Outside the Bar

In some senses, anyway -- you'll see in my write-up:

Work – Fortunately it was a quieter, less stressful Wednesday in the office, with my eight hours consisting of:

A) Working my way through all the pledge cards returned with “so and so is deceased” notes on them to make sure they were all appropriately marked deceased, fixing up some duplicates and such along the way

B) Taking a couple of phone calls to verify that we’d received gifts from some people who’d gotten another ask after sending/calling something in

C) And having the check-in call with the credit card people, which was mostly the usual bullshit about having to send stuff to the guy in charge (including my latest spreadsheet of missed pledge payments, which I sent to them after the call) and nothing actually being done. Because that’s just how it works with these assholes

*shrug* Nothing particularly exciting, but nothing particularly stressful either, and I care a lot more about the latter than the former! Hopefully tomorrow I can finish up some of the other roster maintenance that I have to do – we’ll see!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another half-hour on the bike tonight equaled another half-hour of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Low XP Challenge!” Jo The Low XP Courier’s attempt to beat the game with the least XP possible continued with:

A) Jo leaving the recently-deceased Benny on their shared bed after seducing and killing him and sneaking off through the side door into the secret room where Yes Man lived to meet him and take up Benny’s plan to conquer Vegas! Starting with completing the “Side Bets” quest, where you must go and meet five different groups – The White Glove Society, the Omertas, the Great Khans, the Brotherhood of Steel, and the Boomers – and then report back to Yes Man about them, letting him know if they’re friends, enemies, or can just be ignored. Jo had already “met” the White Glove Society, the Omertas, and the Great Khans by stopping by where they hung out, and thus could tell Yes Man “let’s just ignore their asses,” but still needed to officially “meet” the Brotherhood and the Boomers. She thus:

I. Fast-traveled back to Hidden Valley to enter the Brotherhood bunker...and then showed off a speed-runner’s trick to “meet” the BOS without getting roped into the quest where they slap an explosive collar around your neck and make you deal with an NCR Ranger nearby. Basically, what’s supposed to happen is, if the Courier enters the main bunker without having Veronica or some other prior form of invitation, the entrance door locks behind them, a couple of guards come out the door on the other side, and then Senior Paladin Ramos, Head of Security, shows up and forces them to strip before dragging them before the Elder and kicking off the “deal with the Ranger” mission, which, of course gives them XP. HOWEVER, at least one of the guards has the key for the entrance door on them, probably to help people who shoot first and ask questions later escape if necessary. So, what Jo did was step inside the entrance room, run up to the guards as they came out, pickpocket the key to the entrance door off the nearest one, run back to the door and open it, turn around and fire at Ramos to make him and his buddies hostile (thus preventing them from wanting to give her quests), then booked it out of there before they could kill her. And then kept running because the valley around the bunker was full of scorpions and she needed to get away from them if she wanted to fast-travel anywhere. XD

II. Returned to Camp McCarran once she was free of scorpions and carefully worked her way around all the potential spots of interest that the game wanted to show her (and the NPCs murdering each other as random patrols from various factions walked around) to get to Nellis Air Force Base! Where she proceeded to survive the bombardment that greets you as you work your way to the front gate by sticking close to the left-hand cliff and just healing her way through any hits (helped that Jon had the difficulty down to “Easy,” admittedly); meet Pearl and pretend to start “Volare!”; rob the place of as much useful stuff as possible (which turned out to be a shit-ton of combat armor – Jon theorized that the game couldn’t spawn in any of the usual gear that’s found here because Jo had entered the area at too low a level); and then waltz back out and promptly fast travel back to McCarran. Because that’s all she needed to do.

III. Returned to The Strip via the monorail and checked in with Yes Man, telling him that the Boomers and the Brotherhood could both be ignored. Yes Man was very passive-aggressive about her wanting to ignore these two factions (given one has howitzers and the other was predicted to be a huge threat), but allowed it. Which wrapped up “Side Bets” –

For NO XP. Because apparently that quest just does not give any. Jon doesn’t know if it’s a bug or a feature, but it certainly worked out for him there!

( You know how it goes – attack of the wordiness! )

2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got another good chunk on this done, covering:

A) Alice telling Damsel and Skelter about how LaCroix’s sending her to Hollywood to grill Gary on the location of the Ankaran Sarcophagus, and saying that she hoped she didn’t find a pile of dust when she arrived; Damsel assured her in her own foul-mouthed way that she wouldn’t, as nobody would mess with Gary, before complaining about how Gary knows he’s one of the most important people in the city, and how that would be fine if he hadn’t decided to side with the assholes in the Tower. Skelter admitted he didn’t think Gary was really pro-Camarilla, just pro-Nosferatu (and indeed, I believe he’s a lot friendlier to you if you play a Nosferatu fledgling. Those guys stick together!)

B) Skelter then asking Alice about the sarcophagus being missing, and Alice telling him it sure as hell wasn’t at the Museum of Natural History, and he could confirm that with Beckett should he run into him. Cue Skelter being utterly shocked that Alice knows Beckett, and a deeply smug Alice happily informing him that Beckett was a great conversationalist – and thought Skelter’s theory about sleeping elders controlling their movements was full of shit. Skelter was like “he can believe what he wants, I’m keeping my guard up,” before complaining that the nights just got weirder and weirder lately in the city – a sentiment Alice fully agreed with

C) And Smilin’ Jack calling Alice over for a chat just as she prepared to leave – Alice was very relieved to discover that he had no intention of chewing her out over the whole “Nines accused of murdering a primogen” mess, as he knew she’d just been the messenger. He also assured her that Skelter was just a “big barkin’ pup” and only bit when he got cornered. Alice allowed that was some comfort, but admitted she still wished she’d never told LaCroix about Nines, or that she’d at least come to the Last Round first to get the story FROM Nines before going to Venture Tower. She asked Jack if he had any idea why Nines would go to Grout’s, and Jack admitted he didn’t, as Nines sure as hell hadn’t told him anything about going there –

Then revealed that he didn’t believe it was Nines there at all, because some vampires have the ability to make themselves look like other people (hilariously, it’s an Obfuscate power, just not one included in Bloodlines). A startled Alice admitted that would explain why he was acting so oddly, and asked if Jack thought this had all been a set-up, and he confirmed he did, saying LaCroix had wanted to get Nines out of the way for a while, and that sending the newbie to see what he wanted her to see would be a good way to do it. He promised that the Anarchs would shove his bullshit back down his throat at SOME point, but said that, in the meantime, Alice should keep things business as usual.

And there we have it! I ended with Alice promising to do what needed to be done – next time, Jack brings up the sarcophagus, and why HE thinks LaCroix might want it! Should be fun. :P

3. Watch something on YouTube: Check – once again, before starting the Workout Video Write-Up, I decided to watch a YouTube Short from my Recommendeds that intrigued me: “Gale destroys Lorroakan with words #baldursgate3” by SuNStereO! Which showcased Gale and Lorroakan (the wizard that hired Aradin and his company to find the Nightsong) sniping at each other in Lorroakan’s tower in Baldur’s Gate. And while the title described Gale destroying Lorroakan, I think Lorroakan gave as good as he got, honestly –

A) Gale started things off by noting that Lorroakan sought “the power of gods for the pettiest of reasons” and commented that at least he wanted to become a god to HELP people; Lorroakan responded by saying he hadn’t quite heard what Gale had said, “but the insolent tone was quite clear enough”

B) Gale lobbed back that his tone was “pitying, not insolent,” and then told Lorroakan straight up that an even greater power than the one Lorroakan was looking for was within his reach – “a Crown of Karsus!” He claimed that once he acquired it, he would overshadow Lorroakan’s ambitions, challenge Mystra and take her powers, “for the betterment of all.” Lorroakan scoffed, stating that “even if it still existed, you couldn’t possibly handle its power.”

C) Gale then played his ace card, letting Lorroakan know that “Netheril’s power is in my blood,” and that he knew Mystra “in ways most mortals can only dream of.” Unfortunately, that just confirmed his identity to Lorroakan, who shot back that Gale must be “Mystra’s discarded lapdog!” And mocked the idea that Gale’s “bark” would cause him to tremble. Ooof.

D) An annoyed Gale shot back that he didn’t need to bark – “my actions will speak for themselves. [pause, glance to the side] In time.” XD And an unimpressed Lorroakan told him to go and act then, stating, “I’ll open a fine vintage in your name, once word of your failure reaches me.”

...yeah, I think match point for that particular game might go to Lorroakan, actually. *pats Gale* Don’t worry, we’ll help Aylin kill him in my game. AFTER talking you out of your godly ambitions, come on man.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about today, and I’m pleased to say that I got two more items into the queue –

A) First, this morning, I took some time and finished off the post for Newt’s birthday fic – adding a link to the Christmas fic that it’s a sequel to, adding a “read more” cut, and finishing off the tags – before dropping it in the queue for Thursday

B) And then, tonight, while catching up on my dash, I stumbled across a post Newt had reblogged earlier, showing a TikTok posted by stromcuzewon featuring an education short about concrete – that someone going by dinosaurdinnertheatre had dubbed over with their own ridiculous narration, talking about how concrete is the answer to the question “What if we could make our own ugly version of rocks?” and claiming that concrete manufacturing places regularly release chinchillas onto the factory floor. XD I had a good laugh over it and promptly put it into my queue for Friday.

So that’s all sorted – and I already know exactly what my Song Saturday post is going to be, so I should be able to get that done nice and quick tomorrow! Hooray!

Yeah -- mostly quieter, but that workout video write-up remains a killer. *shakehead* At least the video itself is nearly done! I'm off to bed -- night all!

Yeah, the weather was absolutely miserable today -- pouring rain in the morning, clouds for much of the afternoon, then a bit of spitting snow on my drive home. Nothing major or ready to accumulate, fortunately, just -- annoying. *grumbles* This does not feel like a good start to spring. Fortunately it's supposed to get warmer as the week goes on...before cooling back down for the weekend, of course. Meeeh. I really wish we lived in a place with better weather -- it feels like the nice days get fewer and fewer around here as the years go on...

Anyway -- enough bitching about that. Here's the daily write-up for you all:

Work – Well, I am pleased to announce that the start of this workweek was at least somewhat less frustrating than the end of the last one, if only because we got fewer phone calls today. Like, yeah, we still had people calling in to check on gifts and whatnot, but the volume of calls was much lower, and for that I am grateful. *nods* My first day back at work was thus spent:

A) Doing the GL for pretty much the entire morning (as there was a lot of stuff posted on Friday that needed to be sorted through)

B) Going through my e-mails and answering a question from our database tech person about a duplicate gift in one of the remaining credit card batches that she was trying to post...and having to loop in the credit card people because the duplicate gift in question was a Capital Campaign gift in a regular Appeal batch. Which isn’t supposed to happen. *rolls eyes*

C) Returning a message from someone who left a voicemail asking if we’d received his gift after closing on Friday – I let him know we did have it (while noting that he seemed to have some duplicates on the system, which might explain why he got another ask)

D) Answering a few phone calls from people looking for gifts, or checking what they did last year so they could decide what to do for this year’s gift, or setting up a pledge with me over the phone (not a credit card one, interestingly – my coworker got all those ones!)

E) Going through some of the problem items I found at the end of last week – fixing a parish credit on a gift, determining that one gift was indeed posted to the wrong person (same common name for our area), and determining that another was posted to the RIGHT person, she just seemed to have remarried or something (I updated her name accordingly)

F) Doing some reversals to fix some of the issues I’d noted (like the gift being on the wrong person)

G) And e-mailing the credit card people AGAIN when we got another error on someone’s credit card gift before my coworker could even enter the information *rolls eyes*

Yeah – still pretty damn busy, as you can see, and a little frustrating in spots (mostly due to the credit card bullshit, but what’s new), but – not as bad as last week. We’ll see what happens on Tuesday as I work to catch up on everything else!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – got back on the bike today to catch up with The Drunken Melee Adventures of P. D. Shoot in “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 35 - Thrown To The Dogs!” The latest episode saw P. D. Shoot leave the “tutorial” areas of “Dead Money” and start working on getting the actual heist for Father Elijah underway, and featured:

A) P. D. braving the Medical District again (after sending Dean Domino back to wait at the central Fountain, which he was willing to do now that they’d successfully got out of the Residential District) and killing the two Ghost People still inside to make the area safe (or as safe as anywhere gets in “Dead Money”)! Reason? With the two enemies cleared, she was able to head back to the actual clinic in the district, which was one of the few places she was actually allowed to wait (apparently this DLC is very picky about where you can stand around doing nothing for a few hours). She thus advanced time past midnight, which refreshed her five daily doses of Implant GRX and made her feel much better about life. Because she wasn’t doing anything in the bigger, nastier areas without her supply of subdermal Turbo. *nods* She also took advantage of the opportunity to loot some of the trashcans and hit the workbench in the basement (where she used the terminal to free Christine) to make herself a Cosmic Knife Spear – Jon wasn’t sure if she’d get much use out of it, as he much preferred her Bear Trap Fist for beating up and killing Ghost People (thanks to the extra damage granted by the “Cross” move), but figured it was better to have it than not!

( Usual Cut To Spare Reading Pages )

2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Got through another page of this tonight, covering:

A) Alice taking the elevator back down to the ground floor of Venture Tower, asking the Wonderlanders along the way if they thought Van, Terrence, and Mercurio had believed her when she said she was going to pack and get some blood, and didn’t suspect her of running off to immediately warn the Anarchs what was about to go down; Cheshire replied that they probably had their suspicions, but she had reasonable doubt on her side – and better yet, none of them were loyal enough to LaCroix to rat her out if they did know. Especially not Mercurio, who sold weapons to the Anarchs. Alice was very glad to hear that, as you might expect.

B) Alice then saying she hoped she caught Nines before the Blood Hunt really kicked off, and complaining about how much she regretted mentioning his presence at Grout’s in front of LaCroix, as she should have known it would go poorly; Caterpillar comforted her by saying she couldn’t have known it would go this poorly, and Alice agreed before wondering again what the hell Nines had even been doing there in the first place. But she knew that she would likely not get an answer to that tonight, so she resolved to put the question off for another time (Hatter: “Good, because that’s when the answer is coming”).

C) Alice then leaving Venture Tower (with a quick wave to Chunk, who was busy eating a burger) and following Rabbit to The Last Round, where she burst in the front doors looking for Nines – only to be confronted by a furious Skelter, asking what the fuck she thought she was doing, showing her face there after fingering Nines for killing a primogen. Cue Alice yelling back that she hadn’t said anything about Nines killing anyone, and if LaCroix had claimed she had, he was a lying liar who lies, and that she’d run back here to try and warn him; Damsel demanding to know why she hadn’t done that last night; and Alice screaming that “LACROIX HAS DOMINATE” and going on about how, if Nines did kill Grout, she wanted to shake his hand, because yes, the fucker needed to die, and she had been about ready to kill him herself after getting through that horror show of a mansion.

Whew – high-octane stuff, as you can tell! Which will be taking a swerve into the ridiculous tomorrow, as we will be starting off with me finding a way to shove the main three cast members of the British comedy quiz show “Would I Lie To You?” into this fic. XD See you then!

3. Watch something on YouTube: Weird mix of “no check” and “technical check,” I’d say, given that I didn’t quite finish the F:NV YOLO Remastered episode above during my actual workout, then ended up rewatching a decent portion of it during my write-up. So I watched something, I just didn’t watch any additional videos on TOP of it. Not entirely sure what I would have watched, granted, but it still would have been nice to get in something else. *shrug* What can you do.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – took a moment just now to go into the drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) and whip up a rough draft of Newt’s birthday fic post! It’s not finished, obviously, but at least I don’t have to do the entire thing tomorrow now. *nods* Planning ahead!

Other:

-->Happy to say that one of the Little Corners people got back to me about the bug I reported, asking me about my hardware – I let them know the pertinent information. Let’s see if they get back to me again anytime soon!

-->And if you were wondering about the situation with Dad’s teeth, they were able to tighten up his bottom plate so it sits better in his mouth – ain’t perfect, but it’s better than it was!

And there we are then! And now it is time for me to head to bed. *nods* Hopefully tomorrow will be better weather-wise, at least -- night all!

For me and Dad, actually -- he finally managed to get his dentures back in today! He hasn't put them in since this whole mess started because he couldn't get them to stay, but today he tried them out so he could have hot dogs and fries for supper. The top plate was fine, but apparently the bottom plate doesn't fit quite right -- fortunately, he has a dentist appointment on Monday where he can get them to fix that. *nods* Here's hoping it goes well!

As for me:

Cleaning & Laundry: Twas another long Cleaning Saturday, but we’re not surprised by that these days, are we? I started the whole process at around 10:40 AM; broke for lunch shortly after 1 PM, with almost all of my dusting completed; then picked up again around 1:50 PM and finished the last of my dusting, along with my Swiffering and vacuuming, by 2:40 PM (all the while listening to someone play a “lone wolf” version of Baldur’s Gate 3 with an asshole nobleman dwarf Great Old One Warlock (who was constantly screwing over the “peasants”), and then someone else go through the BG3 take on the warlock class and the three pre-final-patch subclasses (Fiend, Great Old One, and Archfey) in detail – it was what I was in the mood for!). First load of laundry, meanwhile, went into the washer around 11:50 AM, and the second load came out around 4:10 PM. *shrug* Just the way of things – and at least I have the pleasure of knowing I won’t have to do it next weekend!

Little Corners: I returned to my virtual stickerbook game today after I was done with the cleaning/first round of laundry, and I’m happy to say that I had a mostly good time with it, with just a bit of unfortunate screwiness at the end –

A) After folding up my sheets, I loaded up my latest save and proceeded to pick up where I’d left off with my latest project – the Ruins corner! You know, the one that is two broken-down walls and features stickers of things like a sad skeleton that you can dress in rusty armor, broken-down pillars and old fountains, lots of plants, and – if you can unlock it – an adorable squirrel in his own rusty armor! :D Here’s what I did with that today:

I. I moved the “nest full of baby birds being fed by their parent” sticker I unlocked last time off the big squat pillar I’d put them on at the end of my first session and onto a convenient little ledge on the crumbling left-hand wall above, and got rid of the squat pillar entirely – decided I didn’t actually like the look of it in the end. That’ll happen sometimes!

( More Nattering On About Decorating Below )

Writing: I got almost two pages of Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” edited tonight, I am pleased to report. :D Said two pages featured:

A) Alice, Van, Terrence, and Mercurio being escorted out of LaCroix’s office by the Sheriff – Alice saying that she’d see LaCroix when she had the sarcophagus in hand, and LaCroix going back to his city-gazing with an annoyed “nothing is ever easy in this city,” which Alice had to give him – and Van stating how relieved he was that LaCroix didn’t chew him, Terrence, or Mercurio out...before sheepishly going “No offense” to Alice XD

B) Alice telling Van that she wouldn’t take offense – but as that comment had been a bit rude, she’d take anything he knew on Gary and the Nosferatu, as her own experience with the clan was limited. Unfortunately, Van didn’t know much about Gary in particular – he and Terrence hadn’t been down to Hollywood since the Camarilla entered L. A., since it was solidly Anarch territory – but he was able to tell her that the Nosferatu, while not easy on the eyes, were a clan you didn’t get on the bad side of, as they knew everything about everybody. Terrence followed that up by stating they were tight-knit too, and if you pissed off one, you pissed off the lot...before quickly reassuring the suddenly-uneasy Alice that she shouldn’t see any reprisals for killing Brother Kanker; his decision to join a Gehenna death cult dedicated to spreading disease had probably made him persona non grata among the Nossies before she got to him

C) Terrence then telling Alice that the best advice he could give her when it came to dealing with Gary was to be polite, as he loved screwing with rude people (well, people in general, but ESPECIALLY rude ones) – Cheshire, however, told Alice that his take should be tempered, as Gary’s idea of “rudeness” might be a little askew from the norm, and he did enjoy it when people matched wits with him. Alice noted this and said she hoped Gary had wits worth matching

D) Alice confirming that none of the men had an idea of where to start looking for Gary – Terrence confirming he and Van had not been in Hollywood in ages, and Mercurio saying that he’d been stuck in Santa Monica all this time, so Alice was going to have to rely on Isaac’s good graces (though if she wanted to see him to get some gear, he had some new goodies to share with her). Alice, curious, asked how things were going in Santa Monica – Mercurio immediately bitched that they were boring, even with this sarcophagus business –

Only for Van to tell him things would be getting more interesting soon, as Therese Voerman had petitioned LaCroix for the position of Prince of Santa Monica, and was likely to get it. Mercurio noted that this was probably why Jeannette had loudly decided to go officially Anarch and pester Nines for a Baronship, and that she was likely to get it too, causing Terrence to complain that the city would end up neutral ground just because those two couldn’t stop fighting. He followed up with that it at least made it easy to keep them distracted…

While Alice quietly noted that the sisters’ plan to see who wanted them distracted fighting was working out perfectly. They just had to hope that no one noticed they were never in the same room together! XD

E) And Alice heading out with the excuse that she had to do some “housekeeping” before her trip to Hollywood – then warding off a somewhat-suspicious Terrence by saying that she needed to pack (as it would probably be smarter to rent a hotel room down in Hollywood rather than constantly going back and forth) and get a snack (as she’d burned a lot of blood in the museum). He bought it and told her just to get herself down there sooner rather than later – she promised that she’d head out tomorrow evening at the latest, and parted ways with the men (Mercurio jokingly telling her not to get murdered).

Hooray for progress! We’re now about seven pages from the end now, folks – next time, we’ll pick up with Alice asking the Wonderlanders if she actually convinced Terrence that she wasn’t about to immediately run off to the Last Round and warn Nines about the Blood Hunt. XD

Other: I got to these a little later than I’d intended, but I did get to them – and now Moose’s messages are all answered again! Sorry about the long pause, but – that just seems to happen between us, doesn’t it? :p

So yes, all goals achieved for today, w000~ And now it is time for me to go to bed and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow's goals: Either work on some of my drafts or go through my tracked tags on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); revise my gift fic for Newt so it's ready to go on the 26th; play some Portal 2 and conquer at least one more test chamber; get in a workout; and watch Jon's latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode (HOPEFULLY those last two can be combined, but who knows anymore). We'll see how I do on those -- night all!

As my write-up will attest to:

Work – It was a very frustrating day at work, I’m sad to say, consisting of:

A) My coworker having to deal with an error that the credit card people INSISTED we wouldn’t get again right at the start of the day, leading to me having to e-mail them again to say “Hey, what gives” (and then to say “the gift in question is in this batch, as per my previous e-mail”)

B) Me then spending most of the rest of the morning writing up a long summary of all the issues we’ve had with our credit card company at my supervisor’s behest, which involved a lot of looking up things and referencing old e-mails and the like, all while dealing with quite a few phone calls (including more credit card gifts – fortunately every one after the first went through successfully)

C) Me then ATTEMPTING to spend the afternoon working on a QC file for the latest thank you going out (double-checking multiple gifts on people’s records), only to keep getting interrupted by either more phone calls (like people looking for tax letters, or asking to be taken off the mailing list, or changing their parish, or…) or my coworker needing me to look something up for her, meaning I didn’t get through much of it…but discovering four gifts meant for our NEWSPAPER office (people paying for their subscriptions) in said QC file in the bit I did get through

Yeah, it was – it was a lot. I mean, it may not seem like a lot from that write-up, but trust me – in that office, dealing with the phone ringing so often while trying so hard to get that summary sorted and that file done? It was a LOT. *sigh* Hoping tomorrow is a better day – at least it’s the end of the work week, so it’s got that going for it!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – tonight’s pedal session on the bike took me through:

A) The end of “D&D But... Everyone Has Amnesia Again | Oxventure | D&D with Scratch Card Character Sheets!” And the final chunklet of The Amnesiac Adventures Of Ms. Blue the dwarf (Jane), Mr. White the Goliath (Mike), and Mr. Brown/Bron Harfoot the human (Andy) featured –

I. The rest of the battle between Blue, White, and Bron and the battle mages of Skinner Rabbit! And let me tell you, our trio acquitted themselves admirably:

a. I picked up with Bron’s turn – which he chose to hold until Right-Hand Battle Mage (who, remember, he had Slowed) had taken his, wanting to see if he’d do another Magic Missile after having his first Counterspelled by Blue. Right-Hand did indeed prepare another seven darts of never-misses pain, which began proceeding very slowly in the direction of Bron –

And then Bron went up to Right-Hand, picked him up, put him in the path of his own Magic Missiles, and canceled Slow. Leading to the guy getting absolutely pummeled by his own high-level spell. XD Didn’t kill him, amazingly, but he was NOT in a good way.

b. Blue went next and decided that it was time to put poor Left-Hand Battle Mage (who, if you recall, had been Frightened, Held, and then hit with two beams of Agonizing Blast) out of his misery and cast her final spell upon him – which turned out to be Mind Spike! She thus shoved a 20-damage bolt of psychic ow into the man’s brain – Luke was like “do you want to KILL him, or just knock him unconscious?” –

And Jane was like “Well, I know I’m supposed to be part of the City Watch, but from what little I remember, I’ve already accepted a large bribe, so my reputation is already ruined...plus I have no loyalty to Skinner...and I’m pretty sure I can’t actually control if a Mind Spike kills or not. So yeah, kill him.” XD Yeah, sure, ask the woman who played PRUDENCE for years and years if she wants to spare a foe…

c. With Left-Hand Guard dead, Bonesly got to go, and did something in the big old Stinking Cloud that Bron had conjured – we weren’t privy to what it was, but he got a nat 20 on it! White, on his turn, thusly ran up to the cloud to see what he could see, and spotted two figures standing and one lying on the ground. One he could tell was Bonesly, as it looked more skeletal, but he had no idea if the one on the ground was Skinner or Emily…

So he went “fuck it, I want another skeleton” and summoned another one! Bonesly Mk. II or Bonesly Jr., depending on if you asked Mike or Andy. XD Luke noted that Summon Undead was a concentration spell, but allowed it because it was cool (and because, as Andy argued, without his memories, White had a lot more space for concentrating on spells). White had the new skeleton erupt behind the standing figure and grab them, figuring that if it was Emily, that was fine, she was just grappled, and if it was Skinner, he’d then be at a disadvantage. *nods* Smart.

d. And Bron finished off the fight by taking out the Right-Hand Battle Mage with another Thunderwave – though he actually proved to be more merciful than Blue and just knocked the guy out against the side of the church. It was a very painful knocking out, sure, but – dude would live, at least.

( It Always Gets Long! )

B) And the very beginning of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Man With The Platinum Chip” by Jon of Many A True Nerd! A one-shot he did seven years ago, around the time Fallout 76 was coming out I believe, which saw him take one of those “adjust the difficulty” mods for Fallout: New Vegas and tinker with it to turn up the damage everyone – NPCs and his character – was doing by 10,000%. Basically, if you got shot at all, unless you were very lucky, you were dead. Apparently this nonsense was inspired by the “Man With A Golden Gun” mode in GoldenEye 007’s multiplayer mode (where there’s a single golden gun that can kill in one shot that the players can try to acquire – and once it’s claimed, the only way to get it is to kill the current owner, as per Wikipedia), so naturally his Courier was named Bames Jond. XD Jon’s aim was to show off how this affected the various gun battles that can occur in the game and see how chaotic things got – the chunk I got through today covered how the extra damage affected “Ghost Town Gunfight!” And, thanks to a reload, we got to see two distinct outcomes –

I. If Bames Jond did get involved, Goodsprings won, but with heavy casualties – both Ringo and Sunny Smiles ended up dead, though Trudy and Cheyenne (Sunny’s dog) both managed to survive. Bames himself just barely survived the fight, with his leather armor actually allowing him to take a hit without immediately dying even WITH the damage boost. Jon, who had thought armor was going to be absolutely useless during this whole one-shot, was surprised

II. And if Bames didn’t get involved? Well, in that case, the Powder Gangers won (managing to overwhelm the citizenry by coming in as a big pack, essentially), but also with heavy casualties – only two Powder Gangers survived the whole mess. And – unfortunately for Bames, who thought he could just waltz on out of there so long as he had the right clothes on – they were not fooled by his disguise taken off the corpse of their fallen friend. XD

Interesting stuff indeed! I’m glad that I spotted it in my Recommendeds. :) I left off with Bames heading toward the NCRCF, ready to cause some chaos there – tomorrow, we’ll see how that goes, and what other ridiculous fights he gets into over the rest of the one-shot!

2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – started the home stretch of this chapter today, getting past a scene break and covering:

A) Van and Terrence having a whispered argument about who should open the door to LaCroix’s office when neither of them wanted to do it; Alice interrupting to point out somebody had to do it; and Mercurio immediately going “Not it” and that if he had his way, he’d already be in the next state over. XD Van was like “yeah, so would we” and started grousing about how it was bad enough that the Anarchs stopped the plague before they could, while Terrence added that LaCroix was likely already in a bad mood thanks to all the stuff with Grout – apparently he’d been having a “serious discussion” with the primogen before they left. Alice had to ask if LaCroix was ever in a good mood, allowing that she hadn’t seen him in person that often, but that he didn’t seem very chill; Van mused that he thought he’d seen LaCroix smile once, while Terrence explained that LaCroix was stuck with a very shitty gig here, trying to establish a Camarilla presence in the Anarch Free States and getting his authority undermined by unsanctioned Embraces (“No offense” “None taken, I didn’t want to be part of this bullshit anyway”)

B) The door opening apparently of its own accord right as Alice resolved to do it, revealing the Sheriff on the side – Van and Terrence immediately started quailing, while a resigned Mercurio greeted him with a “hey, big guy” and asked if the prince was in. The Sheriff nodded and let them in, revealing that LaCroix was standing by his office windows, gazing out at the city in an apparently melancholy mood – cue the boys immediately letting Alice take point, making her roll her eyes XD

C) And Alice making an effort to greet LaCroix a little more politely this night, only to be hit with a speech about the “folly of leadership” and how as Prince he wears “the albatross and a bullseye.” Carpenter pronounced it short but stirring, while Alice sarcastically noted “what a surprise, you enjoying his whining.”

Not a bad start, I feel! I left off with Alice noting it sounded like LaCroix had had a night and asking if he’d made a certain decision – tomorrow, she learns that the Blood Hunt for Nines Rodriguez is on, and LaCroix learns he is not getting a certain sarcophagus...

3. Watch something on YouTube: Check, surprisingly – mostly because I spotted a Short that intrigued me in my Recommendeds and chose to watch it before getting down to the important business of spending most of my night summing up my workout videos. :p Said short was “Warlock’s patron takes the wheel #baldursgate3” by SuNStereO, and covered what happens when a warlock (any patron) encounters Queen Vlaakith CLVII in the githyanki creche you can find near the end of Act I – basically, their patron grabs their eyes for a minute to size up the Lich Queen Of The Githyanki, notes she’s “not quite a god, but not far off,” then recoils, leaving a single word of advice – “Caution.” As someone who is now very fond of warlocks thanks to not only loving Prudence’s whole deal in the original Oxventure, but happily embracing my Tav!Smiler being one, I approve of this unique interaction. :D Looking forward to when it happens with Smiler!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – I didn’t get anything done on Valice Multiverse (there WAS an ask there, but I’m not sure I want to answer it, it’s not a particularly fun one), but I did reblog two things on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler):

A) A thread talking about a “citizens petition” to the FDA to regulate estrogen more and force patients to be put on a registry...thus creating a list of trans women for the current administration to bully; fortunately the thread included a link to a place where you could leave comments and object to this practice

B) And a post by my friend thesatiricaldemon talking about a new fanfic he’s writing crossing over The SCP Foundation and the Fate series of games! Dunno if I’ll be READING it, as I don’t know anything about those games, but I like to promote my friends. :)

So that was all right, I suppose!

And now I will be going to bed, as it's been a long day and I need my sleep. Night all!

The curse of forgetting what fucking day it is now that I've had a long weekend strikes again! XD Anyway, yes, had a pretty busy day today, so let me dive straight into the write-up:

Work – As you might expect, my day at work was largely about playing catch-up with everything I’d missed (while my coworker, who was actually ALSO out yesterday with a stomachache, worked her way through the GLs and some gifts that needed go on) – namely:

A) Answering some questions from our database company contact to help her get the final two credit card batches from last week on (had to call a guy about multiple online gifts; turns out he’d set up a recurring gift trying to make a one-time payment to “catch up” on his pledge)

B) Doing a QC file for the next Capital Campaign pledge billing going out

C) Calling back a woman who wanted to set up her new credit card pledge

D) Double-checking that all the missing payments had been posted by the credit card company

E) Doing some roster maintenance my boss had forwarded to me and my coworker in our absence (adding one guy, changing the parish on another, and marking two others as deceased)

F) Properly submitting my time card for last week, as I managed to forget to do that before I left ^^;

G) Taking some phone calls, including doing a payment on a pledge with one guy who always phones in his payments and assuring another that her mother’s gift was going to be credited to the right parish

H) And doing some reversals, including splitting an online pledge into THREE online pledges to different parishes now that the donor’s first payment had FINALLY been posted

Whew! It was a fair bit, but I got it all done. And you can’t say it didn’t make the day go by. *nods* We’ll see what happens tomorrow!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “D&D But... Everyone Has Amnesia Again | Oxventure | D&D with Scratch Card Character Sheets!” And let me tell you, tonight’s chunk of The Adventures Of Ms. Blue the dwarf (Jane), Mr. White the Goliath (Mike), and Mr. Brown the human (Andy) was very chaotic indeed, featuring –

A) Blue and Brown, fresh out of the Fuzzbug’s Fast Gold Exchange, noting that White wasn’t looking so hot (down to 13 HP out of 33), and Blue deciding to see if she had any healing magic to hand – aiming at one of White’s arms juuust in case whatever came out was the opposite of healing so she only took off a limb rather than kill him. XD Fortunately, what came out wasn’t an offensive spell –

Unfortunately, it also wasn’t a healing spell – in fact, it was kind of an anti-spell, in that it was Counterspell, which cancels the effect of other magic. Brown decided “well if we have one of THOSE in hand, might as well try something myself” and tried casting a spell of his own –

And discovered that he actually had something useful – Aid! Which temporarily doubled both White’s upper HP total and his HP at the time. Inspired (and feeling much healthier), White reached deep inside himself to see if he had anything that could help –

And discovered his Large Form ability, growing to massive size for roughly ten minutes! With nothing to counter, Blue threw her Counterspell down the alley, where it hit the kid they’d bullied earlier, preventing him from trying to use magic against them. XD Well, that could have gone much worse for all of them!

( Let’s face it, it’s going to get long )

2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I finally returned to Malkavian!Alice and her conversation with Beckett in the museum tonight, getting through another page of their chat – specifically:

A) Beckett agreeing with Alice that other Kindred should treat the thin-bloods better (if only because he wants to know if this “thin-blood alchemy” they’ve cooked up is real) and commenting that the weak often make good scapegoats for people’s fear, before continuing on with his theory that Gehenna is not a real thing, but just a myth derived from other myths about the end of the world from the various cultures all Kindred were a part of while they were still human, and that a self-made destruction seemed much more likely to him than one inflicted on them by a vengeful God; Alice thoroughly agreed with him there

B) Alice noting it sounded like Beckett had been studying this for a while, and Beckett confirming that he’d spent 300 years trying to figure out the reason why Kindred exist (one that didn’t have anything to do with “supernatural, biblical vengeance,” anyway) and would continue working on it for 300 more if he had to – before asking if Alice had any thoughts on the subject; Alice joked that “we’re here because the jellyfish will it so” (an actual Malkavian line from the game), then more seriously suggested that Kindred could be a predator species designed to keep humans on their toes and thin their herds, like many predator/prey relationships in nature. Before adding that there was definitely something supernatural about their origin, because they could do magic by pulling energy from their blood, Beckett. XD

C) Beckett confirming that he knew vampires were supernatural, he just didn’t think it had anything to do with God, before stating that he’d heard Alice’s “predators made specifically to hunt humans” theory before and that, while interesting, it didn’t have much evidence backing it up – after all, most Kindred take pains NOT to kill those they feed on, and to keep themselves hidden from the masses of humanity, meaning they certainly don’t keep humans on their toes. Though he still liked it better than the “divine punishment for manslaughter” thing – Alice was like “Don’t you mean murder?” but Beckett said that after studying the Bible, it didn’t sound to him like Caine MEANT to kill Abel, so the charge should be downgraded. Alice deferred to his greater expertise, admitting she wasn’t familiar with the Bible thanks to her family not being religious (even if her father was a Dean at Christ Church in Oxford) – Beckett admitted he wasn’t religious either even after reading the Bible, as he had a hard time believing in things without evidence. Alice sympathized, saying she had a hard time believing in anything but herself after all the shit she’d been through, and Beckett encouraged her to keep doing so – after all, you always know what YOU’RE capable of. You hope, at least.

*nods* Solid stuff, I think! I left off with Alice looking at the busted crate the sarcophagus was supposed to be in and commenting that she had to go tell LaCroix his sarcophagus had gone mysteriously walkabout – tomorrow, we’ll finish off this section with Beckett taking his leave and Alice meeting up with some familiar faces before going to see LaCroix! The end is slowly but surely moving into sight here, folks!

3. Watch something on YouTube: Check – fortunately, I had something short in my Subs that I could slip in tonight after my writing session – “Fun With Shorts: Robotics The Future Is Now” by Josh Way! Part 1 of an old short hosted by William Shatner (yup, Kirk himself) about robots and robotics, with an especial focus on industrial robots (though there was a cameo from a cute dome-headed “personal robot” who toddled in to ask Shatner for his autograph near the beginning). Shatner went on and on about stuff like “degrees of freedom” (how many ways an industrial robot can move), “end effectors” (the tool you put at the end of a robotic arm), and the like, comparing robotic arms to human ones and noting how industrial robots had to be programmed to work with things like conveyor belts and inspection cameras – meanwhile, Josh went on and on with jokes about how overly-excited he was to see William Shatner (calling “Starring William Shatner” the “greatest three words in the universe”), Shatner charging the little dome robot $90 for the autograph ($200 if it wanted it personalized), one of the robotic arms in one of the clips complaining about being programmed to feel tedium, and how he “wasn’t dressed” to go visit the National Bureau of Standards (which controlled the standards for getting industrial robots to interface with other automated machinery). XD Good stuff as always – the short itself was reasonably entertaining and informative, and Josh’s jokes made it all much more amusing. I look forward to Part 2, whenever it pops up!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – I am pleased to say that tumblr chose to revert their terrible update to reblogs, so I feel safe in posting and reblogging things again. *nod* And while it was definitely a nothing day over on Valice Multiverse again, it was a very busy night over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) –

A) First, I quickly reblogged three art posts from my friend Nebby that she posted the other day (which I was reluctant to reblog before because of the stupid update that broke the notes and how creators tracked reblogs and suchlike):

I. One showing off some new outfits for her redesign of the vampire “madam” NPC Madame Jo-Jo for her MediEvil II rewrite fanfic – specifically, her underthings, her walking dress, her evening gown, and her tea gown (which had some cool bat motifs to it)

II. One showing off some new outfits for MediEvil big bad Zarok – specifically his sleep gown, his winter gown (which had a cool lava-like look to it), and his coronation gown (which made him look like a cobra)

III. And one showing off some MediEvil-themed tarot cards she did a little while back (The Fool, showing protagonist Dan facing off against the arrow barrage that killed him; The Devil, showing MediEvil II antagonist Lord Palethorn; and Justice, showing Dan preparing to face off against Jack The Ripper to protect Kiya (who he kills in the original MediEvil II)

B) And second, I threw a few things into my queue for this week just now:

I. The “VITD Timeline” post I was working on this weekend for Wednesday

II. The reblog of polyshipprompts’ “imagine your polyship sharing a bed for the first time and trying to figure out who should sleep where” post with my addition about how Alice and Smiler quickly learned that cover-stealing Victor should sleep in the middle for Thursday

III. And the reblog of that “Let’s fuck him together. You and me. (Hold out your hand)” reaction image from jennaflare, with additional image of the text over the image of a guy holding his hand out by lethalwizard, with my tags commenting on this being Smiler talking to Alice about Victor for Friday XD

So that’s all sorted, yay! Well, except for Song Saturday, but I’ll figure it out later. Here’s hoping that they don’t fuck with the reblogs again for a while!

...aand proper spacing is going to have to wait until tomorrow morning, because I have to get to bed. Expect a few light edits to this post tomorrow to make it more readable! Night all! EDIT 3/18/2026: Spacing fixed and a bit more detail added to the tumblr section at the bottom, enjoy!

Dad once again had a tough day (for some reason he's feeling really queasy a lot, so he can't eat much at all), meaning the vibes around the house weren't great, but I still managed to get done almost everything I wanted to get done:

Tumblr: It proved to be another nothing day over on Valice Multiverse (as I kind of suspected it would be) – but I had a very productive time indeed on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) –

A) First, I reblogged a short two-post thread into my drafts for later – jennaflare posting an image from a game she was playing of a dialogue option reading “‘Let’s fuck him together. You and me.’ (Hold out your hand.)” stating “oh wonderful i will get some mileage out of this as a new reaction image,” followed by lethalwizard putting the words “let’s fuck him together” over an image of a man in a baseball cap holding out his hand. XD I actually tried to find an appropriate screenshot of Smiler and Alice together from my old Sims 4 Chill Valicer Save that I could put the original dialogue option on like one of those “text post memes” first, but came up short, so instead I just stuck the post in my drafts with some tags indicating that it would be something Smiler would gleefully say to Alice and that eventually I would find a good screenshot to go with the text!

B) And second, I edited my “VITD Timeline” post and made some very good progress on it – cleaning up the opening a bit and adding plot summaries to all the stories in the timeline save the last (the “meeting Preston” story) – and that was only because I ran out of time before being called to lunch. *nods* I might actually be able to finish this thing up tomorrow, if I can keep up the momentum – would be nice if I could add it to my queue for this week! We’ll see, though.

Writing: While unfortunately I didn’t do any “proper” writing (either gift fic or “Londerland Bloodlines”), I did at least add a couple of things to a couple of my master docs:

A) First, in the Valicer In The Dark master doc, I added three new vague ideas for stories, because my brain simply will NOT stop producing them –

I. One where I put a version of the Sierra Madre casino in the Deathlands around Duskwall (probably in the Lost District), obviously inspired by the fact that I’m watching Jon take on “Dead Money” in F:NV YOLO Remastered these days (I put a note next to it asking why my brain couldn’t wait until Jon had actually FINISHED THE DLC)

II. One that I came up with while working on the above “VITD Timeline” post – specifically, while trying to come up with titles for some of the stories that don’t have ones yet. Basically, I pondered if one of the stories where they’re trying to break into The Sanctuary or Lord Rowan’s place should have a title that references the Resident Evil franchise – then thought “No, that doesn’t fit, you’d need something with zombies for a title like that. ...Or Hollows, since they’re the closest things to zombies in the Shattered Isles. ...wait, shit, Deep Cuts actually has a collection of Hollows that are under some mysterious master’s control and have been abducting people for fell purposes, I could probably do something with that. Have them target Victor, only for Alice and Smiler to not let him go without a fight?” So yeah, that’s in the master doc now – we’ll see if anything comes of it

III. And one that’s actually been bumming around in my head for a bit, and finally got committed to virtual paper – a post-retirement story that sees the trio called out for one last job (lured by the promise of a MASSIVE paycheck that would help them lift Six Towers fully out of poverty) and has them discover the Gates of Death (possibly a literal magical gate) that were broken during the cataclysm. And learning that the Gates were broken deliberately by either the head of the Spirit Wardens...or the Immortal Emperor himself. Because I actually had a thought recently about the Emperor and his immortality...namely, if it might be related to how many spirits get sacrificed daily in the Bellweather Crematorium, never mind the rest of the empire. *wince* Fortunately this story would end with the trio repairing the gates, allowing Death to come and claim the Emperor (or the head of the Spirit Wardens...or both, if they were working together) before calling any remaining ghosts to the afterlife, and getting a boon where none of them can die except of pure old age. Because that’s what they deserve, damn it.

*shakehead* Brain, I would really appreciate it if you would calm down on making stories for this verse for a bit. XD

B) And second, in the BG3 Tav!Smiler master doc, I added a couple more ideas for potential script scenes inspired by recent play sessions:

I. Nettie asking Smiler during her examination of them if anything “strange” has happened to them lately – cue Smiler thinking about the last couple of days and telling her “you’re going to have to be more specific”

II. And Lae’zel going on about how a devil and his paltry wings is nothing compared to a red dragon, only for Smiler to go “so no thoughts on the deal he offered us?” Causing her to reply “...he offered us a deal?”

XD What can I say, I thought they were funny! Hopefully one day I’ll find the time to actually write some of these out – and come up with some for Courier Victor too. We’ll see!

Fallout: New Vegas: Hit the Mojave today to check in with Courier Victor, and I’m pleased to say that he actually made some progress in his quest to get to Primm and get some answers regarding the delivery that nearly got him killed this play session –

A) I picked up where I left off last time, with Victor hanging out in the little campsite just past the Goodsprings Source wells, getting ready to spend the night in the caravan parked by the rocks before he continued on his journey. The poor guy was extremely thirsty, though (to the point where it was going to start affecting his stats), so I quickly had him hike up the nearby slope to the nearest of the Source wells and take two good slurps out of the water valve there. Once rehydrated, he then went down the slope to the nearest campfire to cook up five more gecko steaks (after all, he has the meat), then had one for dinner to make sure he didn’t go to bed hungry either. And then he just kinda wandered around the general area until I decided it was late enough for him to go to bed, finally hitting the mattress at 9:10 PM. *nods* Keeping your couriers fed, watered, and well-rested is important, y’all!

B) Victor woke up the next morning (10/25/2281, if you’re curious) feeling pretty good, if a little thirsty again – I had him grab one of the empty Nuka-Cola bottles out of the caravan, then head back up to the same well he visited last night to get another drink and see if maybe he could fill his bottle up with water. Sadly, there did not seem to be an option for that, and Victor was forced to leave without a fresh bottle of water. :( Come on, guys, there’s so many empty bottles in this stupid campsite – let me fill ‘em up! I could do it in Fallout 4 (with, er, the help of mods, admittedly…)!

Anyway – having had his drink and thus staved off dehydration for a bit, Victor proceeded to head back toward the road so he could get back on track – but while he was making his way through the campsite, he saw a hunter sitting at the tent surrounded by all the tires, hanging out before the bonfire while her dog chilled a little ways away. She didn’t seem hostile, so I had Victor put away his 9mm and approach her to say hi –

And, to my delight, she turned out to be a trader! Though she didn’t have much in the way of wares when Victor asked to see them – just some antivenom, ten 20 Gauge hulls, a gecko hide, a knife, and 55 caps. Still, I wanted the antivenom – that’s just useful to have in a world that includes both little and giant scorpions – so I had Victor take then, then give her three gecko hides, a mantis egg, an empty scotch bottle, two cherry bombs, and 7 caps in return. *nod* Fair trade. :p She declared him another satisfied customer, and the two parted ways on friendly terms. :) Gotta say, it was nice to be able to offload some of the crap he was carrying and get some useful stuff in return! Hopefully he will encounter another trader too with a few more caps so he can get rid of some guns he doesn’t need…

( Always gotta have one of these )

Workout: Well, annoyingly, Jon once again uploaded the next episode of the F:NV YOLO Remastered series a bit late, meaning it wasn’t ready when I went downstairs to work out. And I had no idea how much of a grace period to give him, leading to me instead starting one of the Oxventure one-shots I had to catch up on (along with the next seasons of Wyrdwood and Deadlands) – “D&D But... Everyone Has Amnesia Again | Oxventure | D&D with Scratch Card Character Sheets!” Yes, it was time for another adventure where the players – Jane, Mike, and Andy – had no idea who their characters were or what they could do at the start, and could only discover the pertinent facts – like ability scores and special powers – by scratching them off on their special scratch-off character sheets! Just like last time, Luke kept things simple by saying that any special abilities could be used once when they were initially revealed, then once more at any point after said reveal (because this kind of play wasn’t exactly conducive to using spell slots and the like); UNLIKE last time, the characters didn’t start washed up on a deserted island with no clue who the hell they were, but rather woke up in a dirty inn room in the middle of a rather disreputable part of a city – with no clue who the hell they were. Basically, think The Hangover movies, only with more amnesia and even more nonsense on account of people having magic. XD The first half-hour covered:

A) The trio waking up all tangled up on a bed in their room, and seeing who they were with the help of a cracked and cloudy mirror on the other wall – Jane being a dwarf with black hair and blood down her face, dressed in blue silks; Mike a Goliath (basically a very tall humanoid descended from proper giants – he’s 8 foot as per Luke) with greyish skin, dressed in white silks; and Andy a human man with close-cropped hair dressed in brown silks. Naturally, after establishing nobody could remember anything about who any of them were or why they were here, they became Ms. Blue, Mr. White, and Mr. Brown for the time being (insert your own joke about either Clue or Reservoir Dogs here).

B) Ms. Blue trying to determine if the blood on her face was hers or someone else’s, and discovering that she was very smart (Intelligence 18) and had a huge bonus to history; her roll proved good enough that Mike declared she should be able to figure out her blood type and what she ate for the past few days. XD Luke confirmed it was her blood and that, while she hadn’t broken her nose, she’d certainly banged it up a bit, hence the bleeding. (Oh, and that her blood type was O-. XD)

C) The trio’s musings about what was going on being interrupted by the landlord banging on their door and informing them they had to get out – Brown asked if the bill was already settled, and the landlord confirmed it was. Though he seemed very eager to hurry them out of the room once they let him in, refusing to answer any questions they had about what had happened the previous night. Brown in particular noted that the otherwise-dirty man had a very clean piece of paper tucked into one pocket, and thus tried to get it off him while Blue attempted to use the distraction of Brown chatting with him to scurry away and check the ledger downstairs for clues to their identity –

But alas, while Brown proved to have incredibly high Dexerity and Sleight-Of-Hand bonuses, he rolled a critical 1. And Blue proved to have no sneaking skills at all and rolled a mere 7 on her attempt get out of the room. Luke thus ruled that, while Brown clearly was EXCELLENT at stealing things, this particular attempt went awry when the landlord turned and caught him upon hearing Blue bang into one of the side tables by the bed. He grabbed Brown’s wrist, declaring him a thief; White grabbed his wrist to stop him doing anything nasty; the landlord took a swing at Brown with his other hand regardless –

And rolled his own critical 1, busting his hand against the mirror. *wince* Ouch. I mean, pretty much deserved, but – ouch. *nods*

D) Initiative officially being rolled for a fight, and Mr. White getting to go first – Mike took the opportunity to reveal one of his abilities, and discovered the man had the ability to cast a portal spell! (I think Dimensional Door, but I didn’t catch the name). He thus put one portal on the wall of the room nearby, and was going to put the other out on the street (at ground level, he didn’t want to kill the landlord) and shove the landlord through so they could make their escape while he was disoriented –

But then Brown/Andy suggested putting him into a cupboard or something else they could secure, and upon confirming with Luke there was a wardrobe in the room, putting the other portal in there and sticking the landlord in the cupboard. The landlord did manage to knock the doors on the front open briefly on his go, but Brown was on the case and managed (after convincing Luke to let him use his incredible Dexerity instead of strength) to close them again and wedge a hat rack through the handles to temporarily trap the landlord inside. The trio then fled downstairs, stolen paper in hand, and Blue checked the ledger –

To discover their names weren’t written down inside (of course not, that would be too easy), but instead the landlord had put down a 3, an X – and a “58g.” Everyone was very confused about what that meant, because it was a hell of a high price to pay for a room, but it didn’t make sense as a debt either…

E) The trio escaping outside into an alley and reading the paper that Brown had stolen – to discover that it was a letter from “E” to someone, apparently about their upcoming nuptials! Going on about how “today was the day” and how they hadn’t thought it would ever arrive and how they’d included a token of their undying love and how it was very important for the recipient to be at the church at 5 o’clock – and don’t forget the speech! The group realized they’d probably attended some sort of bachelor/bachelorette party and had gotten WAY hammered (explaining why they didn’t remember anything) – and then were briefly like “oh no, did we just steal the landlord’s letter from his beloved and stop him from attending his own wedding?” As per Luke, though, another look at the fancy paper and calligraphy and all that made them realize “no, this is antithetical to that guy’s whole deal.” And then Blue realized that the token the letter mentioned was missing…

Making them go “hey, wait a minute, maybe he stole from us! When one of us might be getting married!” (Mr. White was immediately put forth as the most likely candidate, given he was dressed in white silks.) Cue the group going back to the inn and ransacking the front room to see if they could find anything –

And while Mr. Brown rolled middlingly well and didn’t come up with anything, and Mr. White rolled a whole 2 and got stuck trying to open a jammed cutlery drawer, Blue rolled fabulously thanks to her high Intelligence and Investigation and quickly realized that one of the bookcases had a scrape in front of it indicating a secret door (Luke suggesting that this was something she was very familiar with, in fact)…

F) The trio opening the secret bookcase door to find a big old metal safe behind it. Brown, of course, immediately chose to tackle the lock, grabbing a quill and inserting it into the opening at the front. Luke informed him that he would need to roll very high indeed to actually get this thing open –

Cue Brown getting a natural 20. And then revealing that, if you let him add all his bonuses, he’d in fact gotten a 33. XD Luke was like “...yes, you somehow manage to jimmy open this magically locked safe with a quill.” XD The gang thus opened it up and found three things inside –

I. A pouch with 58 gold in it

II. A receipt from “Fuzzbug’s Fast Gold Exchange,” indicating that someone had pawned a diamond ring for said 58 gold

III. And a matchbook with a logo for a place called “The Quenching Tub”

Brown immediately accused the landlord of stealing the ring off them and pawning it for fast cash, but Blue and White were both like “we don’t know it was him, it could have been us, maybe we’re that sort of people.” Brown reluctantly admitted that could be the case, but said they should still take the stuff and track down this “Fuzzbug’s” place, with White agreeing and insisting they had to get the ring back, because there was a wedding and you couldn’t have one of those without a ring!

And so the chunk ended with the three fleeing with the pouch, the receipt, and the matchbook, right as they heard the landlord finally bash his way out of the wardrobe upstairs. XD Next time, the group ask around to see where the hell Fuzzbug’s is, and we see if anyone else reveals any special abilities or particularly strong stats! I’m already guessing that Andy’s character should be a Rogue of some sort, given those Dex and Sleight of Hand scores, but you never do know for certain...

YouTube: Well, after doing the two write-ups above, I didn’t really have time to watch the latest from Jon of Many A True Nerd...but I really, really wanted to watch it, so I decided to split it up and watch half tonight and half tomorrow. *nods* So, after having some cookies for dessert, I got my plushie friends and sat down to take in the first twenty-two minutes of “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 34 - Radio Silence!” This first half of the episode featured:

A) Jon taking a moment at the very beginning to both call himself a “genius” again for walking straight into a bear trap last week (we told you to take Light Step, Jon!) and to explain to some confused commenters how P. D. was able to sneak right past the Ghost People in the last episode, when in their experience those assholes are perceptive as fuck and spot you instantly! Basically, it’s all down to him having the Silent Running perk – because, while the Ghost People do have incredibly high “detecting the Courier” skills thanks to their level (Jon believes they all should be spawning in as Level 35 enemies because P. D. came in at Level 30, and the higher the enemy level, the better they are at finding the player character), they do have to play by normal detection rules – that is, they have to be able to hear or see P. D. to detect her. And thanks to Silent Running, P. D. makes no sound as she scoot-runs around the place at hyper speed. So they can only detect her if they can see her – and if she comes up on them from behind...yeah. Leads to moments like P. D. successfully sneaking past a Ghost Person while coming within inches of brushing up against them! (And leads to me noting down Silent Running as probably a good perk to give to Courier Victor in the future! He deserves it – besides, Victor can be pretty silent when he moves, based on the “keeping away from Emily” sequence in the movie!)

B) P. D. heading off to the Medical Villa to get Christine, the next member of her little heist crew, and learning the gimmick of the area when Father Elijah warned her about the degraded speakers scattered around, telling her that they too emitted a tone that could set off her collar if she lingered around them too long. There were damaged speakers and shielded speakers, and the intended gameplay loop is that you stay back and destroy the damaged ones at range to make life easier for yourself –

But, of course, P. D. didn’t have that option due to this being a melee-only run. She wasn’t allowed to even toss a throwing spear at the damn things. Fortunately, since New Vegas was designed by developers who gave a shit, they accounted for the fact that a player might have run out of ammo when encountering speakers and made sure it was always possible to just get past the things without shooting them. And since P. D. is basically equal to Sonic when she’s running around crouched, it was even easier for her to take advantage of those routes. :p Her trip through the first part of the Villa thus consisted of:

I. Speeding down the first hallway past the dangerous speaker and into a safe zone

II. Ducking in and out of an archway to try and get a bead on the Ghost Person beyond it (without staying in the danger zone of the speaker longer than she had to), until she could finally zip through and hide behind a pillar until the Ghost Person moved to a more advantageous area to be attacked

III. Sneaking up on the Ghost Person and using the “Cross” special unarmed attack on him with her new Bear Trap Fist! Why a cross? Because that not only does 10% more damage overall, it also does 2.5 times the limb damage – and Ghost People of course die when you destroy a limb. Or their head, as P. D. aptly demonstrated with her cross against this guy. Just exploded right into confetti, it did

IV. Zipping past another radio in the ceiling of another area, then sneaking around up a set of stairs and dropping down into another plaza to sneak up and kill another Ghost Person without incident

V. Then finally going back up the stairs and traversing the roofs to find another one of Dean’s stashes and get around to the main clinic’s back door, as going in the front would have put her into unnecessary danger

*nods* It’s times like these that you realize that Jon is in fact very good at Fallout: New Vegas. He just also happens to walk into bear traps sometimes. :P

C) P. D. entering the Medical Clinic through the aforementioned back door, then – after getting the scoop on holograms from Father Elijah (basically “they can damage you, but you can’t damage them, so don’t try to fight them”) – using the terminal by the door to send the holographic security guard downstairs so she could get to his emitter and use her excellent Repair skill to turn him off entirely. *nods* Smart. Thus almost perfectly safe (beyond one shielded radio causing problems down one hallway), she proceeded to go around the place looting goodies and picking up useful information, such as:

I. The fact that the Auto Docs in this place could repair damaged vocal cords from an entry about Dean Domino worrying about his friend Vera Keyes’s voice on the Chief Physician’s terminal

II. The vending machine codes for mentats and – via downloading it from a different terminal – Med-X (the latter being the more useful to P. D. as it confers damage resistance)

III. A bunch of chips off the headless corpses in the room where Father Elijah was clearly working on the bomb collars earlier

IV. And an Assassin Suit out of that same room, which was decent armor but not as good as the stuff she was wearing – she took it only because it was worth a lot and thus could be sold for a decent price

Not a bad haul, honestly! And that information about the Auto Docs and vocal cords would be coming in handy later, as per Jon…

D) P. D. then descending into the basement and using the terminal down there to turn off the main power, thus disabling the radio and letting her go down that one hall to go free Christine from the malfunctioning Auto Doc she was trapped in! And learning her gimmick in the process – her vocal cords were cut during her time in the Doc (as she indicates post-release), so she can’t actually talk, only mime. Meaning that, unless you pass the skill and SPECIAL checks that the game throws at you, your character is going to have a hard time understanding her. Fortunately, there were no checks needed to get through their first “conversation” – P. D. just had to reassure the suspicious Christine that she was a friend, not a foe, when she was initially released; stop her trying to take off the bomb collar when she noticed it and started fiddling with the lock; and confirm that they were in fact in the same boat when Christine finally noticed P. D. was also wearing a collar. She then sent Christine off to the Fountain in the middle of the main plaza to join Dog in waiting for her…

Only for Christine, after running off, to come back and start miming about what the deal is with the speakers and the collar. Because her companion perk actually makes it so you can spend more time near decayed speakers without your collar going off, and the game insists that she tell you about it even if she’s not going to be your companion right away. XD Jon found it very amusing – though I must say, as railroading goes, it’s a very mild example. Even makes sense in-universe – who the hell else is she going to ask about the speakers when she first sees one on her way out of the clinic?

E) And P. D. leaving the clinic through the back door to avoid some of the Ghost People the game had just spawned in near the front, using a dose of her Implant GRX Turbo to get past a troublesome speaker and up some stairs back onto the roof without getting popped, then proceeding to clamber around said roofs trying to get a bead on the one Ghost Person she felt she had to kill in the plaza below –

Only to drop down, accidentally knock some trash onto the ground, and discover that the Ghost Person from the plaza next door, whom she’d hoped to ignore, had wandered over in this direction and was in a perfect position to see her. I left off with her preparing to use another dose of GRX Turbo to just straight up run away from him and his friend – tomorrow, we’ll see how well that went, and finish off this episode! Should be fun. :)

*nods* Yeah, not bad at all. But now it is very late and I really need to head to bed. Tomorrow's goals: work some more on the VITD Timeline post on VLA(NS); get some PROPER writing done (I gotta figure out something for a Newt gift fic!); play some Portal 2; and finish off the F:NV YOLO Remastered episode above. Hopefully all achievable goals -- we shall see. Night all!

And I can't say that I had a particularly bad day, fortunately -- though I wouldn't call it amazing, either. It was really just a day, as my write-ups will probably prove:

Work – It was a fairly busy day to end the workweek – not OVERLY busy, fortunately (I was spared the phone ringing off the hook), but busy enough:

A) First I spent a good chunk of the morning talking to a lady on the phone complaining about how she hadn’t been able to get ahold of us (this was a legit gripe, btw, one of our pledge cards went out with a typo in our phone number *sigh*) and then about how she hadn’t gotten any mailings from us (have no idea how that transpired, as we had the correct agreed), before putting a pledge card in the mail for her. Which took longer than expected because I ended up having to redo the label on it twice to add her parish, then her ID number. *shakehead* Well, it wouldn’t be Friday the 13th without a little bad luck, now would it?

B) Then I spent the rest of the morning doing the GL – which took so long as the credit card company FINALLY posted the remaining missing pledge payments...but because they were so old, I had to go back into old bank reconciliation reports to see which bank batches they’d been added to retroactively. Which ate up a lot of time. *shakehead* I’m glad the payments are on, but it pisses me off that it took this long to get them on!

C) Then, after lunch, I spent some time answering the various questions our database person was peppering me with about the OTHER credit card batches coming through that needed revalidation – should she merge these records as duplicates, was this person someone’s spouse, was this gift potentially a double-charge, etc, etc. I’m used to having to look this stuff up for her, but it was just a lot in a short time!

D) Then I put on the checks that we received in the mail, making copies of the ones that came from an IRA account as those get special acknowledgment letters from my coworker

E) Then I ended the day going through a batch of gifts we’d gotten from one of the parishes, putting on some new donors and making sure all of the envelopes had ID numbers (I’d intended to put ON the gifts, but I just didn’t have the time), with a quick break to call up someone who had a duplicate recurring gift (as usual, they thought they had to renew when they didn’t) after our database person let me know about it.

Yeah – pretty busy day, involving a lot of back and forth and matching up stuff and whatnot. But at least it wasn’t TOO stressful. Still, glad I have a three day weekend ahead of me!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – my final night on the bike this week saw me pedal my way through:

A) The rest of “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 33 - Dead On Arrival!” I am pleased to report that P. D. did not step on another trap and get killed, and thus we will have a Part 34 on Sunday. *nods* The remaining 23-or-so minutes of this episode, meanwhile, featured:

I. P. D. making her way over to the Police Station, looping around the back to open up the back door for later (and gather more goodies, like more Sierra Madre chips) before going back around to the front to face her most dangerous enemy – RADIOS. Because in this DLC, radios interfere with your bomb collar’s signal, and thus can lead to early head explosion (Father Elijah was like “can’t figure out how to turn it off, you’ll have to work around it” – thanks a lot, you prick). Normally how the Courier handles this problem is by shooting it (aka blasting the radios with whatever firearm they’ve got), but that wasn’t an option for P. D., so instead she had to rely on her incredible speed to zip up to each radio and turn it off before her collar’s beeping turned into a BOOM. Fortunately for her, she is EXTREMELY speedy, and there is a decent “grace” period when your collar starts beeping, so she was able to turn off all of them without issue. Hooray!

( Long Sum-Up Is Long As Usual )

B) And the entirety of “Baldur's Gate 3 Shadowheart and Lae'zel React to Horny IGN Comments” by IGN! Jennifer English (Shadowheart) and Devora Wilde (Lae’zel) reading out a variety of comments at various horniness levels and reacting to them – often with shock and amusement. Choice comments included:

I. BlancPebble writing out a whole little skit with Gale offering to show them something magical, them assuming “oh nice, he’s probably gonna do a cool fireworks show,” then Shadowheart telling them “heard you and Gale are gonna bang later” and them being like “what?!” – the ladies first weren’t sure how to do Gale’s voice (with Jennifer doing a bit of a mocking impersonation of his actor, Tim Downie, before immediately laughing and apologizing XD), then noting that it was a very elaborate script, but they’d liked it. XD

II. phanteos complaining “I’m literally openly dating shadowheart and all the other guys are still trying to f**k me” – Jennifer was like “It’s a hard life, but just say ‘no’ and focus on Shadowheart; forget the rest, especially Lae’zel.” Devora promptly went “here we go again,” while Jennifer giggled over the fact that, contrary to the characters they play, Devora was being the nice one while she kept being playfully bitchy

III. K1ngW1ndsor joking “I am one hour in on character creation…. Tips on how to clean out lotion on a mechanical keyboard? Asking for a friend...” – Jennifer had a good laugh over Devora slowing down in the middle of reading that comment, noting that she had NOT read ahead (Devora confirming she hadn’t), before declaring that she’d lost a lot of respect for the royal family. XD Followed by Devora wondering what’s going to happen once KW actually experiences an ACTUAL romance scene, and her and Jennifer agreeing they may, uh, “break” themselves. :p

IV. And NeuroCoder7 stating “I have nothing against nudity but I’d like a skip option on sex scenes. Those are private moments between a woman and her bear” (referencing a rather, um, infamous scene with Halsin the druid) – Devora was like “that’s actually respectful, who needs to see what a woman and her bear and their lotion get up to? ...actually, me, a little bit.” XD And then the ladies genuinely wondering if there were no skip options for the sex scenes and you HAD to watch them. (There is at least an option where you can say you’re not interested in seeing anyone fully nude which I think does turn all the sex scenes into “fade to black” – I’ve got it enabled for my game, as I didn’t really want to select Smiler’s – um – junk.)

Fun stuff, if a little hornier than I’d prepared myself for! Now to figure out what I’m watching next week – I still have a LOT of Oxventure to catch up on...

2. Ask Newt what he might like in a gift fic: Check – did this before I left for work today via tumblr DM. He hasn’t actually gotten back to me yet, but, honestly, that’s not really that surprising. I just wanted to try and throw something out there because his birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks and I’d like to be prepared! Hopefully he has something for me tomorrow or Sunday...

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check, but that was no surprise, given not only did I have the usual long workout write-ups, I also had Game Night (The 80s Game – as usual, our poor knowledge of The 80s meant that I won simply by virtue of getting lucky enough to get to the 1985 circle). I am going to schedule some time this weekend to catch up on stuff if it’s the last thing I do.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – didn’t have anything on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), but I did find something to throw into the queue on Valice Multiverse – namely –

A) My post sharing the second “Smiler In Secundus” story from a few days ago (the one where Victor takes them home and they meet the other Van Dorts – Lightning, Alice, and Chester)

B) And my post announcing that Chapter 4 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” is up!

Because, well, if nobody’s going to give me anything to react to, I might as well share my fanfic. :p Better than nothing!

*shrug* And there you have it. Perhaps not my most productive day, but I got some stuff done, and Game Night was fun enough. And now it is time to head to bed and prepare to start a long weekend. Tomorrow's goals include working on my "VITD timeline" tumblr draft on Victor Luvs Alice (it feels relevant after posting another chapter of "The Van Dort Vacancy"); playing some Baldur's Gate III and working my way toward Karlach; and watching the OXBoxtra content I've missed this week (the list video and the gang playing around with a Virtual Boy, at the very least)! We'll see what I accomplish -- night all!