Productive Final Day Off
Apr. 18th, 2022 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI did end up going to bed later than I wanted yesterday, and thus sleeping in later than I expected, but on the flip side, I also got everything on my to-do list checked off:
1. Free Writing Day -- try to write something: Check, hoorah! XD Yeah, finally got back into the writing groove tonight with a quick Valicer scene of Victor, Alice, and Smiler starting a hypnosis session. Since that’s a big part of their relationships in all these little AUs I’ve been coming up with. . . But yes, actually wrote a page, w000~ Tomorrow – back to editing for the final chapter of LB:SMVoT!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – two videos in the Subs, and a few bonuses elsewhere –
A) Actually started the day with a look at some GrayStillPlays shorts – one of him refusing to take a game’s insistence that he’d generated all the scenarios he could; a bunch of little animations from his Minecraft adventures with Reginald; and one story of the time he wrestled an alligator, volunteering with some group – he had to duct-tape its snout and his legs. XD Bite-sized bits of chaos to start your morning!
B) Then this afternoon, we had from my Recommended the latest from SimmerErin and looking at how Quality Assurance on the latest packs has gone downhill in Sims 4. She’s hunted down some comments both new and old from QA members both in America and overseas, and the consensus seems to be that EA is a good place to start working, and has decent amenities for employees, but if you’re a QA tester, you’re low person on the totem pole. A lot of dislikes had to do with the “executive branch” of management ignoring them, pushing them toward unreasonable deadlines, and not providing them with the support they need. Granted, these are all self-reported, who knows what’s real and what might be a lie, but QA not getting support from upper management does seem to jive with the last couple of game packs and patches having some interesting bugs (to the point of My Wedding Stories being released completely broken). And she brought up a point at the end of the video that I’ve said before – Sims 3 was so poorly optimized that, by the end, the game was literally telling you “it is NOT a good idea to play with all DLC, so please pick and choose what you want.” Sims 4 was determined to be a better experience for players with all sorts of computers, but they kinda overshot the mark and made a game that was TOO simple. *shrug* I dunno – I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about it, short of showing our displeasure by refusing to buy whatever they’re selling next, but it is good to have people looking into WHY the game is steadily getting more and more fucked up.
C) Then it was over to Call Me Kevin for more Minecraft weirdness – “This Realistic Minecraft mod goes TOO FAR!” Yes, he has found a mod that – well. It SORT OF adds more realism to the game. According to the comments, it’s call “RL Craft,” and it gives you things like a thirst gauge as well as a hunger gauge to keep track of (and you can’t just drink bucket water, it must be purified first); a temperature tracker to see how hot or cold you are (if the water is sufficiently cold, I suspect you could freeze before you drown!); separate health bars for all your body parts (along with new healing items, at least); more complicated recipes for things (a fishing rod is no longer just a stick with a string – you have to craft hook and bobble separately!); level requirements for using certain categories of item (like you have to get up to a certain level by doing “quests” and slaying creatures before you can upgrade from wood items to stone, for example); and of course XP that you have to collect to level up. And it does this while ALSO making the whole thing more fantasy-themed by procedurally generating stuff like castles, villages, forests –
And SO MANY MONSTERS. Kevin died SO many times just walking around because there are monsters EVERYWHERE. Dragons! Fishmen! Coal creatures! Baby Ents! The other spawn of JRR Tolkien! And this is WITH the vanilla mobs running around! Poor Kevin could barely take two steps before getting poisoned, or paralyzed, or – suffice to say, this is a TOUGH MOD! Kevin persevered for the length of the video, coming back from every death to try and up his level by building items (even if he couldn’t use them), slaying snails and baby zombies, farming poisonous potatoes, doing the tutorial quests, and running away from everything that even looked REMOTELY dangerous, but in the end, he just ended up cowering in the library with one of the other NPCs. Don’t blame you, buddy – this mod is exactly why I want SOME realism in my games, not ALL the realism. Or all the fantasy monsters.
D) Then, tonight, I went ahead and watched “Inversion Addicts” doing a vlog on visiting Alton Towers during the Festival of Thrills and going around on the rides. There really isn’t all that much going on with the Festival beyond the band stages and the actors nearby, but there is some good music. They had to wait until the end of the day to go on Oblivion, The Smiler, and Spinball Whizzer, though, as I guess there was technical problems with all three rides. Shame. But they hit pretty much all the big coasters – quite liked Nemesis and The Smiler, but felt Galactica needed some help. Still, it’s nice to see a video of the park, and what it looks like to walk through it and see the coasters and such in action.
E) Then finally we had GrayStillPlays and Make ‘Em Puzzle – the stick figure mobile game makers are at it again! This time the sticks are in one of those “pull the body into the right position games” – and while being 2-D drawings means they don’t have fun physics flip-outs like the 3-D variations, we still have plenty of weirdness. And plenty of Gray making bodies do inappropriate things. XD I mean, the first level involved putting a guy’s hands at crotch height supposedly to stuff him into a closet – and then he just ended up trussed up like a kidnap victim. Gray didn’t understand it either. We also had a dude very poorly imitating the statue of David; Gray positioning a guy to hit a ball away from his girlfriend and ending up making it look like he was gonna bash her head in; Gray making a guy trying to propose do high leg kicks before putting him in a “Ready to Run” position should she say no; a guy trolling another by pulling away his chair mid-lunch – but the REAL troll, Gray noticed, was in the background, where they just cut off the clip art so the guy had like a third of a microwave; a dude throwing an unknown ball into the distance while all the while Gray tried to figure out just what it was he was throwing; and a couple hugging and making up after a fight while Gray tried to get the guy to strangle the girl. I mean, typical GrayStillPlays stuff! XD
3. Play Sims 4 and get through Fall Sunday with Smiler Always: Check – and let me tell you, Smiler had a pretty busy day around both campuses and their house! Started the day off by grabbing the skill book they got from the Bronze-level Incognito Costume Party out of their household inventory and discovered it was actually the one for MISCHIEF skill, not Charisma like I had assumed. But hey, it was Prank Day, I intended for Smiler to prank people, so I let them read it for a little while. After that, they wanted to do some of their homework, so I let them do that and got them to submit their term paper as well. After that was inventory management – I bought some display shelves for them to put the majority of their insect collection on, got their Humor & Hijinks snowglobe and pretty Sulani shell put on their dresser, and hung up their School Spirit Squad poster. And decided they might as well plant their wolfsbane and sixam mosquito trap seeds by their plasma fruit tree, which had finally grown. It was only once THAT was all done, and the plasma fruit harvested, that we could move on –
To Darby’s Den! As Smiler had some tasks over there to complete for their School Spirit Squad. Like defacing the statue – though they ended up having to do that twice, since the goals glitched out at one point. Either that or Yarnbombing doesn’t count for some reason. . .Smiler got the Knitting skill out of that, though! They also put up Foxbury banners on the U-Brite stadium, and taunted a rival student – which was a mean interaction, so I had Smiler do it to someone they hadn’t met yet, so they could immediately fix the damage with their Incredibly Friendly Trait and Pristine Reputation. One friendly greeting means Sims are INSTANTLY their GOOD friends. :D That combined with meeting a few new people (Maya and Siya specifically) and pulling a few light-hearted pranks meant that they’d done most of their School Spirit Squad “work” AND completed Prank Day before 11 AM!
Which was good, as I got a notification around that time that the Bot Savants were having a Utili-Bot contest at the Foxbury quad! The Bot Savants were the other organization I wanted Smiler to join, so I sent them over there to see the competition (lots and lots of flying bots), and meet back up with their friend Davion to ask for membership. It was granted, and after some friendly chat with one of the local Servos (Electra Bolts) and another member, Smiler flew up to the robot lab and spent the rest of the competition tinkering and picking up robot salvage parts. They’re almost up to level two Robotics skill, yay! :)
And THEN, as they were finishing up that, I noticed that the School Spirit Squad had an event planned for the day too – a Bar night at Plumbella’s Pub! So Smiler scooted over to that, hanging out with some of the Spirit Squad outside, doing lots of cheers, and reinforcing their friendship enough with Kazuki to get to drink from his wrist, yay. :) As the night wound down, they did a little dancing, then finished up their final bit of homework, before I sent them home to reset their romantic preferences AGAIN (Wonderful Whims, I want to like you, I do) and update some of their outfits with their new organization t-shirts. :) Very productive day – and next time we play, it’s gonna be Spooky Day! You’d better believe Smiler’s gonna throw a party – even if it’s ungoaled, it’ll at least tick off another one on their “throw three parties” aspiration milestone!
4. Work on tumblr drafts (specifically the Wednesday Chill Save Update): Check! Set myself to that in the hours between breakfast and lunch, and got through all four posts for the upcoming Chill Save update with Smiler on Victor Luvs Alice. I also got a couple of silly shitpost ideas for Alton Towers coasters and lore out of my head (namely Dr. Kelman getting his job taken by a roller coaster and how the Ministry of Joy basically just canceled Oblivion’s former lore), and the start of a post of “not-actually-incorrect” Valicer quotes (because they’re not taken from other media, they’re just things I can see them saying XD). Hooray for buffers!
5. Get in a workout: Check! Back on the bike again, and onto the next Oxventure Stream, “Hunter Pressure!” The gang, once again on the move, received a blood raven (a raven that delivers a message, then explodes in blood) from Bismuth regarding the sale of the haunted family mansion – apparently there’s an offer, but she needs to know where they are so she can give them the details/send the potential buyer to meet them/etc. So the gang went to the nearby town of Barrowmere to visit the post office there! They got in line for the queue, but then a rather distracting call of “Help! Help!” started up from a nearby courtyard. A curious Merilwen went to investigate, and Prudence (who didn’t want to sell the haunted family mansion and thus was planning to tell Bismuth to reject the offer) told the others she’d hold their line and let them do cutsies if they left – Dob and Egbert followed Merilwen, but Corazon, sensing a trap, decided to stay. XD Dob, Egbert and Merilwen all went to the courtyard to find a woman in an impractical long flowing dress tied to a stake – not yet on fire (as discovered when Mike tried to start a conversation about the appropriate attire to be burned alive in), or really in any immediate peril. Hmmm. Dob being Dob, however, immediately rushed forward to free her. This triggered her to yell “NOW!” –
And the entire freaking courtyard opened up like a giant trap door! Dob, Merilwen, and Egbert all fell in – Merilwen hit the ground first, knocking herself out; then Dob on top of her, knocking HIMSELF out, and then Egbert – who’d rolled really well on the Constitution check – landed on top of them, perfectly fine! At least for the five seconds it took a guy with a blowpipe to hit him with a dart and render him unconscious. Damn.
Corazon and Prudence, meanwhile, reached the counter of the post office and proceeded to give the guy there a pretty bad day. XD Namely by buying an absurd amount of lottery tickets; purchasing a blood vulture to make the trip to Necropolis-On-Sea but Corazon refusing to put more words than “I’m in Barrowmere” on the note (and even then he only did THAT because there was a three-word limit); and then insisting on one of every stamp he had. And then paying him in a variety of loose change he had to count. XD As they stepped away from the counter, though, the yells of “Help! Help!” started up again – annoyed that their compatriots had apparently not dealt with the problem and deciding it would be funny to show them up in doing good, they went to investigate. They were a little savvier than their friends upon seeing the scene – Corazon checked for traps around the obvious maiden and realized the entire courtyard was one big trap, while Prudence Detected Magic and found a hooded figure in a nearby tower, full of innate magical power. However, this did not stop them from getting got by the trap after the man indicated to the woman he wanted them too, because, well, entire courtyard is a big trap door. Corazon DID cast Featherfall on himself and Prudence as they dropped, and DID get off a shot at the guy with his crossbow (missed the man but broke the window at least), but there were many, MANY blowdart people on the way down to the bottom, and not all of them were terrible shots. And so everyone was railroaded into unconsciousness –
And eventually woke up in a dungeon! Without any of their gear, but all in the same cell. And with the mysterious cloaked man on the other side of the bars, playing with Corazon’s crossbow bolt. He introduced himself as Rodrigo Bellaforte, and explained that he was the richest man in town, thanks to his parties. And that they were going to be the guests of honor at his latest party. Dob instantly volunteered himself to jump out of a cake, which Rodrigo said sounded like would be a fun way to kick things off at the starting line. Everyone was puzzled by this – well, except Egbert, who reminded everyone, “I SAID there were these rich-people parties where they hunted the poorer guests!” And indeed, Rodrigo’s parties are all excuses to have people pay him lots of money to hunt other people for sport. He introduced the people ready to hunt the Oxventurers – Orbo the Goliath (hench man is hench); Furio the human (who just LOOKS like he should be named “Furio” and is apparently a master at unarmed combat); Neve the Tiefling (who is just bristling with knives); and Ashlin the High Elf barbarian (who was VERY distracted by Corazon taking off his shirt in response to being called scrawny). The idea was that the next day, the Oxventurers would be released into the woods just outside town (with their gear; Rodrigo likes to keep an illusion of fairness) and the others would hunt them until they were all dead.
Naturally the Oxventurers were not in favor of being hunted and started arguing. Including what they would get if they won (Rodrigo genuinely didn’t know, as it’s never happened before); what was stopping them from just flopping at the starting line to ruin the hunt (Rodrigo admitted that was a problem in the past when they were paying people’s relatives to get them to go along with the hunt; now he targets adventures because they willingly put themselves in danger – I guess he expects them to not be able to resist making it interesting), and – when I left off – if they could pay him more than the hunters paid to be released (with Merilwen finally getting a chance to flex her official treasurer muscles). Rodrigo had some questions for them too, like what the deal with the seal was (Seal Gaiman was angry as all hell until he was allowed into the Scotch Egg larder, it seems XD), and what was this terrible map that seems to mark some sort of lake (AKA Dob’s special map to all the treasure he's thrown in there – Corazon managed to get his hands back on it, though who knows if it’ll actually be of any use to them going forward, given, well, Dob). Basically the stakes are high, but as usual, so is the silly. XD Looking forward to seeing how the hell they get themselves out of this one!
Not bad, not bad at all. And now I get to go to bed, head to work in the morning, and probably end up super stressed out because that's generally what happens after these long weekends. And my next proper one isn't until the end of May. . .probably take a day off before then, but let's get through the last couple of weeks of April first. Wish me luck tomorrow, everyone! Night all!
1. Free Writing Day -- try to write something: Check, hoorah! XD Yeah, finally got back into the writing groove tonight with a quick Valicer scene of Victor, Alice, and Smiler starting a hypnosis session. Since that’s a big part of their relationships in all these little AUs I’ve been coming up with. . . But yes, actually wrote a page, w000~ Tomorrow – back to editing for the final chapter of LB:SMVoT!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – two videos in the Subs, and a few bonuses elsewhere –
A) Actually started the day with a look at some GrayStillPlays shorts – one of him refusing to take a game’s insistence that he’d generated all the scenarios he could; a bunch of little animations from his Minecraft adventures with Reginald; and one story of the time he wrestled an alligator, volunteering with some group – he had to duct-tape its snout and his legs. XD Bite-sized bits of chaos to start your morning!
B) Then this afternoon, we had from my Recommended the latest from SimmerErin and looking at how Quality Assurance on the latest packs has gone downhill in Sims 4. She’s hunted down some comments both new and old from QA members both in America and overseas, and the consensus seems to be that EA is a good place to start working, and has decent amenities for employees, but if you’re a QA tester, you’re low person on the totem pole. A lot of dislikes had to do with the “executive branch” of management ignoring them, pushing them toward unreasonable deadlines, and not providing them with the support they need. Granted, these are all self-reported, who knows what’s real and what might be a lie, but QA not getting support from upper management does seem to jive with the last couple of game packs and patches having some interesting bugs (to the point of My Wedding Stories being released completely broken). And she brought up a point at the end of the video that I’ve said before – Sims 3 was so poorly optimized that, by the end, the game was literally telling you “it is NOT a good idea to play with all DLC, so please pick and choose what you want.” Sims 4 was determined to be a better experience for players with all sorts of computers, but they kinda overshot the mark and made a game that was TOO simple. *shrug* I dunno – I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about it, short of showing our displeasure by refusing to buy whatever they’re selling next, but it is good to have people looking into WHY the game is steadily getting more and more fucked up.
C) Then it was over to Call Me Kevin for more Minecraft weirdness – “This Realistic Minecraft mod goes TOO FAR!” Yes, he has found a mod that – well. It SORT OF adds more realism to the game. According to the comments, it’s call “RL Craft,” and it gives you things like a thirst gauge as well as a hunger gauge to keep track of (and you can’t just drink bucket water, it must be purified first); a temperature tracker to see how hot or cold you are (if the water is sufficiently cold, I suspect you could freeze before you drown!); separate health bars for all your body parts (along with new healing items, at least); more complicated recipes for things (a fishing rod is no longer just a stick with a string – you have to craft hook and bobble separately!); level requirements for using certain categories of item (like you have to get up to a certain level by doing “quests” and slaying creatures before you can upgrade from wood items to stone, for example); and of course XP that you have to collect to level up. And it does this while ALSO making the whole thing more fantasy-themed by procedurally generating stuff like castles, villages, forests –
And SO MANY MONSTERS. Kevin died SO many times just walking around because there are monsters EVERYWHERE. Dragons! Fishmen! Coal creatures! Baby Ents! The other spawn of JRR Tolkien! And this is WITH the vanilla mobs running around! Poor Kevin could barely take two steps before getting poisoned, or paralyzed, or – suffice to say, this is a TOUGH MOD! Kevin persevered for the length of the video, coming back from every death to try and up his level by building items (even if he couldn’t use them), slaying snails and baby zombies, farming poisonous potatoes, doing the tutorial quests, and running away from everything that even looked REMOTELY dangerous, but in the end, he just ended up cowering in the library with one of the other NPCs. Don’t blame you, buddy – this mod is exactly why I want SOME realism in my games, not ALL the realism. Or all the fantasy monsters.
D) Then, tonight, I went ahead and watched “Inversion Addicts” doing a vlog on visiting Alton Towers during the Festival of Thrills and going around on the rides. There really isn’t all that much going on with the Festival beyond the band stages and the actors nearby, but there is some good music. They had to wait until the end of the day to go on Oblivion, The Smiler, and Spinball Whizzer, though, as I guess there was technical problems with all three rides. Shame. But they hit pretty much all the big coasters – quite liked Nemesis and The Smiler, but felt Galactica needed some help. Still, it’s nice to see a video of the park, and what it looks like to walk through it and see the coasters and such in action.
E) Then finally we had GrayStillPlays and Make ‘Em Puzzle – the stick figure mobile game makers are at it again! This time the sticks are in one of those “pull the body into the right position games” – and while being 2-D drawings means they don’t have fun physics flip-outs like the 3-D variations, we still have plenty of weirdness. And plenty of Gray making bodies do inappropriate things. XD I mean, the first level involved putting a guy’s hands at crotch height supposedly to stuff him into a closet – and then he just ended up trussed up like a kidnap victim. Gray didn’t understand it either. We also had a dude very poorly imitating the statue of David; Gray positioning a guy to hit a ball away from his girlfriend and ending up making it look like he was gonna bash her head in; Gray making a guy trying to propose do high leg kicks before putting him in a “Ready to Run” position should she say no; a guy trolling another by pulling away his chair mid-lunch – but the REAL troll, Gray noticed, was in the background, where they just cut off the clip art so the guy had like a third of a microwave; a dude throwing an unknown ball into the distance while all the while Gray tried to figure out just what it was he was throwing; and a couple hugging and making up after a fight while Gray tried to get the guy to strangle the girl. I mean, typical GrayStillPlays stuff! XD
3. Play Sims 4 and get through Fall Sunday with Smiler Always: Check – and let me tell you, Smiler had a pretty busy day around both campuses and their house! Started the day off by grabbing the skill book they got from the Bronze-level Incognito Costume Party out of their household inventory and discovered it was actually the one for MISCHIEF skill, not Charisma like I had assumed. But hey, it was Prank Day, I intended for Smiler to prank people, so I let them read it for a little while. After that, they wanted to do some of their homework, so I let them do that and got them to submit their term paper as well. After that was inventory management – I bought some display shelves for them to put the majority of their insect collection on, got their Humor & Hijinks snowglobe and pretty Sulani shell put on their dresser, and hung up their School Spirit Squad poster. And decided they might as well plant their wolfsbane and sixam mosquito trap seeds by their plasma fruit tree, which had finally grown. It was only once THAT was all done, and the plasma fruit harvested, that we could move on –
To Darby’s Den! As Smiler had some tasks over there to complete for their School Spirit Squad. Like defacing the statue – though they ended up having to do that twice, since the goals glitched out at one point. Either that or Yarnbombing doesn’t count for some reason. . .Smiler got the Knitting skill out of that, though! They also put up Foxbury banners on the U-Brite stadium, and taunted a rival student – which was a mean interaction, so I had Smiler do it to someone they hadn’t met yet, so they could immediately fix the damage with their Incredibly Friendly Trait and Pristine Reputation. One friendly greeting means Sims are INSTANTLY their GOOD friends. :D That combined with meeting a few new people (Maya and Siya specifically) and pulling a few light-hearted pranks meant that they’d done most of their School Spirit Squad “work” AND completed Prank Day before 11 AM!
Which was good, as I got a notification around that time that the Bot Savants were having a Utili-Bot contest at the Foxbury quad! The Bot Savants were the other organization I wanted Smiler to join, so I sent them over there to see the competition (lots and lots of flying bots), and meet back up with their friend Davion to ask for membership. It was granted, and after some friendly chat with one of the local Servos (Electra Bolts) and another member, Smiler flew up to the robot lab and spent the rest of the competition tinkering and picking up robot salvage parts. They’re almost up to level two Robotics skill, yay! :)
And THEN, as they were finishing up that, I noticed that the School Spirit Squad had an event planned for the day too – a Bar night at Plumbella’s Pub! So Smiler scooted over to that, hanging out with some of the Spirit Squad outside, doing lots of cheers, and reinforcing their friendship enough with Kazuki to get to drink from his wrist, yay. :) As the night wound down, they did a little dancing, then finished up their final bit of homework, before I sent them home to reset their romantic preferences AGAIN (Wonderful Whims, I want to like you, I do) and update some of their outfits with their new organization t-shirts. :) Very productive day – and next time we play, it’s gonna be Spooky Day! You’d better believe Smiler’s gonna throw a party – even if it’s ungoaled, it’ll at least tick off another one on their “throw three parties” aspiration milestone!
4. Work on tumblr drafts (specifically the Wednesday Chill Save Update): Check! Set myself to that in the hours between breakfast and lunch, and got through all four posts for the upcoming Chill Save update with Smiler on Victor Luvs Alice. I also got a couple of silly shitpost ideas for Alton Towers coasters and lore out of my head (namely Dr. Kelman getting his job taken by a roller coaster and how the Ministry of Joy basically just canceled Oblivion’s former lore), and the start of a post of “not-actually-incorrect” Valicer quotes (because they’re not taken from other media, they’re just things I can see them saying XD). Hooray for buffers!
5. Get in a workout: Check! Back on the bike again, and onto the next Oxventure Stream, “Hunter Pressure!” The gang, once again on the move, received a blood raven (a raven that delivers a message, then explodes in blood) from Bismuth regarding the sale of the haunted family mansion – apparently there’s an offer, but she needs to know where they are so she can give them the details/send the potential buyer to meet them/etc. So the gang went to the nearby town of Barrowmere to visit the post office there! They got in line for the queue, but then a rather distracting call of “Help! Help!” started up from a nearby courtyard. A curious Merilwen went to investigate, and Prudence (who didn’t want to sell the haunted family mansion and thus was planning to tell Bismuth to reject the offer) told the others she’d hold their line and let them do cutsies if they left – Dob and Egbert followed Merilwen, but Corazon, sensing a trap, decided to stay. XD Dob, Egbert and Merilwen all went to the courtyard to find a woman in an impractical long flowing dress tied to a stake – not yet on fire (as discovered when Mike tried to start a conversation about the appropriate attire to be burned alive in), or really in any immediate peril. Hmmm. Dob being Dob, however, immediately rushed forward to free her. This triggered her to yell “NOW!” –
And the entire freaking courtyard opened up like a giant trap door! Dob, Merilwen, and Egbert all fell in – Merilwen hit the ground first, knocking herself out; then Dob on top of her, knocking HIMSELF out, and then Egbert – who’d rolled really well on the Constitution check – landed on top of them, perfectly fine! At least for the five seconds it took a guy with a blowpipe to hit him with a dart and render him unconscious. Damn.
Corazon and Prudence, meanwhile, reached the counter of the post office and proceeded to give the guy there a pretty bad day. XD Namely by buying an absurd amount of lottery tickets; purchasing a blood vulture to make the trip to Necropolis-On-Sea but Corazon refusing to put more words than “I’m in Barrowmere” on the note (and even then he only did THAT because there was a three-word limit); and then insisting on one of every stamp he had. And then paying him in a variety of loose change he had to count. XD As they stepped away from the counter, though, the yells of “Help! Help!” started up again – annoyed that their compatriots had apparently not dealt with the problem and deciding it would be funny to show them up in doing good, they went to investigate. They were a little savvier than their friends upon seeing the scene – Corazon checked for traps around the obvious maiden and realized the entire courtyard was one big trap, while Prudence Detected Magic and found a hooded figure in a nearby tower, full of innate magical power. However, this did not stop them from getting got by the trap after the man indicated to the woman he wanted them too, because, well, entire courtyard is a big trap door. Corazon DID cast Featherfall on himself and Prudence as they dropped, and DID get off a shot at the guy with his crossbow (missed the man but broke the window at least), but there were many, MANY blowdart people on the way down to the bottom, and not all of them were terrible shots. And so everyone was railroaded into unconsciousness –
And eventually woke up in a dungeon! Without any of their gear, but all in the same cell. And with the mysterious cloaked man on the other side of the bars, playing with Corazon’s crossbow bolt. He introduced himself as Rodrigo Bellaforte, and explained that he was the richest man in town, thanks to his parties. And that they were going to be the guests of honor at his latest party. Dob instantly volunteered himself to jump out of a cake, which Rodrigo said sounded like would be a fun way to kick things off at the starting line. Everyone was puzzled by this – well, except Egbert, who reminded everyone, “I SAID there were these rich-people parties where they hunted the poorer guests!” And indeed, Rodrigo’s parties are all excuses to have people pay him lots of money to hunt other people for sport. He introduced the people ready to hunt the Oxventurers – Orbo the Goliath (hench man is hench); Furio the human (who just LOOKS like he should be named “Furio” and is apparently a master at unarmed combat); Neve the Tiefling (who is just bristling with knives); and Ashlin the High Elf barbarian (who was VERY distracted by Corazon taking off his shirt in response to being called scrawny). The idea was that the next day, the Oxventurers would be released into the woods just outside town (with their gear; Rodrigo likes to keep an illusion of fairness) and the others would hunt them until they were all dead.
Naturally the Oxventurers were not in favor of being hunted and started arguing. Including what they would get if they won (Rodrigo genuinely didn’t know, as it’s never happened before); what was stopping them from just flopping at the starting line to ruin the hunt (Rodrigo admitted that was a problem in the past when they were paying people’s relatives to get them to go along with the hunt; now he targets adventures because they willingly put themselves in danger – I guess he expects them to not be able to resist making it interesting), and – when I left off – if they could pay him more than the hunters paid to be released (with Merilwen finally getting a chance to flex her official treasurer muscles). Rodrigo had some questions for them too, like what the deal with the seal was (Seal Gaiman was angry as all hell until he was allowed into the Scotch Egg larder, it seems XD), and what was this terrible map that seems to mark some sort of lake (AKA Dob’s special map to all the treasure he's thrown in there – Corazon managed to get his hands back on it, though who knows if it’ll actually be of any use to them going forward, given, well, Dob). Basically the stakes are high, but as usual, so is the silly. XD Looking forward to seeing how the hell they get themselves out of this one!
Not bad, not bad at all. And now I get to go to bed, head to work in the morning, and probably end up super stressed out because that's generally what happens after these long weekends. And my next proper one isn't until the end of May. . .probably take a day off before then, but let's get through the last couple of weeks of April first. Wish me luck tomorrow, everyone! Night all!
