Happy Unofficial BTTF Day!
Aug. 8th, 2023 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickOne of two on the calendar, if you're a Backie who pays attention to that sort of thing -- 8/8, like 88 miles per hour. :) And I actually happened to notice the clock in time to get a 10:04 timestamp on the post, hooray! :)
As for my actual day, it was pretty good -- the weather wasn't great, with rain in the morning and another passing shower in the afternoon, and a lot of humidity, but we just hung around in the AC for the most part after my parents got home from grocery shopping, and we even managed to plan a couple of activities for the end of the week -- we're going mini-golfing over at one of our old haunts tomorrow, and then going to a garden and arboretum on Friday (weather permitting in both cases, though tomorrow IS supposed to be beautiful). Trying to get out and about a little bit again without going anywhere too crowded, since -- *glances at the beginning of the year again* Yeaaaah. But hopefully that'll all work out okay. And I got a lot done on my to-do list today too --
Tumblr: Had a good, productive day over here, I’m happy to say –
Victor Luvs Alice – had a decent morning on this blog, catching up on the dash and tags again before going in and finishing off my two remaining posts for the Chill Valicer Save update this week – managed to get through all of one post and most of the second before my parents came back from the grocery trip and I got pulled into helping put groceries away and getting lunch ready and making granola and such. Finished off that second post after lunch, then shucked them into the queue before supper! Still have to figure out the rest of the week, but hopefully I can do that after mini-golf tomorrow. . .
Valice Multiverse – first of all, took a moment this evening to install the Firefox Multi-Containers extension, which allows you to open links in new “containers” that are separate from your usual browsing (like, say, you can do your banking in one container, and all that information is separate from the container you use for looking at YouTube) – I made myself an “RP tumblr” container, which is now what I can use to access this particular tumblr without having to open a new private window or anything! :) Hooray for finding a way around THAT nonsense. . .
Anyway – as for activity, it was a pretty simple day on there – just three thread replies from Brynlee Marie. I’ve chucked all of those into my queue over there to fire tomorrow, easy peasy. :)
Sims 4: Another productive session in the old Chill Valicer Save, picking up where I left off yesterday with the gang working on their store –
A) With the layout pretty well sorted now, I set about assigning everyone their initial jobs – Smiler got sent to the fishing spot behind the lot to examine the water and start fishing; Alice got sent to one of the bulk food processors to start making cans of green beans and green peas; and Victor got sent to one of the stoves to start cooking up perfume – starting with the bluebell “focused” scent, then moving on to the daisy “playful” scent before looping back around with another deodorizing scent. This got him the level 2 Perfumery skill (allowing him to also make “happy” and “energized” scents), while Smiler (after rather a lot of waiting around) was able to catch a pufferfish, a betta, and tilapia, which went in the “fish cooler” (the pufferfish and tilapia on top, the betta in the actual custom content freezer I have). Alice, meanwhile, just kept canning and boxing green beans and peas, helping me fill in gaps in my shelves. . .
B) And then Victor started doing the same, with the overpowered mess that is Copypasto! :D I had him copy a bunch of jars of chocolate syrup, apple jam, raspberry jam, and other preserves – and, to my shock and delight, found that he could copy meat too! So filling up the meat cooler isn’t going to take nearly as long either! Alice, for her part, took a quick toilet break upstairs, then got working on her canning by making some jars of meat substitute to fill up those shelves, because we do have to make some things by hand (lest Victor overcharge himself). Smiler, meanwhile, kept fishing, getting a kissing gorami – though when I tried to put it in the freezer, I accidentally clicked “put in all supplies” while searching for the “just auto-move fish” option. Remember that, it’s important for later. . .
C) But I wouldn’t discover the consequences of that for a bit, mostly because I was busy having Victor reduce his charge and then continue copypastoing things, specifically Smiler’s various herbalism jars. I then let him take a break from magic to go do some more perfume-making, doing the happy scent (I forget what’s in that one), while Alice swapped between the bulk processor to do boxes of meat substitute and the stove to do jars of mushroom conserve, and Smiler fished up another betta. As they were feeling pretty thirsty by this point, I let them turn that one into a plasma pack, drink it, then head downstairs to make some synthetic food tablets for the “pharmacy” shelves. Victor finished up his perfume and loaded some snapdragons into the fizzy juice maker (mostly because I’d forgotten I’d dumped all his fruit into the produce fridges upstairs – on the other hand, he hadn’t tried making kombucha yet from flowers, so why not?) and then went back upstairs to copypasto some animal treats while we waited for that to finish. As he did so, I went “maybe I should have Smiler make more straight-up herbalism potions” and went to check what they could make on the grill –
D) And was surprised when I saw one thing and one thing only, because I could have SWORN they had termites and locusts in their inventory for stuff like Tummy Therapy! It was then I remembered the “put all supplies” thing in the fridge, and checked there – but no, I saw no insects or anything. “Huh, I guess the game wouldn’t let me put them in there” –
And then I realized where they had to be. Cue me opening the household inventory and discovering the insects in there –
ALONG WITH ALL OF SMILER’S UPGRADE AND ROBOT SALVAGE PARTS. ALL 73 ROBOT SALVAGE PARTS. AND 66 COMMON UPGRADE PARTS.
*facepalm* Okay, so, had to spend a good few minutes fishing THOSE out of the inventory, laying them on the floor, and putting them back into Smiler’s inventory, because I don’t know if you can use them from the household inventory! However, on the PLUS side, I did discover that you can set robot salvage parts for sale in a store. Along with fertilizer, since the cans they had in their inventory were shot into the household inventory too. Can’t copypasto either, though, darn it. I set a couple of robot salvage parts out on the shelves underneath the chatterbots Smiler had made, but I ended up putting the fertilizers in Victor’s inventory for the moment – not sure if I want to sell them or let Victor use them. We’ll see later!
E) Okay, with THAT mess done, everyone could get back to work – Smiler went to the grill to make some Tummy Therapy drink, as they had the stuff for it now, while Victor copypastoed animal treats all the way to another talent point! I ended up choosing “A Little Extra Chemistry” to improve any future potions he should make – and I really have to have him learn some new potion recipes, as those are another thing I want to sell in the store, darn it. *grumbles* Something to think about for the next play session, I suppose! Alice made a box of dried sage, then did a big batch of aubergine (eggplant for us Americans) conserve using the big old aubergine in the fridge, while Victor made some energized perfume and developed a like of cooking from it. XD (Also discovered that he can Repairio flowers when checking the arrangements to see how they were doing – I don’t know if this resets their freshness state, but maybe I can make some arrangements better quality so they can be scented with bluebells to keep them fresh longer.) He and Smiler had a brief chat before Victor got the snapdragon kombucha (SnapBucha) for the drinks fridge and Smiler made one last bottle of synthetic food tablets (while Alice mopped up some puddles outside) –
F) And with that, I decided the gang was done and could go home. They arrived back at the farm in the rain – Victor headed inside to get some leftover choripán for dinner while Alice published the two books waiting in her inventory (“The Corruption of Wonderland” and “Vorpal Rhymes”) at the mailbox before transforming into her beast form and going off for a hunt (amusingly enough, followed by Kelly, who had decided she had a hankering for adventure XD) and Smiler went to fix the broken turbines in the wind farm. Victor then tended his bees, applying some mite treatment before harvesting the honey and beeswax – oh, yeah, and I discovered you can set beeswax out for sale too, so now I’ve got that out in the store – if I have Victor make more candles, maybe we can have a “bees” shelf XD – and then quickly Floralorialed a plant and evolved a few others. Poor dude was exhausted after all that, though, so I sent him upstairs to sleep in the super-bed while Smiler finished scavenging the trash piles and sticking them in their inventory before taking a brief shower in the rain –
G) When I spotted right nearby some catchable fireflies! I’ve been WAITING for these little fuckers to spawn, as Smiler desperately needs some for some of their herbalism potions! I promptly had them grab them (they even consented to put their clothes back on before doing so), then sent them to start crafting more chatterbots for the store (observed by Shadow). Alice returned from her hunt and came into the barn to say “hi” to Smiler before finishing scarfing her steak down and going to wash her dishes –
H) When I spotted shenanigans on the front porch – namely, an elderly visitor (who I suspected was a vampire) being menaced by an angry red specter! Alice finished her cleaning and went to rescue the woman by presenting the furious red blob with a surreal painting as a gift – fortunately, the blob liked it, and left Alice another candy jar before spiraling off. Alice then ran upstairs to lick herself clean and get some sleep to avoid spooking the woman on the front porch more. . .
I) And that’s where I WOULD have left it, except that Victor was actually full on energy and I noticed the downstairs phonograph was broken. I sent him to repair it the normal way (this was originally a mistake, but then I was like “actually, he likes handiness too, so. . .” while Smiler got to work on another mechanism (so I could try having them make a quadcopter), and Alice, woken by some creepy haunted house noises, emptied the kitty litter storage on the litter box upstairs, before going to make sugar in the bulk processor they have at home using the raspberries in the fridge (because I was going to have her do some more canning, but we didn’t have any sugar in the house). Victor followed to do some experimenting in his cauldron –
And THAT is where I left it, because honestly I could have just kept going and forgotten anything else going on. XD What can I say, I find this kind of thing fun! So yes, the store is looking better stocked, and the gang is doing pretty well for themselves. I just have to get Victor making actual potions, and maybe see about selling woodworks and candles too. . .maybe a trip to the Magic Realm should be in the cards next time I play this family? At the very least, Victor can ask the sages for any potion recipes they can give him. . .
Writing: Another page on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” tonight – and hoo boy, we have just started Alice’s Least Favorite Bit Ever. Basically, she just discovered Grout was murdered in his own bedroom before she arrived, and when she started looking for clues, the whole mansion was rocked with explosions. And when she opened the door on the other side of the room onto Grout’s personal balcony, she found the house in flames and someone named Bach on the walkway opposite declaring that she would burn as a promise to all who serve “the archfiend LaCroix.” Alice, naturally is very much NOT HAPPY about this, and might have succumbed to panic if the Queen of Hearts hadn’t literally given her a shove to move. Next time – Alice gets to relive running for her life through a burning house before throwing herself out of a window! Yeah, this is – this is all the trauma for her. :(
YouTube: Once again, ran out of time to watch the video in my Watch Later – and while OXtra DID upload a list I was interested in, it was all about horror game openings that didn’t fuck around, so I was like “maybe I should save that for tomorrow, when I can watch it without it being the night before I have to wake up a little earlier so we can take a mini-golf trip.” XD So I kept it simple and just watched today’s GrayStillPlays – “When phobias get 1000x worse,” aka Gray plays Happy Wheels! We had a number of fun boards today, starting with a bottle flip complete with glitched-text “MALICE,” “SATAN,” and “CHILDREN” areas and a win that was nearly impossible to reach (but Gray did so nonetheless), then moving through a Super Mario-themed fall board (where all the spiky blocks and spinning fire bars were horrible katanas waiting to kill Gray), a glass DODGE board (like a harpoon dodge, only you had to dodge the falling panes of glass), a trip through the hospital (with people vomiting in the background and one guy getting caught up in Gray’s patient’s gurney’s wheels), the “roper” swing (where Gray had to do everything damn near PERFECTLY to avoid losing too many limbs as he swung and spun and fell gradually into a cannon which shot him to victory), the “Most Possible Level” (which had an “easy” path where Gray had to fall past a bunch of spikes and avoiding being speared by crossbows, and a “normal” way where he had to leap off a tall incline and then avoid all the wrecking balls, homing mines and harpoons on his way down), a “new Happy Wheels boards” board (where the conceit was someone else was playing the game and Gray had to complete the mini-challenges they picked – like a spike fall with an invisible ceiling and planks blocking the end, or a pogo fight with a collapsing tower to jump on – Gray was very amused by the complaint on the selection board about how many levels were made for him XD), a “200% impossible” board (where Nixon had to get through a win protected by rockets, multiple wrecking balls, harpoons, and a regularly-falling meteor – Gray, however, realized it was all a matter of timing and after a few tries made it through), and Dylan’s board of the week, “Phobophobia,” which consisted of Gray having to hop his way over a couch with jars of olives on it, past a windowsill with bouncing eyeballs, up a window guarded by sai-wielding spiders, then through a hole in the wall and down a ball fall in the joists to make the win (oh, and the floor wasn’t real either – Gray said that the real phobia this induced in him was the fear of failing at Happy Wheels). Another delightful video of delightful nonsense! :)
Workout: Back on the bike, and back to Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark – “The Horrors of Castle Wisenshire!” Barnaby, having just been told ominously by a maid that no one ever actually leaves the castle who then scurried off, chose to Survey the room and figure out what was what (predicting their wealth, smug in the knowledge that it wasn’t more than his XD). He rolled a six, and thus was able to tell at a glance that all of these people were indeed quite wealthy. . .but, strangely, they were all dressed decades out of fashion, in powdered wigs and ruffled brightly-colored clothes, the kind of thing Barnaby remembers his parents wearing when he was very small. And despite all of them being society folk Barnaby’s age, Barnaby had no idea who any of them were. Puzzled, he decided to go and try mingling. . .
Cut to Zillah, who was doing a thorough check of Barnaby’s guest quarters for secret peepholes and the like and laying out Barnaby’s pajamas to sell the idea that she was a valet. This was another Survey roll, and she too rolled a six, meaning she found nothing suspicious in the musty room, AND she managed to pull off some swan origami with the pajamas that impressed Bixton and made him leave her alone – though not before warning her that she wasn’t to leave the room except to come to the servant’s quarters for food. Zillah attempted to suss out where exactly she wasn’t supposed to go, but Bixton left keeping his secrets. Undaunted, she set out to snoop around on her own once he was gone, Prowling her way back down to the main foyer and trying to work her way around to the chunk of the castle closest to the ghost field. . . Only to smash into a maid carrying a tray of drinks and causing her to drop them all over the floor on a roll of three. Whoops.
Cut back to Barnaby, who decided that maybe the best way to figure out what was going on was to start talking to the various partygoers. So he sat down across from a lounging couple, Arthur and Agatha – they gave him a rather languid welcome, with Arthur getting Barnaby to kiss his hand in greeting (another tradition that was out-of-date – Barnaby did it, though, and was disgusted to find the hand very cold and clammy). Barnaby chatted with them about why they were staying in the castle and why he hadn’t seen them around the city, only to get more confused when Arthur asked if a certain establishment still did amazing breakfasts, and Barnaby recognized the name as a restaurant long since closed. Arthur tried to cover it up by saying his mother had told him about it, and he and Agatha insisted on a joke – Barnaby promptly told an awful one about “how many paupers does it take to refill an oil lamp,” to very languid laughter. Barnaby asked them then how they knew his uncle, and Arthur informed him that he’d saved them –
But then Agatha began poking at him in a way designed to shut him up, and Arthur excused himself for a doze. Barnaby decided that maybe the BEST thing to do would be to find his quarters and maybe freshen up and see if he could find Zillah – but unfortunately, Luke’s fortune roll to see exactly when dinner was came up a one, so he only made it as far as the door when the bell rang. Uncle Monty scooped him up, promising him that the guests would be much more energized after supper and that he was so eager to show him what he had planned then when Barnaby asked, and then they all went to the dining room next door, where there was a very long table – but no drinks on said table. . .
Cut back to Zillah, where the maid, Edith, was very upset about her smashed drinks, declaring that Zillah should not be here and that she had to get Bixton. Zillah quickly played it off as “oh no, he sent me to help you,” with Edith being “well, you’d better help me NOW,” and the two sprinted off to the kitchen, with Zillah trying to get information from Edith but not being very successful (with Edith insisting that she kept her head down and didn’t answer questions, like “what do you think of Master Fortesque?”). They burst into the kitchen to find a small staff there – including, unfortunately, Bixton himself, having his supper. Zillah kept up her story of helping Edith with the drinks, insisting that it was all her fault that they got smashed when Bixton started lecturing Edith for being clumsy, then pretending contrition when Bixton started scolding her about the cost of the crystal glasses (Barnaby, in a semi-OOC moment, was very pleased with her fakery XD). One of the other valets in the room asked Bixton if they shouldn’t offer the newcomer a drink – then got oddly insistent when Zillah initially waved him off. She eventually said that she’d come back after helping Edith and have a cup of tea, which he promised to make for her personally. Hmmm, curiouser and curiouser. . .
No time to worry about it, though – it was time to deliver the drinks! Zillah and Edith hurried over to the servant’s entrance into the dining room, where Edith snapped that she was behind and it was up to Zillah to hand them out. Zillah took the tray and burst into the room, interrupting a big speech by Uncle Monty thanking everyone for attending another of his little get-togethers, and how gratified he was to have Barnaby here to “join their ranks.” Zillah, completely oblivious to Monty’s displeasure, promptly began handing out drinks at random, starting with Barnaby who waved her down (and who, while waiting, had started drinking his personal supply of absinthe, which DID count as load now that it was a full kit and bottle) and whispered to her that they definitely needed to talk and he’d try to excuse himself soon and catch up with her. Zillah nodded, finished handing out drinks, then headed out of the room –
Where, upon being told she was alone for a few minutes, promptly decided to try prowling again, this time with the express intention of getting lost so she could find interesting stuff. A roll of five meant that she found two rooms of especial interest – firstly, the ballroom, which was of course gone to mold, same as all the others, but curiously also seemed to contain every mirror in the house, either deliberately shattered or covered in a sheet; and secondly, Uncle Monty’s own personal chambers, up a high turret and dominated by a big four-poster bed. Zillah promptly searched the desk, finding a strange speech about the reopening of the castle that suggested some mysterious benefactor had renovated it (if anything, the castle was looking DE-novated with all the dust and must), and a diary that she shoved down her jumper for later. She was just about to go when – well, she rolled a five, not a six, meaning she got a complication, and that complication was heavy footsteps coming up the stairs! Zillah knew she couldn’t be caught in this room –
So she climbed out the window and hung from the ledge by her fingers 47-style, relying on her massive upper-body strength (honed by hundreds of chin-ups) to keep her aloft over a frankly terrifying drop over many many spiky turrets. She rolled and got a four, meaning she WAS able to cling, and the owner of the heavy footsteps, Bixton, did NOT find her when he searched the room – but he DID close the window on her, meaning she couldn’t get back IN. Uh-oh.
Cut back to Barnaby, who, after eating some very poorly-made food, made his excuses (namely that he had to go have a stern word with his valet, which his uncle accepted immediately) and left the party, after promising to be back in time for dessert and the after-dinner entertainment. Free to wander as he pleased, he decided to find his quarters, which he did very easily on a roll of six – he generally can figure out where the guest rooms are in a place! In his room, he of course found a drinks cabinet, and also a cupboard –
Which contained a long red robe with a hood. Barnaby being Barnaby, he assumed it was some sort of out-of-fashion dressing gown or smoking jacket. XD He decided then to open the window and let in some fresh (or at least fresher air). . .
And yes, Zillah noticed his window opening below her, as I’m sure Mike had intended. :p (Well, I’m pretty sure his ACTUAL intention was for Barnaby to SEE her, but this worked too.) She promptly pushed herself to use her Not To Be Trifled With special ability to perform a feat of superhuman strength, allowing her to shimmy along the ledge, jump to a flying buttress, and from there jump to Barnaby’s window. The gang interpreted this as she got to DO this utterly impossible act, but she still had to ROLL to see how well it went – and she rolled a four. So she’s DONE it, but not perfectly. . .we’ll see what actually happened tomorrow! Oooh, I’m excited. . .
*nods* Not bad, not bad at all. And now it is time for me to wrap things up and head out, as I want to make sure I'm up in plenty of time to have breakfast and chill out for a bit before we go do mini-golf. Might skip the gaming tomorrow in favor of another YouTube day, along with more Valicer In The Dark stuff. . .we'll see how it all shakes out! Night all!
As for my actual day, it was pretty good -- the weather wasn't great, with rain in the morning and another passing shower in the afternoon, and a lot of humidity, but we just hung around in the AC for the most part after my parents got home from grocery shopping, and we even managed to plan a couple of activities for the end of the week -- we're going mini-golfing over at one of our old haunts tomorrow, and then going to a garden and arboretum on Friday (weather permitting in both cases, though tomorrow IS supposed to be beautiful). Trying to get out and about a little bit again without going anywhere too crowded, since -- *glances at the beginning of the year again* Yeaaaah. But hopefully that'll all work out okay. And I got a lot done on my to-do list today too --
Tumblr: Had a good, productive day over here, I’m happy to say –
Victor Luvs Alice – had a decent morning on this blog, catching up on the dash and tags again before going in and finishing off my two remaining posts for the Chill Valicer Save update this week – managed to get through all of one post and most of the second before my parents came back from the grocery trip and I got pulled into helping put groceries away and getting lunch ready and making granola and such. Finished off that second post after lunch, then shucked them into the queue before supper! Still have to figure out the rest of the week, but hopefully I can do that after mini-golf tomorrow. . .
Valice Multiverse – first of all, took a moment this evening to install the Firefox Multi-Containers extension, which allows you to open links in new “containers” that are separate from your usual browsing (like, say, you can do your banking in one container, and all that information is separate from the container you use for looking at YouTube) – I made myself an “RP tumblr” container, which is now what I can use to access this particular tumblr without having to open a new private window or anything! :) Hooray for finding a way around THAT nonsense. . .
Anyway – as for activity, it was a pretty simple day on there – just three thread replies from Brynlee Marie. I’ve chucked all of those into my queue over there to fire tomorrow, easy peasy. :)
Sims 4: Another productive session in the old Chill Valicer Save, picking up where I left off yesterday with the gang working on their store –
A) With the layout pretty well sorted now, I set about assigning everyone their initial jobs – Smiler got sent to the fishing spot behind the lot to examine the water and start fishing; Alice got sent to one of the bulk food processors to start making cans of green beans and green peas; and Victor got sent to one of the stoves to start cooking up perfume – starting with the bluebell “focused” scent, then moving on to the daisy “playful” scent before looping back around with another deodorizing scent. This got him the level 2 Perfumery skill (allowing him to also make “happy” and “energized” scents), while Smiler (after rather a lot of waiting around) was able to catch a pufferfish, a betta, and tilapia, which went in the “fish cooler” (the pufferfish and tilapia on top, the betta in the actual custom content freezer I have). Alice, meanwhile, just kept canning and boxing green beans and peas, helping me fill in gaps in my shelves. . .
B) And then Victor started doing the same, with the overpowered mess that is Copypasto! :D I had him copy a bunch of jars of chocolate syrup, apple jam, raspberry jam, and other preserves – and, to my shock and delight, found that he could copy meat too! So filling up the meat cooler isn’t going to take nearly as long either! Alice, for her part, took a quick toilet break upstairs, then got working on her canning by making some jars of meat substitute to fill up those shelves, because we do have to make some things by hand (lest Victor overcharge himself). Smiler, meanwhile, kept fishing, getting a kissing gorami – though when I tried to put it in the freezer, I accidentally clicked “put in all supplies” while searching for the “just auto-move fish” option. Remember that, it’s important for later. . .
C) But I wouldn’t discover the consequences of that for a bit, mostly because I was busy having Victor reduce his charge and then continue copypastoing things, specifically Smiler’s various herbalism jars. I then let him take a break from magic to go do some more perfume-making, doing the happy scent (I forget what’s in that one), while Alice swapped between the bulk processor to do boxes of meat substitute and the stove to do jars of mushroom conserve, and Smiler fished up another betta. As they were feeling pretty thirsty by this point, I let them turn that one into a plasma pack, drink it, then head downstairs to make some synthetic food tablets for the “pharmacy” shelves. Victor finished up his perfume and loaded some snapdragons into the fizzy juice maker (mostly because I’d forgotten I’d dumped all his fruit into the produce fridges upstairs – on the other hand, he hadn’t tried making kombucha yet from flowers, so why not?) and then went back upstairs to copypasto some animal treats while we waited for that to finish. As he did so, I went “maybe I should have Smiler make more straight-up herbalism potions” and went to check what they could make on the grill –
D) And was surprised when I saw one thing and one thing only, because I could have SWORN they had termites and locusts in their inventory for stuff like Tummy Therapy! It was then I remembered the “put all supplies” thing in the fridge, and checked there – but no, I saw no insects or anything. “Huh, I guess the game wouldn’t let me put them in there” –
And then I realized where they had to be. Cue me opening the household inventory and discovering the insects in there –
ALONG WITH ALL OF SMILER’S UPGRADE AND ROBOT SALVAGE PARTS. ALL 73 ROBOT SALVAGE PARTS. AND 66 COMMON UPGRADE PARTS.
*facepalm* Okay, so, had to spend a good few minutes fishing THOSE out of the inventory, laying them on the floor, and putting them back into Smiler’s inventory, because I don’t know if you can use them from the household inventory! However, on the PLUS side, I did discover that you can set robot salvage parts for sale in a store. Along with fertilizer, since the cans they had in their inventory were shot into the household inventory too. Can’t copypasto either, though, darn it. I set a couple of robot salvage parts out on the shelves underneath the chatterbots Smiler had made, but I ended up putting the fertilizers in Victor’s inventory for the moment – not sure if I want to sell them or let Victor use them. We’ll see later!
E) Okay, with THAT mess done, everyone could get back to work – Smiler went to the grill to make some Tummy Therapy drink, as they had the stuff for it now, while Victor copypastoed animal treats all the way to another talent point! I ended up choosing “A Little Extra Chemistry” to improve any future potions he should make – and I really have to have him learn some new potion recipes, as those are another thing I want to sell in the store, darn it. *grumbles* Something to think about for the next play session, I suppose! Alice made a box of dried sage, then did a big batch of aubergine (eggplant for us Americans) conserve using the big old aubergine in the fridge, while Victor made some energized perfume and developed a like of cooking from it. XD (Also discovered that he can Repairio flowers when checking the arrangements to see how they were doing – I don’t know if this resets their freshness state, but maybe I can make some arrangements better quality so they can be scented with bluebells to keep them fresh longer.) He and Smiler had a brief chat before Victor got the snapdragon kombucha (SnapBucha) for the drinks fridge and Smiler made one last bottle of synthetic food tablets (while Alice mopped up some puddles outside) –
F) And with that, I decided the gang was done and could go home. They arrived back at the farm in the rain – Victor headed inside to get some leftover choripán for dinner while Alice published the two books waiting in her inventory (“The Corruption of Wonderland” and “Vorpal Rhymes”) at the mailbox before transforming into her beast form and going off for a hunt (amusingly enough, followed by Kelly, who had decided she had a hankering for adventure XD) and Smiler went to fix the broken turbines in the wind farm. Victor then tended his bees, applying some mite treatment before harvesting the honey and beeswax – oh, yeah, and I discovered you can set beeswax out for sale too, so now I’ve got that out in the store – if I have Victor make more candles, maybe we can have a “bees” shelf XD – and then quickly Floralorialed a plant and evolved a few others. Poor dude was exhausted after all that, though, so I sent him upstairs to sleep in the super-bed while Smiler finished scavenging the trash piles and sticking them in their inventory before taking a brief shower in the rain –
G) When I spotted right nearby some catchable fireflies! I’ve been WAITING for these little fuckers to spawn, as Smiler desperately needs some for some of their herbalism potions! I promptly had them grab them (they even consented to put their clothes back on before doing so), then sent them to start crafting more chatterbots for the store (observed by Shadow). Alice returned from her hunt and came into the barn to say “hi” to Smiler before finishing scarfing her steak down and going to wash her dishes –
H) When I spotted shenanigans on the front porch – namely, an elderly visitor (who I suspected was a vampire) being menaced by an angry red specter! Alice finished her cleaning and went to rescue the woman by presenting the furious red blob with a surreal painting as a gift – fortunately, the blob liked it, and left Alice another candy jar before spiraling off. Alice then ran upstairs to lick herself clean and get some sleep to avoid spooking the woman on the front porch more. . .
I) And that’s where I WOULD have left it, except that Victor was actually full on energy and I noticed the downstairs phonograph was broken. I sent him to repair it the normal way (this was originally a mistake, but then I was like “actually, he likes handiness too, so. . .” while Smiler got to work on another mechanism (so I could try having them make a quadcopter), and Alice, woken by some creepy haunted house noises, emptied the kitty litter storage on the litter box upstairs, before going to make sugar in the bulk processor they have at home using the raspberries in the fridge (because I was going to have her do some more canning, but we didn’t have any sugar in the house). Victor followed to do some experimenting in his cauldron –
And THAT is where I left it, because honestly I could have just kept going and forgotten anything else going on. XD What can I say, I find this kind of thing fun! So yes, the store is looking better stocked, and the gang is doing pretty well for themselves. I just have to get Victor making actual potions, and maybe see about selling woodworks and candles too. . .maybe a trip to the Magic Realm should be in the cards next time I play this family? At the very least, Victor can ask the sages for any potion recipes they can give him. . .
Writing: Another page on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” tonight – and hoo boy, we have just started Alice’s Least Favorite Bit Ever. Basically, she just discovered Grout was murdered in his own bedroom before she arrived, and when she started looking for clues, the whole mansion was rocked with explosions. And when she opened the door on the other side of the room onto Grout’s personal balcony, she found the house in flames and someone named Bach on the walkway opposite declaring that she would burn as a promise to all who serve “the archfiend LaCroix.” Alice, naturally is very much NOT HAPPY about this, and might have succumbed to panic if the Queen of Hearts hadn’t literally given her a shove to move. Next time – Alice gets to relive running for her life through a burning house before throwing herself out of a window! Yeah, this is – this is all the trauma for her. :(
YouTube: Once again, ran out of time to watch the video in my Watch Later – and while OXtra DID upload a list I was interested in, it was all about horror game openings that didn’t fuck around, so I was like “maybe I should save that for tomorrow, when I can watch it without it being the night before I have to wake up a little earlier so we can take a mini-golf trip.” XD So I kept it simple and just watched today’s GrayStillPlays – “When phobias get 1000x worse,” aka Gray plays Happy Wheels! We had a number of fun boards today, starting with a bottle flip complete with glitched-text “MALICE,” “SATAN,” and “CHILDREN” areas and a win that was nearly impossible to reach (but Gray did so nonetheless), then moving through a Super Mario-themed fall board (where all the spiky blocks and spinning fire bars were horrible katanas waiting to kill Gray), a glass DODGE board (like a harpoon dodge, only you had to dodge the falling panes of glass), a trip through the hospital (with people vomiting in the background and one guy getting caught up in Gray’s patient’s gurney’s wheels), the “roper” swing (where Gray had to do everything damn near PERFECTLY to avoid losing too many limbs as he swung and spun and fell gradually into a cannon which shot him to victory), the “Most Possible Level” (which had an “easy” path where Gray had to fall past a bunch of spikes and avoiding being speared by crossbows, and a “normal” way where he had to leap off a tall incline and then avoid all the wrecking balls, homing mines and harpoons on his way down), a “new Happy Wheels boards” board (where the conceit was someone else was playing the game and Gray had to complete the mini-challenges they picked – like a spike fall with an invisible ceiling and planks blocking the end, or a pogo fight with a collapsing tower to jump on – Gray was very amused by the complaint on the selection board about how many levels were made for him XD), a “200% impossible” board (where Nixon had to get through a win protected by rockets, multiple wrecking balls, harpoons, and a regularly-falling meteor – Gray, however, realized it was all a matter of timing and after a few tries made it through), and Dylan’s board of the week, “Phobophobia,” which consisted of Gray having to hop his way over a couch with jars of olives on it, past a windowsill with bouncing eyeballs, up a window guarded by sai-wielding spiders, then through a hole in the wall and down a ball fall in the joists to make the win (oh, and the floor wasn’t real either – Gray said that the real phobia this induced in him was the fear of failing at Happy Wheels). Another delightful video of delightful nonsense! :)
Workout: Back on the bike, and back to Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark – “The Horrors of Castle Wisenshire!” Barnaby, having just been told ominously by a maid that no one ever actually leaves the castle who then scurried off, chose to Survey the room and figure out what was what (predicting their wealth, smug in the knowledge that it wasn’t more than his XD). He rolled a six, and thus was able to tell at a glance that all of these people were indeed quite wealthy. . .but, strangely, they were all dressed decades out of fashion, in powdered wigs and ruffled brightly-colored clothes, the kind of thing Barnaby remembers his parents wearing when he was very small. And despite all of them being society folk Barnaby’s age, Barnaby had no idea who any of them were. Puzzled, he decided to go and try mingling. . .
Cut to Zillah, who was doing a thorough check of Barnaby’s guest quarters for secret peepholes and the like and laying out Barnaby’s pajamas to sell the idea that she was a valet. This was another Survey roll, and she too rolled a six, meaning she found nothing suspicious in the musty room, AND she managed to pull off some swan origami with the pajamas that impressed Bixton and made him leave her alone – though not before warning her that she wasn’t to leave the room except to come to the servant’s quarters for food. Zillah attempted to suss out where exactly she wasn’t supposed to go, but Bixton left keeping his secrets. Undaunted, she set out to snoop around on her own once he was gone, Prowling her way back down to the main foyer and trying to work her way around to the chunk of the castle closest to the ghost field. . . Only to smash into a maid carrying a tray of drinks and causing her to drop them all over the floor on a roll of three. Whoops.
Cut back to Barnaby, who decided that maybe the best way to figure out what was going on was to start talking to the various partygoers. So he sat down across from a lounging couple, Arthur and Agatha – they gave him a rather languid welcome, with Arthur getting Barnaby to kiss his hand in greeting (another tradition that was out-of-date – Barnaby did it, though, and was disgusted to find the hand very cold and clammy). Barnaby chatted with them about why they were staying in the castle and why he hadn’t seen them around the city, only to get more confused when Arthur asked if a certain establishment still did amazing breakfasts, and Barnaby recognized the name as a restaurant long since closed. Arthur tried to cover it up by saying his mother had told him about it, and he and Agatha insisted on a joke – Barnaby promptly told an awful one about “how many paupers does it take to refill an oil lamp,” to very languid laughter. Barnaby asked them then how they knew his uncle, and Arthur informed him that he’d saved them –
But then Agatha began poking at him in a way designed to shut him up, and Arthur excused himself for a doze. Barnaby decided that maybe the BEST thing to do would be to find his quarters and maybe freshen up and see if he could find Zillah – but unfortunately, Luke’s fortune roll to see exactly when dinner was came up a one, so he only made it as far as the door when the bell rang. Uncle Monty scooped him up, promising him that the guests would be much more energized after supper and that he was so eager to show him what he had planned then when Barnaby asked, and then they all went to the dining room next door, where there was a very long table – but no drinks on said table. . .
Cut back to Zillah, where the maid, Edith, was very upset about her smashed drinks, declaring that Zillah should not be here and that she had to get Bixton. Zillah quickly played it off as “oh no, he sent me to help you,” with Edith being “well, you’d better help me NOW,” and the two sprinted off to the kitchen, with Zillah trying to get information from Edith but not being very successful (with Edith insisting that she kept her head down and didn’t answer questions, like “what do you think of Master Fortesque?”). They burst into the kitchen to find a small staff there – including, unfortunately, Bixton himself, having his supper. Zillah kept up her story of helping Edith with the drinks, insisting that it was all her fault that they got smashed when Bixton started lecturing Edith for being clumsy, then pretending contrition when Bixton started scolding her about the cost of the crystal glasses (Barnaby, in a semi-OOC moment, was very pleased with her fakery XD). One of the other valets in the room asked Bixton if they shouldn’t offer the newcomer a drink – then got oddly insistent when Zillah initially waved him off. She eventually said that she’d come back after helping Edith and have a cup of tea, which he promised to make for her personally. Hmmm, curiouser and curiouser. . .
No time to worry about it, though – it was time to deliver the drinks! Zillah and Edith hurried over to the servant’s entrance into the dining room, where Edith snapped that she was behind and it was up to Zillah to hand them out. Zillah took the tray and burst into the room, interrupting a big speech by Uncle Monty thanking everyone for attending another of his little get-togethers, and how gratified he was to have Barnaby here to “join their ranks.” Zillah, completely oblivious to Monty’s displeasure, promptly began handing out drinks at random, starting with Barnaby who waved her down (and who, while waiting, had started drinking his personal supply of absinthe, which DID count as load now that it was a full kit and bottle) and whispered to her that they definitely needed to talk and he’d try to excuse himself soon and catch up with her. Zillah nodded, finished handing out drinks, then headed out of the room –
Where, upon being told she was alone for a few minutes, promptly decided to try prowling again, this time with the express intention of getting lost so she could find interesting stuff. A roll of five meant that she found two rooms of especial interest – firstly, the ballroom, which was of course gone to mold, same as all the others, but curiously also seemed to contain every mirror in the house, either deliberately shattered or covered in a sheet; and secondly, Uncle Monty’s own personal chambers, up a high turret and dominated by a big four-poster bed. Zillah promptly searched the desk, finding a strange speech about the reopening of the castle that suggested some mysterious benefactor had renovated it (if anything, the castle was looking DE-novated with all the dust and must), and a diary that she shoved down her jumper for later. She was just about to go when – well, she rolled a five, not a six, meaning she got a complication, and that complication was heavy footsteps coming up the stairs! Zillah knew she couldn’t be caught in this room –
So she climbed out the window and hung from the ledge by her fingers 47-style, relying on her massive upper-body strength (honed by hundreds of chin-ups) to keep her aloft over a frankly terrifying drop over many many spiky turrets. She rolled and got a four, meaning she WAS able to cling, and the owner of the heavy footsteps, Bixton, did NOT find her when he searched the room – but he DID close the window on her, meaning she couldn’t get back IN. Uh-oh.
Cut back to Barnaby, who, after eating some very poorly-made food, made his excuses (namely that he had to go have a stern word with his valet, which his uncle accepted immediately) and left the party, after promising to be back in time for dessert and the after-dinner entertainment. Free to wander as he pleased, he decided to find his quarters, which he did very easily on a roll of six – he generally can figure out where the guest rooms are in a place! In his room, he of course found a drinks cabinet, and also a cupboard –
Which contained a long red robe with a hood. Barnaby being Barnaby, he assumed it was some sort of out-of-fashion dressing gown or smoking jacket. XD He decided then to open the window and let in some fresh (or at least fresher air). . .
And yes, Zillah noticed his window opening below her, as I’m sure Mike had intended. :p (Well, I’m pretty sure his ACTUAL intention was for Barnaby to SEE her, but this worked too.) She promptly pushed herself to use her Not To Be Trifled With special ability to perform a feat of superhuman strength, allowing her to shimmy along the ledge, jump to a flying buttress, and from there jump to Barnaby’s window. The gang interpreted this as she got to DO this utterly impossible act, but she still had to ROLL to see how well it went – and she rolled a four. So she’s DONE it, but not perfectly. . .we’ll see what actually happened tomorrow! Oooh, I’m excited. . .
*nods* Not bad, not bad at all. And now it is time for me to wrap things up and head out, as I want to make sure I'm up in plenty of time to have breakfast and chill out for a bit before we go do mini-golf. Might skip the gaming tomorrow in favor of another YouTube day, along with more Valicer In The Dark stuff. . .we'll see how it all shakes out! Night all!
