End Of Vacation Tuesday :(
Aug. 15th, 2023 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickAnd it ended up not being the greatest day -- in addition to dealing with my period, the weather was pretty lousy -- cloudy and kinda drizzly all day -- AND we didn't get our shots this morning because, when we arrived at the CVS, the pharmacist had to tell us they didn't have any more Pfizer vaccine, AND that a new version was actually coming out later in September (I looked that up when we got home, and yeah, apparently there's a new booster that's targeting the newest strand that should be released late September/early October). So that was annoying. Plus the company we contracted to put in a fence for us never showed during the two-week window, sooo. . .yeah, just not-good stuff all around. *sigh* But, on the plus side, we had a nice lunch and dinner, and I was honestly fairly productive today on the old interwebs --
Tumblr: Had a very good day on here, especially since I skipped the gaming to try and focus on the drafting (and the YouTube) –
Victor Luvs Alice – After catching up on my dashboard and tracked tags, I spent most of the day working on the draft of the “Weapons” post for Smiler’s Otherland – ended up finishing both that and the “Not-Incorrect Quotes” set this evening. :) I also queued up this week’s “Sims 4 Builds Update” post featuring the Tranquil Circle Spa for Wednesday, some A:MR fanart of Alice for Thursday, some CB fanart of Victor and Victoria for Friday, and I got all eighty-five pictures for the next Chill Valicer Save update (them getting back into the swing of things on the farm and in the store) sorted early. So hopefully I can get a head start on THOSE posts later this week!
Valice Multiverse – Pretty easy night over here – had two ask replies to do (one in response to the prompts I reblogged the other night), an ask to send (as my regular partner Brynlee Marie also reblogged the prompts as well as sending me one, so I had to send one back), and a reply to answer (Marie is interested in Valicer In The Dark, so it appears I’ll be adding that to my list of AUs for this account!). Nothing too taxing. :)
Writing: Started a new snippet for my Valicer In The Dark Au – “Home Sweet Lair,” which will cover the gang finding Elder Gutknecht’s house in Six Towers! Currently the trio are just wandering through Six Towers generally, having lost the Bluecoats but having no real destination in mind of where they should go now. Smiler’s pointed out to Victor that his eyes glow whenever he starts looking for ghosts (to Victor’s own surprise), and Victor’s asked Smiler how the hell they’re staying so positive about this situation. Turns out Smiler thinks that making new friends is a net positive, even if the situation is shitty – and Alice agrees, pointing out the other two could have left when the murder accusations started being slung around, only for Victor to say “no, because you two helped me unconditionally, so I could only do the same for you” and Smiler to say “no, because that goes against being an Advocate and besides, I like both of you already.” :) Bit of a weird story to have a warm fuzzy moment like that in it, but still – I’ll take it. :)
YouTube: No Sims meant that there was more than enough time for YouTube, and I made sure to do my best to keep up with everything I might want to watch –
A) Watched a couple of OXBoxtra videos in the Watch Later in the mid-afternoon to start things off –
I. “Fallout 4 Dirty Wastelander Cocktail: Make a Dirty Wastelander with Nuka Cola, Whiskey, Mutfruit!” As you might imagine, this video was made a WHILE ago – it just so happened to pop up in my Recommendeds the other day, and I decided I had to watch it. XD It featured Mike and Andy making the “Dirty Wastelander” drink from Fallout 4, or as close as they could to it – while, obviously, the real world does have whiskey, they ended up substituting blackberries for mutfruit, and an unknown brand of soda for Nuka-Cola (it in fact looked like a cherry cola, judging by the red sheen). Everything was muddled (aka mashed) and stirred together, and Jane was called in to taste-test the resultant creation – her first word on it was “lumpy.” XD But after she got past all the blackberry chunks and seeds (Mike explaining that was the bit that made it dirty), she said it was actually quite tasty, if a bit strong, and the boys happily joined her in sampling some. So yes, very successful cocktail-making! Not that I’m ever gonna make it, given that I’m not a drinker, but if I could find a virgin variant, maybe. . .
II. “7 Times You Died Right at the Start, RIP You: The Return” – by contrast, this was an OXtra list released just today, with Ellen and Andy talking about those games that involved you dying pretty much right at the start – either because you’d actually be taking control of a different character for the rest of it (like, poor super-spy Dalton of Watch Dogs Legion dies after the opening mission, but that’s okay because you’re actually going to be swapping between all SORTS of different characters as you recruit folks to the cause of fighting the technocracy) or your character is going to get resurrected somehow (like Abe of Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, who gets brought back to life after cracking his head falling down a bunch of cliffs because he has a destiny to restore his world from the evil capitalists who have basically sucked it dry – yes, there were jokes about how this related to the current world situation), or your character is now some manner of supernatural beast who doesn’t require a pulse to function (like the Fledgling of Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines, who gets killed in the opening cutscene by their sire while having sex, but immediately rewakens as a vampire, with all the powers that make playing that game fun). So yeah, sometimes death is not the end! Of your video game, anyway. :p
B) Then, this evening, it was over to the Subs for the latest from Josh Way – “Fun With Shorts: On the Air!” Yes, Josh took us through a classic short today – a Chevy/GM ad from Jam Handy disguised as an educational short on how radio transmissions work! Well, I say “disguised,” it was actually quite informative about how a signal from a studio microphone actually gets to the radio in your car. I never really knew how a “carrier wave” worked before! And Josh had a lot of fun riffs too, continually referring to the original “audio wave” diagram as some manner of ghosts and making fun of all the weird-ass shit on the radio these days. XD Good stuff – I like his art stuff, but it’s always great to see a fresh “Fun With Shorts.” :)
C) And finally, we wrapped up with GrayStillPlays and “When candy becomes 1000x more dangerous,” aka Gray plays Happy Wheels! We started with a bottle throw where Gray had to find a way to get a bottle into a platform that was hanging from a chain (meaning it MOVED when he tried to throw bottles into it – after a lot of close calls and a number of unwanted wins, he finally worked a bottle into the right slot for “Gray will find a way”), then moved onto a “throw yourself” board where Gray had to fling Bike Dad the furthest distance to be a part of the creator’s next level (this took a LOT of clinging to his bicycle as it rotated rapidly around and around the flinging ball, and he ended up going the distance in pieces, but he did make it all the way to end); the first Candy Board, which was a candy-themed climbing board where Gray had to climb candy-corn-walls in his wheel of lollipops to the win (dodging such things as homing mines and his own legs coming off in the process – took a few tries, but he got there); a blue rope swing that turned into a ball fall which turned into a sword throw (Gray learned a valuable lesson about going down the ball fall feet first on his first attempt); a “trust me” board where Gray had to follow the directions on screen to make it safely to the end of the board (except halfway through the creator started lying to him and he had to go down the pit of spikes they told him to avoid – admittedly Gray was expecting that and did quite well SORT OF following instructions XD); the second Candy Board, a tour through a candy land where Gray had to work his way through a violent pan of popcorn, go over the Skittles bridge, and avoid the weird cupcake in the cupcake line (it all looked absolutely delicious, Gray was impressed); a Russian ball fall that became a triangle-spike fall halfway down (Gray lost his legs but got down there with his life), “Pogo Fight Red,” aka the hardest pogo fight board Gray has ever done (featuring a dude launching himself at Gray with a battle axe and the telekinetic field of butcher’s cleavers – Gray ended up dragging himself to the end with no legs after losing them to the cleavers); and the third Candy Board, which was the weekly Dylan Snider creation and featured Gray going through a snowy-themed Candyland while being chased by an angry gingerbread man armed with a crossbow riding a gingerbread train, then having to get across an icy lake with three very deadly gingerbread figure skaters on it (Gray ended up bisected by those blades SOOO much, and eventually got to the end minus one son and one arm). XD Delightful stuff, as always – I’m always thrilled when the HW community brings their A game!
Workout: Back on the bike today, and back to Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark with the next episode in Season 2, “Into The Deathlands!” This was a whole-party adventure, with all the chaos that implies. XD As Luke wanted to get straight into said adventure, he’d had everyone roll for their downtime separately and report to him to sum up the results – Zillah, as you might imagine after her incredibly stressful trip through Castle Wisenshire last time, spent her downtime going to a pub of ill repute and picking fights until her stress was down to two; Barnaby bribed an official to bring their Heat down by two – but then went out drinking to reduce stress, overindulged, and started bragging about the bribe, bringing their Heat back UP by two, for a net zero result; Lilith went to their “doctor” for more help with her smashed body and managed to heal all the damage, took in a play to reduce stress, and then – upon discovering Barnaby’s failure at reducing Heat – did some ghosty business around the opera house to try and convince all the guards around there that the nonsense was all due to ghosts – this resulted in Heat going down by two again (and Lilith getting a bonus downtime action, but nobody seemed inclined to call that out); Edvard worked on figuring out how to teach his latest Wonderful Mechanical Man how to love (PLATONICALLY, he insisted to Barnaby, who was under the impression Edvard had made himself a “make-out doll” and MAY have been using it as such) and went to visit a mystic to indulge his own vice – which turned out to be Kasimir in a hat (fortunately, that meant that Kasimir could use his Functioning Vice ability on Edvard and up his reduced stress from one tick to three); and Kasimir sat around in a mystic’s hat defrauding people as he alternated putting hot and cold packs on his leg and acquired two strong goats as an asset because he can’t be bothered healing his soul-curse damage. :p Oh, and we learned that a) the ghost that Kasimir picked up from the balloon race is still around and occasionally pressing on Kasimir’s shoulder, and b) Kasimir is a licensed babysitter, which is apparently a very difficult license to get in Volisport because so many people either kill the baby or forget to bribe the proctor. XD
ANYWAY – the story actually opened with the gang all in Eleanor’s townhouse, with her eagerly telling everyone that, thanks to reading the diary Barnaby and Zillah stole from Uncle Monty (Barnaby insisted he’d just inherited it early) and studying some old maps of the Volisport train lines across the deathlands outside the city, she thought she had an idea of where the mysterious “Barricade” mentioned in his speech to the Brighteners might be – down an old, SUPPOSEDLY decommissioned train line that ends up at the foot of some mountains out there, where there are lots of caverns to hide a giant stargate-looking device. So they needed to, SOMEHOW, acquire a train they could take out there and take a look. Edvard’s first thought was just using one of those little rail-carts you can propel yourself, but Eleanor insisted it was too far, and Zillah was like “and the ghosts will get us” (Luke/Eleanor corrected her saying “what’s out there are HORRORS, not ghosts – think ghosts but worse”). Barnaby said that his family had a personal, private carriage with all their luxuries aboard that they could use, but they didn’t have a personal locomotive to go with it – fortunately, Lilith was one step ahead and said that they’d done a pretty big favor for the Gut-Cutters (the gang of murderous children from Phase Two of Season One) that live in the old Coalridge train yard – perhaps they could be prevailed upon to help get them a train? Kasimir wasn’t really keen on any of this – an annoyed Eleanor reminded him they had a bargain, and he was like “I know, but I’m under the effects of a half-curse and I’m not exactly happy about it,” getting her to back off a bit. But he did agree that going to the Gut-Cutters was probably their best option for anything locomotive-related.
So – smash cut to the gang visiting the Gut-Cutters and their leader Bug at their station (Bug having sprouted up to a whole three-and-a-half feet). Bug greeted the gang warmly – ESPECIALLY Zillah, who got to pat him on the head and NOT lose a finger. Lilith was immediately charmed by the crush, and Kasimir promptly got Zillah to stand nice and close to him while he asked them about the best way to acquire a train. Bug, after some deliberation, said that while they could definitely STORE a train for them, not a problem (they have control of those old sheds and know who to pay off and who to knife), GETTING one was trickier, because obviously any train company would immediately be suspicious of where the hell their train had gone. However, he pointed out that if they managed to somehow stage a train accident in the deathlands themselves, and snuck the train back, everyone would just assume that the train derailed or something, and then it could be stored until such time as the gang needed it. Edvard said that probably the best thing to do would be to destroy a bridge over a river (or, rather, over where a river used to be, as Luke explained the deathlands were like a horrible ghosty desert) and pretend the locomotive had toppled into the depths, which Bug thought was a fine idea. Edvard produced some maps for everyone to look at (having loaded up on map books, puzzle books, and biscuits beforehand for the journey – Mumbles commandeered a coloring book to draw a bleeding Bluecoat in it), and it was decided that their best chance would be to take out a bridge on the line to the Imperial City. Kasimir briefly tried to suggest that they just steal the train itself and “slum it” on the locomotive on their way to their destination, but between the Gut-Cutters saying that they wanted any freight the train was carrying as their payment for helping, Barnaby absolutely REFUSING to consider “slumming” in any form, and it being pointed out that their actual destination was down a DIFFERENT, more heavily guarded line where a first-class carriage might help them out, he relented and said they could fake derailing the train and sneak it back to Volisport with the freight.
And so, with the engagement roll nigh, Luke allowed everyone one last chance to plan! And Edvard, upon being told that the deathlands are just as horrible as the name suggests, decided to try and make a personal “ghost field” (AKA a barrier against ghosts – I think Luke’s confused “the layer of reality in which ghosts normally operate” with the lightning barriers used to keep the worst of them out of the city) for Barnaby’s carriage. He did very well on the Tinker roll, creating a set of pylons that he could set up magnetically around the carriage –
Cue Barnaby informing everyone that all the metal in his carriage was gold. (And all the wood oak.) Luke decided that, for the sake of poor Edvard’s cool invention working, the Fortescues got sold a lemon in this case and that the “gold” was in fact pyrite, and if it wasn’t magnetic before, it is now. After all, this is G’eth, where there are two suns and space comes down at night (apparently they’d just established that in the Oxventure, in fact – crap, I forget what episode that was, though. Before “Legacy Of Dragons,” I remember that much!). XD That’s where I left it – we’ll see how the rest of the planning, and the all-important engagement roll, goes tomorrow! :D
And that, along with answering Moose's latest round of messages, is how I end my vacation. And now I have to get off and actually go to bed because I have to get up at 7 AM again and go catch up with everything at work. I mean, at least it's a very short week -- two full days, one half day -- and I go straight into a non-cleaning weekend, but -- it's not the SAME when you have to go back to the old routine, you know? *sigh* Ah well, nothing for it. . .night all!
Tumblr: Had a very good day on here, especially since I skipped the gaming to try and focus on the drafting (and the YouTube) –
Victor Luvs Alice – After catching up on my dashboard and tracked tags, I spent most of the day working on the draft of the “Weapons” post for Smiler’s Otherland – ended up finishing both that and the “Not-Incorrect Quotes” set this evening. :) I also queued up this week’s “Sims 4 Builds Update” post featuring the Tranquil Circle Spa for Wednesday, some A:MR fanart of Alice for Thursday, some CB fanart of Victor and Victoria for Friday, and I got all eighty-five pictures for the next Chill Valicer Save update (them getting back into the swing of things on the farm and in the store) sorted early. So hopefully I can get a head start on THOSE posts later this week!
Valice Multiverse – Pretty easy night over here – had two ask replies to do (one in response to the prompts I reblogged the other night), an ask to send (as my regular partner Brynlee Marie also reblogged the prompts as well as sending me one, so I had to send one back), and a reply to answer (Marie is interested in Valicer In The Dark, so it appears I’ll be adding that to my list of AUs for this account!). Nothing too taxing. :)
Writing: Started a new snippet for my Valicer In The Dark Au – “Home Sweet Lair,” which will cover the gang finding Elder Gutknecht’s house in Six Towers! Currently the trio are just wandering through Six Towers generally, having lost the Bluecoats but having no real destination in mind of where they should go now. Smiler’s pointed out to Victor that his eyes glow whenever he starts looking for ghosts (to Victor’s own surprise), and Victor’s asked Smiler how the hell they’re staying so positive about this situation. Turns out Smiler thinks that making new friends is a net positive, even if the situation is shitty – and Alice agrees, pointing out the other two could have left when the murder accusations started being slung around, only for Victor to say “no, because you two helped me unconditionally, so I could only do the same for you” and Smiler to say “no, because that goes against being an Advocate and besides, I like both of you already.” :) Bit of a weird story to have a warm fuzzy moment like that in it, but still – I’ll take it. :)
YouTube: No Sims meant that there was more than enough time for YouTube, and I made sure to do my best to keep up with everything I might want to watch –
A) Watched a couple of OXBoxtra videos in the Watch Later in the mid-afternoon to start things off –
I. “Fallout 4 Dirty Wastelander Cocktail: Make a Dirty Wastelander with Nuka Cola, Whiskey, Mutfruit!” As you might imagine, this video was made a WHILE ago – it just so happened to pop up in my Recommendeds the other day, and I decided I had to watch it. XD It featured Mike and Andy making the “Dirty Wastelander” drink from Fallout 4, or as close as they could to it – while, obviously, the real world does have whiskey, they ended up substituting blackberries for mutfruit, and an unknown brand of soda for Nuka-Cola (it in fact looked like a cherry cola, judging by the red sheen). Everything was muddled (aka mashed) and stirred together, and Jane was called in to taste-test the resultant creation – her first word on it was “lumpy.” XD But after she got past all the blackberry chunks and seeds (Mike explaining that was the bit that made it dirty), she said it was actually quite tasty, if a bit strong, and the boys happily joined her in sampling some. So yes, very successful cocktail-making! Not that I’m ever gonna make it, given that I’m not a drinker, but if I could find a virgin variant, maybe. . .
II. “7 Times You Died Right at the Start, RIP You: The Return” – by contrast, this was an OXtra list released just today, with Ellen and Andy talking about those games that involved you dying pretty much right at the start – either because you’d actually be taking control of a different character for the rest of it (like, poor super-spy Dalton of Watch Dogs Legion dies after the opening mission, but that’s okay because you’re actually going to be swapping between all SORTS of different characters as you recruit folks to the cause of fighting the technocracy) or your character is going to get resurrected somehow (like Abe of Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, who gets brought back to life after cracking his head falling down a bunch of cliffs because he has a destiny to restore his world from the evil capitalists who have basically sucked it dry – yes, there were jokes about how this related to the current world situation), or your character is now some manner of supernatural beast who doesn’t require a pulse to function (like the Fledgling of Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines, who gets killed in the opening cutscene by their sire while having sex, but immediately rewakens as a vampire, with all the powers that make playing that game fun). So yeah, sometimes death is not the end! Of your video game, anyway. :p
B) Then, this evening, it was over to the Subs for the latest from Josh Way – “Fun With Shorts: On the Air!” Yes, Josh took us through a classic short today – a Chevy/GM ad from Jam Handy disguised as an educational short on how radio transmissions work! Well, I say “disguised,” it was actually quite informative about how a signal from a studio microphone actually gets to the radio in your car. I never really knew how a “carrier wave” worked before! And Josh had a lot of fun riffs too, continually referring to the original “audio wave” diagram as some manner of ghosts and making fun of all the weird-ass shit on the radio these days. XD Good stuff – I like his art stuff, but it’s always great to see a fresh “Fun With Shorts.” :)
C) And finally, we wrapped up with GrayStillPlays and “When candy becomes 1000x more dangerous,” aka Gray plays Happy Wheels! We started with a bottle throw where Gray had to find a way to get a bottle into a platform that was hanging from a chain (meaning it MOVED when he tried to throw bottles into it – after a lot of close calls and a number of unwanted wins, he finally worked a bottle into the right slot for “Gray will find a way”), then moved onto a “throw yourself” board where Gray had to fling Bike Dad the furthest distance to be a part of the creator’s next level (this took a LOT of clinging to his bicycle as it rotated rapidly around and around the flinging ball, and he ended up going the distance in pieces, but he did make it all the way to end); the first Candy Board, which was a candy-themed climbing board where Gray had to climb candy-corn-walls in his wheel of lollipops to the win (dodging such things as homing mines and his own legs coming off in the process – took a few tries, but he got there); a blue rope swing that turned into a ball fall which turned into a sword throw (Gray learned a valuable lesson about going down the ball fall feet first on his first attempt); a “trust me” board where Gray had to follow the directions on screen to make it safely to the end of the board (except halfway through the creator started lying to him and he had to go down the pit of spikes they told him to avoid – admittedly Gray was expecting that and did quite well SORT OF following instructions XD); the second Candy Board, a tour through a candy land where Gray had to work his way through a violent pan of popcorn, go over the Skittles bridge, and avoid the weird cupcake in the cupcake line (it all looked absolutely delicious, Gray was impressed); a Russian ball fall that became a triangle-spike fall halfway down (Gray lost his legs but got down there with his life), “Pogo Fight Red,” aka the hardest pogo fight board Gray has ever done (featuring a dude launching himself at Gray with a battle axe and the telekinetic field of butcher’s cleavers – Gray ended up dragging himself to the end with no legs after losing them to the cleavers); and the third Candy Board, which was the weekly Dylan Snider creation and featured Gray going through a snowy-themed Candyland while being chased by an angry gingerbread man armed with a crossbow riding a gingerbread train, then having to get across an icy lake with three very deadly gingerbread figure skaters on it (Gray ended up bisected by those blades SOOO much, and eventually got to the end minus one son and one arm). XD Delightful stuff, as always – I’m always thrilled when the HW community brings their A game!
Workout: Back on the bike today, and back to Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark with the next episode in Season 2, “Into The Deathlands!” This was a whole-party adventure, with all the chaos that implies. XD As Luke wanted to get straight into said adventure, he’d had everyone roll for their downtime separately and report to him to sum up the results – Zillah, as you might imagine after her incredibly stressful trip through Castle Wisenshire last time, spent her downtime going to a pub of ill repute and picking fights until her stress was down to two; Barnaby bribed an official to bring their Heat down by two – but then went out drinking to reduce stress, overindulged, and started bragging about the bribe, bringing their Heat back UP by two, for a net zero result; Lilith went to their “doctor” for more help with her smashed body and managed to heal all the damage, took in a play to reduce stress, and then – upon discovering Barnaby’s failure at reducing Heat – did some ghosty business around the opera house to try and convince all the guards around there that the nonsense was all due to ghosts – this resulted in Heat going down by two again (and Lilith getting a bonus downtime action, but nobody seemed inclined to call that out); Edvard worked on figuring out how to teach his latest Wonderful Mechanical Man how to love (PLATONICALLY, he insisted to Barnaby, who was under the impression Edvard had made himself a “make-out doll” and MAY have been using it as such) and went to visit a mystic to indulge his own vice – which turned out to be Kasimir in a hat (fortunately, that meant that Kasimir could use his Functioning Vice ability on Edvard and up his reduced stress from one tick to three); and Kasimir sat around in a mystic’s hat defrauding people as he alternated putting hot and cold packs on his leg and acquired two strong goats as an asset because he can’t be bothered healing his soul-curse damage. :p Oh, and we learned that a) the ghost that Kasimir picked up from the balloon race is still around and occasionally pressing on Kasimir’s shoulder, and b) Kasimir is a licensed babysitter, which is apparently a very difficult license to get in Volisport because so many people either kill the baby or forget to bribe the proctor. XD
ANYWAY – the story actually opened with the gang all in Eleanor’s townhouse, with her eagerly telling everyone that, thanks to reading the diary Barnaby and Zillah stole from Uncle Monty (Barnaby insisted he’d just inherited it early) and studying some old maps of the Volisport train lines across the deathlands outside the city, she thought she had an idea of where the mysterious “Barricade” mentioned in his speech to the Brighteners might be – down an old, SUPPOSEDLY decommissioned train line that ends up at the foot of some mountains out there, where there are lots of caverns to hide a giant stargate-looking device. So they needed to, SOMEHOW, acquire a train they could take out there and take a look. Edvard’s first thought was just using one of those little rail-carts you can propel yourself, but Eleanor insisted it was too far, and Zillah was like “and the ghosts will get us” (Luke/Eleanor corrected her saying “what’s out there are HORRORS, not ghosts – think ghosts but worse”). Barnaby said that his family had a personal, private carriage with all their luxuries aboard that they could use, but they didn’t have a personal locomotive to go with it – fortunately, Lilith was one step ahead and said that they’d done a pretty big favor for the Gut-Cutters (the gang of murderous children from Phase Two of Season One) that live in the old Coalridge train yard – perhaps they could be prevailed upon to help get them a train? Kasimir wasn’t really keen on any of this – an annoyed Eleanor reminded him they had a bargain, and he was like “I know, but I’m under the effects of a half-curse and I’m not exactly happy about it,” getting her to back off a bit. But he did agree that going to the Gut-Cutters was probably their best option for anything locomotive-related.
So – smash cut to the gang visiting the Gut-Cutters and their leader Bug at their station (Bug having sprouted up to a whole three-and-a-half feet). Bug greeted the gang warmly – ESPECIALLY Zillah, who got to pat him on the head and NOT lose a finger. Lilith was immediately charmed by the crush, and Kasimir promptly got Zillah to stand nice and close to him while he asked them about the best way to acquire a train. Bug, after some deliberation, said that while they could definitely STORE a train for them, not a problem (they have control of those old sheds and know who to pay off and who to knife), GETTING one was trickier, because obviously any train company would immediately be suspicious of where the hell their train had gone. However, he pointed out that if they managed to somehow stage a train accident in the deathlands themselves, and snuck the train back, everyone would just assume that the train derailed or something, and then it could be stored until such time as the gang needed it. Edvard said that probably the best thing to do would be to destroy a bridge over a river (or, rather, over where a river used to be, as Luke explained the deathlands were like a horrible ghosty desert) and pretend the locomotive had toppled into the depths, which Bug thought was a fine idea. Edvard produced some maps for everyone to look at (having loaded up on map books, puzzle books, and biscuits beforehand for the journey – Mumbles commandeered a coloring book to draw a bleeding Bluecoat in it), and it was decided that their best chance would be to take out a bridge on the line to the Imperial City. Kasimir briefly tried to suggest that they just steal the train itself and “slum it” on the locomotive on their way to their destination, but between the Gut-Cutters saying that they wanted any freight the train was carrying as their payment for helping, Barnaby absolutely REFUSING to consider “slumming” in any form, and it being pointed out that their actual destination was down a DIFFERENT, more heavily guarded line where a first-class carriage might help them out, he relented and said they could fake derailing the train and sneak it back to Volisport with the freight.
And so, with the engagement roll nigh, Luke allowed everyone one last chance to plan! And Edvard, upon being told that the deathlands are just as horrible as the name suggests, decided to try and make a personal “ghost field” (AKA a barrier against ghosts – I think Luke’s confused “the layer of reality in which ghosts normally operate” with the lightning barriers used to keep the worst of them out of the city) for Barnaby’s carriage. He did very well on the Tinker roll, creating a set of pylons that he could set up magnetically around the carriage –
Cue Barnaby informing everyone that all the metal in his carriage was gold. (And all the wood oak.) Luke decided that, for the sake of poor Edvard’s cool invention working, the Fortescues got sold a lemon in this case and that the “gold” was in fact pyrite, and if it wasn’t magnetic before, it is now. After all, this is G’eth, where there are two suns and space comes down at night (apparently they’d just established that in the Oxventure, in fact – crap, I forget what episode that was, though. Before “Legacy Of Dragons,” I remember that much!). XD That’s where I left it – we’ll see how the rest of the planning, and the all-important engagement roll, goes tomorrow! :D
And that, along with answering Moose's latest round of messages, is how I end my vacation. And now I have to get off and actually go to bed because I have to get up at 7 AM again and go catch up with everything at work. I mean, at least it's a very short week -- two full days, one half day -- and I go straight into a non-cleaning weekend, but -- it's not the SAME when you have to go back to the old routine, you know? *sigh* Ah well, nothing for it. . .night all!
