more formalized royal retinue, with messengers being ‘Eagles’, infantry ‘Lions’ (with a reference to chess pawns being called lions as well), and heavy cavalry called ‘Dragons’.

As with anything this large, there is a large cast of characters, but for the first half of the book, there are two viewpoint characters in alternating chapters, who both follow the typical epic fantasy ‘zero-to-hero’ arc. Alain quickly ends up at the lowest rung in a lord’s household, and steadily moves up. I found Liath the more engaging character, because of her more studious background, but she suffers abuse that is hard to take. Her arc is also less developed here; it moves forward, but it’s hard to see where it will go.

The plot proper gets going in the second half of the book, and the scope and number of viewpoint characters expands rapidly, dealing with both a major rebellion and and the Eika besieging a major city at the same time. One of the new characters is a secondary character from the first half, but the others are new (though mentioned before), including the Dragon of the title and cover. In general, the two plots are well handled in tandem, though one takes up much more time than the other. Ironically, Alain’s ‘screen time’ goes down even though he’s in the dominant plot, as it also features two new viewpoint characters.

In the end, both storylines hit either an end, or a good stopping point, giving the book a good sense of closure. Alain’s arc also feels finished, as he rides off away from the promise of further action, even though it’s obvious that his life is not destined to be so simple….

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