But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap.

He drew a deep breath. “Well, I’m back,” he said. — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

So I’ve been away from the site now for…essentially a week.

You see, about a week ago, I got hit with…something. I never did figure out if it was a nasty stomach bug or a bout of food poisoning, but either way, it basically cast me into bed and robbed me of every well and reserve of energy I would normally draw upon. (To say nothing of the fact that it left me all but unable to eat for a few days; I only regained the ability to drink a cup of coffee over the weekend!)

It was only because I elected to record the most recent podcast episode on Monday evening, rather than on Tuesday, that I was even able to publish that at its normal time. And this week’s podcast is actually likely to be a day late, since it needs to go up on Patreon before it hits the site.

Fortunately, Golem Dragon was able to cover both the Shroud of the Avatar Release 16 instructions in addition to his usual weekly conveyance of the Update of the Avatar; I’m grateful for that. And for my part, I at least managed to summon enough strength on Wednesday morning to get the podcast published.

So what will likely transpire today is a torrent of news updates, because of course both the Ultima fandom and the efforts of former Origin Systems developers do not pause when my world is derailed by illness or circumstance. So when you find a pile of site updates from the Codex in your RSS reader of choice…that’s why.