More Productive Sunday
Dec. 19th, 2021 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickThat's for sure -- I got an earlier start on stuff and pretty much smashed out my to-do list:
1. Continue working on final edits on Chapter 3 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”: Check – just shy of halfway through the page count now, having completed the short Victor POV Section of Alice coming along and saving him with her blood after he was hit by a car and abandoned in the clinic (aka his only scene in this particular fic, because Heather doesn’t reappear until post-Elizabeth-Dane Downtown), and Alice dropping off the werewolf blood in her mailbox before heading over the Asylum, being accosted by Jeannette before being directed to meet back up with Knox by Wonderland. She’s on her way to visit Therese now – should able to get through that tomorrow!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, OXBox Xmas Challenge, OXtra Xmas Challenge, the OX Lists, and Jon's latest F:NV video: Check! Got through all the videos today, yay –
A) Started before lunch for a change with my OX lists:
I. OXtra, “7 Heroes Who Saved Xmas, Mostly by Punching” – seven games featuring heroes working during the holiday season to make sure our festivities remain unwrecked – or unpoisoned, or unmelted, or un-blown-up as the case may be. From Aya of Parasite Eve taking on big bag prima donna Eve trying to either set people on fire or melt them over the holidays (giving up a Christmas date to do so!), to Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Miles Morales fighting a dangerous energy company and his own uncle to stop Harlem being exploded over Christmas (as Ellen put it, though, fighting with a relative can be "the holidays" in a nutshell to some people – it’s just not normally over dangerous new energy sources); to Solid Snake stopping the country of Zanzibar Land from hoarding nukes and putting them on a new Metal Gear tank on Christmas Eve in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (no, seriously, read the manual), these hard-hitting protagonists are willing to abandon their own plans to save ours! So long as they can get home in time for Christmas dinner and the January sales, of course. XD
II. OXBox, “7 Most Terrifying One Hit Kills That Will Ruin Your Whole Game” – rather less appropriate for the season, our usual trio hosted seven games with one-hit-kill attacks that can really ruin your whole game. From optional boss Darkeater Midir having a super-laser he can fire from his mouth to take you out in Dark Souls 3 (your own fault for knocking him off his cliff!); to the penultimate boss in Yakuza: Like a Dragon having an old boxing super-punch that can basically stop your heart (and if your party leader dies, that’s it); to – this one “Master Tonberry” lizard-creature with a knife in Final Fantasy VII (I mean, yes, he ALSO has an attack that inflicts damage on each party member based on how many people they’ve killed times ten, but it’s being shanked with a large butcher’s knife that’s still barely a quarter of the size of Cloud’s sword that instantly murders your party members), these are the enemies whom you just want to avoid if at all possible. Good thing I don’t play any of these games!
B) Then, after my own gaming (below), it was time for Xmas Challenges!
I. Day Seven of the OXBox Xmas Challenges, with Mike and the “Come Let Us Not Behold Him” Mortal Kombat 11 Blindfold Challenge! Mike had to win a match in MK11 against the CPU – BLINDFOLDED. He did get three attempts, though. He chose Shao Kahn as his player for his big fuck-off hammer, and Kano for his opponent as apparently the guy is really annoying. XD He put on the eye mask and started mashing the buttons –
And got absolutely OWNED on attempt one, with the CPU Kano just ANNIHILATING him in two rounds while Andy and Jane desperately cried advice. Oof. :( But Mike rallied, and in attempt two, with a better idea of where he was on the screen and what moves worked (namely, the big kick), he managed to come back after a bad first round and won the match! :D Kano had his meat tenderized, and Mike got himself a nice solid Christmas point! :D And all was right with the world. . .
II. Day Two of the OXtra Xmas Challenges, with Santa assigning Luke and Ellen the Mario Party Superstars “Minigame Melee” challenge – Ellen and Luke must team up with the AI characters for minigames (2 V 2, of course), and first to five stars wins! Ellen chose Waluigi for her main character and Wario for her partner, while Luke went with Princess Peach for his main character and Birdo for his partner! Off they all went to Mt. Minigame, where they hopped in the mine carts and went riding to victory!
And ooooh, what a close one it was today! Waluigi and Wario blasted through “Rocky Road” for Ellen, but Peach and Birdo gobbled down “Eatsa Pizza” for Luke! The boys reversed enough bombs to take “Revers-a-Bomb” for Ellen, but the girls covered enough goombas in paint for Luke to get “Paint Misbehavin’!” An early fall knocked Ellen out of the “Bobsled” race early, giving it to Luke, but Luke was unable to wrangle enough control over Birdo and her crayons to capture enough stamps in “Etch N’ Catch,” giving that to Ellen! And Ellen’s boys were able to burst their Bowser balloon first in “Balloon Burst,” but Luke’s girls had the blocking power to get to three goals first in “Speed Hockey!” So it all came down to the wire, four stars versus four stars, in the final AI-picked game – “Sky Pilots!” Where BOTH Ellen and Luke were regulated to the “flapping the wings” controls of the planes, while the AIs actually got to pilot! So which AI was better?
BIRDO! Yup, she actually flew into the boosts and thus got Peach and Luke to the finish line, and to a Christmas point! Luke, who had been slagging her off for most of the match, immediately changed his tune. And then ending celebrations got derailed by him noticing her big diamond ring and him and Ellen trying to figure out who her mysterious fiance was. XD So Ellen and Luke are both 1-1, now! Christmas is getting interesting. . .
C) Then, after writing (above), it was into the Subs to watch some Call Me Kevin and a new challenge for the game Raft – the premise is that you are on a raft on the water, and you can add to the raft to give yourself more space to make a little shelter and all that. Kevin – is not doing that. He is going to play the game while staying on the starter raft, which is – well, it looks pretty tiny. (Raft One Board Challenge?) The first run (called “Doomed”) did not go well at all – not only did a shark (apparently your persistent enemy) rip off one quarter of the raft before Kevin even reached the first island, Kevin ended up losing his raft when it floated away from said island, and then got teleported into the void as he tried to get supplies to get a new one. Turns out you cannot build a new raft in this game if you lose your original one – and the comments said that the world is generated around the raft, not the player, so he basically got yeeted into the outer darkness once his raft was far enough away that he was out of the world borders. Whoops. XD Fortunately, his second attempt (called “NOT Doomed”) is currently going better. Kevin actually managed to make a weapon to fend off the shark (a simple wooden spear), a paddle to move the raft around, a sail, a fresh water purifier, a cooking pot, a fishing rod, a research desk, and even a nice little bottle candle! All balanced precariously on his tiny raft as he picks up supplies from floating shacks and the tiny islands he explores. XD Better yet, he actually managed to kill the original shark with his spear! Even wore its head as a fancy hat. XD Granted, a new one is now stalking him, but – still. He’s got a place to live, a book to read, the ability to control where the hell he goes, fresh water, and fresh food! Now all he has to do is figure out where he’s going to put his smelter. . . (yes, this is a thing you can make. He needs it for an antenna? *shrug* Don’t ask me, I don't play this game.)
D) Then it was over to GrayStillPlays for Hurricane Outbreak, a game where you control a little tropical depression and grow it into a proper hurricane! Or, if you’re Gray, you get your friend to create some hax for you to turn this into a TRUE monster storm. XD Yes, instead of taking his little tropical depression around the Caribbean naturally to gather up clouds and gain strength that way, he instead just directly fiddled with the numbers to create monster storms that could do hairpin turns across Florida, swallow the Bahamas, and grow to basically ENCOMPASS THE ENTIRE PLANET. He got the damn thing so large you couldn’t even SEE it – just a faint flicker of cloud cover around the eye. He was murdering people in France while going across Mexico. It, in fact, grew so large and so powerful that he killed every person currently noted by the game code. He literally killed the ENTIRE GAME WORLD. And drowned Florida. XD The era of Sadism Gray has definitely returned, folks! And I am here for it!
E) And, finally, we had Jon of Many A True Nerd and more "Fallout: New Vegas – Utter Chaos!" Today can be basically summed up as “the day Jon had to fight all the sentry bots because the game loved replacing other enemies with sentry bots.” XD Nipton had a sentry bot (led to him by one of the NPCs trying to talk to him, no less), this random shack in the middle of nowhere had a sentry bot, this OTHER random shack in the middle of nowhere had a sentry bot. . .fortunately Jon had a grenade launcher and some plasma grenades, but still – yeesh. He also found the Tops Restaurant to sell some stuff at; his way onto the worst part of the Strip for doors; encountered the leader of the Great Khans and leveled up twice after learning of their dealings with Benny, but couldn’t pass his speech check to convince him to release his hostages; rescued Deputy Beagle, who now is female; got shot up in the Gommorha lounge because apparently everyone hates him there for some reason (even when he tried to put on his stripper gear); and then ran out through the wrong door IN said lounge, meaning he lost all his guns (because you have to hand them over to the tiny bouncer guy) and had to duel one Great Khan and his leader Jessop with a superheated knife. Which admittedly did the job, but. . . Basically everything remains totally chaotic and I can barely follow the plot but who cares, I’m having fun. XD
3. Play Bloodlines and redo the attack on the Sabbat so I have a chance of beating Andrei: Check – booted up the game early this afternoon and started at an autosave the game made right after I bought a couple of guns off Mercurio. Went right to Vandal, wound my way through a bit of his creepy dialogue (him complaining about Crystal wanting to buy the “prepackaged stuff”) and got a few spare blood packs (some blue blood, some elder blood, and even a bit of regular blood). From there it was back to the Hallowbrook Hotel, where Crystal ended up relying a HELL of a lot more on her guns and broadsword instead of her blood powers. Though I ended up having to do the big group fight twice – I’d ALMOST killed everyone and was feeding on the sole remaining human when Crystal suddenly died! The guy happened to be right next to a fire barrel, so I think she ended up in the fire and couldn’t drink fast enough to keep herself alive. Second time went well, though – shooting and slicing a bunch of vampires, Blood Boiling the most dangerous enemies, and eating the humans – and THIS time, when I confronted Andrei, I had Crystal whip out the Blood Boil right away. A few blood packs, some Odious Chalice blood points, and a few whacks with the Tal’Mehe’Ra blade later, and Andrei was history! Made a hard save after THAT, let me tell you!
Anyway, Crystal headed out and was met by Ming-Xiao, who let her know that yes, she and LaCroix had an alliance; yes, she was the one who framed Nines Rodriguez; and she’s the one with the key to the sarcophagus right now. Crystal took all this information back to LaCroix (after unsuccessfully trying to take it to Strauss – he needs more dialogue, at least if you’re a Tremere!), got her rewards and her instructions to go meet with the Anarchs. . .and then immediately headed back to Santa Monica because I ain’t making the same mistakes again! Happily no one was in the way of her glitchy punches this time, so she was able to go straight to Mercurio to sell some weapons and buy some ammo for her new flamethrower (picked up from the Hallowbrook) and some of her other guns, and pick up a few more blood packs for the road from Vandal. She then went back, got a surprise visit from Beckett telling her “don’t open it,” then went to the Last Round to propose the alliance to Damsel. She was pissed, but agreed, letting slip that Nines was in Griffith Park. I ended with Crystal swinging by her fancy Tremere haven one last time to read that damn Dodge skill book (having upped her Dodge to the needed 4) and check her final e-mail. Next time – we start the endgame proper by going up against that damn werewolf! Wonder if he responds at ALL to Blood Boil – I know it can’t KILL him, but will it slow him down? Hmmm. . .
4. Get in a workout: Check – another evening on the bike, and through another thirty-so minutes with the Oxventure “Heist Society!” The gang is still split up, and still trying to solve the mystery of the supposedly-stolen Emerald Tear – here is how they’re all going:
Team Stealth – after repeatedly trying to convince Amelia that they believe Horatio and she should too (and Dob coming up with a rather convoluted plan of finding the gem, making a copy, and seeing how Horatio reacts when given it), Amelia finally got them to leave by threatening to ring the bell-pull to summon the guards. They moved over to Hawthorne’s office, which Corazon was able to pick with ease – Dob tried to find secret passages while Corazon tore through the office for important documents. Dob wasn’t able to detect anything, but Corazon found Hawthorne’s diary, written in a cipher! Fortunately, after some shenanigans, Johnny allowed Corazon to use his spell “Comprehend Languages” on the cipher – what he and Dob found out was so shocking, they rushed back to Amelia’s room (knocking politely this time) to do a dramatic Phoenix Wright-style breaking of the news. Namely, according to the diary (and Johnny’s secret note), Amelia is not biologically Hawthorne’s daughter. Apparently she’s the child of his former partner, Bookman, whom he KILLED to get the business all to himself. Unfortunately, they both rolled TERRIBLY on the Charisma roll to convince her of this, with Dob getting a Natural 1 – and so the guards have been summoned on them. Whoops.
Team Party – continued to mingle at the party, having separated from Hawthorne himself. Prudence was able to locate the Captain of the Guard by spotting a guy with some serious scarring and some impressive medals – Merilwen struck up a conversation based on them being “samesies” (she too has a scar on her cheek – also, this thing is a masquerade ball only when it’s plot-appropriate now XD), and the Captain gave a hilariously insincere account of Horatio’s arrest, making it clear that he’d never even met the pawnbroker Horatio supposedly sold it to (calling him a “good friend,” but having no clue what his name was), nor seen the jewel in question (it’s explicitly called the Emerald Tear, but he described it as BLUE). Merilwen and Prudence are suspicious, but haven’t yet had a chance to act on the information.
Team Egbert – was led up to the fancy smoking room by a servant, where he selected a dude at random, cracked open a beer, and started engaging in conversation. Turns out the guy’s a bit of a gossip-monger, and was willing to let a few things slip (like the local cloth-dying family using urine for their yellows – the “Tanner’s Folly” collection (see why I remember THAT name? XD)) – ESPECIALLY if Egbert shared his beer. They got through the rest of his six-pack together, and the guy gave Egbert a riddle about how a good chess player keeps his queen hidden so his opponent can’t see her strike, even if she’s right under his nose. Egbert needed chess explained to him first (guy’s got a Wisdom modifier of minus one), then – once the guy got blackout drunk and he’d had a rifle through his pockets – sat down to ponder the riddle, with the help of another secret note by Johnny.
So yeah – progress has been made, buuuuut not enough to clear Horatio’s name yet! I left it off with Amelia calling the guards on Team Stealth – we’ll see how it wraps up tomorrow!
5. Keep up on tumblr queues: Check – three ask replies queued up over on Valice Multiverse, and the pictures and starter text for the Chill Save update this Wednesday drafted on Victor Luvs Alice!
Additionally:
-->Answered my friend DarkCountess’s FF.net PM, yay – good to have that done, and to tell her that I have the gift fic ready to go for this Saturday. :) w000!
And now I must be off for the night, because I do have three more days of work to get through before I am free. AKA the three days where I really have to juggle watching the OXmas Challenges and my Subs stuff -- I suspect Thursday is gonna be primarily me catching up on YouTube videos I wasn't able to get to because of the Challenges! Ah well, it's only once a year, and I do love them, sooo. . . Night all!
1. Continue working on final edits on Chapter 3 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”: Check – just shy of halfway through the page count now, having completed the short Victor POV Section of Alice coming along and saving him with her blood after he was hit by a car and abandoned in the clinic (aka his only scene in this particular fic, because Heather doesn’t reappear until post-Elizabeth-Dane Downtown), and Alice dropping off the werewolf blood in her mailbox before heading over the Asylum, being accosted by Jeannette before being directed to meet back up with Knox by Wonderland. She’s on her way to visit Therese now – should able to get through that tomorrow!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, OXBox Xmas Challenge, OXtra Xmas Challenge, the OX Lists, and Jon's latest F:NV video: Check! Got through all the videos today, yay –
A) Started before lunch for a change with my OX lists:
I. OXtra, “7 Heroes Who Saved Xmas, Mostly by Punching” – seven games featuring heroes working during the holiday season to make sure our festivities remain unwrecked – or unpoisoned, or unmelted, or un-blown-up as the case may be. From Aya of Parasite Eve taking on big bag prima donna Eve trying to either set people on fire or melt them over the holidays (giving up a Christmas date to do so!), to Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Miles Morales fighting a dangerous energy company and his own uncle to stop Harlem being exploded over Christmas (as Ellen put it, though, fighting with a relative can be "the holidays" in a nutshell to some people – it’s just not normally over dangerous new energy sources); to Solid Snake stopping the country of Zanzibar Land from hoarding nukes and putting them on a new Metal Gear tank on Christmas Eve in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (no, seriously, read the manual), these hard-hitting protagonists are willing to abandon their own plans to save ours! So long as they can get home in time for Christmas dinner and the January sales, of course. XD
II. OXBox, “7 Most Terrifying One Hit Kills That Will Ruin Your Whole Game” – rather less appropriate for the season, our usual trio hosted seven games with one-hit-kill attacks that can really ruin your whole game. From optional boss Darkeater Midir having a super-laser he can fire from his mouth to take you out in Dark Souls 3 (your own fault for knocking him off his cliff!); to the penultimate boss in Yakuza: Like a Dragon having an old boxing super-punch that can basically stop your heart (and if your party leader dies, that’s it); to – this one “Master Tonberry” lizard-creature with a knife in Final Fantasy VII (I mean, yes, he ALSO has an attack that inflicts damage on each party member based on how many people they’ve killed times ten, but it’s being shanked with a large butcher’s knife that’s still barely a quarter of the size of Cloud’s sword that instantly murders your party members), these are the enemies whom you just want to avoid if at all possible. Good thing I don’t play any of these games!
B) Then, after my own gaming (below), it was time for Xmas Challenges!
I. Day Seven of the OXBox Xmas Challenges, with Mike and the “Come Let Us Not Behold Him” Mortal Kombat 11 Blindfold Challenge! Mike had to win a match in MK11 against the CPU – BLINDFOLDED. He did get three attempts, though. He chose Shao Kahn as his player for his big fuck-off hammer, and Kano for his opponent as apparently the guy is really annoying. XD He put on the eye mask and started mashing the buttons –
And got absolutely OWNED on attempt one, with the CPU Kano just ANNIHILATING him in two rounds while Andy and Jane desperately cried advice. Oof. :( But Mike rallied, and in attempt two, with a better idea of where he was on the screen and what moves worked (namely, the big kick), he managed to come back after a bad first round and won the match! :D Kano had his meat tenderized, and Mike got himself a nice solid Christmas point! :D And all was right with the world. . .
II. Day Two of the OXtra Xmas Challenges, with Santa assigning Luke and Ellen the Mario Party Superstars “Minigame Melee” challenge – Ellen and Luke must team up with the AI characters for minigames (2 V 2, of course), and first to five stars wins! Ellen chose Waluigi for her main character and Wario for her partner, while Luke went with Princess Peach for his main character and Birdo for his partner! Off they all went to Mt. Minigame, where they hopped in the mine carts and went riding to victory!
And ooooh, what a close one it was today! Waluigi and Wario blasted through “Rocky Road” for Ellen, but Peach and Birdo gobbled down “Eatsa Pizza” for Luke! The boys reversed enough bombs to take “Revers-a-Bomb” for Ellen, but the girls covered enough goombas in paint for Luke to get “Paint Misbehavin’!” An early fall knocked Ellen out of the “Bobsled” race early, giving it to Luke, but Luke was unable to wrangle enough control over Birdo and her crayons to capture enough stamps in “Etch N’ Catch,” giving that to Ellen! And Ellen’s boys were able to burst their Bowser balloon first in “Balloon Burst,” but Luke’s girls had the blocking power to get to three goals first in “Speed Hockey!” So it all came down to the wire, four stars versus four stars, in the final AI-picked game – “Sky Pilots!” Where BOTH Ellen and Luke were regulated to the “flapping the wings” controls of the planes, while the AIs actually got to pilot! So which AI was better?
BIRDO! Yup, she actually flew into the boosts and thus got Peach and Luke to the finish line, and to a Christmas point! Luke, who had been slagging her off for most of the match, immediately changed his tune. And then ending celebrations got derailed by him noticing her big diamond ring and him and Ellen trying to figure out who her mysterious fiance was. XD So Ellen and Luke are both 1-1, now! Christmas is getting interesting. . .
C) Then, after writing (above), it was into the Subs to watch some Call Me Kevin and a new challenge for the game Raft – the premise is that you are on a raft on the water, and you can add to the raft to give yourself more space to make a little shelter and all that. Kevin – is not doing that. He is going to play the game while staying on the starter raft, which is – well, it looks pretty tiny. (Raft One Board Challenge?) The first run (called “Doomed”) did not go well at all – not only did a shark (apparently your persistent enemy) rip off one quarter of the raft before Kevin even reached the first island, Kevin ended up losing his raft when it floated away from said island, and then got teleported into the void as he tried to get supplies to get a new one. Turns out you cannot build a new raft in this game if you lose your original one – and the comments said that the world is generated around the raft, not the player, so he basically got yeeted into the outer darkness once his raft was far enough away that he was out of the world borders. Whoops. XD Fortunately, his second attempt (called “NOT Doomed”) is currently going better. Kevin actually managed to make a weapon to fend off the shark (a simple wooden spear), a paddle to move the raft around, a sail, a fresh water purifier, a cooking pot, a fishing rod, a research desk, and even a nice little bottle candle! All balanced precariously on his tiny raft as he picks up supplies from floating shacks and the tiny islands he explores. XD Better yet, he actually managed to kill the original shark with his spear! Even wore its head as a fancy hat. XD Granted, a new one is now stalking him, but – still. He’s got a place to live, a book to read, the ability to control where the hell he goes, fresh water, and fresh food! Now all he has to do is figure out where he’s going to put his smelter. . . (yes, this is a thing you can make. He needs it for an antenna? *shrug* Don’t ask me, I don't play this game.)
D) Then it was over to GrayStillPlays for Hurricane Outbreak, a game where you control a little tropical depression and grow it into a proper hurricane! Or, if you’re Gray, you get your friend to create some hax for you to turn this into a TRUE monster storm. XD Yes, instead of taking his little tropical depression around the Caribbean naturally to gather up clouds and gain strength that way, he instead just directly fiddled with the numbers to create monster storms that could do hairpin turns across Florida, swallow the Bahamas, and grow to basically ENCOMPASS THE ENTIRE PLANET. He got the damn thing so large you couldn’t even SEE it – just a faint flicker of cloud cover around the eye. He was murdering people in France while going across Mexico. It, in fact, grew so large and so powerful that he killed every person currently noted by the game code. He literally killed the ENTIRE GAME WORLD. And drowned Florida. XD The era of Sadism Gray has definitely returned, folks! And I am here for it!
E) And, finally, we had Jon of Many A True Nerd and more "Fallout: New Vegas – Utter Chaos!" Today can be basically summed up as “the day Jon had to fight all the sentry bots because the game loved replacing other enemies with sentry bots.” XD Nipton had a sentry bot (led to him by one of the NPCs trying to talk to him, no less), this random shack in the middle of nowhere had a sentry bot, this OTHER random shack in the middle of nowhere had a sentry bot. . .fortunately Jon had a grenade launcher and some plasma grenades, but still – yeesh. He also found the Tops Restaurant to sell some stuff at; his way onto the worst part of the Strip for doors; encountered the leader of the Great Khans and leveled up twice after learning of their dealings with Benny, but couldn’t pass his speech check to convince him to release his hostages; rescued Deputy Beagle, who now is female; got shot up in the Gommorha lounge because apparently everyone hates him there for some reason (even when he tried to put on his stripper gear); and then ran out through the wrong door IN said lounge, meaning he lost all his guns (because you have to hand them over to the tiny bouncer guy) and had to duel one Great Khan and his leader Jessop with a superheated knife. Which admittedly did the job, but. . . Basically everything remains totally chaotic and I can barely follow the plot but who cares, I’m having fun. XD
3. Play Bloodlines and redo the attack on the Sabbat so I have a chance of beating Andrei: Check – booted up the game early this afternoon and started at an autosave the game made right after I bought a couple of guns off Mercurio. Went right to Vandal, wound my way through a bit of his creepy dialogue (him complaining about Crystal wanting to buy the “prepackaged stuff”) and got a few spare blood packs (some blue blood, some elder blood, and even a bit of regular blood). From there it was back to the Hallowbrook Hotel, where Crystal ended up relying a HELL of a lot more on her guns and broadsword instead of her blood powers. Though I ended up having to do the big group fight twice – I’d ALMOST killed everyone and was feeding on the sole remaining human when Crystal suddenly died! The guy happened to be right next to a fire barrel, so I think she ended up in the fire and couldn’t drink fast enough to keep herself alive. Second time went well, though – shooting and slicing a bunch of vampires, Blood Boiling the most dangerous enemies, and eating the humans – and THIS time, when I confronted Andrei, I had Crystal whip out the Blood Boil right away. A few blood packs, some Odious Chalice blood points, and a few whacks with the Tal’Mehe’Ra blade later, and Andrei was history! Made a hard save after THAT, let me tell you!
Anyway, Crystal headed out and was met by Ming-Xiao, who let her know that yes, she and LaCroix had an alliance; yes, she was the one who framed Nines Rodriguez; and she’s the one with the key to the sarcophagus right now. Crystal took all this information back to LaCroix (after unsuccessfully trying to take it to Strauss – he needs more dialogue, at least if you’re a Tremere!), got her rewards and her instructions to go meet with the Anarchs. . .and then immediately headed back to Santa Monica because I ain’t making the same mistakes again! Happily no one was in the way of her glitchy punches this time, so she was able to go straight to Mercurio to sell some weapons and buy some ammo for her new flamethrower (picked up from the Hallowbrook) and some of her other guns, and pick up a few more blood packs for the road from Vandal. She then went back, got a surprise visit from Beckett telling her “don’t open it,” then went to the Last Round to propose the alliance to Damsel. She was pissed, but agreed, letting slip that Nines was in Griffith Park. I ended with Crystal swinging by her fancy Tremere haven one last time to read that damn Dodge skill book (having upped her Dodge to the needed 4) and check her final e-mail. Next time – we start the endgame proper by going up against that damn werewolf! Wonder if he responds at ALL to Blood Boil – I know it can’t KILL him, but will it slow him down? Hmmm. . .
4. Get in a workout: Check – another evening on the bike, and through another thirty-so minutes with the Oxventure “Heist Society!” The gang is still split up, and still trying to solve the mystery of the supposedly-stolen Emerald Tear – here is how they’re all going:
Team Stealth – after repeatedly trying to convince Amelia that they believe Horatio and she should too (and Dob coming up with a rather convoluted plan of finding the gem, making a copy, and seeing how Horatio reacts when given it), Amelia finally got them to leave by threatening to ring the bell-pull to summon the guards. They moved over to Hawthorne’s office, which Corazon was able to pick with ease – Dob tried to find secret passages while Corazon tore through the office for important documents. Dob wasn’t able to detect anything, but Corazon found Hawthorne’s diary, written in a cipher! Fortunately, after some shenanigans, Johnny allowed Corazon to use his spell “Comprehend Languages” on the cipher – what he and Dob found out was so shocking, they rushed back to Amelia’s room (knocking politely this time) to do a dramatic Phoenix Wright-style breaking of the news. Namely, according to the diary (and Johnny’s secret note), Amelia is not biologically Hawthorne’s daughter. Apparently she’s the child of his former partner, Bookman, whom he KILLED to get the business all to himself. Unfortunately, they both rolled TERRIBLY on the Charisma roll to convince her of this, with Dob getting a Natural 1 – and so the guards have been summoned on them. Whoops.
Team Party – continued to mingle at the party, having separated from Hawthorne himself. Prudence was able to locate the Captain of the Guard by spotting a guy with some serious scarring and some impressive medals – Merilwen struck up a conversation based on them being “samesies” (she too has a scar on her cheek – also, this thing is a masquerade ball only when it’s plot-appropriate now XD), and the Captain gave a hilariously insincere account of Horatio’s arrest, making it clear that he’d never even met the pawnbroker Horatio supposedly sold it to (calling him a “good friend,” but having no clue what his name was), nor seen the jewel in question (it’s explicitly called the Emerald Tear, but he described it as BLUE). Merilwen and Prudence are suspicious, but haven’t yet had a chance to act on the information.
Team Egbert – was led up to the fancy smoking room by a servant, where he selected a dude at random, cracked open a beer, and started engaging in conversation. Turns out the guy’s a bit of a gossip-monger, and was willing to let a few things slip (like the local cloth-dying family using urine for their yellows – the “Tanner’s Folly” collection (see why I remember THAT name? XD)) – ESPECIALLY if Egbert shared his beer. They got through the rest of his six-pack together, and the guy gave Egbert a riddle about how a good chess player keeps his queen hidden so his opponent can’t see her strike, even if she’s right under his nose. Egbert needed chess explained to him first (guy’s got a Wisdom modifier of minus one), then – once the guy got blackout drunk and he’d had a rifle through his pockets – sat down to ponder the riddle, with the help of another secret note by Johnny.
So yeah – progress has been made, buuuuut not enough to clear Horatio’s name yet! I left it off with Amelia calling the guards on Team Stealth – we’ll see how it wraps up tomorrow!
5. Keep up on tumblr queues: Check – three ask replies queued up over on Valice Multiverse, and the pictures and starter text for the Chill Save update this Wednesday drafted on Victor Luvs Alice!
Additionally:
-->Answered my friend DarkCountess’s FF.net PM, yay – good to have that done, and to tell her that I have the gift fic ready to go for this Saturday. :) w000!
And now I must be off for the night, because I do have three more days of work to get through before I am free. AKA the three days where I really have to juggle watching the OXmas Challenges and my Subs stuff -- I suspect Thursday is gonna be primarily me catching up on YouTube videos I wasn't able to get to because of the Challenges! Ah well, it's only once a year, and I do love them, sooo. . . Night all!
