Busy Nicer Sunday
Mar. 3rd, 2024 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickNot only did we get to see the sun, temperatures actually reached into the low 60s this afternoon! How about that! And it's supposed to hover around the high 50s mark for a little while yet. . .the problem is, starting Tuesday, it's also supposed to start raining. A lot. *sigh* We just had a hard, driving rain last night -- can we not get even more soaked so soon? I swear, the rivers are never gonna stop flooding at this rate. . . Anyway, I ended up having a pretty nice, pretty productive Sunday --
Tumblr: Had a somewhat more productive day over here – while there was nothing happening on Valice Multiverse again, I was able to catch up fully on Victor Luvs Alice’s dash, reblog a post about why I chose my icon (it’s currently a cute shot of Victor and Alice from early in the Chill Valicer Save’s lifespan, before it was Valicer, because, well, my blog name is “Victor Luvs Alice” XD), and get the tags and image alt text on my two Chill Valicer Save House Upgrade posts sorted! So that’s all good for this week. Still have to figure out what I’m doing Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but hopefully I can get that done tomorrow.
Fallout 4: Well, today’s trip to the Commonwealth turned Fallout 4 into “Inventory Management: The Game.” XD Specifically, it was all about me doing the final prepwork to get Victor into his Power Armor and on his way to the Glowing Sea, which involved a LOT of emptying inventories – his and other people’s – and rearranging things about his Red Rocket house. If you would like details –
A) Started things off by storing all the junk and various armor/weapon mods Victor was carrying in the workshop, then going over to Deacon (who was busy rotating the spit roaster outside the main building) to empty out HIS inventory of all junk and apparel (that wasn’t his own – accidentally stole his sunglasses, quickly gave them back to him) – I let him keep the weapons and mines he was holding, as I figured he could use them while working for the Railroad. :p I then dumped all of the junk in the workbench, then started looking for where I kept clothes in this settlement –
B) And went “actually, you know what? I have a proper “bedroom” for Victor now, I should build him a dresser by his bed. Oh, and put up Grognak’s Axe on the weapon display while I’m at it.” So that’s what I did. :) I also ended up building an armor display mannequin and putting it by the axe a bit later, slapping Grognak’s costume and the lieutentant’s hat Victor earned from the USS Constitution and its crew on that. XD Hey, look, I thought it was a funny pairing, what can I say.
C) While I was getting that done, I also went into the Red Rocket’s office (where the dogs have their beds – though, actually, I should move those into Victor’s bedroom, shouldn’t I?) and put away all the non-quest-item holotapes that Victor had picked up into the desk there, and all the various paper notes and scraps (again, that weren’t quest items he couldn’t drop) into the cabinet just outside the door, along with some old ruined books and the like. Most of these don’t actually really weigh much, but it’s just nice to be able to sort out the old inventory a bit more! And while I was at it, I moved the two rotating magazine racks into the hallway by the new flat shelf magazine rack, so all my magazines are in one place. *nods* Organization!
D) With THAT done, I had Victor scrap down a spare assault rifle he was carrying for some reason, then go over to the power armor station and go ahead and install a jet pack on the torso (after making the joke of Victor saying he could make a jet pack out of an extinguisher in the Playthrough Progression last week, and Deacon and Alice going “so do it then,” I kinda had to), and put a VATS Matrix Overlay mod on the helmet (increases VATS hit chance, and as I do use a fair amount of VATS. . .). Then it was over to the cooking station to cook up as much meat and veg as Victor had on him before having a melon flambe supper and hitting the sack at 8:45 PM.
E) Next morning, hearing Ada outside nearby, I had Victor track her down and – after confirming all systems were go – take her on as his companion again, sending Deacon back to Railroad HQ. (I am very glad that I learned canceling sending a companion to a specific settlement means they go back to their actual home again!) I then emptied out Ada’s inventory of everything except one red bandanna (she can’t wear it, but we’ll pretend she can) and a subway token (just in case we come across Subway Steward protectrons) and stored all the junk and mods in the workbench again. With that sorted, it was over to the weapons workbench to scrap down all the spare 10mms, hunting rifles, and combat rifles that Victor had picked up – and, because I had the materials, to slap a long recon scope on the Mighty Sniper. :) Been meaning to do that for a while, frankly – if any gun should have a recon scope, it’s the sniper!
F) But hey, while we’re improving things, why not go ahead and improve Ada as well? Victor now has better Science! after all. So I went over to the Robotics station and had her hop in, and started looking at what I could do. There wasn’t much I wanted to fiddle with, but I discovered that I could give her legs new armor that would help increase her damage resistances AND improve her carry capacity. So, with all my remaining adhesive, I gave her a Hydraulic Frame on her left leg, and a Voltaic Frame on her right leg. Though it wasn’t until after that I realized giving her a Voltaic Frame on both legs would have actually boosted her carry capacity a bit more. . .ah well, live and learn I suppose.
G) All right, with Ada thus improved (and up to about 570 carry capacity, nice), I had Victor grab his port-a-potty, go take a little shower, and – after determining the stupid thing could NOT be scrapped – dumped his T-45 power armor torso in the workbench (figures I’d have had Ada take a piece that was already X-01). I then gave Ada a bunch of grenades and mines, a couple of spare guns (like the Silver Submachine Gun and the syringer rifle I’m holding onto until I get the nicer one from Vault 81), and the cloth wall and GPS beacon from the camping kit, before taking a deep breath and hopping into the power armor to see what was what, carry capacity wise. Good news – the mods on the legs brought it up to 460 carry weight!
H) Bad news – Victor was still over a hundred pounds over that. Hmmm. Well, I knew one way to reduce some weight, and that was to trade out the clothes Victor was wearing – I think they don’t count as “equipped” when you’re inside power armor. So I had him take off his military fatigues and all his various armor bits in favor of slapping on the hazmat suit he’d picked up from the old Switchboard (might as well have extra protection from rads should he need to get out of his armor for any reason), and handed all the clothes over to Ada. That got weight down a little, but not enough, and I didn’t want to hand over any of the weapons I was currently carrying –
And then I remembered just how much food Victor had on him. Cue me dumping so much meat and veg on poor Ada I’m surprised her newly-upgraded legs didn’t buckle. XD THAT finally got Victor under the 460 weight limit, so I had him hop into the Power Armor and head out the garage door, looking off to the horizon! Next time, we start toward the Glowing Sea –
. . .right after I see if Victor can build a portable power armor workstation (comes with the “portable workbench” mod), because it occurs to me I might want that now that I’m running around in power armor. *makes a note to herself*
Writing: Another update to the FO4 Playthrough Progression today, if you can believe it. :p While the write-up was pretty much the same as the above in the sense of “everybody did inventory management in preparation for Victor going into the Glowing Sea,” I did change up the order of things a bit and update how a few things went down – namely:
A) Victor did the jet pack and VATS Matrix Overlay mods on the power armor BEFORE storing any of his other junk (and I indicated the VATS Overlay was already in the helmet, Victor just had to get it activated and working – not sure how he could BUILD that with random junk XD)
B) Everyone helped with storing things so it would go quicker (for example, Alice put away all the holotapes and notes in the proper cabinets in the safety of the actual building, since she couldn’t go outside anyway)
C) Deacon going back to HQ was the result of a “family meeting” about who should actually be going into the Glowing Sea and who shouldn’t – it was decided that Deacon should head back to Railroad HQ to fill them in, then Victor, Ada, and Alice would head to the edge of the Glowing Sea, where Alice would wait while Victor and Ada went inside – that way, if anything happened or they needed outside help, she’d be available. (Also, she doesn’t know how large doses or radiation affects vampires, so she doesn’t want to risk it unless it’s an emergency – understandable.) Should make writing that bit a little easier, as I’ll only have Victor and Ada to keep track of, instead of having to add Alice into everything. :p
D) And Victor, unlike me, realized he was going to have to give Ada a bunch of food to carry because otherwise he was going to be overweight in the power armor BEFORE he hopped in it and checked the carry capacity. Admittedly, this is because he had to manually empty all of his backpacks before getting in, while I’m playing a video game which automatically de-equips them for me when I hop inside the frame. XD He also warned Ada that he was going to have to rely on her to carry interesting stuff he finds after upgrading her legs, which prompted Ada to go “. . .oh no.” XD I do love having the other characters tease Victor for being a hoarder. XD
So yeah – after all that, the team is at the same endpoint, with Victor testing out the power armor to make sure it’s good, with Ada carrying a bunch of his shit so they can start their journey to, and the into, the Glowing Sea! Right after I have Victor realize he should bash up some sort of portable power armor station in case he needs it. . .though I guess that would require him to carry some junk to repair the armor. . .we’ll grab some aluminum from the workbench and see what happens. :P
YouTube: An easier-to-summarize session of Fallout 4 meant that, amazingly, I WAS actually able to catch up on my YouTube today, yay! :D So here’s my Sunday THREE for the day –
A) First up, a split double dose of GrayStillPlays (one watched before my workout, one after) –
I. “Testing Cars from different Countries in GTA 5!” Yesterday’s video, this one was an International Alex Torture Board! Specifically, this one featured Alex setting up four different challenges based around England, Russia, Germany, and the USA, and providing Gray with two cars from each of these countries (hidden inside garages, so Gray wouldn’t immediately know what he was getting when he picked) that he could try to use to complete the challenges. His only caveat was that Gray could not choose cars from the same country back to back (for example, if he chose one of the English cars first, he then had to pick an American, Russian, or German car before going back to England). Gray’s international tour included –
a. English Speedbumps – a timed course where Gray had to get over a series of terrible speedbumps in twenty seconds. The first few speedbumps weren’t too bad, though they did have a tendency to send the cars flying – but then Gray discovered the penultimate two TRANSFORMED, with various bits of the platforms used to make them sticking out all over the place, and the final bump, while low, had slowdown sticks embedded in it. So yeah – not a fun trip over England’s roads!
b. Russian Potholes – An untimed challenge where Gray had to climb a hill and get down the other side, all while avoiding the giant road-length pits standing in for potholes. And yes, the potholes were ON THE HILL, both going up and going down. The problem here was a slow car wouldn’t get over the potholes, while a fast one would go flying off the top of the hill and probably off the course. Neither were great outcomes, as Gray found. XD
c. German Sleepy Autobahn – another timed challenge, where Gray had fifty seconds to make his way down the autobahn highway, avoiding various obstacles like other cars trying to cut him off, random people in the middle of the road, and various bits of road construction. . .all while having the “falling asleep” status effect, meaning his screen kept blinking black and he kept losing control of his car. This one was basically just luck – well, that and Gray learning when to take his foot off the gas so he didn’t go careening off the side of the road. :P
d. America’s High-Speed Chase But You’re The Criminal – and finally, an untimed Michael Bay sequence where Gray was chasing an armored truck down a highway, zooming around all the various obstacles in his path (which included a construction site where only half the road was there – the other half dipped down into a pit where he had to ramp off a container of gravel to get back on the road and continue the chase), and doing his best to avoid the slowdown circle weaving and circling around the truck, the truck’s EMP blasts, and the helicopter flying over the truck shooting rockets at him. You know, just a typical day on Florida’s roads. XD
So, which country reigned supreme? Well, I can tell you it wasn’t America – Gray got the Liberator monster truck and a cyber truck out of that garage, and neither could handle the English speedbumps. Neither was it Russia (who provided him with a rustbucket vehicle that WAS able to JUST handle the speedbumps, but couldn’t take on its own potholes) or Germany (which gave him a Mercedes that got all the way to the autobahn, but couldn’t stop crashing while Gray fell asleep). Which, of course, necessarily means the winner was England! Oh gee, the country that Alex is from, who would have thought. XD It started off the video weak by giving Gray a Mini-Cooper that also couldn’t get past the speedbumps, but when he finally went back to it, he found a McLaren electric super car waiting for him. The only car that could make it across every challenge! :D Not without fail (the autobahn still gave him trouble, and the chase was a hell of a tricky thing to manage), but it did it in the end. Rule Britannia, I guess! At least for this challenge – England, you’re not allowed to rule anything else anymore, remember that. :P
II. “When science experiments go terribly wrong” – Today’s video, featuring Gray playing Algodoo! Which is apparently Happy Wheels’s low-rez, low-rent cousin, in that it allows people to make their own levels and mini-games within it, just with much lower production values (most levels look like they were made in MS Paint, though there were a few that actually used nice assets). Gray’s tour of the game today involved becoming a knock-off Indominus Rex (with a skull-like head) and escaping his pen to destroy the guards outside; helping an MS Paint person eat breakfast by shoving Coke and Mentos down their gullet until they had let off enough explosive burps to please the game; taking a rickety racing car over a huge jump and crash-landing before rolling up against the crash pads in a crumpled heap; struggling with the world’s longest and most difficult Video Game Motorcross Course (where the bike was constantly trying to kill him by flipping over and smashing his groin with its scoop front); taking a bunch of children to school via the tunnel through the secret facility before getting everyone smashed in the pit of despair; running from the police through simplistic traditional movie obstacles before crashing into a blockade and being reduced to a single hand; and helping a giant man eat tiny peg-people before pooping them out again. You know, just the everyday nonsense we see on this channel. XD I hope this game gets featured more – it’s fun to watch Gray play stuff like this.
B) And second (or, well, third) up, we had Jon and “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 26 - Jeff and the Giant War Crimes!” Which featured Mayor Bob making some – less-than-smart decisions when it came to taking back a settlement that had been taken over by Gunners; recruiting a new settler via a rescue mission; and doing some more work with the Nightingales. All while followed by the titular Jeff as he tried to source stories for the new newspaper in town. XD Let’s get into the details:
I. Things picked up with Bob in Brandis’s bunker (having just convinced him to return to the Brotherhood), deciding to listen to the latest message on his and Jake’s private frequency. Turns out Jake was pretty sure that one of their settlements had fallen to the Gunners and he needed Bob to check it out and, if necessary, liberate it. Can’t have Gunners throwing their weight around, after all. He sent Bob the coordinates –
And the settlement in question turned out to be Starlight Drive-In. The settlement that Bob gave Preston Garvey control of. Jon noted that having his Minuteman settlement taken over by the Gunners was probably pretty embarrassing for poor Preston, while I was like “I have a hard time believing Preston wouldn’t mobilize his settlers to kick Gunner ass, given how much he canonically loathes them.”
II. Before he could go kick Gunner ass, though, Bob had a few things to take care of! His first stop was Sanctuary, to build a new artillery cannon to go with the flaming arch at the entrance – but after, while he was heading down to Concord to drop off his interviews with the super mutant survivors with Alyssa at her place, he ran into a fellow crossing the bridge toward the settlement – one Ed Rocke, wearing a Red Rocket jumpsuit. He asked if Bob was the “manager” and said that he had to help his friend RT – they were working over at Red Rocket 1409 when some hooligans with switchblades came in, ran him off, and captured RT, dragging him off into an underground storage facility in the store, talking about bets and gambling. A baffled Bob asked him to make sense, but Ed just repeated that they were attacked at Red Rocket 1409 and now he was asking the manager for help – what was confusing about that? Jon suspected poor Ed wasn’t fully right in the head, but had Bob agree to help, and Ed handed over his bandanna to Bob to help identify him as a friend to RT. As it turned out, the Red Rocket in question was the one near Lexington, not far from the Starlight Drive-In, so Jon figured Bob could swing by once he’d liberated his settlement.
III. With that taken care of, Bob headed over to Alyssa’s and gave her the interviews, then – after going back to Sanctuary to sleep a day – came back to pick up the first edition of her paper, The Voice Of The Commonwealth! (Or, well, he chased Alyssa down into Concord to get it, as she’d wandered off while he wasn’t looking.) Alyssa thanked him for his help and said she was already working on the second edition, and asked if Bob wouldn’t mind helping her new assistant, Jeff (a dude in a nice suit and glasses, who did his part of the conversation from back in Alyssa’s house as the game had gotten confused about where the chat was supposed to be happening) go conduct some more interviews and source new stories. Bob said sure, why not –
And then discovered that that had given him Jeff as an unofficial companion. Making things immediately awkward as Bob had not intended to get any of those interviews right away. XD He decided that he’d just deal with Jeff hanging around and hope that he was good at murder –
IV. Because it was time to go visit Starlight Drive-In and take care of its Gunner problem! Bob went along the route leading from the Drumlin Diner because that would allow him to sneak up to the town from behind the old giant movie screen, and the moment he got close, he heard Gunner announcements, confirming the place had been taken over! After getting annoyed with the settlers and especially Preston for just standing around and letting themselves be subjugated, Bob proceeded to sneak into the movie screen structure –
And throw an ARTILLERY SMOKE GRENADE at the nearest Gunner he could see. For a moment, it looked like his plan to bombard the place with cannon fire wouldn’t work, as the game was like “you can’t fire on a friendly settlement!” – but then Fallout 4 and Sim Settlements 2 changed its mind and let the bombardment rain down. XD Bob followed that up by tossing grenades at any Gunners he could find (including two freaking Legendaries!) and figuring out the best position to fire at them –
Only to find himself under fire by the SETTLERS as well. As it turns out, raining artillery fire down willy-nilly and then throwing grenades around does NOT endear you to the people you were trying to “save.” A panicked Bob had to kill a bunch of his own settlers (with the help of Jeff, who as it turned out WAS pretty good at murder) before desperately running away once it was clear the last of the Gunners had fallen. Though he made sure to check the corpse of the one Legendary Gunner he could find – Crippling Sledgehammer, of course (though Jon admitted that was actually pretty good with the right build – just not HIS). He retreated to Concord to tell Jake the problem was solved (fortunately, Jake did not ask any follow-up questions, though he did obliviously lay on the guilt by saying how much he appreciated what Bob did for him), then ran back to Sanctuary (which now has a full-on “eye of Sauron” flaming gate at the entrance, incidentally – strung with Christmas lights XD) for a couple of days worth of rest before venturing back to Starlight. Fortunately, by that point, the place had calmed down and willing to let Bob back in without renewing hostilities, and Bob was able to stop Preston Garvey attacking a busted water pump and turn in “Old Guns.” Which, of course, had Preston mention just how thrilled he was that the Minutemen had artillery support again, and how they needed to build artillery in all their settlements now. After most of his town was wrecked by artillery fire. ...the vanilla quests just do NOT mesh well with the mod quests sometimes. Especially when Jon is being Jon. XD
V. With Starlight all sorted (and Bob unfortunately discovering the other Legendary Gunner corpse had despawned while he was away, leaving just the settlers to mock him), Bob decided it was time to rescue Ed Rocke’s friend RT from the nearby Red Rocket! He thus headed over there (making sure to explode the frag mines in his way with a few well-placed shots so Jeff didn’t blow himself up on accident) and found an actual raider group called the Lexington Hooligans having a bit of a tiff with some synths in the area. Once that was done, Bob ventured inside the Red Rocket to find some non-hostile Hooligans hanging around –
And a hatch in the door leading to the Lexington Underground. Bob pickpocketed the key off one of the Hooligans lazing by the front counter (who fortunately didn’t aggro) and headed down, where he found a little office area with some more Hooligans and an albino mongrel. Fighting his way past them, he descended and found the remaining Hooligans defending a fighting ring of some sort. He killed them and headed down to find RT, whom he found fighting another mongrel nearby –
Oh, and discovered that RT was himself a dog. Explaining why the quest was called “Dog Eat Dog.” Bob killed the mongrel and got RT’s trust by letting him sniff the bandanna, then brought him over to the new Red Rocket that Ed was staying at. Ed thanked him profusely, and Bob got his story out of him – basically, the reason Ed talks like he was was because he was raised in a Red Rocket with a bunch of other people, and learned to read from the employee manual. He adopted RT while living there, and RT helped him survive and escape when that Red Rocket was attacked by something. They’ve been traveling from Red Rocket to Red Rocket ever since, doing what work they can, apparently. Bob (and Jon) were touched by his story and let him join the Mayor Bob Collection of Settlements – naturally sending him to live at the Red Rocket by Sanctuary. :) All’s well that ends well, at least so we hope!
VI. With that sorted, Bob decided his next objective was to head back to Mass Bay Medical and see what was happening with the Nightingales, since during his naps he’d picked up a quest to go see them again. Fiona told him where he could find his reward (along with the stuff they’d taken off the dead bodies) and gave him some new ASAM schematics for making Sanitation-based plots, which Bob was pleased by. She also told him that while she was keeping busy trying to fix up some of this old equipment, he should check in with Cassandra and Raphael and see if they had anything for him to do. Bob promptly tracked down Cassandra –
To find her mid-argument with Ellis about what to do with a belligerent raider patient he was treating – Ellis wasn’t sure if the straps would hold the guy down, but wasn’t keen on continuing to sedate him or getting Raphael to hold him down again, as their guard was busy doing other stuff. Cassandra seemed to be trying to impart the lesson that “you can’t save everyone and do everything yourself” on Ellis, but he wasn’t having it, so she instead turned to Bob, saying that she thought Ellis’s problem was that he was continually unsure what the “right” thing to do in some situations was. She asked for Bob’s expert opinion on what he’d do with their raider patient, who was probably a pretty nasty person who’d might go on to kill people – Bob said he wasn’t sure, with Jon adding from his side of the screen that, well, the Hippocratic Oath meant that they HAD to help him regardless of what kind of person he was, but that he was pretty sure them constantly helping people that wanted to hurt them in return was going to end in some sort of tragedy eventually. Bob also said that Ellis was smarter than Cassandra thought – Cassandra agreed, just saying the kid was headstrong too, and had a lot to learn, but she was sure he’d find his way and figure out the “right” thing to do eventually.
VII. However, talking about Ellis with Bob wasn’t what Cassandra wanted to see Bob about – instead, what she wanted was to upgrade Bob’s Vit-O-Matic for scanning people for their SPECIAL stats to also have it diagnose people with any diseases they might have! Bob was all about that and happily let her upgrade the machine, and then promptly tested it out on Jeff and Cassandra herself. Both of them were clean of disease, but both had some very interesting SPECIAL stats. Namely, Cassandra had SUPER high stats, including a THIRTEEN in Intelligence and a TWELVE In Perception, while Jeff. . .Jeff has eights in Strength, Perception, Endurance, and Agility, four in Charisma –
And ONES in Intelligence and Luck. XD Well then. I guess that means he and “Idiot Savant” Bob will get along fine, then!
VIII. Anyway – with that done, Bob went to go see what Raphael wanted – only to run into Ellis. Who said that he thought being a doctor would be easy – if someone needed treatment, treat them – but he was discovering things were harder than he expected, and that maybe Cassandra and Raphael were right in that you couldn’t save everyone, no matter how much you wanted to do the good thing. Bob asked about the patient, and Ellis confirmed he was a raider – one of “Bosco’s guys” according to Raphael. The guy’s been acting downright feral, mumbling to himself, snapping his teeth, and fighting back against all help. Bob assured Ellis that he did his best, and Ellis admitted that he was still struggling with the idea that it might be better to let the guy die, but he’d let Cassandra get a diagnosis first –
And I went, “wait a minute, Bosco? Isn’t that the raider boss who it’s implied has RABIES?!” Oh fuck – I think the Nightingales might be caught up in something that might really be bad, especially if the raider manages to infect one of them. . .
IX. Anyway – Bob then went and met up with Raphael, who asked Bob if he was free to join him on a little quest to meet up with a caravan passing west of Diamond City, near the Library. Bob was indeed, and the two of them set out – only to find the caravan already slaughtered by the local super mutants. Raphael commented that the wreckage looked like the one that the Nightingales had pulled him out of, and Bob asked if they’d been attacked by super mutants too. Raphael said no, it had been raiders –
Specifically, Raphael’s own gang of raiders. Yup, as Jon had semi-suspected, Raphael was a former raider who had turned over a new leaf after joining the Nightingales. As he described it, his gang had attacked a caravan out of stupidity or desperation (having not seen one in weeks) – they hadn’t even planned to shoot anyone, but when the caravan’s own guards opened fire, it turned into a bloodbath. Raphael ended up severely wounded, and his “friends” left him to die after securing the loot from the wiped-out caravan. Raphael doesn’t really remember what happened when the Nightingales rescued him, but he did remember thinking that Fiona’s speech about “second chances” was a load of hooey. And yet, despite planning to ditch them when his legs healed, he just – never did. So it seems sometimes, kindness CAN reform these people. :)
And then a bunch of super mutants attacked and the nice moment was ruined. Fortunately, Bob was easily able to take them out with Jeff and Raphael’s help (getting another Legendary with ANOTHER Sledgehammer, this time a Kneecapper), and once he was done looting the bodies, headed back to report to Fiona (who was looking pretty haggard from a lot of worry and not enough sleep). She thanked him for his help and asked if he’d be willing to play bodyguard for another member of their team, Circe – they got an offer recently from someone offering to give them supplies and finding, and Circe agreed to go meet the person in a neutral location to see what kind of supplies, how much funds, how many strings are attached, yada yada. Fiona just would feel better if she had some backup in case the negotiations turned sour – Bob, who thought this whole thing sounded like a big old trap, promptly agreed to go meet up with her.
And so the episode ended with Jon making his plans for next week – namely to hit up Cabot House to start advancing those quests more; go to Bunker Hill and The Slog with Jeff to get his interviews; and check in with Circe and see if she was indeed walking into a trap. Should be an exciting Sunday next week – looking forward to it. :)
Workout: Back on the bike this week, resuming the chaos adventures with the next part of James Turner’s current miniseries – “Why did I think twins was a good idea? Every Lot Challenge Again. (Part 3)!” And oh, this one was chaotic – over the course of the episode, Semaj –
A) Used the funds brought over from his new roommate Pelham to buy himself (and Pelham) better beds, along with some solar panels and a water generator to help with the power and water situation on their lot (since it is currently Off The Grid)
B) Had his first visit from Temperance, which left him terrified until he talked to Guidry, who gave him some wraith wax for sacred candles (I did not know that he could give you that! But then again, I never talked that much to Guidry while he was in my haunted house). He then attempted to befriend Temperance, through a combination of chatting, flirty jokes, and gifting her loads of grilled cheese – she liked the gift but shut his flirting down HARD as he was not her type
C) Went and visited Vlad in Forgotten Hollow after Vlad invited him over the next morning – his efforts to befriend the guy (with an eye toward later woohooing) mostly fell flat because of a massive, distracting thunderstorm outside and the fact that Vlad is generally an evil dick, but he did find out that Vlad enjoys receiving funny prank gifts. So that’s good. He also attempted to take Vlad with him to the Humor & Hijinks Festival to become Pranksters together, only to realize they arrived too early and Vlad was probably going to burn up, so he ditched him and went back home XD
D) Finally became good enough friends with Pelham that he agreed to donate his genes to Semaj so they could have a science baby together – which resulted in twins! A girl named Jamie and a boy named Mathias! Once they were settled in, James checked off the “Have Twins (Or Triplets)” challenge and spun the wheel –
Aaaand landed on “Set Money To $0.” XD Dude, your luck with this wheel is IMPECCABLY bad in these early episodes. :p
E) Discovered that taking care of twins is VERY hard work, especially when you have no money AND you forgot to pay your bills when you DID have money; cue him desperately harvesting prairie grass for goodies (finding a couple more nectars that needed to be aged up) and immediately selling their bassinets the minute they aged up to afford cribs for them; he also spent a bit of money on a pet bowl so he could feed the stray cats hanging around in an attempt to befriend one of them for a challenge
F) Stayed long enough in his haunted house that Guidry told him “here, you can have my special outfit,” giving him some new sartorial swagger if nothing else
G) Went dumpster diving in a desperate attempt to earn more money to pay bills, only to be blocked not only by his own miserable needs, but also Victor and Lily Feng monopolizing the dumpster he was looking at by woohooing in it XD
H) Accepted help from a random stranger offering aid with child care – he promptly assigned her to his old mattress that James had thrown outside when he got the new beds, and she promptly retaliated by concentrating on cleaning up all his trash outside instead of looking after the babies
I) Escaped to the Magic Realm for a little while to build up his spellcasting abilities by talking to the Sages – and, happily, got both the Potion of Plentiful Needs recipe AND the Repairio spell from Simeon, allowing him to go home and start repairing all the burnt furniture he’d found on his latest dumpster run! Sure, he set one piece on fire again, but Pelham was there to put it out, and the proceeds allowed them to finally pay their bills AND allowed him to get a food sale stand so he could hopefully start his own Grilled Cheese business and earn $1,000 from that for ANOTHER challenge.
Whew! Busy episode! But a fun one, to be sure. XD We’ll see if Semaj’s life improves in the next episode – I doubt it, though. XD
Whew -- that is a lot! And now I have to rush off to bed, as I have work in the morning. And a refund coming onto my damn credit card, I hope. *sigh* Here's hoping we see the last of that dealership nonsense tomorrow -- night all!
Tumblr: Had a somewhat more productive day over here – while there was nothing happening on Valice Multiverse again, I was able to catch up fully on Victor Luvs Alice’s dash, reblog a post about why I chose my icon (it’s currently a cute shot of Victor and Alice from early in the Chill Valicer Save’s lifespan, before it was Valicer, because, well, my blog name is “Victor Luvs Alice” XD), and get the tags and image alt text on my two Chill Valicer Save House Upgrade posts sorted! So that’s all good for this week. Still have to figure out what I’m doing Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but hopefully I can get that done tomorrow.
Fallout 4: Well, today’s trip to the Commonwealth turned Fallout 4 into “Inventory Management: The Game.” XD Specifically, it was all about me doing the final prepwork to get Victor into his Power Armor and on his way to the Glowing Sea, which involved a LOT of emptying inventories – his and other people’s – and rearranging things about his Red Rocket house. If you would like details –
A) Started things off by storing all the junk and various armor/weapon mods Victor was carrying in the workshop, then going over to Deacon (who was busy rotating the spit roaster outside the main building) to empty out HIS inventory of all junk and apparel (that wasn’t his own – accidentally stole his sunglasses, quickly gave them back to him) – I let him keep the weapons and mines he was holding, as I figured he could use them while working for the Railroad. :p I then dumped all of the junk in the workbench, then started looking for where I kept clothes in this settlement –
B) And went “actually, you know what? I have a proper “bedroom” for Victor now, I should build him a dresser by his bed. Oh, and put up Grognak’s Axe on the weapon display while I’m at it.” So that’s what I did. :) I also ended up building an armor display mannequin and putting it by the axe a bit later, slapping Grognak’s costume and the lieutentant’s hat Victor earned from the USS Constitution and its crew on that. XD Hey, look, I thought it was a funny pairing, what can I say.
C) While I was getting that done, I also went into the Red Rocket’s office (where the dogs have their beds – though, actually, I should move those into Victor’s bedroom, shouldn’t I?) and put away all the non-quest-item holotapes that Victor had picked up into the desk there, and all the various paper notes and scraps (again, that weren’t quest items he couldn’t drop) into the cabinet just outside the door, along with some old ruined books and the like. Most of these don’t actually really weigh much, but it’s just nice to be able to sort out the old inventory a bit more! And while I was at it, I moved the two rotating magazine racks into the hallway by the new flat shelf magazine rack, so all my magazines are in one place. *nods* Organization!
D) With THAT done, I had Victor scrap down a spare assault rifle he was carrying for some reason, then go over to the power armor station and go ahead and install a jet pack on the torso (after making the joke of Victor saying he could make a jet pack out of an extinguisher in the Playthrough Progression last week, and Deacon and Alice going “so do it then,” I kinda had to), and put a VATS Matrix Overlay mod on the helmet (increases VATS hit chance, and as I do use a fair amount of VATS. . .). Then it was over to the cooking station to cook up as much meat and veg as Victor had on him before having a melon flambe supper and hitting the sack at 8:45 PM.
E) Next morning, hearing Ada outside nearby, I had Victor track her down and – after confirming all systems were go – take her on as his companion again, sending Deacon back to Railroad HQ. (I am very glad that I learned canceling sending a companion to a specific settlement means they go back to their actual home again!) I then emptied out Ada’s inventory of everything except one red bandanna (she can’t wear it, but we’ll pretend she can) and a subway token (just in case we come across Subway Steward protectrons) and stored all the junk and mods in the workbench again. With that sorted, it was over to the weapons workbench to scrap down all the spare 10mms, hunting rifles, and combat rifles that Victor had picked up – and, because I had the materials, to slap a long recon scope on the Mighty Sniper. :) Been meaning to do that for a while, frankly – if any gun should have a recon scope, it’s the sniper!
F) But hey, while we’re improving things, why not go ahead and improve Ada as well? Victor now has better Science! after all. So I went over to the Robotics station and had her hop in, and started looking at what I could do. There wasn’t much I wanted to fiddle with, but I discovered that I could give her legs new armor that would help increase her damage resistances AND improve her carry capacity. So, with all my remaining adhesive, I gave her a Hydraulic Frame on her left leg, and a Voltaic Frame on her right leg. Though it wasn’t until after that I realized giving her a Voltaic Frame on both legs would have actually boosted her carry capacity a bit more. . .ah well, live and learn I suppose.
G) All right, with Ada thus improved (and up to about 570 carry capacity, nice), I had Victor grab his port-a-potty, go take a little shower, and – after determining the stupid thing could NOT be scrapped – dumped his T-45 power armor torso in the workbench (figures I’d have had Ada take a piece that was already X-01). I then gave Ada a bunch of grenades and mines, a couple of spare guns (like the Silver Submachine Gun and the syringer rifle I’m holding onto until I get the nicer one from Vault 81), and the cloth wall and GPS beacon from the camping kit, before taking a deep breath and hopping into the power armor to see what was what, carry capacity wise. Good news – the mods on the legs brought it up to 460 carry weight!
H) Bad news – Victor was still over a hundred pounds over that. Hmmm. Well, I knew one way to reduce some weight, and that was to trade out the clothes Victor was wearing – I think they don’t count as “equipped” when you’re inside power armor. So I had him take off his military fatigues and all his various armor bits in favor of slapping on the hazmat suit he’d picked up from the old Switchboard (might as well have extra protection from rads should he need to get out of his armor for any reason), and handed all the clothes over to Ada. That got weight down a little, but not enough, and I didn’t want to hand over any of the weapons I was currently carrying –
And then I remembered just how much food Victor had on him. Cue me dumping so much meat and veg on poor Ada I’m surprised her newly-upgraded legs didn’t buckle. XD THAT finally got Victor under the 460 weight limit, so I had him hop into the Power Armor and head out the garage door, looking off to the horizon! Next time, we start toward the Glowing Sea –
. . .right after I see if Victor can build a portable power armor workstation (comes with the “portable workbench” mod), because it occurs to me I might want that now that I’m running around in power armor. *makes a note to herself*
Writing: Another update to the FO4 Playthrough Progression today, if you can believe it. :p While the write-up was pretty much the same as the above in the sense of “everybody did inventory management in preparation for Victor going into the Glowing Sea,” I did change up the order of things a bit and update how a few things went down – namely:
A) Victor did the jet pack and VATS Matrix Overlay mods on the power armor BEFORE storing any of his other junk (and I indicated the VATS Overlay was already in the helmet, Victor just had to get it activated and working – not sure how he could BUILD that with random junk XD)
B) Everyone helped with storing things so it would go quicker (for example, Alice put away all the holotapes and notes in the proper cabinets in the safety of the actual building, since she couldn’t go outside anyway)
C) Deacon going back to HQ was the result of a “family meeting” about who should actually be going into the Glowing Sea and who shouldn’t – it was decided that Deacon should head back to Railroad HQ to fill them in, then Victor, Ada, and Alice would head to the edge of the Glowing Sea, where Alice would wait while Victor and Ada went inside – that way, if anything happened or they needed outside help, she’d be available. (Also, she doesn’t know how large doses or radiation affects vampires, so she doesn’t want to risk it unless it’s an emergency – understandable.) Should make writing that bit a little easier, as I’ll only have Victor and Ada to keep track of, instead of having to add Alice into everything. :p
D) And Victor, unlike me, realized he was going to have to give Ada a bunch of food to carry because otherwise he was going to be overweight in the power armor BEFORE he hopped in it and checked the carry capacity. Admittedly, this is because he had to manually empty all of his backpacks before getting in, while I’m playing a video game which automatically de-equips them for me when I hop inside the frame. XD He also warned Ada that he was going to have to rely on her to carry interesting stuff he finds after upgrading her legs, which prompted Ada to go “. . .oh no.” XD I do love having the other characters tease Victor for being a hoarder. XD
So yeah – after all that, the team is at the same endpoint, with Victor testing out the power armor to make sure it’s good, with Ada carrying a bunch of his shit so they can start their journey to, and the into, the Glowing Sea! Right after I have Victor realize he should bash up some sort of portable power armor station in case he needs it. . .though I guess that would require him to carry some junk to repair the armor. . .we’ll grab some aluminum from the workbench and see what happens. :P
YouTube: An easier-to-summarize session of Fallout 4 meant that, amazingly, I WAS actually able to catch up on my YouTube today, yay! :D So here’s my Sunday THREE for the day –
A) First up, a split double dose of GrayStillPlays (one watched before my workout, one after) –
I. “Testing Cars from different Countries in GTA 5!” Yesterday’s video, this one was an International Alex Torture Board! Specifically, this one featured Alex setting up four different challenges based around England, Russia, Germany, and the USA, and providing Gray with two cars from each of these countries (hidden inside garages, so Gray wouldn’t immediately know what he was getting when he picked) that he could try to use to complete the challenges. His only caveat was that Gray could not choose cars from the same country back to back (for example, if he chose one of the English cars first, he then had to pick an American, Russian, or German car before going back to England). Gray’s international tour included –
a. English Speedbumps – a timed course where Gray had to get over a series of terrible speedbumps in twenty seconds. The first few speedbumps weren’t too bad, though they did have a tendency to send the cars flying – but then Gray discovered the penultimate two TRANSFORMED, with various bits of the platforms used to make them sticking out all over the place, and the final bump, while low, had slowdown sticks embedded in it. So yeah – not a fun trip over England’s roads!
b. Russian Potholes – An untimed challenge where Gray had to climb a hill and get down the other side, all while avoiding the giant road-length pits standing in for potholes. And yes, the potholes were ON THE HILL, both going up and going down. The problem here was a slow car wouldn’t get over the potholes, while a fast one would go flying off the top of the hill and probably off the course. Neither were great outcomes, as Gray found. XD
c. German Sleepy Autobahn – another timed challenge, where Gray had fifty seconds to make his way down the autobahn highway, avoiding various obstacles like other cars trying to cut him off, random people in the middle of the road, and various bits of road construction. . .all while having the “falling asleep” status effect, meaning his screen kept blinking black and he kept losing control of his car. This one was basically just luck – well, that and Gray learning when to take his foot off the gas so he didn’t go careening off the side of the road. :P
d. America’s High-Speed Chase But You’re The Criminal – and finally, an untimed Michael Bay sequence where Gray was chasing an armored truck down a highway, zooming around all the various obstacles in his path (which included a construction site where only half the road was there – the other half dipped down into a pit where he had to ramp off a container of gravel to get back on the road and continue the chase), and doing his best to avoid the slowdown circle weaving and circling around the truck, the truck’s EMP blasts, and the helicopter flying over the truck shooting rockets at him. You know, just a typical day on Florida’s roads. XD
So, which country reigned supreme? Well, I can tell you it wasn’t America – Gray got the Liberator monster truck and a cyber truck out of that garage, and neither could handle the English speedbumps. Neither was it Russia (who provided him with a rustbucket vehicle that WAS able to JUST handle the speedbumps, but couldn’t take on its own potholes) or Germany (which gave him a Mercedes that got all the way to the autobahn, but couldn’t stop crashing while Gray fell asleep). Which, of course, necessarily means the winner was England! Oh gee, the country that Alex is from, who would have thought. XD It started off the video weak by giving Gray a Mini-Cooper that also couldn’t get past the speedbumps, but when he finally went back to it, he found a McLaren electric super car waiting for him. The only car that could make it across every challenge! :D Not without fail (the autobahn still gave him trouble, and the chase was a hell of a tricky thing to manage), but it did it in the end. Rule Britannia, I guess! At least for this challenge – England, you’re not allowed to rule anything else anymore, remember that. :P
II. “When science experiments go terribly wrong” – Today’s video, featuring Gray playing Algodoo! Which is apparently Happy Wheels’s low-rez, low-rent cousin, in that it allows people to make their own levels and mini-games within it, just with much lower production values (most levels look like they were made in MS Paint, though there were a few that actually used nice assets). Gray’s tour of the game today involved becoming a knock-off Indominus Rex (with a skull-like head) and escaping his pen to destroy the guards outside; helping an MS Paint person eat breakfast by shoving Coke and Mentos down their gullet until they had let off enough explosive burps to please the game; taking a rickety racing car over a huge jump and crash-landing before rolling up against the crash pads in a crumpled heap; struggling with the world’s longest and most difficult Video Game Motorcross Course (where the bike was constantly trying to kill him by flipping over and smashing his groin with its scoop front); taking a bunch of children to school via the tunnel through the secret facility before getting everyone smashed in the pit of despair; running from the police through simplistic traditional movie obstacles before crashing into a blockade and being reduced to a single hand; and helping a giant man eat tiny peg-people before pooping them out again. You know, just the everyday nonsense we see on this channel. XD I hope this game gets featured more – it’s fun to watch Gray play stuff like this.
B) And second (or, well, third) up, we had Jon and “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 26 - Jeff and the Giant War Crimes!” Which featured Mayor Bob making some – less-than-smart decisions when it came to taking back a settlement that had been taken over by Gunners; recruiting a new settler via a rescue mission; and doing some more work with the Nightingales. All while followed by the titular Jeff as he tried to source stories for the new newspaper in town. XD Let’s get into the details:
I. Things picked up with Bob in Brandis’s bunker (having just convinced him to return to the Brotherhood), deciding to listen to the latest message on his and Jake’s private frequency. Turns out Jake was pretty sure that one of their settlements had fallen to the Gunners and he needed Bob to check it out and, if necessary, liberate it. Can’t have Gunners throwing their weight around, after all. He sent Bob the coordinates –
And the settlement in question turned out to be Starlight Drive-In. The settlement that Bob gave Preston Garvey control of. Jon noted that having his Minuteman settlement taken over by the Gunners was probably pretty embarrassing for poor Preston, while I was like “I have a hard time believing Preston wouldn’t mobilize his settlers to kick Gunner ass, given how much he canonically loathes them.”
II. Before he could go kick Gunner ass, though, Bob had a few things to take care of! His first stop was Sanctuary, to build a new artillery cannon to go with the flaming arch at the entrance – but after, while he was heading down to Concord to drop off his interviews with the super mutant survivors with Alyssa at her place, he ran into a fellow crossing the bridge toward the settlement – one Ed Rocke, wearing a Red Rocket jumpsuit. He asked if Bob was the “manager” and said that he had to help his friend RT – they were working over at Red Rocket 1409 when some hooligans with switchblades came in, ran him off, and captured RT, dragging him off into an underground storage facility in the store, talking about bets and gambling. A baffled Bob asked him to make sense, but Ed just repeated that they were attacked at Red Rocket 1409 and now he was asking the manager for help – what was confusing about that? Jon suspected poor Ed wasn’t fully right in the head, but had Bob agree to help, and Ed handed over his bandanna to Bob to help identify him as a friend to RT. As it turned out, the Red Rocket in question was the one near Lexington, not far from the Starlight Drive-In, so Jon figured Bob could swing by once he’d liberated his settlement.
III. With that taken care of, Bob headed over to Alyssa’s and gave her the interviews, then – after going back to Sanctuary to sleep a day – came back to pick up the first edition of her paper, The Voice Of The Commonwealth! (Or, well, he chased Alyssa down into Concord to get it, as she’d wandered off while he wasn’t looking.) Alyssa thanked him for his help and said she was already working on the second edition, and asked if Bob wouldn’t mind helping her new assistant, Jeff (a dude in a nice suit and glasses, who did his part of the conversation from back in Alyssa’s house as the game had gotten confused about where the chat was supposed to be happening) go conduct some more interviews and source new stories. Bob said sure, why not –
And then discovered that that had given him Jeff as an unofficial companion. Making things immediately awkward as Bob had not intended to get any of those interviews right away. XD He decided that he’d just deal with Jeff hanging around and hope that he was good at murder –
IV. Because it was time to go visit Starlight Drive-In and take care of its Gunner problem! Bob went along the route leading from the Drumlin Diner because that would allow him to sneak up to the town from behind the old giant movie screen, and the moment he got close, he heard Gunner announcements, confirming the place had been taken over! After getting annoyed with the settlers and especially Preston for just standing around and letting themselves be subjugated, Bob proceeded to sneak into the movie screen structure –
And throw an ARTILLERY SMOKE GRENADE at the nearest Gunner he could see. For a moment, it looked like his plan to bombard the place with cannon fire wouldn’t work, as the game was like “you can’t fire on a friendly settlement!” – but then Fallout 4 and Sim Settlements 2 changed its mind and let the bombardment rain down. XD Bob followed that up by tossing grenades at any Gunners he could find (including two freaking Legendaries!) and figuring out the best position to fire at them –
Only to find himself under fire by the SETTLERS as well. As it turns out, raining artillery fire down willy-nilly and then throwing grenades around does NOT endear you to the people you were trying to “save.” A panicked Bob had to kill a bunch of his own settlers (with the help of Jeff, who as it turned out WAS pretty good at murder) before desperately running away once it was clear the last of the Gunners had fallen. Though he made sure to check the corpse of the one Legendary Gunner he could find – Crippling Sledgehammer, of course (though Jon admitted that was actually pretty good with the right build – just not HIS). He retreated to Concord to tell Jake the problem was solved (fortunately, Jake did not ask any follow-up questions, though he did obliviously lay on the guilt by saying how much he appreciated what Bob did for him), then ran back to Sanctuary (which now has a full-on “eye of Sauron” flaming gate at the entrance, incidentally – strung with Christmas lights XD) for a couple of days worth of rest before venturing back to Starlight. Fortunately, by that point, the place had calmed down and willing to let Bob back in without renewing hostilities, and Bob was able to stop Preston Garvey attacking a busted water pump and turn in “Old Guns.” Which, of course, had Preston mention just how thrilled he was that the Minutemen had artillery support again, and how they needed to build artillery in all their settlements now. After most of his town was wrecked by artillery fire. ...the vanilla quests just do NOT mesh well with the mod quests sometimes. Especially when Jon is being Jon. XD
V. With Starlight all sorted (and Bob unfortunately discovering the other Legendary Gunner corpse had despawned while he was away, leaving just the settlers to mock him), Bob decided it was time to rescue Ed Rocke’s friend RT from the nearby Red Rocket! He thus headed over there (making sure to explode the frag mines in his way with a few well-placed shots so Jeff didn’t blow himself up on accident) and found an actual raider group called the Lexington Hooligans having a bit of a tiff with some synths in the area. Once that was done, Bob ventured inside the Red Rocket to find some non-hostile Hooligans hanging around –
And a hatch in the door leading to the Lexington Underground. Bob pickpocketed the key off one of the Hooligans lazing by the front counter (who fortunately didn’t aggro) and headed down, where he found a little office area with some more Hooligans and an albino mongrel. Fighting his way past them, he descended and found the remaining Hooligans defending a fighting ring of some sort. He killed them and headed down to find RT, whom he found fighting another mongrel nearby –
Oh, and discovered that RT was himself a dog. Explaining why the quest was called “Dog Eat Dog.” Bob killed the mongrel and got RT’s trust by letting him sniff the bandanna, then brought him over to the new Red Rocket that Ed was staying at. Ed thanked him profusely, and Bob got his story out of him – basically, the reason Ed talks like he was was because he was raised in a Red Rocket with a bunch of other people, and learned to read from the employee manual. He adopted RT while living there, and RT helped him survive and escape when that Red Rocket was attacked by something. They’ve been traveling from Red Rocket to Red Rocket ever since, doing what work they can, apparently. Bob (and Jon) were touched by his story and let him join the Mayor Bob Collection of Settlements – naturally sending him to live at the Red Rocket by Sanctuary. :) All’s well that ends well, at least so we hope!
VI. With that sorted, Bob decided his next objective was to head back to Mass Bay Medical and see what was happening with the Nightingales, since during his naps he’d picked up a quest to go see them again. Fiona told him where he could find his reward (along with the stuff they’d taken off the dead bodies) and gave him some new ASAM schematics for making Sanitation-based plots, which Bob was pleased by. She also told him that while she was keeping busy trying to fix up some of this old equipment, he should check in with Cassandra and Raphael and see if they had anything for him to do. Bob promptly tracked down Cassandra –
To find her mid-argument with Ellis about what to do with a belligerent raider patient he was treating – Ellis wasn’t sure if the straps would hold the guy down, but wasn’t keen on continuing to sedate him or getting Raphael to hold him down again, as their guard was busy doing other stuff. Cassandra seemed to be trying to impart the lesson that “you can’t save everyone and do everything yourself” on Ellis, but he wasn’t having it, so she instead turned to Bob, saying that she thought Ellis’s problem was that he was continually unsure what the “right” thing to do in some situations was. She asked for Bob’s expert opinion on what he’d do with their raider patient, who was probably a pretty nasty person who’d might go on to kill people – Bob said he wasn’t sure, with Jon adding from his side of the screen that, well, the Hippocratic Oath meant that they HAD to help him regardless of what kind of person he was, but that he was pretty sure them constantly helping people that wanted to hurt them in return was going to end in some sort of tragedy eventually. Bob also said that Ellis was smarter than Cassandra thought – Cassandra agreed, just saying the kid was headstrong too, and had a lot to learn, but she was sure he’d find his way and figure out the “right” thing to do eventually.
VII. However, talking about Ellis with Bob wasn’t what Cassandra wanted to see Bob about – instead, what she wanted was to upgrade Bob’s Vit-O-Matic for scanning people for their SPECIAL stats to also have it diagnose people with any diseases they might have! Bob was all about that and happily let her upgrade the machine, and then promptly tested it out on Jeff and Cassandra herself. Both of them were clean of disease, but both had some very interesting SPECIAL stats. Namely, Cassandra had SUPER high stats, including a THIRTEEN in Intelligence and a TWELVE In Perception, while Jeff. . .Jeff has eights in Strength, Perception, Endurance, and Agility, four in Charisma –
And ONES in Intelligence and Luck. XD Well then. I guess that means he and “Idiot Savant” Bob will get along fine, then!
VIII. Anyway – with that done, Bob went to go see what Raphael wanted – only to run into Ellis. Who said that he thought being a doctor would be easy – if someone needed treatment, treat them – but he was discovering things were harder than he expected, and that maybe Cassandra and Raphael were right in that you couldn’t save everyone, no matter how much you wanted to do the good thing. Bob asked about the patient, and Ellis confirmed he was a raider – one of “Bosco’s guys” according to Raphael. The guy’s been acting downright feral, mumbling to himself, snapping his teeth, and fighting back against all help. Bob assured Ellis that he did his best, and Ellis admitted that he was still struggling with the idea that it might be better to let the guy die, but he’d let Cassandra get a diagnosis first –
And I went, “wait a minute, Bosco? Isn’t that the raider boss who it’s implied has RABIES?!” Oh fuck – I think the Nightingales might be caught up in something that might really be bad, especially if the raider manages to infect one of them. . .
IX. Anyway – Bob then went and met up with Raphael, who asked Bob if he was free to join him on a little quest to meet up with a caravan passing west of Diamond City, near the Library. Bob was indeed, and the two of them set out – only to find the caravan already slaughtered by the local super mutants. Raphael commented that the wreckage looked like the one that the Nightingales had pulled him out of, and Bob asked if they’d been attacked by super mutants too. Raphael said no, it had been raiders –
Specifically, Raphael’s own gang of raiders. Yup, as Jon had semi-suspected, Raphael was a former raider who had turned over a new leaf after joining the Nightingales. As he described it, his gang had attacked a caravan out of stupidity or desperation (having not seen one in weeks) – they hadn’t even planned to shoot anyone, but when the caravan’s own guards opened fire, it turned into a bloodbath. Raphael ended up severely wounded, and his “friends” left him to die after securing the loot from the wiped-out caravan. Raphael doesn’t really remember what happened when the Nightingales rescued him, but he did remember thinking that Fiona’s speech about “second chances” was a load of hooey. And yet, despite planning to ditch them when his legs healed, he just – never did. So it seems sometimes, kindness CAN reform these people. :)
And then a bunch of super mutants attacked and the nice moment was ruined. Fortunately, Bob was easily able to take them out with Jeff and Raphael’s help (getting another Legendary with ANOTHER Sledgehammer, this time a Kneecapper), and once he was done looting the bodies, headed back to report to Fiona (who was looking pretty haggard from a lot of worry and not enough sleep). She thanked him for his help and asked if he’d be willing to play bodyguard for another member of their team, Circe – they got an offer recently from someone offering to give them supplies and finding, and Circe agreed to go meet the person in a neutral location to see what kind of supplies, how much funds, how many strings are attached, yada yada. Fiona just would feel better if she had some backup in case the negotiations turned sour – Bob, who thought this whole thing sounded like a big old trap, promptly agreed to go meet up with her.
And so the episode ended with Jon making his plans for next week – namely to hit up Cabot House to start advancing those quests more; go to Bunker Hill and The Slog with Jeff to get his interviews; and check in with Circe and see if she was indeed walking into a trap. Should be an exciting Sunday next week – looking forward to it. :)
Workout: Back on the bike this week, resuming the chaos adventures with the next part of James Turner’s current miniseries – “Why did I think twins was a good idea? Every Lot Challenge Again. (Part 3)!” And oh, this one was chaotic – over the course of the episode, Semaj –
A) Used the funds brought over from his new roommate Pelham to buy himself (and Pelham) better beds, along with some solar panels and a water generator to help with the power and water situation on their lot (since it is currently Off The Grid)
B) Had his first visit from Temperance, which left him terrified until he talked to Guidry, who gave him some wraith wax for sacred candles (I did not know that he could give you that! But then again, I never talked that much to Guidry while he was in my haunted house). He then attempted to befriend Temperance, through a combination of chatting, flirty jokes, and gifting her loads of grilled cheese – she liked the gift but shut his flirting down HARD as he was not her type
C) Went and visited Vlad in Forgotten Hollow after Vlad invited him over the next morning – his efforts to befriend the guy (with an eye toward later woohooing) mostly fell flat because of a massive, distracting thunderstorm outside and the fact that Vlad is generally an evil dick, but he did find out that Vlad enjoys receiving funny prank gifts. So that’s good. He also attempted to take Vlad with him to the Humor & Hijinks Festival to become Pranksters together, only to realize they arrived too early and Vlad was probably going to burn up, so he ditched him and went back home XD
D) Finally became good enough friends with Pelham that he agreed to donate his genes to Semaj so they could have a science baby together – which resulted in twins! A girl named Jamie and a boy named Mathias! Once they were settled in, James checked off the “Have Twins (Or Triplets)” challenge and spun the wheel –
Aaaand landed on “Set Money To $0.” XD Dude, your luck with this wheel is IMPECCABLY bad in these early episodes. :p
E) Discovered that taking care of twins is VERY hard work, especially when you have no money AND you forgot to pay your bills when you DID have money; cue him desperately harvesting prairie grass for goodies (finding a couple more nectars that needed to be aged up) and immediately selling their bassinets the minute they aged up to afford cribs for them; he also spent a bit of money on a pet bowl so he could feed the stray cats hanging around in an attempt to befriend one of them for a challenge
F) Stayed long enough in his haunted house that Guidry told him “here, you can have my special outfit,” giving him some new sartorial swagger if nothing else
G) Went dumpster diving in a desperate attempt to earn more money to pay bills, only to be blocked not only by his own miserable needs, but also Victor and Lily Feng monopolizing the dumpster he was looking at by woohooing in it XD
H) Accepted help from a random stranger offering aid with child care – he promptly assigned her to his old mattress that James had thrown outside when he got the new beds, and she promptly retaliated by concentrating on cleaning up all his trash outside instead of looking after the babies
I) Escaped to the Magic Realm for a little while to build up his spellcasting abilities by talking to the Sages – and, happily, got both the Potion of Plentiful Needs recipe AND the Repairio spell from Simeon, allowing him to go home and start repairing all the burnt furniture he’d found on his latest dumpster run! Sure, he set one piece on fire again, but Pelham was there to put it out, and the proceeds allowed them to finally pay their bills AND allowed him to get a food sale stand so he could hopefully start his own Grilled Cheese business and earn $1,000 from that for ANOTHER challenge.
Whew! Busy episode! But a fun one, to be sure. XD We’ll see if Semaj’s life improves in the next episode – I doubt it, though. XD
Whew -- that is a lot! And now I have to rush off to bed, as I have work in the morning. And a refund coming onto my damn credit card, I hope. *sigh* Here's hoping we see the last of that dealership nonsense tomorrow -- night all!
