2-24 Session 2: TLQuest week 3

Greetings, everyone - it's now officially meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere so naturally where I am in the UK today it is overcast with occasional spitting rain and I'm wearing a cardigan with a big scarf whilst sitting at the computer!  I hope you're all having equally seasonal weather...  This week our adventurers gather in a tavern where they'll meet each other and decide which quest they want to do, which led me to thinking about how we make decisions about what to work on.  I very much struggle with this - there are so many possibilities, but it's also so hard to plan effectively between the fickleness of grant awards, the huge variability in speed of responses to submitted papers, and being in a collaborative subject where colleagues are on different schedules and it seems ALL of us dealing with some sort of job or life complications!  Any tips or stories to share?

If you're busy this week/when reading this, the weekly goals and prompts are right at the bottom after the list of last week's goals, just skip the earlier stuff!

THIS WEEK'S GAMEPLAY:

It's a D&D cliche that adventures start with everyone getting together in a tavern - but it's a cliche for a sound narrative reason, and we're starting there too.  This tavern is located at the edge of a fairly well-travelled road which connects the large town of Elinard with the city of Caisterhythe.  Elinard sits in the foothills of the Boarcrest Mountains, and hosts markets and interchanges which bring together the different races - dwarves bring iron work and gems from the roots of the mountains, halfling villages occupy folds of land in the foothills and cheerful families bring the sweetest cream and most satisfying taffy-like candies to market, quiet gnomes from hidden communities high on the forested slopes bring beautifully decorated wooden items from treasure boxes to honey dippers and abacuses along with berries, mushrooms and resinous bark, and elves pass through with a wealth of songs, jewelery, blended forest tisanes and lacy, crisp nut and honey wafers which are all the craze among rich city humans.  There is even rumoured to be an elven city somewhere in the gorges along the fast-running River Elin, although on-one local can tell you where to look.  Caisterhythe, about ten day's travel away from Elinard, is a human dominated walled city which is crowded within and sprawling beyond the walls of a much older fort.  Located where the Elin joins the Northbranch River to form a waterway barges can use, and at the confluence of several trade roads, it's a busy, bustling place with a substantial temple complex, well known Wizard's college, and plenty of accommodations for travellers going to and from the royal city of Aliard, the sea coast, the West March where a constant low-scale war of raid and counter-raid has been going on for generations between the civilised lands and the creatures of the haunted Black Moor, blighted result of a past magical cataclysm, or starting the long trek to the southern steppe and desert lands whence yearly caravans bring spices, magical ingredients and the strangest stories.  

The tavern itself is quite an ordinary sort of place, on the edge of a small farming settlement, itself conveniently near the road.  The road is safe enough at this point for a solo traveller if they are sensible about where they stay at night and can protect themselves, and the lands it travels through are by local standards peaceful, which doesn't mean entirely safe; there are outlaws, there are creatures in the woods and marshes which can be hungry or dangerous to the unwary, and small settlements and roving bands of peoples outside the compact of races who prefer to help themselves to what they want.  This tavern is a typical stopping point where a traveller can get a safe place to sleep for a reasonable price, access good well water, and buy ale, a cooked meal, or basic travel food, and outside of travelling season it is still regularly host to a few locals and gets market day trade from the outlying farms and settlements.  The large common room is generally friendly and social, although there's an unspoken "locals to left, travellers to the right, news exchange at the bar" geography to the place.  At the bar, there is a notice board (literacy is not universal, but it's normal for most of the longer-lived races and so more common among humans than in our world's middle ages in a "keeping up with the pointy-eared types" way, or the barman will helpfully write a sign or read the board for an illiterate visitor) which used by locals and travellers alike.

Your characters have all decided to break their journey at the tavern, and find themselves sharing the common table on the travellers side of the bar for their evening meal or drink.  They will agree to group together to take on one of the jobs offered by the notice board.  So this week's game play is a bit of role playing and some decision making - what do the others see when they look at your character, what sort of impression do they get, what sort of information is shared?  Your character might be friendly but not say much of substance, cheerfully tell everyone their life story (or the public version thereof), start the story telling, or focus on practical information about the road ahead.  They might be the kind to try every option on the menu and ask for the local beer, or carefully stick to bread and cheese.  They might be spending the coin to have a small room to themselves and buying drinks for everyone, sleeping in the common attic where everyone gets a decent bed pallet and a lockable chest for their gear and sharing the standard meal (bread, soft cheese, generous portions of a stew which has enough meat in it to flavour the vegetables well, stored apples and a honeycake, served with herbal tea or local ale), or using the clean straw in the stall in the barn the owner has set aside for the poorest travellers (both for charity and because they don't want rough sleepers attracting any nuisance creatures) and nursing a single cup of ale.  As for the decision, the noticeboard is currently offering three jobs/requests from help for travellets.  Which one most appeals to your character?  We'll treat the comments as a straw poll, so if you could rank the jobs 1 (preferred) to 3 (least interested) for your character that would be helpful.

NOTICE BOARD - in case the fonts aren't legible, the three "Work for Pay" items are: 1) "Skilled assistance required. Good prices paid for Specific Herbs currently on Short Sipply in the region needed by Apothecary. Silas Fontanis - ask at bar for directions".  2) "Weird stuff happening to sheep - can you help work out what is going on?  Payment (in goods only). Stubbings Farm" and 3) "CAUTION travellers on North Bluff road - third goblin attack last week.  Travel in groups, take care.  Villages of Redgrove and Upper Bluff offer reward of 50 gold to anyone who can find and remove goblin camp"

Did I say fewer words from me?? Oh well...

LAST WEEK'S GOALS:

 DAISY
• Complete my part of Paper 1 revision to hand over to colleagues
• Do modelling for Paper 2 revision
• Plan out first weeks of field work for visiting student
• Do conference finance mop-up
• Clean out garden beds, plant seedlings, and hope they survive
• Fun with friend

DAME ELEANOR HULL
• keep "office hours" 3-4 days
• make progress on Alms
• 1 unit Greek review
• 2 x 2 hours in the garden
• look at spreadsheet of choices for book group
• enjoy various celebratory and social activities

HEU MIHI
• Write 10 hours
• Make a second book
• ASSIGN TASHIPS
• Read 1/2 of review book

JANEB
• self-care: tick off at least 75% of the regular chores list, additional intentional movement three days, eye specialist appointment, resting as needed
• fun: play D&D, knit some, and finish the novel I'm currently reading.
• teaching and administration: any last minute marking, two blocks of teaching preparation from my list.
• send a couple of emails starting to pick up with different service stuff in my field now I'm "back". Improve research session goal. referee report on an article. Attend an online seminar.

JULIE
• Read PhD chapters for two students.
• Start thinking about presentation for workshop next month.
• Moderate exam scripts.
• Prep for two meetings (one is an academic misconduct panel, so will not be fun, chairing the other)
• Send sympathy cards to uncle and cousin (an aunt died this weekend).
• Present and card for my MIL's birthday.
• Exercise
• Eat healthily
• Do some gardening stuff if weather improves
• Read book for book club.

SUSAN
We would all like an update on the health of Ginger George please!
    RESEARCH:
• Finish re-reading Famous author to figure out direction
• Make sure I have everything for the summer, for Famous Author and for Rest of Life Project
    ADMIN
• Do 2 hour required course on people behaving badly (we have to do 2 hours every 2 years. This is my last one.)
• Touch base with deans, colleagues, etc.
• Keep up with changing TA assignments
    LIFE:
• Finish packing
• Try to plan mini-breaks over the summer; so far it's quite sociable, with several people coming to visit, but my planned hike fell through, and I need to plan my trip, in addition to a short trip with a friend and another short one with my sister.

In summary

your TLQuest prompt is: what do the rest of the group see/hear of your character in the tavern?  Which job most interests them from the noticeboard?

your real world TLQ prompt is: how do you make decisions about which TLQ tasks make it onto the action list and which don't; how do you plan research in an ever-changing world?  Plus of course how did you get on last week and what are your plans for the coming week?