Squeaking In On Tuesday
Jun. 20th, 2023 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickHaving just finished answering Moose's latest set of messages (we ARE running out of room in that third one!), I'm just gonna throw the to-do list up here and go --
Work – Pretty quiet day – most of it for me was doing various duplicates and taking a few credit-card-related calls. And reorganizing everything I had outstanding on a fresh, clean piece of paper. :p Just keepin’ on keepin’ on, basically! *shrug*
In a stunning turn of events, though, the weather was nice enough AND I got home early enough to actually play some beanbags! And I ended up having a pretty good day, scoring two seconds and a first, while Dad has his usual “two great games, one lousy one” and Mom had her usual “two poor games and one okay one.” :p Final scores were me 2-2-W; Dad W-W-3; Mom 3-3-2. We’ll see if we get any more equitable scores in the days ahead!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the Live Oxventure “Baking Bad!” With Merilwen having been rumbled (and having pulled the javelins out of both herself and Dob), the gang spent a bit of time trying to figure out how they were going to get aboard this thing, preferably BEFORE it hit the next town. (Said next town being, of all places, Castor Falls, the site of the very first Oxventure! Egbert was like “uh, is that one of those places that hates us,” but Johnny reassured them that, while there was certainly a nobleman in town who wouldn’t want them around for tea, most of the other townsfolk were fifty-fifty. XD) The idea of disguising Egbert as some sort of lizard-folk himself was brought up, but shot down as Egbert didn’t look enough like them to pull off the deception (he admitted to being rather envious of their crest, as his official artwork gives him a rather smooth head). Prudence took another look at where the citadel was heading –
And realized that it wasn’t going STRAIGHT for Castor Falls – rather, it was taking a bit of a detour toward the river near it. The gang realized that this might be an opportunity, and Merilwen cast both Pass Without Trace AND Longstrider on them (though Corazon insisted he didn’t need the latter because of his awesome condor legs) so they could easily catch up without being noticed. Though, admittedly, Egbert NEARLY brought that whole plan down by rolling a five on his sneaking roll and forgetting to add ten for the Pass Without Trace bonus at first, making everyone go “how did you DO that?!” XD They found the citadel leaning over the river, extending a long proboscis to drink from it. Dob immediately noted that said proboscis would be their best way in – Corazon was like “maybe a few of us should hold back, so we don’t all die if that’s a bad idea?” and Dob was like “but I feel we should all die together!” He was, however, easily convinced by Corazon to go up there alone and strode into the water before Merilwen could even think to cast Waterbreathing on him. XD Cue poor Dob getting heavily beat up as he was sucked up the pipe before ending up in the big central water tank. Corazon decided to use his grappling hook and his awesome stealth skills to just climb up onto the lower level now that it was within grappling hook reach, and on a buffed roll of thirty-two (because Pass Without Trace WASN’T done yet – it’s an hour-long spell, and Johnny decided they had about twenty minutes left) made it up there so skillfully a passing lizard-folk guard actually gave him a hand up without even realizing. XD Egbert, for his part, decided, “well, nobody told me not to shield-surf my way up there on a bomb” and proceeded to try and do exactly that –
Cue the critical one on the die. XD His shield went flying off to parts unknown, and Egbert got twenty points of pure bludgeoning damage from being shot upward and into the third floor of the citadel, punching through the wall and ending up head-first in the very same water tank Dob was stuck in! As in, his head was sticking through the side of the tank. Dob promptly swam down and used Heat Metal on his knife to carve a hole in the tank around Egbert’s head to free them both, and smashed the roll to actually do so, allowing the pair to get blasted out of the tank and onto the floor, wet but alive. And Egbert had a cool metal collar to boot! As he put it, he’ll need that to keep himself from licking his inevitable stitches. XD
Anyway, back with the “stealthy approach” gang, Merilwen and Prudence decided to follow Corazon’s example roughly, with Prudence suggesting that Merilwen cling onto her while she Spider-Climbed up – Merilwen, however, possibly aware of just how few spell slots Prudence actually has (it’s a whole TWO in case you were wondering), instead suggested that they use her special magic bow that lets her teleport to wherever she shoots once a day. Prudence was keen once she explained “yes, I can bring a passenger who’s holding onto me,” and together they proceeded to full-on telefrag (aka “teleport on top of and messily murder”) the very same lizard-folk guard who’d unknowingly helped Corazon up. XD Prudence was quite keen on the fact that they ended up covered in blood, and asked if she could keep the intestines caught in her horns as decoration (Corazon suggested making them a kitschy scarf). After determining where the highly-magical heart of this creation was (appropriately, in the heart – the middle of the second “layer” of the Battle Cake), the trio got on the move, heading upstairs via the external staircase. However, Prudence was not as stealthy as she could have been (only rolling a four, meaning that became a fourteen), and another lizard-folk guard caught their scent a bit. Fortunately, Prudence was able to throw one of her many stinky spell components in another direction, allowing them to get to the second level undetected – for now. . .
Meanwhile, back with Team Bludgeoning Damage, Dob and Egbert were having a look around the water tank room, finding a whooole lotta pipes around, one of which was waaay bigger and thicker than the others. They were all conveniently labeled. . .in Draconic. Which Egbert can’t read. (He put this poorly at first, suggesting he couldn’t read at ALL, prompting both Andy and Jane to be like “YOU DISTRIBUTE PAMPHLETS!” XD Though he HAS actually previously – oh, wait, no! The fact that he can’t READ Draconic was established HERE, wasn’t it? Interesting. . .) Johnny promptly called for a Charisma/Performance check from Dob to sound out the labels and a Wisdom/Perception check from Egbert to understand Dob’s likely-terrible accent. . .
Cue them both getting nines, which they tried to insist added up to an eighteen. XD Dob, as it turned out, was not very good at reading the labels, to the point where he said that one pipe was labeled “hit here to win game.” So Egbert did exactly that. XD He didn’t take out the biggest pipe, but he DID end up crippling the legs a bit by removing some important water flow down to them. After establishing that the biggest pipe was big enough for both Dob and Egbert to fit into, Dob cast Calm Emotions on both himself and Egbert to help with holding their breaths and conserving oxygen, then the two of them got back in the tank and headed down the tube, letting the current take them into what they quickly determined was a giant boiler. Egbert, very calmly and rationally, asked what the chances of death by drowning versus death by boiling were – currently fifty-fifty, but slowly but surely tipping in favor of boiling.
Cut back to Team Sneaky-Sneak, sneaking their way into the second level of the citadel and navigating the corridors without being seen (despite the stealth rolls slowly getting worse – I’d like to think this coincidentally covers Pass Without Trace slowly wearing off). They eventually came across two doors, one looking like it led to a very hot place, the other looking appropriately dungeony. Corazon guessed that the second one had to be where the bakers who would make his croissants were being kept (confirmed by the telltale cough of “flour lung” coming from inside) and headed inside, to find a sleeping lizard-folk guard with a ring of keys. Another good roll with the Pass Without Trace bonus meant he had the keys AND managed to draw his own face on the lizard-folk’s face without any issue at all. XD The coughing baker got their attention from a nearby cell and said he was a font of useful information, though he seemed a bit reluctant to be freed, given how dangerous everything was. Corazon assured him that it was an Escort Mission and he just had to hang out at the back so his health bar didn’t get dinged, and the guy agreed to come with them so long as they didn’t get mad at him for his repeating dialogue. XD Corazon was already starting to regret this decision a little when another baker spoke up and said that, uh, yeah, George there COULD answer direct questions, and even knew a bit of Draconic. So he is useful to have around after all! :) I left it off there, with George ready to answer direct questions before repeating his story about making a guy soil himself with some sort of fearsome baking implement – we’ll see what comes of it, and if Team Bludgeoning Damage gets out of the boiler before they start taking boiling damage as well. :p
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice has made it around and up to the tower walk (after finding another short tape mentioning how Grout would pace it pondering the frailty of existence – Alice was less than sympathetic, hoping people got to escape while he brooded), and after taking a moment to admire the view, made it back down again and past another ghoul who was fortunately blocking a DOORWAY, not a DOOR (allowing Alice to sneak past her with Obfuscate rather than taking more drastic measures). She’s currently heading down further still, to find more horrors and get even more pissed off with Grout. . . Yeah, there are many, MANY reasons why, of all her horrible adventures, THIS is the one Alice hates the most.
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just GrayStillPlays tonight, with “I turned adblock into a deadly weapon,” aka Gray plays more Happy Wheels! And we had some truly killer boards tonight, in all senses of the word. XD We started with the obligatory bottle throw (where Gray had to get a bottle up into the harpoon area before getting SHOT by said harpoons to get a shoutout – he managed it, but he ALSO managed earlier to SURVIVE being shot by said harpoons, so maybe a double shoutout is due to this man), then proceeded through a nature/kinda-Indiana-Jones-themed extreme rope swing (featuring trips to the center of the earth, a dive into some lava, a ride on “The Coffin” cart, and a “to be continued” – Gray really liked it and gave it five stars); a very deadly green-themed ball fall (with spikes on the sides AND in the board – took Gray a few tries not to either lose his head or get minced); an extremely dangerous harpoon run with a surprise spike ceiling at the end (Gray, however, cottoned on quickly that he needed speed and thus was in the perfect position to make it over the hump and past the ceiling to crash into the win first try); an extremely dangerous pogo jump box (with many machetes, harpoons, jets, and falling toilets – and yet, via knowing EXACTLY where to jump and fall, Gray won this one first try too); a double escape box (where after escaping the wave of weapons in the first box, you had to enter the second box and escape the wild Thwomp block ready to crush you – took Gray a few tries just to get IN that box); a random board of much randomness (floating bits of floor, people flying off all over the place, and sentences that made no grammatical sense); a super-tough “moral choice” board (if you left early by rolling backwards, you could get an “evil” win by killing Santa; if you managed to make it through the rotating bomb boxes, over the killer invisible hump and another line of bombs, through the glass break, avoid the harpoon, through the box of knife butterflies, and then chose to spare the child and survived the subsequent spike fall, you could get a “moral victory”); and finally the Dylan Snider board of the video, “Ad-pocalypse,” where Gray, bullied by YouTube for daring to skip ads and use ad blockers, had to traverse various ads for various products until he found his way back to the computer and the actual video he was trying to watch (ads included some weird space-themed block thing; an example of Angry Birds play; killer Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and M&Ms (complete with rap lyrics), and a trip across some angry vans that would crush Gray if he fell). Good stuff all around, as usual! I’m glad he’s made this game a weekly thing again. :D
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check –
Victor Luvs Alice – Got the seven posts for this week’s Chill Valicer Save update on Wednesday and Nebby’s birthday fic for Thursday into the queue, yay! And I JUST did a quick and dirty “starter draft” for the “first mention of Valice” anniversary post that also needs to go up on Thursday – I’ll clean that up tomorrow.
Valice Multiverse – Got two ask replies (a Pinky and the Brain-themed “pondering what I’m pondering” one for Smiler and a “charity ball canceled because we gave the budget to charity” one for Alice) into the queue, yay! So that’s set for a couple of days.
*thumbs up* Not too shabby, no. And now it is time for bed, as I'm not quite halfway through the week yet. Hopefully things continue on a good keel -- night all!
Work – Pretty quiet day – most of it for me was doing various duplicates and taking a few credit-card-related calls. And reorganizing everything I had outstanding on a fresh, clean piece of paper. :p Just keepin’ on keepin’ on, basically! *shrug*
In a stunning turn of events, though, the weather was nice enough AND I got home early enough to actually play some beanbags! And I ended up having a pretty good day, scoring two seconds and a first, while Dad has his usual “two great games, one lousy one” and Mom had her usual “two poor games and one okay one.” :p Final scores were me 2-2-W; Dad W-W-3; Mom 3-3-2. We’ll see if we get any more equitable scores in the days ahead!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the Live Oxventure “Baking Bad!” With Merilwen having been rumbled (and having pulled the javelins out of both herself and Dob), the gang spent a bit of time trying to figure out how they were going to get aboard this thing, preferably BEFORE it hit the next town. (Said next town being, of all places, Castor Falls, the site of the very first Oxventure! Egbert was like “uh, is that one of those places that hates us,” but Johnny reassured them that, while there was certainly a nobleman in town who wouldn’t want them around for tea, most of the other townsfolk were fifty-fifty. XD) The idea of disguising Egbert as some sort of lizard-folk himself was brought up, but shot down as Egbert didn’t look enough like them to pull off the deception (he admitted to being rather envious of their crest, as his official artwork gives him a rather smooth head). Prudence took another look at where the citadel was heading –
And realized that it wasn’t going STRAIGHT for Castor Falls – rather, it was taking a bit of a detour toward the river near it. The gang realized that this might be an opportunity, and Merilwen cast both Pass Without Trace AND Longstrider on them (though Corazon insisted he didn’t need the latter because of his awesome condor legs) so they could easily catch up without being noticed. Though, admittedly, Egbert NEARLY brought that whole plan down by rolling a five on his sneaking roll and forgetting to add ten for the Pass Without Trace bonus at first, making everyone go “how did you DO that?!” XD They found the citadel leaning over the river, extending a long proboscis to drink from it. Dob immediately noted that said proboscis would be their best way in – Corazon was like “maybe a few of us should hold back, so we don’t all die if that’s a bad idea?” and Dob was like “but I feel we should all die together!” He was, however, easily convinced by Corazon to go up there alone and strode into the water before Merilwen could even think to cast Waterbreathing on him. XD Cue poor Dob getting heavily beat up as he was sucked up the pipe before ending up in the big central water tank. Corazon decided to use his grappling hook and his awesome stealth skills to just climb up onto the lower level now that it was within grappling hook reach, and on a buffed roll of thirty-two (because Pass Without Trace WASN’T done yet – it’s an hour-long spell, and Johnny decided they had about twenty minutes left) made it up there so skillfully a passing lizard-folk guard actually gave him a hand up without even realizing. XD Egbert, for his part, decided, “well, nobody told me not to shield-surf my way up there on a bomb” and proceeded to try and do exactly that –
Cue the critical one on the die. XD His shield went flying off to parts unknown, and Egbert got twenty points of pure bludgeoning damage from being shot upward and into the third floor of the citadel, punching through the wall and ending up head-first in the very same water tank Dob was stuck in! As in, his head was sticking through the side of the tank. Dob promptly swam down and used Heat Metal on his knife to carve a hole in the tank around Egbert’s head to free them both, and smashed the roll to actually do so, allowing the pair to get blasted out of the tank and onto the floor, wet but alive. And Egbert had a cool metal collar to boot! As he put it, he’ll need that to keep himself from licking his inevitable stitches. XD
Anyway, back with the “stealthy approach” gang, Merilwen and Prudence decided to follow Corazon’s example roughly, with Prudence suggesting that Merilwen cling onto her while she Spider-Climbed up – Merilwen, however, possibly aware of just how few spell slots Prudence actually has (it’s a whole TWO in case you were wondering), instead suggested that they use her special magic bow that lets her teleport to wherever she shoots once a day. Prudence was keen once she explained “yes, I can bring a passenger who’s holding onto me,” and together they proceeded to full-on telefrag (aka “teleport on top of and messily murder”) the very same lizard-folk guard who’d unknowingly helped Corazon up. XD Prudence was quite keen on the fact that they ended up covered in blood, and asked if she could keep the intestines caught in her horns as decoration (Corazon suggested making them a kitschy scarf). After determining where the highly-magical heart of this creation was (appropriately, in the heart – the middle of the second “layer” of the Battle Cake), the trio got on the move, heading upstairs via the external staircase. However, Prudence was not as stealthy as she could have been (only rolling a four, meaning that became a fourteen), and another lizard-folk guard caught their scent a bit. Fortunately, Prudence was able to throw one of her many stinky spell components in another direction, allowing them to get to the second level undetected – for now. . .
Meanwhile, back with Team Bludgeoning Damage, Dob and Egbert were having a look around the water tank room, finding a whooole lotta pipes around, one of which was waaay bigger and thicker than the others. They were all conveniently labeled. . .in Draconic. Which Egbert can’t read. (He put this poorly at first, suggesting he couldn’t read at ALL, prompting both Andy and Jane to be like “YOU DISTRIBUTE PAMPHLETS!” XD Though he HAS actually previously – oh, wait, no! The fact that he can’t READ Draconic was established HERE, wasn’t it? Interesting. . .) Johnny promptly called for a Charisma/Performance check from Dob to sound out the labels and a Wisdom/Perception check from Egbert to understand Dob’s likely-terrible accent. . .
Cue them both getting nines, which they tried to insist added up to an eighteen. XD Dob, as it turned out, was not very good at reading the labels, to the point where he said that one pipe was labeled “hit here to win game.” So Egbert did exactly that. XD He didn’t take out the biggest pipe, but he DID end up crippling the legs a bit by removing some important water flow down to them. After establishing that the biggest pipe was big enough for both Dob and Egbert to fit into, Dob cast Calm Emotions on both himself and Egbert to help with holding their breaths and conserving oxygen, then the two of them got back in the tank and headed down the tube, letting the current take them into what they quickly determined was a giant boiler. Egbert, very calmly and rationally, asked what the chances of death by drowning versus death by boiling were – currently fifty-fifty, but slowly but surely tipping in favor of boiling.
Cut back to Team Sneaky-Sneak, sneaking their way into the second level of the citadel and navigating the corridors without being seen (despite the stealth rolls slowly getting worse – I’d like to think this coincidentally covers Pass Without Trace slowly wearing off). They eventually came across two doors, one looking like it led to a very hot place, the other looking appropriately dungeony. Corazon guessed that the second one had to be where the bakers who would make his croissants were being kept (confirmed by the telltale cough of “flour lung” coming from inside) and headed inside, to find a sleeping lizard-folk guard with a ring of keys. Another good roll with the Pass Without Trace bonus meant he had the keys AND managed to draw his own face on the lizard-folk’s face without any issue at all. XD The coughing baker got their attention from a nearby cell and said he was a font of useful information, though he seemed a bit reluctant to be freed, given how dangerous everything was. Corazon assured him that it was an Escort Mission and he just had to hang out at the back so his health bar didn’t get dinged, and the guy agreed to come with them so long as they didn’t get mad at him for his repeating dialogue. XD Corazon was already starting to regret this decision a little when another baker spoke up and said that, uh, yeah, George there COULD answer direct questions, and even knew a bit of Draconic. So he is useful to have around after all! :) I left it off there, with George ready to answer direct questions before repeating his story about making a guy soil himself with some sort of fearsome baking implement – we’ll see what comes of it, and if Team Bludgeoning Damage gets out of the boiler before they start taking boiling damage as well. :p
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice has made it around and up to the tower walk (after finding another short tape mentioning how Grout would pace it pondering the frailty of existence – Alice was less than sympathetic, hoping people got to escape while he brooded), and after taking a moment to admire the view, made it back down again and past another ghoul who was fortunately blocking a DOORWAY, not a DOOR (allowing Alice to sneak past her with Obfuscate rather than taking more drastic measures). She’s currently heading down further still, to find more horrors and get even more pissed off with Grout. . . Yeah, there are many, MANY reasons why, of all her horrible adventures, THIS is the one Alice hates the most.
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just GrayStillPlays tonight, with “I turned adblock into a deadly weapon,” aka Gray plays more Happy Wheels! And we had some truly killer boards tonight, in all senses of the word. XD We started with the obligatory bottle throw (where Gray had to get a bottle up into the harpoon area before getting SHOT by said harpoons to get a shoutout – he managed it, but he ALSO managed earlier to SURVIVE being shot by said harpoons, so maybe a double shoutout is due to this man), then proceeded through a nature/kinda-Indiana-Jones-themed extreme rope swing (featuring trips to the center of the earth, a dive into some lava, a ride on “The Coffin” cart, and a “to be continued” – Gray really liked it and gave it five stars); a very deadly green-themed ball fall (with spikes on the sides AND in the board – took Gray a few tries not to either lose his head or get minced); an extremely dangerous harpoon run with a surprise spike ceiling at the end (Gray, however, cottoned on quickly that he needed speed and thus was in the perfect position to make it over the hump and past the ceiling to crash into the win first try); an extremely dangerous pogo jump box (with many machetes, harpoons, jets, and falling toilets – and yet, via knowing EXACTLY where to jump and fall, Gray won this one first try too); a double escape box (where after escaping the wave of weapons in the first box, you had to enter the second box and escape the wild Thwomp block ready to crush you – took Gray a few tries just to get IN that box); a random board of much randomness (floating bits of floor, people flying off all over the place, and sentences that made no grammatical sense); a super-tough “moral choice” board (if you left early by rolling backwards, you could get an “evil” win by killing Santa; if you managed to make it through the rotating bomb boxes, over the killer invisible hump and another line of bombs, through the glass break, avoid the harpoon, through the box of knife butterflies, and then chose to spare the child and survived the subsequent spike fall, you could get a “moral victory”); and finally the Dylan Snider board of the video, “Ad-pocalypse,” where Gray, bullied by YouTube for daring to skip ads and use ad blockers, had to traverse various ads for various products until he found his way back to the computer and the actual video he was trying to watch (ads included some weird space-themed block thing; an example of Angry Birds play; killer Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and M&Ms (complete with rap lyrics), and a trip across some angry vans that would crush Gray if he fell). Good stuff all around, as usual! I’m glad he’s made this game a weekly thing again. :D
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check –
Victor Luvs Alice – Got the seven posts for this week’s Chill Valicer Save update on Wednesday and Nebby’s birthday fic for Thursday into the queue, yay! And I JUST did a quick and dirty “starter draft” for the “first mention of Valice” anniversary post that also needs to go up on Thursday – I’ll clean that up tomorrow.
Valice Multiverse – Got two ask replies (a Pinky and the Brain-themed “pondering what I’m pondering” one for Smiler and a “charity ball canceled because we gave the budget to charity” one for Alice) into the queue, yay! So that’s set for a couple of days.
*thumbs up* Not too shabby, no. And now it is time for bed, as I'm not quite halfway through the week yet. Hopefully things continue on a good keel -- night all!
