Fairly Meh Wednesday
Jul. 19th, 2023 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickGot a bit of a late start this morning and had a few grumpy moments related to traffic and coworkers being annoying and whatnot, but overall the day wasn't bad, just -- not great. You know how it goes. But on the plus side, my to-do list is looking good --
Work – We STILL have not gotten the all-clear from Fiscal when it comes to posting our backlog, so yeah, another super-quiet day with me spending most of it working on obituaries and cleaning up duplicates and deceased people in the system. *shrug* Kinda dragged as the day went on, but – eh. We’ll see if tomorrow actually lets us get a start on the checks!
On the plus side, the weather was nice enough and the traffic home for me light enough for us to actually play a few rounds of beanbags today! Now THERE’S a shocker. I had an early win before dropping to middling for the second two games; Dad stumbled at the last second in the first game but handily took the next two; and Mom got ahead of me once but never did well enough to actually win. Final scores were me W-3-2; Dad 2-W-W; Mom 3-2-3. Sorry Mom – though given the weather’s supposed to be okay again tomorrow, perhaps she can redeem herself then. :p
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, watching TWO OXBoxtra Blades In The Dark-related things –
A) First up, we had the end of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark – “The Dead of Cornelius Bagshot!” Hearing the screaming upstairs from their would-be murder victim, and getting a little peek at the conflagration and the people coming in to help “Bagshot” out of his weird frame, Kasimir turned to Zillah and asked her two questions – has she ever been in a wagon chase (no), and would she like to be in a wagon chase (yes :D). And so the two scarpered, getting out via the coal chute and hastily bundling the surprised Cornelius into the wagon before Kasimir took the reins and Zillah grabbed the seat next to him. Before Kasimir could get the goats pulling their cart up to speed, though, two of the auction guests realized the deception and came after them – the bald heavy from before (whom Kasimir now recognized as part of the Crows gang) and the hooded woman from before (whom Kasimir recognized SPECIFICALLY as Ziggy from the Billhooks gang – and was slightly insulted that she hadn’t recognized him in return XD). The woman aimed a crossbow bolt at them, and Kasimir both used his Spider Foresight to help Zillah with the roll (very necessary, as he decided it would probably be a Finesse roll, and she has no dots in that) and led a group action in ducking –
And, by pushing himself, scored a 6! So basically he was able to use his cane to make Zillah bend forward at JUST the right time to avoid the bolt. The Crows guy chose to be a little more direct and managed to catch up with the wagon just as they were starting to get up some speed, clinging to the side and trying to batter his way in to get at Cornelius. Fortunately, getting rid of him was Zillah’s area of expertise – as the duo raced through the streets of Brightstone, upsetting all the people in their finery enjoying the evening, she climbed onto the top of the carriage, clamped the guy’s hands down to stop him letting go too early, and told Kasimir to wipe him off on a nearby wall. This resulted in another group action, this time a Wreck roll led by Zillah as they were trying to wreck the guy – Zillah rolled a nice six, so the guy did get smacked off very effectively, though Kasimir’s one meant that she took a little stress due to Kasimir not “Tokyo drifting” into the wall as smoothly as either of them would have liked. Did the job, but it did NOT look cool. (Luke also made a fortune roll for the guy – he got a three, which Luke ruled was life-altering injuries but not death. XD)
Still, that took care of all pursuit, and the gang were able to bundle Cornelius off to the train station. . .however, there was the little matter of Kasimir’s Ghost Contract to consider. Namely, he’d promised that they would do everything in their power to fake Cornelius’s death and get him safely out of Volisport – and while they were on the verge of doing the SECOND item on that list, they hadn’t really done the FIRST item thanks to Kasimir insisting on using his horrible bomb to actually kill a guy instead of finding a fake “crematorium bell” to ring while faking murdering the real Cornelius. As Cornelius himself believed the job was done, though, and Luke thought that fulfilling HALF the contract should result in some leniency in the magic, Kasimir only took Level 2 Cursed harm instead of Level 3. This still meant that he was almost incapacitated with pain as his magical tattoo burned him in punishment (the fine bottle of whiskey made a reappearance), so it was up to Zillah to run alongside Cornelius’s departing train to get the info he’d promised them. He admitted that he didn’t have much, BUT – due to them needing him to notarize a contract in a hurry – he DID know the name of the group and one of their associates! They were the Brightstone Analytics Society (not the PRECISE name, but Luke said it in a bit of a rush), and they were having some sort of mechanical maintenance work done –
BY AMADEUS ASTOR. Well – at the very least, Edvard will be pleased to know that solving the mystery of the “gap” in the world means taking down his hated rival. XD And so the adventure ended with Zillah helping Kasimir limp off from the train station, talking about how they were going to have to make up a better story to tell the others, while Luke threw a couple last bits of salt in the wound – firstly, by naming their would-be murder victim Cob and promising he’d survive to get back to his five children and rethink a life of crime after getting laid off from the factory; secondly, by promising that Ziggy the Billhook would remember Kasimir the next day and start leaning on him for a big favor as their post-score entanglement; and thirdly – by putting a stall in the nearby marketplace with big old bells on clearance for them to pass as they headed back home. XD Kasimir and Zillah refused to even look at it. XD Ahhh – good stuff as always, guys!
B) And then second up, “We Make a Character for Our GM | Show of the Weekend,” featuring Ellen and Jane making a character for Luke to play in Blades In The Dark should Ellen (as per a loose promise) ever take the GM chair for the game! Their method was half randomization via dice rolls (allowing them to show off the cool OX dice tray a fan made them) and half “oh come on, that sounds awesome/amusing,” and resulted in the creation of Carro Prichard, a “dark” male ex-soldier Cutter from Tycheros (the land of people with demon blood – Lilith is from there, and that’s why she has snakes for hair; I presume Carro would have his own weirdness going on), with a gambling vice, a close friend in the cold killer Mercy but a hated rival in the extortionist Grace (perhaps she’s on him for his gambling debts?), with two dots each in Finesse and Skirmish, and a dot each in Survey, Wreck, and Command, and the “Ghost Fighter” special ability that lets him punch ghosts. Oh, and his standard outfit is an eel-skin bodysuit and work boots. XD Though maybe Carro was there from the start, because the ladies also rolled to choose an alias for him – and got FLINT, which just so happens to be the name of Lilith’s spirit-trafficker friend! Apparently he punches the ghosts instead of Attuning to capture them like Lilith does. XD But yeah, it was a fun little show, a pretty decent look at the character creation process for Blades In The Dark, and may have even added a little bit of lore to the setting! Though I don’t think Luke has ever been lucky enough to take Carro out for a spin. . .then again, I haven’t seen all their BitD content yet. :P
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen”: Substitution – after all that lovely Blades in the Dark content, I HAD to keep working on my Valicer In The Dark stuff! Namely, on the escape sequence that I started a few days ago, with Victor, Alice, and Smiler running from the Bluecoats who want their heads for the apparent murder of a spirit warden (Barkis Bittern carrying around the right kind of mask). Alice, having already shown she’s Not To Be Trifled With by rapidly taking down all of Sargent Tannen’s six goons with her blade, demonstrated today she also has The Devil’s Footsteps by managing to double-jump in real life atop a carriage to avoid a Bluecoat trying to grab her from behind, and Smiler got a chance to show off their Alchemist skills by drugging the Bluecoat who managed to briefly get the drop on them with a spare syringe of Joy Serum. I just have to do Victor showing off his Ghost Sense now by accidentally leading Tannen into a very angry spirit. . .perhaps that’ll be what we work on Friday. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Half-check as per usual, as I remain a day behind on GrayStillPlays. But I did get to yesterday’s offering – “When they reveal the vision pro price,” aka Gray plays more Happy Wheels! And we had some fun stuff today – a very green bottle throw with a bonus ball fall and more shoutouts to win (plus one of Gray’s previous shoutouts actually made an appearance – this same person made the Neon bottle throw he completed a little while ago); a run through a 2-D Minecraft (with Segway Nixon just smashing up EVERYTHING); a gray rope swing that was a lot more difficult than it first looked (mostly because you had to land JUST RIGHT on all of the various slidey bits to avoid hitting the next rope in the wrong position or tearing off your limbs); a reasonably difficult thumbnail hole swing (Gray got it on the third try, with only minimal katana damage); a very GrayStillPlays obstacle board where Gray had to choose the right fruit to continue without getting blown up and avoid the killer wrecking ball of doom controlled by Tom’s clone Tim to reach the watermelony end (also there was a secret win at the bottom, if you could get past the homing mines in time); an “outrun the mine” board designed to make you smash into as many things as possible (so even if you outran the mine you’d probably lose a limb to something else); a “73% Impossible” pogo jump board that featured thumbnail holes made of harpoons, spikes, and a crossbow, a spike fall, lots of precision platforming, lots of things to rip your head off on, and a mountain of wins to reach (Gray ended up making use of the mines at the beginning to fly over as much of the nonsense as possible – oh, and he ended up pinned to the side of the board by a crossbow bolt at one point); and an “Apple Takeover” board by Dylan Snider where Gray had to traverse Apple Headquarters (avoiding the people playing Beat Saber, making it through the iPhone freeze walls, through the actual apple orchard (featuring a cameo from the Annoying Orange), and multiple presentations about future iPhone models) to meet Jucifier the devil and virtually flip a coin to decide who got to run the place (and I think it was actually random, given Gray picked tails and lost, heads and lost, then tails and won). XD As usual, a delightful time! I swear, sometimes the Happy Wheels people give Alex a run for his money in the “pure sadism” department. . .
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – reset the queue speed to one on Victor Luvs Alice, and put in the gift fic for tumblr friend Kevin for Saturday! I dunno if it’ll REPLACE Song Saturday or fire along WITH Song Saturday yet – we’ll see how I feel on Friday. But the fic’s in the queue and ready to rock, and that’s what matters. :)
So yeah, not too shabby. And now it is time to hit the sheets and get some sleep. One and a half more days of work to go -- night all!
Work – We STILL have not gotten the all-clear from Fiscal when it comes to posting our backlog, so yeah, another super-quiet day with me spending most of it working on obituaries and cleaning up duplicates and deceased people in the system. *shrug* Kinda dragged as the day went on, but – eh. We’ll see if tomorrow actually lets us get a start on the checks!
On the plus side, the weather was nice enough and the traffic home for me light enough for us to actually play a few rounds of beanbags today! Now THERE’S a shocker. I had an early win before dropping to middling for the second two games; Dad stumbled at the last second in the first game but handily took the next two; and Mom got ahead of me once but never did well enough to actually win. Final scores were me W-3-2; Dad 2-W-W; Mom 3-2-3. Sorry Mom – though given the weather’s supposed to be okay again tomorrow, perhaps she can redeem herself then. :p
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, watching TWO OXBoxtra Blades In The Dark-related things –
A) First up, we had the end of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark – “The Dead of Cornelius Bagshot!” Hearing the screaming upstairs from their would-be murder victim, and getting a little peek at the conflagration and the people coming in to help “Bagshot” out of his weird frame, Kasimir turned to Zillah and asked her two questions – has she ever been in a wagon chase (no), and would she like to be in a wagon chase (yes :D). And so the two scarpered, getting out via the coal chute and hastily bundling the surprised Cornelius into the wagon before Kasimir took the reins and Zillah grabbed the seat next to him. Before Kasimir could get the goats pulling their cart up to speed, though, two of the auction guests realized the deception and came after them – the bald heavy from before (whom Kasimir now recognized as part of the Crows gang) and the hooded woman from before (whom Kasimir recognized SPECIFICALLY as Ziggy from the Billhooks gang – and was slightly insulted that she hadn’t recognized him in return XD). The woman aimed a crossbow bolt at them, and Kasimir both used his Spider Foresight to help Zillah with the roll (very necessary, as he decided it would probably be a Finesse roll, and she has no dots in that) and led a group action in ducking –
And, by pushing himself, scored a 6! So basically he was able to use his cane to make Zillah bend forward at JUST the right time to avoid the bolt. The Crows guy chose to be a little more direct and managed to catch up with the wagon just as they were starting to get up some speed, clinging to the side and trying to batter his way in to get at Cornelius. Fortunately, getting rid of him was Zillah’s area of expertise – as the duo raced through the streets of Brightstone, upsetting all the people in their finery enjoying the evening, she climbed onto the top of the carriage, clamped the guy’s hands down to stop him letting go too early, and told Kasimir to wipe him off on a nearby wall. This resulted in another group action, this time a Wreck roll led by Zillah as they were trying to wreck the guy – Zillah rolled a nice six, so the guy did get smacked off very effectively, though Kasimir’s one meant that she took a little stress due to Kasimir not “Tokyo drifting” into the wall as smoothly as either of them would have liked. Did the job, but it did NOT look cool. (Luke also made a fortune roll for the guy – he got a three, which Luke ruled was life-altering injuries but not death. XD)
Still, that took care of all pursuit, and the gang were able to bundle Cornelius off to the train station. . .however, there was the little matter of Kasimir’s Ghost Contract to consider. Namely, he’d promised that they would do everything in their power to fake Cornelius’s death and get him safely out of Volisport – and while they were on the verge of doing the SECOND item on that list, they hadn’t really done the FIRST item thanks to Kasimir insisting on using his horrible bomb to actually kill a guy instead of finding a fake “crematorium bell” to ring while faking murdering the real Cornelius. As Cornelius himself believed the job was done, though, and Luke thought that fulfilling HALF the contract should result in some leniency in the magic, Kasimir only took Level 2 Cursed harm instead of Level 3. This still meant that he was almost incapacitated with pain as his magical tattoo burned him in punishment (the fine bottle of whiskey made a reappearance), so it was up to Zillah to run alongside Cornelius’s departing train to get the info he’d promised them. He admitted that he didn’t have much, BUT – due to them needing him to notarize a contract in a hurry – he DID know the name of the group and one of their associates! They were the Brightstone Analytics Society (not the PRECISE name, but Luke said it in a bit of a rush), and they were having some sort of mechanical maintenance work done –
BY AMADEUS ASTOR. Well – at the very least, Edvard will be pleased to know that solving the mystery of the “gap” in the world means taking down his hated rival. XD And so the adventure ended with Zillah helping Kasimir limp off from the train station, talking about how they were going to have to make up a better story to tell the others, while Luke threw a couple last bits of salt in the wound – firstly, by naming their would-be murder victim Cob and promising he’d survive to get back to his five children and rethink a life of crime after getting laid off from the factory; secondly, by promising that Ziggy the Billhook would remember Kasimir the next day and start leaning on him for a big favor as their post-score entanglement; and thirdly – by putting a stall in the nearby marketplace with big old bells on clearance for them to pass as they headed back home. XD Kasimir and Zillah refused to even look at it. XD Ahhh – good stuff as always, guys!
B) And then second up, “We Make a Character for Our GM | Show of the Weekend,” featuring Ellen and Jane making a character for Luke to play in Blades In The Dark should Ellen (as per a loose promise) ever take the GM chair for the game! Their method was half randomization via dice rolls (allowing them to show off the cool OX dice tray a fan made them) and half “oh come on, that sounds awesome/amusing,” and resulted in the creation of Carro Prichard, a “dark” male ex-soldier Cutter from Tycheros (the land of people with demon blood – Lilith is from there, and that’s why she has snakes for hair; I presume Carro would have his own weirdness going on), with a gambling vice, a close friend in the cold killer Mercy but a hated rival in the extortionist Grace (perhaps she’s on him for his gambling debts?), with two dots each in Finesse and Skirmish, and a dot each in Survey, Wreck, and Command, and the “Ghost Fighter” special ability that lets him punch ghosts. Oh, and his standard outfit is an eel-skin bodysuit and work boots. XD Though maybe Carro was there from the start, because the ladies also rolled to choose an alias for him – and got FLINT, which just so happens to be the name of Lilith’s spirit-trafficker friend! Apparently he punches the ghosts instead of Attuning to capture them like Lilith does. XD But yeah, it was a fun little show, a pretty decent look at the character creation process for Blades In The Dark, and may have even added a little bit of lore to the setting! Though I don’t think Luke has ever been lucky enough to take Carro out for a spin. . .then again, I haven’t seen all their BitD content yet. :P
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen”: Substitution – after all that lovely Blades in the Dark content, I HAD to keep working on my Valicer In The Dark stuff! Namely, on the escape sequence that I started a few days ago, with Victor, Alice, and Smiler running from the Bluecoats who want their heads for the apparent murder of a spirit warden (Barkis Bittern carrying around the right kind of mask). Alice, having already shown she’s Not To Be Trifled With by rapidly taking down all of Sargent Tannen’s six goons with her blade, demonstrated today she also has The Devil’s Footsteps by managing to double-jump in real life atop a carriage to avoid a Bluecoat trying to grab her from behind, and Smiler got a chance to show off their Alchemist skills by drugging the Bluecoat who managed to briefly get the drop on them with a spare syringe of Joy Serum. I just have to do Victor showing off his Ghost Sense now by accidentally leading Tannen into a very angry spirit. . .perhaps that’ll be what we work on Friday. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Half-check as per usual, as I remain a day behind on GrayStillPlays. But I did get to yesterday’s offering – “When they reveal the vision pro price,” aka Gray plays more Happy Wheels! And we had some fun stuff today – a very green bottle throw with a bonus ball fall and more shoutouts to win (plus one of Gray’s previous shoutouts actually made an appearance – this same person made the Neon bottle throw he completed a little while ago); a run through a 2-D Minecraft (with Segway Nixon just smashing up EVERYTHING); a gray rope swing that was a lot more difficult than it first looked (mostly because you had to land JUST RIGHT on all of the various slidey bits to avoid hitting the next rope in the wrong position or tearing off your limbs); a reasonably difficult thumbnail hole swing (Gray got it on the third try, with only minimal katana damage); a very GrayStillPlays obstacle board where Gray had to choose the right fruit to continue without getting blown up and avoid the killer wrecking ball of doom controlled by Tom’s clone Tim to reach the watermelony end (also there was a secret win at the bottom, if you could get past the homing mines in time); an “outrun the mine” board designed to make you smash into as many things as possible (so even if you outran the mine you’d probably lose a limb to something else); a “73% Impossible” pogo jump board that featured thumbnail holes made of harpoons, spikes, and a crossbow, a spike fall, lots of precision platforming, lots of things to rip your head off on, and a mountain of wins to reach (Gray ended up making use of the mines at the beginning to fly over as much of the nonsense as possible – oh, and he ended up pinned to the side of the board by a crossbow bolt at one point); and an “Apple Takeover” board by Dylan Snider where Gray had to traverse Apple Headquarters (avoiding the people playing Beat Saber, making it through the iPhone freeze walls, through the actual apple orchard (featuring a cameo from the Annoying Orange), and multiple presentations about future iPhone models) to meet Jucifier the devil and virtually flip a coin to decide who got to run the place (and I think it was actually random, given Gray picked tails and lost, heads and lost, then tails and won). XD As usual, a delightful time! I swear, sometimes the Happy Wheels people give Alex a run for his money in the “pure sadism” department. . .
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – reset the queue speed to one on Victor Luvs Alice, and put in the gift fic for tumblr friend Kevin for Saturday! I dunno if it’ll REPLACE Song Saturday or fire along WITH Song Saturday yet – we’ll see how I feel on Friday. But the fic’s in the queue and ready to rock, and that’s what matters. :)
So yeah, not too shabby. And now it is time to hit the sheets and get some sleep. One and a half more days of work to go -- night all!
