Well That Took Longer Than Expected
May. 3rd, 2023 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickAnd I am freaking tired, so let's keep this short and I'll try to get to all comments and such tomorrow --
Work – Another busy day – more people calling in with questions and occasional credit card stuff; more roster maintenance; more gifts to update. And as today’s special task, I spend some time clearing out old GLs while my coworkers went down into the basement to shred old papers, making space for me to put the GLs in. Not exactly the most fun work, but gotta be done. *shrug* I’ve had worse days!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with Oxventure: Legacy of Dragons – “Ballot Time!” Merilwen’s attempt to use Locate Creature to track down any Otherberts in or around Mistmire turned out to be VERY successful – she was in fact able to create a dust-mote-hologram of the city for everyone to see, with a whole glowing LINE of Otherberts at the very edge of the citadel. She promptly rushed off to tell Rowan and to get her to go up onto the ramparts for a look with Corazon’s spyglass. Rowan was dismissive at first, warning Merilwen that she would go off the ramparts if this was a joke – but then Merilwen actually got her up there, and even with the naked eye, they could make out the campfires of the Otherberts – and the SIEGE TOWERS they’d brought with them. Rowan was like “Yup, you’ve got my vote” after that, and she and Merilwen remained up on the ramparts just – keeping an eye on things all night (with Merilwen just running back quickly to give her friends an update and maybe get some snacks).
And so time advanced to the council meeting! Corazon used Disguise Self to make himself Chauncey, Dob put on the biggest hood he could find to avoid being recognized by Hammerfist, and the group headed to the meeting room to find all the other members already there. Corazon took his place as “Chauncey” and happily played up how much fun and sex he was having with his new bride, while Shattershield – who’d apparently had a fling with Lady Fyengh before she moved onto Chauncey – basically did his best not to put a fist through the table. XD After covering Corazon’s absence with “he’s drunk after doing pirate stuff and he barely cares about this anyway,” Egbert laid things out for the council – he’d spoken to the dragon, and it wanted its freedom, and he personally felt it was the right thing to do. And he confirmed what I’d already figured happened to get him kicked out of the Order – he’d tried to free it before, things went wrong, and two other paladins died (as Drysdale basically hinted at during their chat). He was still very genuinely regretful about that, but he said his position on the dragon’s state had not changed – it SHOULD be freed. Drysdale admitted that, despite his past with Egbert, he had come around some to his point of view; “Chauncey” talked about how he’d fallen into his foot locker and gotten trapped in the dark and realized that was probably how the dragon felt before his wife rescued him (cue Shattershield going “it should have been ME in that foot locker – wait”); and Rowan brought up the army of Otherberts at the other end of the causeway and said that it was worth freeing the dragon if they could maybe talk it into helping them defend Mistmire, at least in recognition of the thirty sheep they fed it every day. Hammerfist, who was still very drunk, just laughed, then took a minute to squint at Dob – fortunately, Dob’s hood was so vast and dark that he couldn’t QUITE figure out who was inside (aka Johnny got a dirty twenty, while Luke JUST beat it with a twenty-one – Merilwen eventually named him “Bob the Ranger”). The council voted, it was unanimous, and it was agreed the dragon would go free, and Le Dragon D’Or would go mobile to protect it (though Shattershield was ADAMANT he was NOT taking the Fyenghabus XD).
However – that meant they now had to figure out HOW to free the dragon. The chamber it was in DID have doors to the outside, just in case, but as they were never intended to be used, Shattershield wasn’t sure they even still worked. Egbert volunteered the Oxventurers to work on trying to get them open with the order’s help, and said that he wanted to try and speak to the dragon again, just to let it know that it would go free and ask if it would consider helping defend Mistmire. Shattershield agreed, and said that he, Rowan, Drysdale, and Hammerfist would accompany them down. Fortunately, this suited “Chauncey” just fine, as the hour deadline on his Disguise Self spell was coming up anyway. He and Egbert went to “retrieve Corazon” (aka get Chauncey out of Corazon’s wardrobe, with Egbert using Command on him to get him to “Forget” everything that had happened – Chauncey did NOT roll well on his saving throw, and thus wandered out into the corridor butt naked, apparently presuming he’d just had a particularly wild night with his lady), Dob quickly suggested to Egbert that he ask the dragon where they might find an injured frost dragon as well, and everyone headed down into the dragon’s chamber. Egbert told the dragon that it would be free, and asked if it would consider helping Mistmire – it was NOT a condition of its freedom, it could just leave, but if the dragon could find it in itself to help Egbert for trying to help it, they’d be very grateful. He also asked the dragon for its advice on how to find an injured frost dragon – the dragon confirmed that the frost dragon they were looking for was the mother of the eggs that they’d found, and said that if they brought them down and let it examine them, it could track said mother. The eggs were brought down, the dragon took a sniff (nearly inhaling poor Percy Junior in the process), and it declared that if it had its freedom, it could find her.
So, how to get the dragon its freedom? Corazon went to examine the doors, only to find them in BAD disrepair – chains rusted, metal covered in calcified bits of cave, the works. Obviously not opening on their own anytime soon! Dob brought Merilwen and Corazon into his hood to suggest that they find the doors’ weak point and try and just smash them open to help free the dragon –
And then a few Wisdom/Insight rolls had them all realize, “Hang on, Egbert already tried to free this thing – why not ask him what he’d planned to do?” That’s where I left it off – tomorrow, we see how they handle the doors and get this dragon out of this hellhole!
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen”: Check – after getting myself in the mood by watching an on-ride POV video of the Rita coaster in action (nyoom) and putting on the soundtrack (less rock-and-roll than I expected – though I guess it fits well with the nearby Th13teen ride, and given I have them as girlfriends. . .), I completed Rita’s section of the escape – super-speed punching all of the guards and knocking them out as a result. She herself was rather startled to discover she could now go from zero to sixty (well, technically sixty-one) in two-point-five seconds. XD The gang is currently crediting the Corkscrew being off for this turn of events, as is Kelman and his team watching from the security room (with Kelman having just sicced another Phalanx team on the group) – and while it does HELP, the actual answer, as will be revealed later, is slightly more complex. . .but first, the other coasters have to have their day in the sun too. :D
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check plus – again, managed to fit in a bonus video, w000 –
A) First up, the next OXBox list on my, uh, list – “7 Weirdest Secrets in Hitman That Must Be Seen to Be Believed!” Andy taking us through some truly strange Hitman: World of Assassination series secrets. For example, if you find and shoot all the lucky neko statues on Ambrose Island and then go fishing on a specific pier, a giant lucky neko will emerge from the water and shower you with fish! If you dress up as the exterminator on the Bangkok level, have the recording studio evacuated, and then mess with the keyboard, 47 will play a very spirited “La Cucharaca” and summon a giant cockroach to lay waste to the city on the skyline! And if you dress up as a ninja, climb onto the roof of the hospital/spa in Hakaido, walk along the edge until you see a strange light on the opposite corner, and then walk a very specific path to reach the light, 47 will summon – a cheap cardboard cutout of a Godzilla-adjacent monster to terrorize the snow-covered countryside. It looks horrible and is absolutely hilarious, go look up how to summon it right now. XD
B) And second up, the latest GrayStillPlays for the day – “Testing A.I autopilot vs deadly obstacles in GTA 5!” An Alex Torture Board with a twist – today, Gray was up against a bunch of AI opponents in a race to the finish across some of Alex’s weirdest shit yet! XD Though, in practical terms, only one of the AI opponents mattered – Satan the Cheater, an AI opponent who got free teleports in certain spots and could also just straight-up ignore some of the hazards Gray had to handle legitimately. Gray had to beat Satan to win the board, and he had to do it WITHOUT hitting the other cars, because Alex called that “cheating” and then took Gray’s car away. XD The courses included “F1 Racing” (a race course with a BUNCH of hairpin turns, and a few fun gaps – at least one of which Gray hit because he was too busy watching another AI jump to its death there); “Dancing Teleporters” (a couple of cotton-candy-colored platforms with cotton-candy-colored teleporters whirling and spinning around them); “Birthday Cakes” (a few different cake-themed sections – banana and cherry cakes with whirling discs and cherries to avoid, a cut cake with windmills doing the cutting between slices, a three-fourth’s cake where you had to avoid the one slice that had been removed (or have a car that could jump back to the road), and a lollipop-cake with slowly-spinning rainbow trees); “Snowy Multiple Choice” (a fake choice between a straight snowy road and a really twisty-turny one – Satan was allowed to use the straight road, but if Gray picked it, he was immediately teleported onto the really twisty one); “BALLS” (just a few platforms, at different heights connected by ramps, with bowling balls whirling madly across them all); and – well, I don’t know what it was called, but it was essentially a maze with randomly-appearing blocks to dodge to get to the finish line. Gray suffered mightily as he insisted on using such cars as the go-kart and some kid’s ride-along toy at first, but once he got serious – he still kept wiping out, as the Wastelander was too big to avoid the teleporters and the super car too fast to stick to the snowy road. Eventually what got him through was the GTA V equivalent of his own side-by-side – basically a cage car with a pink camo paint job and a LOT of traction on the wheels. It took a couple of runs, and a couple of VERY close saves (Gray nearly skidded off the road a couple of times), but he DID beat Satan to the finish! And nearly got ran over by a train. XD Just another day in GrayStillPlays world! XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check, though I am now very annoyed that my period brain this weekend kept me from getting ahead on my drafted posts, because I just spent the better part of this night writing up the “Smiler’s Otherland” post to put into my Victor Luvs Alice queue for tomorrow. I had all the ideas, it was just getting the actual text done. . .and I really wanted that to be my post for tomorrow, as it’s Alice’s birthday AND the last week of The Smiler Takeover and it felt like the right thing to put up. And I still don’t have anything for Friday or – well, okay, I think what I’m gonna do on Saturday is just reblog the post I did on the Smiler Shop TV video, but still. Gotta figure out Friday at least!
Okay, yes, that'll do it -- I mean, I'm glad to have the "Smiler's Otherland" post done, it was fun and I'm happy to share my ideas, but ugh, tiiiiime. . .why is it always getting away from me? Meeeh. >( Night all!
Work – Another busy day – more people calling in with questions and occasional credit card stuff; more roster maintenance; more gifts to update. And as today’s special task, I spend some time clearing out old GLs while my coworkers went down into the basement to shred old papers, making space for me to put the GLs in. Not exactly the most fun work, but gotta be done. *shrug* I’ve had worse days!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with Oxventure: Legacy of Dragons – “Ballot Time!” Merilwen’s attempt to use Locate Creature to track down any Otherberts in or around Mistmire turned out to be VERY successful – she was in fact able to create a dust-mote-hologram of the city for everyone to see, with a whole glowing LINE of Otherberts at the very edge of the citadel. She promptly rushed off to tell Rowan and to get her to go up onto the ramparts for a look with Corazon’s spyglass. Rowan was dismissive at first, warning Merilwen that she would go off the ramparts if this was a joke – but then Merilwen actually got her up there, and even with the naked eye, they could make out the campfires of the Otherberts – and the SIEGE TOWERS they’d brought with them. Rowan was like “Yup, you’ve got my vote” after that, and she and Merilwen remained up on the ramparts just – keeping an eye on things all night (with Merilwen just running back quickly to give her friends an update and maybe get some snacks).
And so time advanced to the council meeting! Corazon used Disguise Self to make himself Chauncey, Dob put on the biggest hood he could find to avoid being recognized by Hammerfist, and the group headed to the meeting room to find all the other members already there. Corazon took his place as “Chauncey” and happily played up how much fun and sex he was having with his new bride, while Shattershield – who’d apparently had a fling with Lady Fyengh before she moved onto Chauncey – basically did his best not to put a fist through the table. XD After covering Corazon’s absence with “he’s drunk after doing pirate stuff and he barely cares about this anyway,” Egbert laid things out for the council – he’d spoken to the dragon, and it wanted its freedom, and he personally felt it was the right thing to do. And he confirmed what I’d already figured happened to get him kicked out of the Order – he’d tried to free it before, things went wrong, and two other paladins died (as Drysdale basically hinted at during their chat). He was still very genuinely regretful about that, but he said his position on the dragon’s state had not changed – it SHOULD be freed. Drysdale admitted that, despite his past with Egbert, he had come around some to his point of view; “Chauncey” talked about how he’d fallen into his foot locker and gotten trapped in the dark and realized that was probably how the dragon felt before his wife rescued him (cue Shattershield going “it should have been ME in that foot locker – wait”); and Rowan brought up the army of Otherberts at the other end of the causeway and said that it was worth freeing the dragon if they could maybe talk it into helping them defend Mistmire, at least in recognition of the thirty sheep they fed it every day. Hammerfist, who was still very drunk, just laughed, then took a minute to squint at Dob – fortunately, Dob’s hood was so vast and dark that he couldn’t QUITE figure out who was inside (aka Johnny got a dirty twenty, while Luke JUST beat it with a twenty-one – Merilwen eventually named him “Bob the Ranger”). The council voted, it was unanimous, and it was agreed the dragon would go free, and Le Dragon D’Or would go mobile to protect it (though Shattershield was ADAMANT he was NOT taking the Fyenghabus XD).
However – that meant they now had to figure out HOW to free the dragon. The chamber it was in DID have doors to the outside, just in case, but as they were never intended to be used, Shattershield wasn’t sure they even still worked. Egbert volunteered the Oxventurers to work on trying to get them open with the order’s help, and said that he wanted to try and speak to the dragon again, just to let it know that it would go free and ask if it would consider helping defend Mistmire. Shattershield agreed, and said that he, Rowan, Drysdale, and Hammerfist would accompany them down. Fortunately, this suited “Chauncey” just fine, as the hour deadline on his Disguise Self spell was coming up anyway. He and Egbert went to “retrieve Corazon” (aka get Chauncey out of Corazon’s wardrobe, with Egbert using Command on him to get him to “Forget” everything that had happened – Chauncey did NOT roll well on his saving throw, and thus wandered out into the corridor butt naked, apparently presuming he’d just had a particularly wild night with his lady), Dob quickly suggested to Egbert that he ask the dragon where they might find an injured frost dragon as well, and everyone headed down into the dragon’s chamber. Egbert told the dragon that it would be free, and asked if it would consider helping Mistmire – it was NOT a condition of its freedom, it could just leave, but if the dragon could find it in itself to help Egbert for trying to help it, they’d be very grateful. He also asked the dragon for its advice on how to find an injured frost dragon – the dragon confirmed that the frost dragon they were looking for was the mother of the eggs that they’d found, and said that if they brought them down and let it examine them, it could track said mother. The eggs were brought down, the dragon took a sniff (nearly inhaling poor Percy Junior in the process), and it declared that if it had its freedom, it could find her.
So, how to get the dragon its freedom? Corazon went to examine the doors, only to find them in BAD disrepair – chains rusted, metal covered in calcified bits of cave, the works. Obviously not opening on their own anytime soon! Dob brought Merilwen and Corazon into his hood to suggest that they find the doors’ weak point and try and just smash them open to help free the dragon –
And then a few Wisdom/Insight rolls had them all realize, “Hang on, Egbert already tried to free this thing – why not ask him what he’d planned to do?” That’s where I left it off – tomorrow, we see how they handle the doors and get this dragon out of this hellhole!
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen”: Check – after getting myself in the mood by watching an on-ride POV video of the Rita coaster in action (nyoom) and putting on the soundtrack (less rock-and-roll than I expected – though I guess it fits well with the nearby Th13teen ride, and given I have them as girlfriends. . .), I completed Rita’s section of the escape – super-speed punching all of the guards and knocking them out as a result. She herself was rather startled to discover she could now go from zero to sixty (well, technically sixty-one) in two-point-five seconds. XD The gang is currently crediting the Corkscrew being off for this turn of events, as is Kelman and his team watching from the security room (with Kelman having just sicced another Phalanx team on the group) – and while it does HELP, the actual answer, as will be revealed later, is slightly more complex. . .but first, the other coasters have to have their day in the sun too. :D
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check plus – again, managed to fit in a bonus video, w000 –
A) First up, the next OXBox list on my, uh, list – “7 Weirdest Secrets in Hitman That Must Be Seen to Be Believed!” Andy taking us through some truly strange Hitman: World of Assassination series secrets. For example, if you find and shoot all the lucky neko statues on Ambrose Island and then go fishing on a specific pier, a giant lucky neko will emerge from the water and shower you with fish! If you dress up as the exterminator on the Bangkok level, have the recording studio evacuated, and then mess with the keyboard, 47 will play a very spirited “La Cucharaca” and summon a giant cockroach to lay waste to the city on the skyline! And if you dress up as a ninja, climb onto the roof of the hospital/spa in Hakaido, walk along the edge until you see a strange light on the opposite corner, and then walk a very specific path to reach the light, 47 will summon – a cheap cardboard cutout of a Godzilla-adjacent monster to terrorize the snow-covered countryside. It looks horrible and is absolutely hilarious, go look up how to summon it right now. XD
B) And second up, the latest GrayStillPlays for the day – “Testing A.I autopilot vs deadly obstacles in GTA 5!” An Alex Torture Board with a twist – today, Gray was up against a bunch of AI opponents in a race to the finish across some of Alex’s weirdest shit yet! XD Though, in practical terms, only one of the AI opponents mattered – Satan the Cheater, an AI opponent who got free teleports in certain spots and could also just straight-up ignore some of the hazards Gray had to handle legitimately. Gray had to beat Satan to win the board, and he had to do it WITHOUT hitting the other cars, because Alex called that “cheating” and then took Gray’s car away. XD The courses included “F1 Racing” (a race course with a BUNCH of hairpin turns, and a few fun gaps – at least one of which Gray hit because he was too busy watching another AI jump to its death there); “Dancing Teleporters” (a couple of cotton-candy-colored platforms with cotton-candy-colored teleporters whirling and spinning around them); “Birthday Cakes” (a few different cake-themed sections – banana and cherry cakes with whirling discs and cherries to avoid, a cut cake with windmills doing the cutting between slices, a three-fourth’s cake where you had to avoid the one slice that had been removed (or have a car that could jump back to the road), and a lollipop-cake with slowly-spinning rainbow trees); “Snowy Multiple Choice” (a fake choice between a straight snowy road and a really twisty-turny one – Satan was allowed to use the straight road, but if Gray picked it, he was immediately teleported onto the really twisty one); “BALLS” (just a few platforms, at different heights connected by ramps, with bowling balls whirling madly across them all); and – well, I don’t know what it was called, but it was essentially a maze with randomly-appearing blocks to dodge to get to the finish line. Gray suffered mightily as he insisted on using such cars as the go-kart and some kid’s ride-along toy at first, but once he got serious – he still kept wiping out, as the Wastelander was too big to avoid the teleporters and the super car too fast to stick to the snowy road. Eventually what got him through was the GTA V equivalent of his own side-by-side – basically a cage car with a pink camo paint job and a LOT of traction on the wheels. It took a couple of runs, and a couple of VERY close saves (Gray nearly skidded off the road a couple of times), but he DID beat Satan to the finish! And nearly got ran over by a train. XD Just another day in GrayStillPlays world! XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check, though I am now very annoyed that my period brain this weekend kept me from getting ahead on my drafted posts, because I just spent the better part of this night writing up the “Smiler’s Otherland” post to put into my Victor Luvs Alice queue for tomorrow. I had all the ideas, it was just getting the actual text done. . .and I really wanted that to be my post for tomorrow, as it’s Alice’s birthday AND the last week of The Smiler Takeover and it felt like the right thing to put up. And I still don’t have anything for Friday or – well, okay, I think what I’m gonna do on Saturday is just reblog the post I did on the Smiler Shop TV video, but still. Gotta figure out Friday at least!
Okay, yes, that'll do it -- I mean, I'm glad to have the "Smiler's Otherland" post done, it was fun and I'm happy to share my ideas, but ugh, tiiiiime. . .why is it always getting away from me? Meeeh. >( Night all!
