Bad Vibes Sunday
Jul. 16th, 2023 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, today was -- not great, I'm sorry to say. I had to deal with a damn earwig appearing on my comforter while I was making my bed (dunno where it came from, but eugh); the weather was miserably rainy with occasional super-heavy downpours -- we actually had a flash flood warning come into affect for the afternoon -- and as a result our bathroom fan started leaking AGAIN (not much, but just enough to be a problem), meaning I ended up skipping my workout today because I wasn't sure I was gonna get a shower (I did, though I made it a very fast lukewarm one); Mom burned her fingers getting some potatoes out of the microwave -- and then insisted on still trying to do dishes and suchlike, which annoyed Dad (and me too, honestly); and the soundbar for the TV continues to be a pain in the ass, because either everything is too loud or too soft -- there are no happy mediums. *heavy sigh* Oh, and I woke up early because I had to use the toilet, ended up worrying that my period was imminent (it wasn't -- I think I just had gas), and then couldn't properly get back to sleep for the life of me. Fucking PMS, I swear. . .
Fortunately, apart from the bad vibes, I did do pretty good on my unofficial to-do list --
Tumblr: Didn’t get QUITE as much done as I’d hoped, but I got a decent start on things at least –
Victor Luvs Alice – Spent the time before lunch checking on my tracked tags and getting the initial “starter drafts” for this week’s Chill Valicer Save Big Wedding Update sorted – I have gotten the number of posts down from nine to six by doing fifteen pictures per post instead of ten! (I COULD have actually just done three posts of thirty pictures each, but I felt like that was asking people to keep track of too much in any given update.)
Valice Multiverse – Nothing going on with any threads or asks, so I just ended up reblogging the latest set of Valicer Incorrect Quotes – Food Edition! Another reason to keep doing these little scenes – they’re great for filling in gaps in the RP blog’s activity. XD
Fallout 4: Well, after a few rumbles of thunder after lunch caused me to take a Merge Dragons break (I have officially finished off this weekend’s summer-themed event, yay), I was able to get back on the computer around 2 PM and get straight into this week’s FO4 Building Episode –
A) Started midmorning on 1/28/2288 by scrapping a few more items around the absurdly tiny Jamaica Plain settlement (seriously, we could not get ANY more of the town to use??) and then considering my options on where to put water, food, and such – after discovering that the parking lot area had some crumbling corners that counted as “dirt” for placing stuff like water pumps, I sank your standard hand-pump into one of those corners, then moved the robot workbench over into the “crafting area” by the main workbench in order to set up some garden plots for actual crops. Placing the crops themselves was VERY fiddly (like, if you don’t have them in the exact right position in the dirt, they just won’t place), and I had to move one garden plot entirely to make it work, but eventually I got one plot with a couple of ears of corn in it, another with tatos and some razorgrain, and a third with a couple of mutfruit plants. Plus a little cherry tree by the water pump. Food and water – sorted!
B) After that, I checked out my defensive options, and set up a small perimeter of standard turrets roughly around the edges of the build area, with two by the entrance to the “garden.” Defense – sorted!
C) I then went into the only accessible house in the build area (hell, it’s not even a full house – it’s the still-standing half of the house where the workbench is located) and went upstairs to make a bedroom! Built three of the nice Vault-Tec-added beds, and fiddled with some wiring fencing in an attempt to make a “banister” to stop people tumbling down the unprotected stairs. Never got it to work, unfortunately, so I just pushed the bed on that side over and put one of the dressers that was already up there up against the gap to serve as a sort of barrier. One bit of the wire fencing I’d built ended up going in the next room over – well, I say “room,” it’s the single remaining corner of the room that was previously above the workbench area – blocking off the jagged edge of what remains of the floor (it’s floating, but I really can’t do anything about that), while the other just got tossed on a trash pile with an extra post to help define the edges of the build area. *shrug* Didn’t want to scrap it, is all. The sleeping bag that was already up there on the little room corner got brought downstairs and shoved under said room corner (after I’d gotten the power armor station already under there out of the way) so it was at least protected from the elements. Beds – sorted!
D) Around this time, it started to rain, and I got the message saying Victor was tired, but I had one more thing that I wanted to take care of before letting Victor rest – bathroom needs! So, as it stormed in-game, I had Victor consider his shower and pooping options from my “CWSS” mod, then build a nice rustic shower and an outhouse (with towel and soap racks attached to the outer wall for the shower) around the back of the house, near the back door. Toilet and bathing needs – sorted! And with that, I let Victor go to bed, hitting the sleeping bag in its nice new protected corner at 8:49 PM in-game.
E) Victor woke up the next morning at about 5 AM and set right back to work – I had him scrap the TV and picture frames that were in the living room area of the house, and bring the couch and chair up to the room corner by the bedroom to make a little reading nook with a (admittedly currently empty) bookcase. The living room then became kitchen and dining, with a new table, four chairs, some candles for said table, some new pictures for the walls, and a proper cookstove over by the stairs leading up to the bedroom. So now any future residents may eat while protected from the elements! I also threw some cloth walls from my “Campsite” mod up in front of the shower and outhouse to give people the ILLUSION of privacy over there at least. :p
F) With that done, I had Victor move the robot workbench back out into the parking lot (finding a nice spot out of the way of the garden to stick it), then had him build armor, weapons, and chemistry crafting benches for the “crafting” area by the main workbench – had to move the sleeping bag a little bit to fit everything in without blocking any doorways or anything like that, but it all worked out! Crafting – sorted!
G) And with that, it was just a matter of sorting out Victor’s stuff! I had him go into the tool box where I’d had him store all his spare guns and clothing, retrieving the alien blaster, Kellogg’s pistol, the Kneecapper Five-Crank Laser Musket, the Penetrating Maximized Plasma sniper, the jacket and jeans he got from the Atom Cats, and the Red Rocket mechanics jumpsuit I found, before (after saving in case something went wrong) scrapping the box itself to move everything else into the workbench. I’ll see if I want to grab anything else before I go, or just leave all those leftover armor pieces and weapons for the settlers to use – Victor REALLY only uses the Two-Shot Combat Rifle these days unless I WANT him to use something else (for example, he’ll be using the Alien Blaster for at least some of the Cabot stuff), so there’s probably little point in keeping those other guns around. I also had him hit the chem bench to combine some drugs (making psychojet, buffjet, grape mentats, and berry mentats) and build a couple more robot repair kits –
And THAT, under the “AN2” section, is where I found the cure for Victor’s damn UTI! Hooray! I had Victor make a handful of those, then go grab his port-a-potty (before I forgot about it), take a shower, and stick himself with the UTI cure. He is now clean and healthy, w00! :D
So yeah – Victor was in a very good spot as I ended this particular play session. :D Next time – well, I guess we’re heading back to Goodneighbor and getting Drinkin’ Buddy and the Silver Shroud costume! Also have to quickly swing by County Crossing to let them know Jamaica Plain is sorted and finish off that quest, and I’m HOPING that I can mix the Silver Shroud quest together with Victor FINALLY meeting the Railroad...we’ll see how it all goes!
Writing: Updated the FO4 Playthrough Progression with the events of today’s building episode – only, naturally, in the fanfic universe, Victor had some more help, given that Piper and Preston were also around. :) Things went roughly how they did in my actual game, just with more actual hard work instead of me just fiddling with placements and then clicking buttons. XD And with a vague implication that people are going to live in the ENTIRE TOWN of Jamaica Plain instead of just the tiny area the game gives you, they’re just focusing on this one spot near the workbench for now because there’s only so many of them. But yes, the parking lot garden has been set up (complete with Victor and Preston rescuing a cherry tree from the edge of town); the kitchen/dining room has been sorted, along with the upstairs bedroom and reading nook and the crafting garage; and the shower and outhouse around the back of the house fully tested by a covered-in-sawdust-and-grime Victor. :p About the only thing that the fanfic version of Victor didn’t get was the UTI cure, and I’m sure those do actually clear up on their own after a while, so, not really THAT big a deal. And he got to spend some time with his in-game beloveds, which game!Victor did NOT get, so it all balances out. :p Ended this particular bit on everybody getting ready to leave the settlement and head their separate ways – Piper back to Diamond City; Preston back to The Castle; and Victor, Ada, and Alice back to Goodneighbor after getting the micro-brewer and the Silver Shroud costume. A bit of a sad parting, but hopefully they’ll be able to catch up with each other again in the future!
YouTube: Got the two videos I absolutely wanted to watch watched –
A) First up, yesterday’s GrayStillPlays – “Testing Longest Cars vs Bridges in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, with Alex returning to horrible bridge challenges to torture Gray – this time paired with all the longest cars in the game! Gray had to find the right vehicle to make it across the Morning Wood Bridge (a bridge made of various configurations of logs, ending with a narrow section with random logs that fell away as you drove over them), the Gape Bridge (a bridge essentially made up of lots of little platforms with gaps between them – and it just got narrower and narrower the farther you went), the Uneven Crate Bridge (a bridge made of uneven crates – that were all destructible), the Half & Half Bridge (a bridge that alternated between two sheets of broken scrap metal and two panes of breakable glass as it went along), the “Not a Good Sign” Bridge (a bridge made up of destructible “Ammunation” signs that broke away right under your tires as you went along), and the Volcano Bridge: Sequel – Erupting Sanity (another broken bridge over a volcano, this time with LOTS of extra flying rocks that you had to bank off of at just the right angle), all without losing his mind. He tried a lot of cars, most of which really struggled with the breakaway section of the Morning Wood bridge, but while a couple did well enough to get to the uneven crates (like the six-wheeled Sprunk mobile with its giant cans, or the extended-bed pickup truck with free gunner on the back), the only one to make it all the way to the end was the Stretch Money Hummer (a stretch-limo-like Hummer with a money-print design on it). I would not have picked that as the winning car, I must admit. O.o But that’s part of the pleasure of these Alex Torture Boards, isn’t it – seeing which cars will surprise you! Because, honestly, the first time I saw my beloved Wastelander, I wouldn’t have picked IT to win any challenges either. :p
B) And second up, today’s Jon of Many A True Nerd – “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 38 - And Not A Drop To Drink!” Wanda is officially in Broken Steel and the post-Project Purity world! With the caveat that the Project Purity water ain’t so pure. . .but a lot happened in the two weeks that she was mysteriously out after Sarah gave her life to turn on the genocide water machine, and Jon was very eager to show off just how Broken Steel changes up the Wasteland post-PP. Some highlights included –
I. Water logistics! Yes, that is a thing, because, as it turns out, Project Purity is not about purifying all the water in the Capital Wasteland – or, at least, not yet. Project Purity in fact only affects one small basin right by the purifier itself – it’s separated from the rest of the river by flood gates. The HOPE is to try and spread the effect later on (at least downstream), but for now, yes, there is one pool of (supposedly) pure water, and the rest of the Wasteland still has to deal with the irradiated stuff. So Elder Lyons has set up a distribution system, with water caravans and such, to spread it across the Wasteland – for free, even! Of course, he’s not the one directly running this system – instead, he has his scribes doing it. Specifically, Scribe Bigsley, who is pretty annoyed because the Brotherhood of Steel SHOULD be focusing on their damn war with the Enclave, not doling out free water to the plebs, and every time there’s a problem, Lyons is breathing down his neck. Jon loves Bigsley because he’s a bit of an overworked asshole who doesn’t care how you resolve certain quests so long as they’re resolved in a way that means he’s dealing with fewer complaints – we’ll get to that in a little bit.
But yes, there are water caravans all over the Wasteland in the world of Broken Steel, delivering water to various communities. And where there are caravans, there are nasties looking to take their goods (especially purified water) for themselves. Jon had Wanda show off three different raider/slaver/whatever ambushes that you can find if you wander around the Wasteland looking for the water caravans:
a. There’s the standard “simple ambush” type, where the raiders and slavers just come in gunning for the water (Jon rated this a 3/10, though the one he encountered at least thought to bring back up to fight the guards, meaning by the end of it everyone was dead)
b. There’s a more complex ambush where someone in the gang pretends to be an average person asking for water for their family, and if the caravan doesn’t bite, they get attacked (usually with a missile launcher, but the woman in charge of the ambush Jon found didn’t actually use hers for whatever reason, and then most of her fellow raiders got blown up by an exploding car – Jon still ranked it a 7/10)
c. And Jon’s personal favorite, a bunch of ladies beholden to “Jed,” who have set up camp by a certain road with sexy sleepwear, beds, and bathtubs to try and seduce any caravans that come by, quietly kill the guards once they’ve been sexed up, and steal the water (Jon ranked this one 9/10, with it not being a 10/10 for the simple reason of THEY’RE NOT ACTUALLY NEAR ANY CARAVAN ROUTES. Seriously, the ladies are off a few roads from the actual route and thus will never see a caravan. It’s sad)
But why steal the water when it’s supposed to be given out for free to everyone anyway? Why, to set up traps! Yes, as Jon showed off by Evergreen Mills, what the raiders are doing are taking the actual “Aqua Pura,” as it is called, and keeping it for themselves, and setting up ambush points with the leftover crates and barrels, using “Free Water” signs to lure people in. (Sometimes they even hide mines under dead bodies, the bastards.) It’s honestly pretty depressing when you think about it – the Brotherhood is giving away this water for FREE (even if most of them are doing it under duress), and the raiders and slavers of the world only see an opportunity to con, capture, rob, and kill more people. Hmph. I mean, Wanda can’t judge, she poisoned the entire water supply, but I can!
II. Water variants! While what’s being distributed across most of the Wasteland is plain old Aqua Pura, there are two variants you can encounter by triggering the right quests –
a. Holy Water – from the quest “Holy Water,” appropriately enough. This is a quest that introduces you to an offshoot of the Children Of Atom, the Apostles of the Eternal Light, led by Mother Curie III and Brother Gerard. You learn about them when – well. Okay. What’s SUPPOSED to happen is that, at some point upon coming back to Megaton once Broken Steel kicks off, you’re supposed to see a character called Rosa give the water beggar that lives near there, Mickey, some free purified water – only for the poor bastard to die because the water was tainted. Rosa then spots the protagonist and begs them to believe her that she didn’t put anything in the water, directing them toward Brother Gerard, who gave her the stuff. However, in Jon’s case, Mickey DIED before Wanda could come back to Megaton, meaning the encounter didn’t play. He also couldn’t get the cult to leave a note on Wanda’s door in Megaton, so he had to send her to go talk to Bigsley about his woes, specifically Megaton sending angry letters about missing shipments of water when he’d just sent them a week’s supply. THAT kicked off the cult leaving a note on Wanda’s door to tell her where to go (Springvale) –
And it also RESURRECTED MICKEY (though without his unique name, now he was just a generic “water beggar”) and spawned in Rosa to play the encounter that Jon had missed before. Jon was very startled by this, as you might imagine. XD He ended up claiming the new Mickey was a synth and killed Rosa in an effort to pin the blame for the FEV in the water supply on her. XD
ANYWAY – once the quest actually begins, you can head on down to Springvale to meet Brother Gerard and get the “holy water” for yourself (in fact, he won’t even talk to you properly unless you down a bottle, to “cleanse your tongue” for discourse). Said “holy water” is the BOS’s precious Aqua Pura – only RE-irradiated! Pretty heavily too. If you can get past Gerard and into the basement monastery where the Apostles have set up shop (and there’s a cool trick to do that without passing a speech check or stealing his key – this particular Children of Atom offshoot venerates ghoulification, so if you’re wearing the ghoul mask while talking to him, he just accepts that you’re a ghoul and lets you in without a problem), you’ll meet Mother Curie III, who talks about how she met four armored angels who gave her the water to use to spread Atom’s word (aka BOS came across her, and after she said she was from Megaton, gave her the water to share with everyone there) via irradiating it with Atom’s glow. (If you’ve poisoned the water, she also makes note of it making her flock sick upon first drinking it, but says that Atom’s glow purifies it – she is actually wrong on this count, though, as the “Holy Water” still has the FEV effects if you drink it. Perhaps it’s just killing more slowly. . .) Obviously, she has to be stopped, and there’s a few different methods one can use – the dull old “speech check” way, which Jon didn’t even demonstrate; the “blow up Megaton” way (seriously – if you haven’t yet disarmed the bomb in the middle of town and thus still have the option to blow it up, you can do so; when you return to the ruins, you’ll find that Gerard and Curie were in town, and the explosion turned Gerard into a sapient, heavily traumatized ghoul, and Curie into a feral reaver, putting an end to their cult activity AND to Megaton’s need for water; best of all, if you tell Bigsley about this, he is shocked, but STILL PAYS YOU, because, hey, one less settlement needing water that he has to deal with) –
And the one Jon demonstrated, which is the “irradiate yourself so heavily you’re practically glowing too, then set yourself up as a prophet of Atom” way – very easily done by activating one of the radiation traps they set up downstairs to irradiate the water. Curie immediately takes your message of “stop irradiating the water” to heart and promises to just share it clean, stating she’ll use it as a test to see who wants to actually come and join the church on their own, which is about as good as you can get from her. Megaton gets its water and Wanda gets her caps, and all it took was one dead water beggar and Wanda nearly getting a lethal dose of radiation! XD
b. Aqua Cura – from the quest “The Amazing Aqua Cura!” appropriately enough. This quest is triggered by talking to Bigsley about his logistics woes and asking why the BOS isn’t SELLING the water if they need money – pass the speech check, and Bigsley will admit that, while Lyons has insisted the water be given out free, there’s one ghoul named Griffon who proved willing to pay (both in caps and old tech) for barrels of the stuff to sell in Underworld, the ghoul city. Bigsley took him up on the deal (since what Lyons doesn’t know won’t hurt him) and uses the payments to pay Rivet City guards to help protect the water caravans. Heading over to Underworld to see what’s going on with Griffon will reveal that he’s a sleazy salesman of the most amusing sort, peddling the water as “Aqua Cura,” a magical elixir that will relieve ghoul ailments for the low low price of ten caps a bottle. However, procure a bottle of “Aqua Cura” from him, and you’ll quickly discover that, like the “Holy Water,” it’s kind of irradiated.
Unlike the “Holy Water,” this is because “Aqua Cura” is NOT tampered-with Aqua Pura. Instead, once you find Griffon’s bottling facility (by once again talking to Bigsley about where he drops off the water with Griffon’s guys), you’ll find that what he’s doing is taking the Aqua Pura and storing it elsewhere (to sell later to raiders and slavers), and having his goons just bottle up regular river water for him to sell as “Aqua Cura” (which Jon notes probably IS having a good effect on the ghouls, as they ARE generally healed by radiation). Once again, there’s three ways to solve this situation – tell him you know what’s up and get him to buy your silence; tell the crowd, who immediately kill him, and then take all his money off his corpse; or tell him that he can continue with his scheme, but he has to sell REAL Aqua Pura, which will result in him going “you know what, sure, selling to raiders and slavers was probably gonna end badly anyway.” That last is normally at least a nominally good option – but since Wanda poisoned the water, the game realized “hey, wait, that’s gonna kill all the ghouls!” and gave her negative karma for it. A rare case of the FO3 karma system actually understanding that a normally good action can be bad depending on the circumstances!
III. Water karma! Speaking of karma, Wanda actually got hers at the very beginning of the episode. Specifically, as pointed out repeatedly in this very write-up, in order to get back to a nice neutral karma state at the end of the last episode after donating literal thousands to a church, she did the evilest act in the entire game – poisoned the Project Purity water supply with FEV at President Eden’s behest to kill anyone who was slightly mutated by the Wasteland. President Eden, at the time, assured her that the FEV would not affect HER as she grew up in a vault.
He was wrong. As Jon demonstrated, Wanda is as vulnerable as anyone to the FEV-tainted water – first drink reduces strength by one, second drink reduces strength by two, third drink reduces intelligence by one, fourth drink straight-up kills. So if she has too much of her own precious “genocide water,” she too will die. Jon wasn’t sure if President Eden was just straight-up lying to Wanda; if President Eden assumed that Wanda was “pure” vault stock and thus would be fine (she’s not – as per the beginning of the game, she was born OUTSIDE Vault 101 and only grew up there because her dad talked his way in); if President Eden assumed that because she’d spent most of her life in a vault, she’d be fine (probably not knowing some of the nonsense she’d gotten involved in, like doing horrible things to herself for Moira’s book); or if Bethesda just forgot vault-dwellers should be immune (like they do) – his personal theory was that Eden simply assumed Wanda would be fine, with perhaps a side of Bethesda forgot or changed their mind about how the FEV was going to work. *shrug* Either way, it is satisfying to know that Wanda is not immune to her own deadly water and had better watch what she drinks from now on. :p
So yes, lots of changes related to water in the Capital Wasteland this week! And next week, Jon’s seeking out all the stuff regarding how the Enclave’s presence in the Wasteland has changed, because Broken Steel’s plot DOES revolve around BOS versus Enclave. I’m looking forward to it! :)
Other:
-->Got a comment on Chapter 6 of “This Isn’t Goodbye,” the RE4 Remake fix-it fic my friend Squid and their friend Hope co-wrote because they ship Leon/Luis(/Claire from RE2 – she’s not actually IN the story, but she’s mentioned as Leon’s very open-minded at-home girlfriend who already though he was bi XD) and did not appreciate Luis dying from Krauser knife in the back! I’ve been slowly reading and reviewing this as I finished up the OXBox LP, so hopefully I can knock out the final couple of chapters over the next couple of days.
-->Answered my friend Ace’s latest FF.net PM, talking about their Good Omens/Restaurant To Another World fanfic (the latter half of the crossover is a manga/anime about a restaurant run by a human chef that, every Saturday, can be accessed by the various inhabitants of a fun fantasy realm – Crowley stumbled across a door in while looking for a new dining spot for himself and Aziraphale, and the plot of the fic is them taking a little vacation in the other world via the medium of tagging along with different groups of residents when they leave the restaurant for their own homes again) – just read the latest chapter and let them know what I thought! :)
Not too shabby, no. And now I am going to go to bed and hopefully get a proper night's sleep! Plans for my day off include completing as many Chill Valicer Save Wedding Update posts as I can (gotta do at least half!); completing the Valicer Honeymoon in Sims 4 with Spookfest; answering Moose's messages; leaving a proper comment on the latest chapter of "Beneath A Broken Sky;" working on my own writing; and trying to catch up on GrayStillPlays. *shrug* We'll see how much of that I manage to accomplish! Night all!
Fortunately, apart from the bad vibes, I did do pretty good on my unofficial to-do list --
Tumblr: Didn’t get QUITE as much done as I’d hoped, but I got a decent start on things at least –
Victor Luvs Alice – Spent the time before lunch checking on my tracked tags and getting the initial “starter drafts” for this week’s Chill Valicer Save Big Wedding Update sorted – I have gotten the number of posts down from nine to six by doing fifteen pictures per post instead of ten! (I COULD have actually just done three posts of thirty pictures each, but I felt like that was asking people to keep track of too much in any given update.)
Valice Multiverse – Nothing going on with any threads or asks, so I just ended up reblogging the latest set of Valicer Incorrect Quotes – Food Edition! Another reason to keep doing these little scenes – they’re great for filling in gaps in the RP blog’s activity. XD
Fallout 4: Well, after a few rumbles of thunder after lunch caused me to take a Merge Dragons break (I have officially finished off this weekend’s summer-themed event, yay), I was able to get back on the computer around 2 PM and get straight into this week’s FO4 Building Episode –
A) Started midmorning on 1/28/2288 by scrapping a few more items around the absurdly tiny Jamaica Plain settlement (seriously, we could not get ANY more of the town to use??) and then considering my options on where to put water, food, and such – after discovering that the parking lot area had some crumbling corners that counted as “dirt” for placing stuff like water pumps, I sank your standard hand-pump into one of those corners, then moved the robot workbench over into the “crafting area” by the main workbench in order to set up some garden plots for actual crops. Placing the crops themselves was VERY fiddly (like, if you don’t have them in the exact right position in the dirt, they just won’t place), and I had to move one garden plot entirely to make it work, but eventually I got one plot with a couple of ears of corn in it, another with tatos and some razorgrain, and a third with a couple of mutfruit plants. Plus a little cherry tree by the water pump. Food and water – sorted!
B) After that, I checked out my defensive options, and set up a small perimeter of standard turrets roughly around the edges of the build area, with two by the entrance to the “garden.” Defense – sorted!
C) I then went into the only accessible house in the build area (hell, it’s not even a full house – it’s the still-standing half of the house where the workbench is located) and went upstairs to make a bedroom! Built three of the nice Vault-Tec-added beds, and fiddled with some wiring fencing in an attempt to make a “banister” to stop people tumbling down the unprotected stairs. Never got it to work, unfortunately, so I just pushed the bed on that side over and put one of the dressers that was already up there up against the gap to serve as a sort of barrier. One bit of the wire fencing I’d built ended up going in the next room over – well, I say “room,” it’s the single remaining corner of the room that was previously above the workbench area – blocking off the jagged edge of what remains of the floor (it’s floating, but I really can’t do anything about that), while the other just got tossed on a trash pile with an extra post to help define the edges of the build area. *shrug* Didn’t want to scrap it, is all. The sleeping bag that was already up there on the little room corner got brought downstairs and shoved under said room corner (after I’d gotten the power armor station already under there out of the way) so it was at least protected from the elements. Beds – sorted!
D) Around this time, it started to rain, and I got the message saying Victor was tired, but I had one more thing that I wanted to take care of before letting Victor rest – bathroom needs! So, as it stormed in-game, I had Victor consider his shower and pooping options from my “CWSS” mod, then build a nice rustic shower and an outhouse (with towel and soap racks attached to the outer wall for the shower) around the back of the house, near the back door. Toilet and bathing needs – sorted! And with that, I let Victor go to bed, hitting the sleeping bag in its nice new protected corner at 8:49 PM in-game.
E) Victor woke up the next morning at about 5 AM and set right back to work – I had him scrap the TV and picture frames that were in the living room area of the house, and bring the couch and chair up to the room corner by the bedroom to make a little reading nook with a (admittedly currently empty) bookcase. The living room then became kitchen and dining, with a new table, four chairs, some candles for said table, some new pictures for the walls, and a proper cookstove over by the stairs leading up to the bedroom. So now any future residents may eat while protected from the elements! I also threw some cloth walls from my “Campsite” mod up in front of the shower and outhouse to give people the ILLUSION of privacy over there at least. :p
F) With that done, I had Victor move the robot workbench back out into the parking lot (finding a nice spot out of the way of the garden to stick it), then had him build armor, weapons, and chemistry crafting benches for the “crafting” area by the main workbench – had to move the sleeping bag a little bit to fit everything in without blocking any doorways or anything like that, but it all worked out! Crafting – sorted!
G) And with that, it was just a matter of sorting out Victor’s stuff! I had him go into the tool box where I’d had him store all his spare guns and clothing, retrieving the alien blaster, Kellogg’s pistol, the Kneecapper Five-Crank Laser Musket, the Penetrating Maximized Plasma sniper, the jacket and jeans he got from the Atom Cats, and the Red Rocket mechanics jumpsuit I found, before (after saving in case something went wrong) scrapping the box itself to move everything else into the workbench. I’ll see if I want to grab anything else before I go, or just leave all those leftover armor pieces and weapons for the settlers to use – Victor REALLY only uses the Two-Shot Combat Rifle these days unless I WANT him to use something else (for example, he’ll be using the Alien Blaster for at least some of the Cabot stuff), so there’s probably little point in keeping those other guns around. I also had him hit the chem bench to combine some drugs (making psychojet, buffjet, grape mentats, and berry mentats) and build a couple more robot repair kits –
And THAT, under the “AN2” section, is where I found the cure for Victor’s damn UTI! Hooray! I had Victor make a handful of those, then go grab his port-a-potty (before I forgot about it), take a shower, and stick himself with the UTI cure. He is now clean and healthy, w00! :D
So yeah – Victor was in a very good spot as I ended this particular play session. :D Next time – well, I guess we’re heading back to Goodneighbor and getting Drinkin’ Buddy and the Silver Shroud costume! Also have to quickly swing by County Crossing to let them know Jamaica Plain is sorted and finish off that quest, and I’m HOPING that I can mix the Silver Shroud quest together with Victor FINALLY meeting the Railroad...we’ll see how it all goes!
Writing: Updated the FO4 Playthrough Progression with the events of today’s building episode – only, naturally, in the fanfic universe, Victor had some more help, given that Piper and Preston were also around. :) Things went roughly how they did in my actual game, just with more actual hard work instead of me just fiddling with placements and then clicking buttons. XD And with a vague implication that people are going to live in the ENTIRE TOWN of Jamaica Plain instead of just the tiny area the game gives you, they’re just focusing on this one spot near the workbench for now because there’s only so many of them. But yes, the parking lot garden has been set up (complete with Victor and Preston rescuing a cherry tree from the edge of town); the kitchen/dining room has been sorted, along with the upstairs bedroom and reading nook and the crafting garage; and the shower and outhouse around the back of the house fully tested by a covered-in-sawdust-and-grime Victor. :p About the only thing that the fanfic version of Victor didn’t get was the UTI cure, and I’m sure those do actually clear up on their own after a while, so, not really THAT big a deal. And he got to spend some time with his in-game beloveds, which game!Victor did NOT get, so it all balances out. :p Ended this particular bit on everybody getting ready to leave the settlement and head their separate ways – Piper back to Diamond City; Preston back to The Castle; and Victor, Ada, and Alice back to Goodneighbor after getting the micro-brewer and the Silver Shroud costume. A bit of a sad parting, but hopefully they’ll be able to catch up with each other again in the future!
YouTube: Got the two videos I absolutely wanted to watch watched –
A) First up, yesterday’s GrayStillPlays – “Testing Longest Cars vs Bridges in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, with Alex returning to horrible bridge challenges to torture Gray – this time paired with all the longest cars in the game! Gray had to find the right vehicle to make it across the Morning Wood Bridge (a bridge made of various configurations of logs, ending with a narrow section with random logs that fell away as you drove over them), the Gape Bridge (a bridge essentially made up of lots of little platforms with gaps between them – and it just got narrower and narrower the farther you went), the Uneven Crate Bridge (a bridge made of uneven crates – that were all destructible), the Half & Half Bridge (a bridge that alternated between two sheets of broken scrap metal and two panes of breakable glass as it went along), the “Not a Good Sign” Bridge (a bridge made up of destructible “Ammunation” signs that broke away right under your tires as you went along), and the Volcano Bridge: Sequel – Erupting Sanity (another broken bridge over a volcano, this time with LOTS of extra flying rocks that you had to bank off of at just the right angle), all without losing his mind. He tried a lot of cars, most of which really struggled with the breakaway section of the Morning Wood bridge, but while a couple did well enough to get to the uneven crates (like the six-wheeled Sprunk mobile with its giant cans, or the extended-bed pickup truck with free gunner on the back), the only one to make it all the way to the end was the Stretch Money Hummer (a stretch-limo-like Hummer with a money-print design on it). I would not have picked that as the winning car, I must admit. O.o But that’s part of the pleasure of these Alex Torture Boards, isn’t it – seeing which cars will surprise you! Because, honestly, the first time I saw my beloved Wastelander, I wouldn’t have picked IT to win any challenges either. :p
B) And second up, today’s Jon of Many A True Nerd – “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 38 - And Not A Drop To Drink!” Wanda is officially in Broken Steel and the post-Project Purity world! With the caveat that the Project Purity water ain’t so pure. . .but a lot happened in the two weeks that she was mysteriously out after Sarah gave her life to turn on the genocide water machine, and Jon was very eager to show off just how Broken Steel changes up the Wasteland post-PP. Some highlights included –
I. Water logistics! Yes, that is a thing, because, as it turns out, Project Purity is not about purifying all the water in the Capital Wasteland – or, at least, not yet. Project Purity in fact only affects one small basin right by the purifier itself – it’s separated from the rest of the river by flood gates. The HOPE is to try and spread the effect later on (at least downstream), but for now, yes, there is one pool of (supposedly) pure water, and the rest of the Wasteland still has to deal with the irradiated stuff. So Elder Lyons has set up a distribution system, with water caravans and such, to spread it across the Wasteland – for free, even! Of course, he’s not the one directly running this system – instead, he has his scribes doing it. Specifically, Scribe Bigsley, who is pretty annoyed because the Brotherhood of Steel SHOULD be focusing on their damn war with the Enclave, not doling out free water to the plebs, and every time there’s a problem, Lyons is breathing down his neck. Jon loves Bigsley because he’s a bit of an overworked asshole who doesn’t care how you resolve certain quests so long as they’re resolved in a way that means he’s dealing with fewer complaints – we’ll get to that in a little bit.
But yes, there are water caravans all over the Wasteland in the world of Broken Steel, delivering water to various communities. And where there are caravans, there are nasties looking to take their goods (especially purified water) for themselves. Jon had Wanda show off three different raider/slaver/whatever ambushes that you can find if you wander around the Wasteland looking for the water caravans:
a. There’s the standard “simple ambush” type, where the raiders and slavers just come in gunning for the water (Jon rated this a 3/10, though the one he encountered at least thought to bring back up to fight the guards, meaning by the end of it everyone was dead)
b. There’s a more complex ambush where someone in the gang pretends to be an average person asking for water for their family, and if the caravan doesn’t bite, they get attacked (usually with a missile launcher, but the woman in charge of the ambush Jon found didn’t actually use hers for whatever reason, and then most of her fellow raiders got blown up by an exploding car – Jon still ranked it a 7/10)
c. And Jon’s personal favorite, a bunch of ladies beholden to “Jed,” who have set up camp by a certain road with sexy sleepwear, beds, and bathtubs to try and seduce any caravans that come by, quietly kill the guards once they’ve been sexed up, and steal the water (Jon ranked this one 9/10, with it not being a 10/10 for the simple reason of THEY’RE NOT ACTUALLY NEAR ANY CARAVAN ROUTES. Seriously, the ladies are off a few roads from the actual route and thus will never see a caravan. It’s sad)
But why steal the water when it’s supposed to be given out for free to everyone anyway? Why, to set up traps! Yes, as Jon showed off by Evergreen Mills, what the raiders are doing are taking the actual “Aqua Pura,” as it is called, and keeping it for themselves, and setting up ambush points with the leftover crates and barrels, using “Free Water” signs to lure people in. (Sometimes they even hide mines under dead bodies, the bastards.) It’s honestly pretty depressing when you think about it – the Brotherhood is giving away this water for FREE (even if most of them are doing it under duress), and the raiders and slavers of the world only see an opportunity to con, capture, rob, and kill more people. Hmph. I mean, Wanda can’t judge, she poisoned the entire water supply, but I can!
II. Water variants! While what’s being distributed across most of the Wasteland is plain old Aqua Pura, there are two variants you can encounter by triggering the right quests –
a. Holy Water – from the quest “Holy Water,” appropriately enough. This is a quest that introduces you to an offshoot of the Children Of Atom, the Apostles of the Eternal Light, led by Mother Curie III and Brother Gerard. You learn about them when – well. Okay. What’s SUPPOSED to happen is that, at some point upon coming back to Megaton once Broken Steel kicks off, you’re supposed to see a character called Rosa give the water beggar that lives near there, Mickey, some free purified water – only for the poor bastard to die because the water was tainted. Rosa then spots the protagonist and begs them to believe her that she didn’t put anything in the water, directing them toward Brother Gerard, who gave her the stuff. However, in Jon’s case, Mickey DIED before Wanda could come back to Megaton, meaning the encounter didn’t play. He also couldn’t get the cult to leave a note on Wanda’s door in Megaton, so he had to send her to go talk to Bigsley about his woes, specifically Megaton sending angry letters about missing shipments of water when he’d just sent them a week’s supply. THAT kicked off the cult leaving a note on Wanda’s door to tell her where to go (Springvale) –
And it also RESURRECTED MICKEY (though without his unique name, now he was just a generic “water beggar”) and spawned in Rosa to play the encounter that Jon had missed before. Jon was very startled by this, as you might imagine. XD He ended up claiming the new Mickey was a synth and killed Rosa in an effort to pin the blame for the FEV in the water supply on her. XD
ANYWAY – once the quest actually begins, you can head on down to Springvale to meet Brother Gerard and get the “holy water” for yourself (in fact, he won’t even talk to you properly unless you down a bottle, to “cleanse your tongue” for discourse). Said “holy water” is the BOS’s precious Aqua Pura – only RE-irradiated! Pretty heavily too. If you can get past Gerard and into the basement monastery where the Apostles have set up shop (and there’s a cool trick to do that without passing a speech check or stealing his key – this particular Children of Atom offshoot venerates ghoulification, so if you’re wearing the ghoul mask while talking to him, he just accepts that you’re a ghoul and lets you in without a problem), you’ll meet Mother Curie III, who talks about how she met four armored angels who gave her the water to use to spread Atom’s word (aka BOS came across her, and after she said she was from Megaton, gave her the water to share with everyone there) via irradiating it with Atom’s glow. (If you’ve poisoned the water, she also makes note of it making her flock sick upon first drinking it, but says that Atom’s glow purifies it – she is actually wrong on this count, though, as the “Holy Water” still has the FEV effects if you drink it. Perhaps it’s just killing more slowly. . .) Obviously, she has to be stopped, and there’s a few different methods one can use – the dull old “speech check” way, which Jon didn’t even demonstrate; the “blow up Megaton” way (seriously – if you haven’t yet disarmed the bomb in the middle of town and thus still have the option to blow it up, you can do so; when you return to the ruins, you’ll find that Gerard and Curie were in town, and the explosion turned Gerard into a sapient, heavily traumatized ghoul, and Curie into a feral reaver, putting an end to their cult activity AND to Megaton’s need for water; best of all, if you tell Bigsley about this, he is shocked, but STILL PAYS YOU, because, hey, one less settlement needing water that he has to deal with) –
And the one Jon demonstrated, which is the “irradiate yourself so heavily you’re practically glowing too, then set yourself up as a prophet of Atom” way – very easily done by activating one of the radiation traps they set up downstairs to irradiate the water. Curie immediately takes your message of “stop irradiating the water” to heart and promises to just share it clean, stating she’ll use it as a test to see who wants to actually come and join the church on their own, which is about as good as you can get from her. Megaton gets its water and Wanda gets her caps, and all it took was one dead water beggar and Wanda nearly getting a lethal dose of radiation! XD
b. Aqua Cura – from the quest “The Amazing Aqua Cura!” appropriately enough. This quest is triggered by talking to Bigsley about his logistics woes and asking why the BOS isn’t SELLING the water if they need money – pass the speech check, and Bigsley will admit that, while Lyons has insisted the water be given out free, there’s one ghoul named Griffon who proved willing to pay (both in caps and old tech) for barrels of the stuff to sell in Underworld, the ghoul city. Bigsley took him up on the deal (since what Lyons doesn’t know won’t hurt him) and uses the payments to pay Rivet City guards to help protect the water caravans. Heading over to Underworld to see what’s going on with Griffon will reveal that he’s a sleazy salesman of the most amusing sort, peddling the water as “Aqua Cura,” a magical elixir that will relieve ghoul ailments for the low low price of ten caps a bottle. However, procure a bottle of “Aqua Cura” from him, and you’ll quickly discover that, like the “Holy Water,” it’s kind of irradiated.
Unlike the “Holy Water,” this is because “Aqua Cura” is NOT tampered-with Aqua Pura. Instead, once you find Griffon’s bottling facility (by once again talking to Bigsley about where he drops off the water with Griffon’s guys), you’ll find that what he’s doing is taking the Aqua Pura and storing it elsewhere (to sell later to raiders and slavers), and having his goons just bottle up regular river water for him to sell as “Aqua Cura” (which Jon notes probably IS having a good effect on the ghouls, as they ARE generally healed by radiation). Once again, there’s three ways to solve this situation – tell him you know what’s up and get him to buy your silence; tell the crowd, who immediately kill him, and then take all his money off his corpse; or tell him that he can continue with his scheme, but he has to sell REAL Aqua Pura, which will result in him going “you know what, sure, selling to raiders and slavers was probably gonna end badly anyway.” That last is normally at least a nominally good option – but since Wanda poisoned the water, the game realized “hey, wait, that’s gonna kill all the ghouls!” and gave her negative karma for it. A rare case of the FO3 karma system actually understanding that a normally good action can be bad depending on the circumstances!
III. Water karma! Speaking of karma, Wanda actually got hers at the very beginning of the episode. Specifically, as pointed out repeatedly in this very write-up, in order to get back to a nice neutral karma state at the end of the last episode after donating literal thousands to a church, she did the evilest act in the entire game – poisoned the Project Purity water supply with FEV at President Eden’s behest to kill anyone who was slightly mutated by the Wasteland. President Eden, at the time, assured her that the FEV would not affect HER as she grew up in a vault.
He was wrong. As Jon demonstrated, Wanda is as vulnerable as anyone to the FEV-tainted water – first drink reduces strength by one, second drink reduces strength by two, third drink reduces intelligence by one, fourth drink straight-up kills. So if she has too much of her own precious “genocide water,” she too will die. Jon wasn’t sure if President Eden was just straight-up lying to Wanda; if President Eden assumed that Wanda was “pure” vault stock and thus would be fine (she’s not – as per the beginning of the game, she was born OUTSIDE Vault 101 and only grew up there because her dad talked his way in); if President Eden assumed that because she’d spent most of her life in a vault, she’d be fine (probably not knowing some of the nonsense she’d gotten involved in, like doing horrible things to herself for Moira’s book); or if Bethesda just forgot vault-dwellers should be immune (like they do) – his personal theory was that Eden simply assumed Wanda would be fine, with perhaps a side of Bethesda forgot or changed their mind about how the FEV was going to work. *shrug* Either way, it is satisfying to know that Wanda is not immune to her own deadly water and had better watch what she drinks from now on. :p
So yes, lots of changes related to water in the Capital Wasteland this week! And next week, Jon’s seeking out all the stuff regarding how the Enclave’s presence in the Wasteland has changed, because Broken Steel’s plot DOES revolve around BOS versus Enclave. I’m looking forward to it! :)
Other:
-->Got a comment on Chapter 6 of “This Isn’t Goodbye,” the RE4 Remake fix-it fic my friend Squid and their friend Hope co-wrote because they ship Leon/Luis(/Claire from RE2 – she’s not actually IN the story, but she’s mentioned as Leon’s very open-minded at-home girlfriend who already though he was bi XD) and did not appreciate Luis dying from Krauser knife in the back! I’ve been slowly reading and reviewing this as I finished up the OXBox LP, so hopefully I can knock out the final couple of chapters over the next couple of days.
-->Answered my friend Ace’s latest FF.net PM, talking about their Good Omens/Restaurant To Another World fanfic (the latter half of the crossover is a manga/anime about a restaurant run by a human chef that, every Saturday, can be accessed by the various inhabitants of a fun fantasy realm – Crowley stumbled across a door in while looking for a new dining spot for himself and Aziraphale, and the plot of the fic is them taking a little vacation in the other world via the medium of tagging along with different groups of residents when they leave the restaurant for their own homes again) – just read the latest chapter and let them know what I thought! :)
Not too shabby, no. And now I am going to go to bed and hopefully get a proper night's sleep! Plans for my day off include completing as many Chill Valicer Save Wedding Update posts as I can (gotta do at least half!); completing the Valicer Honeymoon in Sims 4 with Spookfest; answering Moose's messages; leaving a proper comment on the latest chapter of "Beneath A Broken Sky;" working on my own writing; and trying to catch up on GrayStillPlays. *shrug* We'll see how much of that I manage to accomplish! Night all!
