Actually Not Running Ultra-Late Tonight
Jul. 14th, 2024 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWhich is an accomplishment for a Sunday! I'm almost always running behind because of having to watch Jon's SS2 video in the evening and then find time to write up how it went for my lists, but today I managed to squeeze a little more into a little less so I'm not still writing up recaps at like 12:30 AM (which is Not Good on a work night). Here's how things went --
Tumblr: Still nothing happening over on Valice Multiverse, but I had a decent enough day over on Victor Luvs Alice – specifically –
A) I caught up as much as I could on my dash, then reblogged some stuff throughout the day (a McFly July fanfic about Marty feeling rather adrift on the Annual McFly Camping Trip with his family because that wasn’t a thing back in the Twin Pines timeline he remembers; a silly post about saying “lock the taskbar” to the tune of “Rock The Casbah” from my friend Newt; a post about how wholesome & healthy ships need a fucked-up element and fucked-up ships need a little wholesomeness for flavor and keeping people interested in the ship; and an audio post featuring “The OKeh Laughing Record” from 1923 – features two people laughing at an incompetent cornet player, which was probably cute at the time but sounds VERY CURSED now. I reblogged it because The Smiler vibes XD)
B) And I started a third reblog of my “Potential Tiny Town Challenge” post to go up on Wednesday, talking about some of the latest ideas I’ve come up with (like Smiler’s money-making skill being nectar-making, and using Community Space lots on the rest of the Crumbling Isle to make it feel like the whole island is being developed as more and more people join the tiny town). Not done yet, unfortunately – I had to stop early because of lunch and wanting to get to Fallout 4 at a decent time (see below) – but I hope to get it finished off tomorrow!
Fallout 4: Well, I did make a LITTLE progress on my journey back toward the Red Rocket and Victor’s robotics bench, but the main theme of today’s trip through the Wasteland was “squirrels.” What the hell do I mean by that? Well –
A) Started with Victor looking over the landscape from atop a broken on-ramp near the elevated highway near Forest Marsh Grove, gazing out at the old Weston Water Treatment Plant. However, I wasn’t interested in a location I had already explored – I was interested in one that I hadn’t! Namely, there was a mysterious trailer icon on Victor’s compass that was begging me to go find it, so I had Victor leave his perch and head in the direction of the marker, going across the road he was traveling along before and up a nearby hill to a second road with a few squirrels wandering around. He continued up that road for a while, checking out a Distress Signal his Pip-Boy had picked up (just empty static) and weaving through the trees along the side of the cracked pavement –
B) When, suddenly, there was the sound of gunshots, and I spotted laser fire ahead of him, at a gap where the elevated highway above had collapsed. Concerned, I had Victor scan the area with VATS, but the only thing he detected were a bunch of brahmin wandering around up atop the hill near him by an old broken-down bus. “Well, they’re friendly at least,” I thought, and had him head up there to join the cows, before heading out onto a little rock spire that sort of overlooked the battle scene to see if he could scope out anything with the Two-Shot’s, uh, scope. :p I saw what LOOKED like a ghoul in some sort of blue outfit (a Vault suit??), but I wasn’t able to get a good look, and after a couple of seconds the red blasts of laser fire stopped. *shrug* Well, at least whatever it was, it didn’t find Victor and become hostile to him!
C) With the excitement over, and the trailer icon closer than ever from Victor’s climb, I had Victor go milk one of the brahmin (something you can do with one of my mods if you have an empty milk bottle), check out the busted bus (empty), then proceed up the road to one Fiddler’s Green Trailer Estates! Probably should have figured it was going to be a trailer park because of the icon. XD Victor was immediately yelled at by some squirrels in the area and took them out –
Then spotted a feral ghoul roaming around down the road behind said squirrels, apparently chasing them, and took it out too. The (admittedly muffled because I have a silencer on this gun) gunfire apparently woke up some more ferals, who started wandering around the side of the trailer park behind the bus stop Victor had passed before – but despite the game telling me Victor was in [DANGER], the group never actually found him. They instead ran off to the right while Victor watched from the other side of the road – I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think they were chasing a squirrel nearby. XD They eventually got bored of trying to find a squirrel snack and started wandering back as Victor started sneaking into the park by the bus stop – Victor managed to successfully sneak attack one’s arm right off the side of its body, and then the remaining ones all spotted Ada (who’d wandered further into the area) first and promptly started attacking her, allowing Victor to pick them off at his leisure. :p This “enemies rush in to attack the robot while Victor stays behind and kills them from a little farther away” strategy is working out well for these two, I must admit. :p
D) With the initial pack of ghouls taken care of, it was time to start exploring the trailer park itself! Victor went around and looted all the bodies, then headed into the main building to see what was up there. The only feral he saw initially was lying on the ground, genuinely dead – but as he crept inside, a LEGENDARY feral suddenly stood up from behind the couch. Fortunately it technically hadn’t seen Victor yet, so Victor was able to take it out with a Two-Shot sneak attack. I then started looking around for more ferals, spotted a jiggling glowing squirrel corpse near the back wall, by the doorway into the other room –
Just in time for another feral to stumble through the gap. However, like with the Legendary, it didn’t immediately see Victor, so he was able to Two-Shot sneak attack it as well. *shakehead* I got fucking lucky there twice, let me tell you!
E) With the ghouls dead, I was a little freer to explore – going through the busted-up doorway next to the dead squirrel along the back wall led to a back office, with a terminal (labeled Lease Office Terminal) and a safe to crack, while the other exit led to the local swimming pool. I took a moment to grab the Legendary item off the Legendary feral (Lucky Double-Barreled Shotgun – not a bad drop, but I can never remember how to execute criticals, so not really for me), looked some of the containers by the pool, then headed back to the office to pick open the safe (some ammo and a trailer key I wasn’t interested in using) and hack the computer (got the password first guess, turned out to just control the safe). I then proceeded out through the pool area, had it out with a couple more squirrels across the road in the little playground area (which was kinda annoying, because while I spotted and killed the first one just fine, the second one was really hard to see and didn’t come up on VATS for the longest time – finally got it though), then started poking around the nearby trailers, looting mailboxes and feral corpses along the way. First one I opened had a couple of squirrel pups in it, along with some sort of Mysterious Piece Of Computer Equipment linked to an empty terminal (seriously, nothing on it), a stealth boy (nice), and a locked toolbox with duct tape inside (also nice). With all the goodies collected, I had Victor leave and head to the trailer across the way, which had two dead ferals in front of it –
F) And two living ferals inside of it, as I discovered when they stumbled out – one standard feral, and one Glowing One, to be precise. Fortunately they both fell easily to the power of the Two-Shot, and Victor was free to look inside. Turns out this was the trailer of the Winners, as the steamer trunk of “you cleared the area, good job” was in there (nothing particularly exciting inside), along with a chemistry bench. I had Victor go ahead and use the chem bench to combine some of the drugs he’d picked up (saves weight and increases value), then, inspired, had him drop his little portable workbench right beside it and took a moment to scrap the laser pistol and rifle he’d picked up fighting that little Gunner camp. To my disappointment, the only thing he got from scrapping them was plastic and screws. :( I wanna improve my Tesla Rifle, damn it! I also attempted to have him cook, but around that point Ada showed up and started standing in his personal space, and the game wouldn’t actually let him complete the action. Meh. Hardly the worst glitch in the world when it comes to Fallout 4, though!
G) With cooking off the menu (at least on the portable workbench), I had Victor pack it up and go investigating the other trailers in the area. The two burned-out shells on the far side of the pool were pretty much empty except of a few old pieces of furniture and a couple of caps, but a newer-looking trailer around the corner had a Master-locked door keeping Victor out, which was interesting. It was also situated right next to a cookpot, so I had Victor stop and do some cooking as the fog rolled in (gotta cook up all this squirrel meat), then – just in case something nasty was going to come out of the locked trailer – had him go check out the final burnt shell in the area to make sure he’d gotten everything out of all the others. As it turned out, this was a very good idea, as this trailer contained a copy of the Live & Love perk magazine (giving Victor +25% more experience when persuading women), some squirrel on a stick and squirrel stew in the fridge –
And a holotape called “The New Squirrel Tape 3!” I THOUGHT this was the place where you found this particular fucked-up bedtime story! XD Which also explains why there seemed to be so many squirrels in the area – I am reasonably sure the modders who made the “squirrel” mod I use deliberately put more around here because of these holotapes. XD
H) I couldn’t listen to tape #3 on its own, though – I obviously needed the first two bits of the story first. So I had Victor pocket the holotape and start looking around again for the other two. Holotape #1 was actually pretty easily located – I just had to pop back into the main building and take another look around. Turns out it was right near the original dead ghoul I’d seen, sitting next to a teddy bear. As the holotape in the trailer had ALSO been marked by a teddy bear, I made a note of that, then headed over to the Master-locked trailer to pop it open and see if #2 was inside. This lock proved to have a really difficult sweet spot, but after a few broken pins, Victor got it open and opened the door to reveal –
A set of power armor! Yeah, apparently this particular trailer belonged to an army guy (whose skeleton was still lounging on the couch in his fatigues), and he still had some of his old T-45 set. Nice, but we all know Victor’s already got better. :p Victor thus grabbed the fusion core (after briefly getting into the armor because I pushed the wrong button) and all the ammo he could find the trailer, then set back out on his mission to find “The New Squirrel Tape 2,” despite his growing tiredness. I had him recheck the trailer with the ghouls and the steamer trunk – no luck – then spotted a trailer near the back of the leasing office that I hadn’t gone in before. This one had one squirrel inside (easily taken out) –
I) And the final holotape, sitting on an ironing board next to a tipped-over teddy bear! :D Delighted, I grabbed it, had Victor raid the open dumpster behind the office, then go around and set up his tent in front of the office, taking a moment to listen to the story of “The New Squirrel!” Which, if you didn’t know, is by Storytime Simon and tells the story of Ricky the brown squirrel, who refused to listen to his elders when they told him that squirrels in other trees were horrible and not to be trusted, and forced them to show some basic kindness to a lost red squirrel who appeared at the base of their tree. Heartwarming, right?
Yeah, as it turns out, the red squirrel ran to Ricky’s tree because a bunch of cats were following him and he didn’t want them to eat HIS family. He escapes while Ricky and his entire family are eaten. The whole thing is probably supposed to be a metaphor for not trusting “The Reds,” aka the Chinese in the Fallout world. Nighty-night, kids! XD
And so my playsession ended with Victor taking a six-hour snooze at 4:30 AM, getting up around 10:30 AM on a bright sunny day and preparing to start his journey anew by looking off the side of the hilltop toward ArcJet Systems below. :) Next time, we’ll continue our meandering toward the Red Rocket and see if there’s any other interesting locations I haven’t found yet!
Writing: Another Sunday, another opportunity to update the FO4 playthrough progression with the Fallout Of Darkness version of the events in my game – and, as usual, it was pretty much identical (Victor and company avoiding a mysterious scrap on the road, finding their way into Fiddler’s Green Trailer Estates, and looting it) with some relatively-minor tweaks (beyond “Alice was there too and did things like help search the trailers and kill squirrels once she got out of her sleeping bag”) –
A) Obviously, Victor wasn’t trying to deliberately track down Fiddler’s Green like I was, since he doesn’t have the magic compass markers I do – climbing up the hill to the first road was just to see what was up there, then climbing up the second hill was just to avoid the gunfire in front of them. Finding the trailer park was just a nice bonus!
B) Victor didn’t milk any of the brahmin hanging out around the broken shell of the bus, because I don’t think it would have occurred to him to even try. That’s just a game mechanic so my in-game Victor can have limb-strengthening milk if he wants to! (I still have to figure out where the ice cream recipe in the game is so I can make that too. . .that probably WILL make it into the Playthrough Progression, since Fanfic!Victor would enjoy it.)
C) The whole thing with Ada wandering farther into the park and distracting that pack of ghouls chasing squirrels was a deliberate battle tactic this time, suggested by Ada herself – Victor’s cool with her using herself as bait for ghouls, who can’t really hurt her, but told her no doing it around deathclaws or the like. (She promised to keep any distraction efforts for those beasts ranged.)
D) Victor opened the safe in the leasing office in the back of the main building, with the terminal, took the trailer key inside, and used that to open the trailer with the power armor. Because unlike his in-game self, he doesn’t need XP from lockpicking things, so he can take the easier path. XD
E) Similarly, Victor didn’t do any drug-combining in the “win” trailer with the Glowing One (because that is something else I just do in the game for XP; fanfic!Victor is no chemist). I did let Alice get herself a new pair of pants out of the steamer trunk in there, though – and that isn’t even that far off what actually happened in the game, as I’m pretty sure I saw a “T-Shirt and Jeans” outfit in the list of items inside).
F) And after finding all the squirrel tapes (which happened after Victor opened up the locked trailer and found the power armor, and involved them splitting up after Victor got Tape #3 from the trailer with the squirrel-based meals inside – Victor found Tape #1 in the main office, while Alice got Tape #2 from the trailer with the squirrel and Ada unsuccessfully checked the Glowing One trailer), the gang made camp by the campfire with the cookpot so Victor could do his cooking and disassemble the guns he got from the Gunners while listening to the tapes before he went to sleep. Because that felt like a more logical progression of events to me.
...okay, maybe that was a few more changes than I thought, but they WERE all relatively minor, I think we can agree on that. :p Anyway, left it with Victor, Ada, and Alice (back in her sleeping back because it is a VERY sunny day) getting ready to leave Fiddler’s Green and continue on their way back to the Red Rocket – we’ll see what adventures await them, and how close they are to my game, next Sunday!
YouTube: Got through my usual Sunday Two no problem, yay –
A) First up, before my workout (because holy shit I had the time to watch it then for a change), we had GrayStillPlays and “I was hired to babysit 1,000 POUS,” aka Gray plays Pou’s Revenge – HACKED VERSION. Yes, Gray returned to the rather jank horror game about taking care of a living poop-creature who then tries to “take care of” you when you dare to try and get another poop-creature, to accomplish three goals for the amusement of us, his audience –
I. Get the first secret ending – this is apparently triggered by such things as ordering a pizza early, making a popsicle in the freezer, and dumping a camera in the toilet so you can get a key from the weird toilet creature that appears and unlock your wardrobe to get a – thingus (MAYBE a sword? I wasn’t sure, and neither was Gray). Doing all of this before Poulina arrives and then going to get more food for them once they’ve eaten you out of house and home causes you to come back to a prematurely-adult Pou –
AND A POULINA WHO HAS BECOME AN AWFUL SPIDER CREATURE. O.o Turns out Pou was actually doing you a favor by killing her in the regular ending! You then must help Pou (or, as he is known in this ending, Bou) fight her off by running through your webbed-up living room (avoiding getting jumpscare-killed by Spider Poulina) to get bandages to bandage Bou’s wounds and food to feed him so he can become strong. Game ends with him eating Spider Poulina, and apparently not turning on you because there’s no last-minute jumpscare. Okay then! Well, we knew this game was fucked-up.
II. Get the SECOND secret ending – this one is triggered by going through the game and making sure to collect all the secret “poo emoji” poops as they pop up throughout. Once Gray had gotten them all (and wrestled the janky car into submission in the final stage), a mystery hand appeared to yank the murderous adult Pou out of existence, and the player character was brought into a room with a giant Poo Emoji surrounded by the little ones he’d collected, where he proceeded to fantasize about living with a Poo Emoji woman – Gray called the woman the PC’s mom, but I’m pretty sure that it was supposed to be his wife (especially since the ending was referred to as the “spicy” ending). The giant Poo Emoji judged the PC hard for this. XD We knew this game was fucked-up!
III. Do horrible things to the game with the help of his hacker friend Outwit! Who installed a “Gray” button for him to use to do such things as noclip through the walls, turn off gravity, change the size of the Pous (he spawned a bunch of Adult Pous and then made them huge so you could only see their eyes and mouths glowing in the void), and spawn as many Pous and Poulinas as he could manage (using an autoclicker to do so just straight-up crashed the game, but by being a little less enthusiastic, Gray was able to fill the living room with little blinking poop-creatures). Because, well, we knew Gray is a little fucked-up. XD Oh Gray – well, at least the Baby In Yellow is getting a break from your antics while you’re tormenting (and being tormented by) poop! (Actually, I wouldn’t mind seeing that game again on the channel – fingers crossed for another update for the Lovecraftian hellbeast infant!)
B) Then, this evening, we had Jon and “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 43 - Hostile Takeover!” Featuring Bob’s continued adventures with the New Liberty Trading Company, and a little empire building along the way so he can be better prepared for raising the army he needs to take on the incoming Gunners! Here’s how that went, as concisely as it’s possible for me to be (which is probably not very) –
I. Picked up with Bob going to see Glatton after the trip to Diamond City – he asked the guy about their reputation, and he admitted that the NLTC had its share of detractors (like competitors and jilted partners), and that it mostly stems from the fact that they are not afraid to send in Allison and the mercenaries to enforce contracts that have been broken (because wastelanders tend to respect might more than paper). Glatton then asked Bob if he wouldn’t mind doing a little favor for him so he could see how the NLTC does business – namely, going to a recent customer who bought some generator parts (made by Glatton’s own family, no less) and collecting the first installment of his payment plan. Bob was willing to do this to see exactly how these guys worked, and was even more interested when the customer in question proved to live in CONCORD. You know, basically his old hometown. *nods* Things just got personal.
II. Before he did anything about the customer in Concord, though, Bob decided to use the journey productively and get a couple more settlements properly set up with mayors and whatnot to help with building his empire up a bit more. So he took a vertibird back to Egret Tours Marina and packed up two city planner’s desks and two boxes of ASAMs, intending to deliver them to Graygarden (who would come on-sides once he cleared the Weston Water Treatment Plant) and Sunshine Tidings (already cleared, just needs citizens). He also remembered to grab some chalk for that one super mutant who needs it for his upset tummy WAAAAY back at the beginning of the series, and figured that, since he was in the area, he’d collect the Mr. Handsy stash at Walden Pond too. Because why not, maybe the repurposed sex robot got him some good stuff. XD So how did his side trips go?
Graygarden – No muss, no fuss – he walked up the river to Weston and cleared it out of super mutants, mirelurks, and desk fans (he was hoping for legendaries, but nothing doing – though on the plus side, he now has mirelurk meat for days), then headed over to Graygarden, reported his success, and got control of the town. He promptly handed control of the town to Hubert (that amusing dude who sounds like he’s from Minnesota, who’s friends with the Children of Atom but really bad with numbers, originally part of the group now living at the Red Rocket near Sanctuary) and left them to build up the place into a proper settlement.
Sunshine Tidings – Never actually made it here because he realized Oberland Station was a lot closer and could be more easily built up (plus it already had a caravan station as part of the “daisy chain” Bob set up earlier to get goods from Sanctuary to the Marina), so he headed over there instead, put Sneake the raider (who he fought back near the beginning of all this, and who became a good citizen after Bob beat him) in charge, and let THEM get on with building things up (being quite impressed with the extension they built onto the back of the little railroad watchtower thing the original residents were living in).
Walden Pond – Another instance of no muss, no fuss – Bob swung by the pond, descended into the tunnels under the gift shop through the drainpipe, and picked up Big Jim the Crippling Wrench (an odd weapon, but might as well get it while you’re there) and the sexbot stash (decent, especially with four duct tape, but not good enough that Bob was going to go out of his way to get them). Better yet, as he was heading over to Concord from the Pond, he hit level 64 fighting the ghouls at Gorski’s cabin and thus was able to get Armorer 4, meaning he can now put max-level ballistic weave on his clothes, NICE. :D We love to see it!
III. With his side trips sorted, Bob then made his way to Concord, where, after a quick stop in the church to see how everyone was getting on (Red Handed Harriet is apparently actually interacting with society a bit, yay!), he went and found the settler who bought the parts. As it turns out, he was familiar with Bob’s reputation as The Commonwealth’s Salvation and very pleased to see him working with the New Liberty Trading Company, as it made them seem more trustworthy – he wasn’t sure about them at first. That being said, he told Bob that the generator was running like a dream with the new parts (raiders apparently smashed it up previously) and was only too happy to hand over the 100 caps for the first installment. Bob was like “okay, seems like they DID sell that guy a quality product for a – REASONABLY fair price; installment plans are always predatory but that’s relatively small potatoes compared to what they could be doing” and headed back to NLTC headquarters –
IV. Where he found Glatton talking with a guy about if he was SURE he wanted to invest in this big, risky scheme, and the guy being like “your last tip got us all the ammo we need for winter, I am IN.” Bob came in as the guy left and asked about it – Glatton claimed that he was a “friend” whom Glatton was helping to see the potential in investing in the Commonwealth. Jon immediately was like, “hang on, are you going around telling your customers to invest in YOUR schemes so you don’t have to risk your own money? Don’t like that, I think,” but had Bob hand over the payment anyway, because, well, still trying to keep an open mind –
And then Glatton asked him what he thought about Allison. Bob, instantly on the alert because he likes Allison, replied that it seemed like she could handle herself, but Glatton said that wasn’t why he was concerned about her. He then wove Bob a tale about how Allison was a violent psychopath, who led an insurrection against the company over a misunderstanding that culminated her shooting his superior and mentor – only to turn on her own insurrection when they put her on their payroll. Basically, he only employs her because she can be controlled with the promise of a paycheck. Just wanted to let Bob know, since they’re starting to trust each other and all. Bob said “thanks for the warning” while Jon vowed to have Bob check in with Allison and hear HER side later, and then went to go as he had no more contracts with the NLTC –
V. Only for Lydia to stop him and ask for a private word while he was heading out. Bob agreed, though he did briefly pull Deliverer in a panic when Lydia took him to the basement. Fortunately it was a nice basement and not a murder basement. XD They made their way to their office, where Lydia asked his opinion on Glatton – Bob admitted he didn’t trust the guy, and Lydia told him that his intuition was right on the money. She thus told him the future of the Commonwealth if it kept dealing with the NLTC as it is – namely, predatory interest would drain the people of caps, any talented people would be lured away with better prospects, then – once the region was bled dry – the NLTC would cut them off and leave, turning the once-prosperous land into easily-abandonable slums. She’s seen it happen many times under Glatton, and even confirmed Allison’s story about growing up in the slums around the Home Office. She, however, was actually interested in a more mutually-beneficial partnership with the Commonwealth, and so wanted Bob’s help in deposing Glatton (not killing him, just disgracing him in the eyes of the Board via proving he was in breach of contract or something – paper means everything to them, after all) so she could take over and convince the Board the Commonwealth was a good long-term investment. Jon was like “but I don’t particularly trust you either,” but decided to let Bob listen to her plan – after all, there was no guarantee she’d be worse.
VI. Onto the plan – the first step was to get a particular manifest out of his office – apparently he normally lets Lydia handle all the paperwork for their contracts, but he insisted on doing this one himself, which let her know that he doesn’t want her seeing it for some reason. So, naturally, she wanted to see it and figure out what he was up to. She recommended Bob get Allison’s help, and wrote him out a payslip to hand over to her to ensure her cooperation. Bob thus went go get Allison, first letting her know that Glatton mentioned her (Allison was like “not surprised, he tells the ‘she’s a psychopath’ story to anyone I might close to who isn’t my mercs – asshole”), then showing her the payslip from Lydia. Allison was more than happy to help with the scheme, and asked if Bob wanted her to distract Glatton or get the manifest – Bob, seeing how excited she was, decided she’d be best for distracting while he snuck in. Allison thus happily went to tell Glatton a lie about someone taking potshots at his beloved boat, causing him to run to check on it, and Bob snuck into the office, grabbed the manifest, confirmed he couldn’t access the guy’s computer, then got out and headed down to the basement –
Where he met Charlotte, a lady sporting a yellow fedora and trenchcoat (hey, that’s the Vault-Tec Rep’s look XD), who informed him she was a smuggler and could get him NLTC goods on the sly in exchange for caps. I – feel like telling Bob this while in their basement offices right in front of their big old security vault was not the smartest plan. XD Bob was open to her pitch (might solve the food problem back at HQ), but declined to set up any deals with her just yet, figuring it could wait until later – though he DID take the opportunity to make Egret Tours Marina the official Capital City of his Empire. :D So that was nice!
VII. Anyway, back to business – he gave the manifest to Lydia, who could see that it was a definite garbage contract, but couldn’t get an angle on what exactly Glatton was trying to pull. She decided to get Bob to go after the latest sale listed in the manifest – some water purifier parts sold to ANOTHER Concord resident (Jon was like “why are you exclusively doing business in Concord??” Because I think this was all supposed to happen EARLIER in the main questline, Jon) and get the receipt and one of the parts if he could. Bob thus went over to the house in question, where the woman mistook him for a handyman the company had sent out in response to her sending a note that her purifier was making some weird noises – apparently her first fix was on the house! She happily gave him the bill of sale as proof, and Bob decided he didn’t want to leave her high and dry and fixed the purifier along with snagging the part he needed – er, AFTER he brought his Intelligence up from a mere 1 from being dehydrated by running up the road to the Red Rocket and getting some water. Irony. XD He thus headed back to the main offices with part and receipt in hand –
VIII. To find her arguing with Allison, who had apparently cottoned onto the whole “Lydia wants to depose Glatton” plan and wanted in. Lydia was resistant as she didn’t trust her, but ALSO didn’t want her alerting Glatton – Bob asked Allison her stakes, and she said it was as simple as “you want to fuck over Glatton, I want to fuck over Glatton.” Bob decided that was enough for him and said they should let her help, and Lydia reluctantly said that she could probably make use of Allison’s mercenaries (Allison was appropriately smug). Bob thus handed over the part and the bill of sale to Lydia – she said that the part looked pretty standard to her, but Allison immediately clocked it as a dud from her days of childhood scrapyard scavenging, unsuited for the machinery up here – and with the logo scratched off too. Lydia realized that Glatton was apparently SABOTAGING HIS OWN FAMILY’S PARTS so he could sell faulty stuff to people that would break down faster (which meant his skilled craftsmen family would NOT be sticking up for him to the Board) – AND when she looked at the bill of sale, she declared it a nonbinding piece of gobbledygook that wouldn’t hold up at the Home Office at ALL. So it seems this team is already a good chunk of the way toward kicking out Glatton! The episode ended with Lydia saying the next step was for Bob to help her meet with The Ron in Diamond City so they could mutually exchange information (The Ron’s apparently been ignoring her written requests), which Bob was only too happy to do since he and The Ron are pretty tight, and he trusts the guy’s opinions. :) Things are getting spicy in this tale of corporate sabotage – I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes next week! And if Jon is right not to trust Lydia any more than he trusts Glatton...
Workout: Back on the bike this week, and back to my friend Squid’s Baldur’s Gate 3 cutscene movie starring their character Runa – Act II, Part 1! I’m actually going to be watching this for a few days this week because I want to finish the video off after having had to skip a couple of Sundays with it to watch GrayStillPlays compilations and James Turner challenge videos – I feel bad that I haven’t gotten further through it! Picked up where I left off, with Runa agreeing to play hide-and-seek with a mysterious tiefling child she and her party encountered in the shadow-cursed lands, and got through –
A) Her and her friends winning two rounds of the game against the kid, Oliver (and him reluctantly handing over a reward so he wouldn’t be seen as a bad sport)
B) The group finding the body of a deceased Githyanki warrior during the game who, via Speak With Dead, told them of a nearby creche of Githyanki (Lae’zel was very interested, especially when they later found a map to the place – that stuff is apparently in a different video, though, as Runa didn’t go to the creche in this “canonical” run)
C) Runa having a chat with Gale about Mystra charging him to blow himself up to stop the Absolute (Gale saying that Mystra probably doesn’t have permission to intervene herself from the top god, Ao, and that Elminister, powerful as he is, would probably struggle against such a foe, so it really is all up to him – and that he’s glad that his death will at least have a purpose; Runa is still not convinced it’s a good idea)
D) Runa surprising Wyll practicing his dance steps and sharing a lovely little dance with him – only to have to turn her head away at the last moment because this is actually Wyll’s first romance scene and she’s with Astarion as her one and only, aw :( He took it pretty well, at least, though his sad face was sad :(
E) The group encountering a gold-obsessed toll collector in front of a river, and Runa getting her to back down by pointing out that there was no one she was collecting the toll FOR (I think she in fact explodes herself if this is pointed out to her)
F) The group locating a temple to Shar, with a blood offering plate and plaques asking if they accepted things like having their intellect challenged, and whether they believed they could convert anyone to Shar’s cause (Runa did the “intellect challenged” one, but had Shadowheart do all the rest, including the offering – I mean, it’s HER goddess!)
G) The group making it into Moonrise Towers and having their first encounter with Ketheric Thorm, the immortal general – by watching him first take a giant axe to the chest from an angry goblin (who’d been sentenced to death for failing to secure the artifact keeping Runa and company safe), then – after he handed it back and told her to “try again” – taking it to the NECK. He just pulled it out and killed the goblin, then left the rest of the killing to his second-in-command, who then put it on Runa. Who suffocated the goblins. O.o As you might imagine, a few party members disapproved (though Lae’zel was totally into it)
H) Getting a mission from Ketheric’s second-in-command, to find a cultist who went out looking for a relic and went missing. Runa’s playing along for now, because it’s safer and gets her access to the cultist’s stuff, but we’ll see what happens when she actually finds the relic!
Lot going on! I left it off with the gang finding more discs of Githyanki lore about Orpheus, Prince of the Comet, and Lae’zel expressing an interest in them – we’ll see how that goes, and how much more we get through, tomorrow!
Not bad, not bad at all. And now I have the pleasure of going to bed at an actually halfway-decent time for a Sunday. *nods* We'll see how my Monday goes -- night all!
Tumblr: Still nothing happening over on Valice Multiverse, but I had a decent enough day over on Victor Luvs Alice – specifically –
A) I caught up as much as I could on my dash, then reblogged some stuff throughout the day (a McFly July fanfic about Marty feeling rather adrift on the Annual McFly Camping Trip with his family because that wasn’t a thing back in the Twin Pines timeline he remembers; a silly post about saying “lock the taskbar” to the tune of “Rock The Casbah” from my friend Newt; a post about how wholesome & healthy ships need a fucked-up element and fucked-up ships need a little wholesomeness for flavor and keeping people interested in the ship; and an audio post featuring “The OKeh Laughing Record” from 1923 – features two people laughing at an incompetent cornet player, which was probably cute at the time but sounds VERY CURSED now. I reblogged it because The Smiler vibes XD)
B) And I started a third reblog of my “Potential Tiny Town Challenge” post to go up on Wednesday, talking about some of the latest ideas I’ve come up with (like Smiler’s money-making skill being nectar-making, and using Community Space lots on the rest of the Crumbling Isle to make it feel like the whole island is being developed as more and more people join the tiny town). Not done yet, unfortunately – I had to stop early because of lunch and wanting to get to Fallout 4 at a decent time (see below) – but I hope to get it finished off tomorrow!
Fallout 4: Well, I did make a LITTLE progress on my journey back toward the Red Rocket and Victor’s robotics bench, but the main theme of today’s trip through the Wasteland was “squirrels.” What the hell do I mean by that? Well –
A) Started with Victor looking over the landscape from atop a broken on-ramp near the elevated highway near Forest Marsh Grove, gazing out at the old Weston Water Treatment Plant. However, I wasn’t interested in a location I had already explored – I was interested in one that I hadn’t! Namely, there was a mysterious trailer icon on Victor’s compass that was begging me to go find it, so I had Victor leave his perch and head in the direction of the marker, going across the road he was traveling along before and up a nearby hill to a second road with a few squirrels wandering around. He continued up that road for a while, checking out a Distress Signal his Pip-Boy had picked up (just empty static) and weaving through the trees along the side of the cracked pavement –
B) When, suddenly, there was the sound of gunshots, and I spotted laser fire ahead of him, at a gap where the elevated highway above had collapsed. Concerned, I had Victor scan the area with VATS, but the only thing he detected were a bunch of brahmin wandering around up atop the hill near him by an old broken-down bus. “Well, they’re friendly at least,” I thought, and had him head up there to join the cows, before heading out onto a little rock spire that sort of overlooked the battle scene to see if he could scope out anything with the Two-Shot’s, uh, scope. :p I saw what LOOKED like a ghoul in some sort of blue outfit (a Vault suit??), but I wasn’t able to get a good look, and after a couple of seconds the red blasts of laser fire stopped. *shrug* Well, at least whatever it was, it didn’t find Victor and become hostile to him!
C) With the excitement over, and the trailer icon closer than ever from Victor’s climb, I had Victor go milk one of the brahmin (something you can do with one of my mods if you have an empty milk bottle), check out the busted bus (empty), then proceed up the road to one Fiddler’s Green Trailer Estates! Probably should have figured it was going to be a trailer park because of the icon. XD Victor was immediately yelled at by some squirrels in the area and took them out –
Then spotted a feral ghoul roaming around down the road behind said squirrels, apparently chasing them, and took it out too. The (admittedly muffled because I have a silencer on this gun) gunfire apparently woke up some more ferals, who started wandering around the side of the trailer park behind the bus stop Victor had passed before – but despite the game telling me Victor was in [DANGER], the group never actually found him. They instead ran off to the right while Victor watched from the other side of the road – I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think they were chasing a squirrel nearby. XD They eventually got bored of trying to find a squirrel snack and started wandering back as Victor started sneaking into the park by the bus stop – Victor managed to successfully sneak attack one’s arm right off the side of its body, and then the remaining ones all spotted Ada (who’d wandered further into the area) first and promptly started attacking her, allowing Victor to pick them off at his leisure. :p This “enemies rush in to attack the robot while Victor stays behind and kills them from a little farther away” strategy is working out well for these two, I must admit. :p
D) With the initial pack of ghouls taken care of, it was time to start exploring the trailer park itself! Victor went around and looted all the bodies, then headed into the main building to see what was up there. The only feral he saw initially was lying on the ground, genuinely dead – but as he crept inside, a LEGENDARY feral suddenly stood up from behind the couch. Fortunately it technically hadn’t seen Victor yet, so Victor was able to take it out with a Two-Shot sneak attack. I then started looking around for more ferals, spotted a jiggling glowing squirrel corpse near the back wall, by the doorway into the other room –
Just in time for another feral to stumble through the gap. However, like with the Legendary, it didn’t immediately see Victor, so he was able to Two-Shot sneak attack it as well. *shakehead* I got fucking lucky there twice, let me tell you!
E) With the ghouls dead, I was a little freer to explore – going through the busted-up doorway next to the dead squirrel along the back wall led to a back office, with a terminal (labeled Lease Office Terminal) and a safe to crack, while the other exit led to the local swimming pool. I took a moment to grab the Legendary item off the Legendary feral (Lucky Double-Barreled Shotgun – not a bad drop, but I can never remember how to execute criticals, so not really for me), looked some of the containers by the pool, then headed back to the office to pick open the safe (some ammo and a trailer key I wasn’t interested in using) and hack the computer (got the password first guess, turned out to just control the safe). I then proceeded out through the pool area, had it out with a couple more squirrels across the road in the little playground area (which was kinda annoying, because while I spotted and killed the first one just fine, the second one was really hard to see and didn’t come up on VATS for the longest time – finally got it though), then started poking around the nearby trailers, looting mailboxes and feral corpses along the way. First one I opened had a couple of squirrel pups in it, along with some sort of Mysterious Piece Of Computer Equipment linked to an empty terminal (seriously, nothing on it), a stealth boy (nice), and a locked toolbox with duct tape inside (also nice). With all the goodies collected, I had Victor leave and head to the trailer across the way, which had two dead ferals in front of it –
F) And two living ferals inside of it, as I discovered when they stumbled out – one standard feral, and one Glowing One, to be precise. Fortunately they both fell easily to the power of the Two-Shot, and Victor was free to look inside. Turns out this was the trailer of the Winners, as the steamer trunk of “you cleared the area, good job” was in there (nothing particularly exciting inside), along with a chemistry bench. I had Victor go ahead and use the chem bench to combine some of the drugs he’d picked up (saves weight and increases value), then, inspired, had him drop his little portable workbench right beside it and took a moment to scrap the laser pistol and rifle he’d picked up fighting that little Gunner camp. To my disappointment, the only thing he got from scrapping them was plastic and screws. :( I wanna improve my Tesla Rifle, damn it! I also attempted to have him cook, but around that point Ada showed up and started standing in his personal space, and the game wouldn’t actually let him complete the action. Meh. Hardly the worst glitch in the world when it comes to Fallout 4, though!
G) With cooking off the menu (at least on the portable workbench), I had Victor pack it up and go investigating the other trailers in the area. The two burned-out shells on the far side of the pool were pretty much empty except of a few old pieces of furniture and a couple of caps, but a newer-looking trailer around the corner had a Master-locked door keeping Victor out, which was interesting. It was also situated right next to a cookpot, so I had Victor stop and do some cooking as the fog rolled in (gotta cook up all this squirrel meat), then – just in case something nasty was going to come out of the locked trailer – had him go check out the final burnt shell in the area to make sure he’d gotten everything out of all the others. As it turned out, this was a very good idea, as this trailer contained a copy of the Live & Love perk magazine (giving Victor +25% more experience when persuading women), some squirrel on a stick and squirrel stew in the fridge –
And a holotape called “The New Squirrel Tape 3!” I THOUGHT this was the place where you found this particular fucked-up bedtime story! XD Which also explains why there seemed to be so many squirrels in the area – I am reasonably sure the modders who made the “squirrel” mod I use deliberately put more around here because of these holotapes. XD
H) I couldn’t listen to tape #3 on its own, though – I obviously needed the first two bits of the story first. So I had Victor pocket the holotape and start looking around again for the other two. Holotape #1 was actually pretty easily located – I just had to pop back into the main building and take another look around. Turns out it was right near the original dead ghoul I’d seen, sitting next to a teddy bear. As the holotape in the trailer had ALSO been marked by a teddy bear, I made a note of that, then headed over to the Master-locked trailer to pop it open and see if #2 was inside. This lock proved to have a really difficult sweet spot, but after a few broken pins, Victor got it open and opened the door to reveal –
A set of power armor! Yeah, apparently this particular trailer belonged to an army guy (whose skeleton was still lounging on the couch in his fatigues), and he still had some of his old T-45 set. Nice, but we all know Victor’s already got better. :p Victor thus grabbed the fusion core (after briefly getting into the armor because I pushed the wrong button) and all the ammo he could find the trailer, then set back out on his mission to find “The New Squirrel Tape 2,” despite his growing tiredness. I had him recheck the trailer with the ghouls and the steamer trunk – no luck – then spotted a trailer near the back of the leasing office that I hadn’t gone in before. This one had one squirrel inside (easily taken out) –
I) And the final holotape, sitting on an ironing board next to a tipped-over teddy bear! :D Delighted, I grabbed it, had Victor raid the open dumpster behind the office, then go around and set up his tent in front of the office, taking a moment to listen to the story of “The New Squirrel!” Which, if you didn’t know, is by Storytime Simon and tells the story of Ricky the brown squirrel, who refused to listen to his elders when they told him that squirrels in other trees were horrible and not to be trusted, and forced them to show some basic kindness to a lost red squirrel who appeared at the base of their tree. Heartwarming, right?
Yeah, as it turns out, the red squirrel ran to Ricky’s tree because a bunch of cats were following him and he didn’t want them to eat HIS family. He escapes while Ricky and his entire family are eaten. The whole thing is probably supposed to be a metaphor for not trusting “The Reds,” aka the Chinese in the Fallout world. Nighty-night, kids! XD
And so my playsession ended with Victor taking a six-hour snooze at 4:30 AM, getting up around 10:30 AM on a bright sunny day and preparing to start his journey anew by looking off the side of the hilltop toward ArcJet Systems below. :) Next time, we’ll continue our meandering toward the Red Rocket and see if there’s any other interesting locations I haven’t found yet!
Writing: Another Sunday, another opportunity to update the FO4 playthrough progression with the Fallout Of Darkness version of the events in my game – and, as usual, it was pretty much identical (Victor and company avoiding a mysterious scrap on the road, finding their way into Fiddler’s Green Trailer Estates, and looting it) with some relatively-minor tweaks (beyond “Alice was there too and did things like help search the trailers and kill squirrels once she got out of her sleeping bag”) –
A) Obviously, Victor wasn’t trying to deliberately track down Fiddler’s Green like I was, since he doesn’t have the magic compass markers I do – climbing up the hill to the first road was just to see what was up there, then climbing up the second hill was just to avoid the gunfire in front of them. Finding the trailer park was just a nice bonus!
B) Victor didn’t milk any of the brahmin hanging out around the broken shell of the bus, because I don’t think it would have occurred to him to even try. That’s just a game mechanic so my in-game Victor can have limb-strengthening milk if he wants to! (I still have to figure out where the ice cream recipe in the game is so I can make that too. . .that probably WILL make it into the Playthrough Progression, since Fanfic!Victor would enjoy it.)
C) The whole thing with Ada wandering farther into the park and distracting that pack of ghouls chasing squirrels was a deliberate battle tactic this time, suggested by Ada herself – Victor’s cool with her using herself as bait for ghouls, who can’t really hurt her, but told her no doing it around deathclaws or the like. (She promised to keep any distraction efforts for those beasts ranged.)
D) Victor opened the safe in the leasing office in the back of the main building, with the terminal, took the trailer key inside, and used that to open the trailer with the power armor. Because unlike his in-game self, he doesn’t need XP from lockpicking things, so he can take the easier path. XD
E) Similarly, Victor didn’t do any drug-combining in the “win” trailer with the Glowing One (because that is something else I just do in the game for XP; fanfic!Victor is no chemist). I did let Alice get herself a new pair of pants out of the steamer trunk in there, though – and that isn’t even that far off what actually happened in the game, as I’m pretty sure I saw a “T-Shirt and Jeans” outfit in the list of items inside).
F) And after finding all the squirrel tapes (which happened after Victor opened up the locked trailer and found the power armor, and involved them splitting up after Victor got Tape #3 from the trailer with the squirrel-based meals inside – Victor found Tape #1 in the main office, while Alice got Tape #2 from the trailer with the squirrel and Ada unsuccessfully checked the Glowing One trailer), the gang made camp by the campfire with the cookpot so Victor could do his cooking and disassemble the guns he got from the Gunners while listening to the tapes before he went to sleep. Because that felt like a more logical progression of events to me.
...okay, maybe that was a few more changes than I thought, but they WERE all relatively minor, I think we can agree on that. :p Anyway, left it with Victor, Ada, and Alice (back in her sleeping back because it is a VERY sunny day) getting ready to leave Fiddler’s Green and continue on their way back to the Red Rocket – we’ll see what adventures await them, and how close they are to my game, next Sunday!
YouTube: Got through my usual Sunday Two no problem, yay –
A) First up, before my workout (because holy shit I had the time to watch it then for a change), we had GrayStillPlays and “I was hired to babysit 1,000 POUS,” aka Gray plays Pou’s Revenge – HACKED VERSION. Yes, Gray returned to the rather jank horror game about taking care of a living poop-creature who then tries to “take care of” you when you dare to try and get another poop-creature, to accomplish three goals for the amusement of us, his audience –
I. Get the first secret ending – this is apparently triggered by such things as ordering a pizza early, making a popsicle in the freezer, and dumping a camera in the toilet so you can get a key from the weird toilet creature that appears and unlock your wardrobe to get a – thingus (MAYBE a sword? I wasn’t sure, and neither was Gray). Doing all of this before Poulina arrives and then going to get more food for them once they’ve eaten you out of house and home causes you to come back to a prematurely-adult Pou –
AND A POULINA WHO HAS BECOME AN AWFUL SPIDER CREATURE. O.o Turns out Pou was actually doing you a favor by killing her in the regular ending! You then must help Pou (or, as he is known in this ending, Bou) fight her off by running through your webbed-up living room (avoiding getting jumpscare-killed by Spider Poulina) to get bandages to bandage Bou’s wounds and food to feed him so he can become strong. Game ends with him eating Spider Poulina, and apparently not turning on you because there’s no last-minute jumpscare. Okay then! Well, we knew this game was fucked-up.
II. Get the SECOND secret ending – this one is triggered by going through the game and making sure to collect all the secret “poo emoji” poops as they pop up throughout. Once Gray had gotten them all (and wrestled the janky car into submission in the final stage), a mystery hand appeared to yank the murderous adult Pou out of existence, and the player character was brought into a room with a giant Poo Emoji surrounded by the little ones he’d collected, where he proceeded to fantasize about living with a Poo Emoji woman – Gray called the woman the PC’s mom, but I’m pretty sure that it was supposed to be his wife (especially since the ending was referred to as the “spicy” ending). The giant Poo Emoji judged the PC hard for this. XD We knew this game was fucked-up!
III. Do horrible things to the game with the help of his hacker friend Outwit! Who installed a “Gray” button for him to use to do such things as noclip through the walls, turn off gravity, change the size of the Pous (he spawned a bunch of Adult Pous and then made them huge so you could only see their eyes and mouths glowing in the void), and spawn as many Pous and Poulinas as he could manage (using an autoclicker to do so just straight-up crashed the game, but by being a little less enthusiastic, Gray was able to fill the living room with little blinking poop-creatures). Because, well, we knew Gray is a little fucked-up. XD Oh Gray – well, at least the Baby In Yellow is getting a break from your antics while you’re tormenting (and being tormented by) poop! (Actually, I wouldn’t mind seeing that game again on the channel – fingers crossed for another update for the Lovecraftian hellbeast infant!)
B) Then, this evening, we had Jon and “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 43 - Hostile Takeover!” Featuring Bob’s continued adventures with the New Liberty Trading Company, and a little empire building along the way so he can be better prepared for raising the army he needs to take on the incoming Gunners! Here’s how that went, as concisely as it’s possible for me to be (which is probably not very) –
I. Picked up with Bob going to see Glatton after the trip to Diamond City – he asked the guy about their reputation, and he admitted that the NLTC had its share of detractors (like competitors and jilted partners), and that it mostly stems from the fact that they are not afraid to send in Allison and the mercenaries to enforce contracts that have been broken (because wastelanders tend to respect might more than paper). Glatton then asked Bob if he wouldn’t mind doing a little favor for him so he could see how the NLTC does business – namely, going to a recent customer who bought some generator parts (made by Glatton’s own family, no less) and collecting the first installment of his payment plan. Bob was willing to do this to see exactly how these guys worked, and was even more interested when the customer in question proved to live in CONCORD. You know, basically his old hometown. *nods* Things just got personal.
II. Before he did anything about the customer in Concord, though, Bob decided to use the journey productively and get a couple more settlements properly set up with mayors and whatnot to help with building his empire up a bit more. So he took a vertibird back to Egret Tours Marina and packed up two city planner’s desks and two boxes of ASAMs, intending to deliver them to Graygarden (who would come on-sides once he cleared the Weston Water Treatment Plant) and Sunshine Tidings (already cleared, just needs citizens). He also remembered to grab some chalk for that one super mutant who needs it for his upset tummy WAAAAY back at the beginning of the series, and figured that, since he was in the area, he’d collect the Mr. Handsy stash at Walden Pond too. Because why not, maybe the repurposed sex robot got him some good stuff. XD So how did his side trips go?
Graygarden – No muss, no fuss – he walked up the river to Weston and cleared it out of super mutants, mirelurks, and desk fans (he was hoping for legendaries, but nothing doing – though on the plus side, he now has mirelurk meat for days), then headed over to Graygarden, reported his success, and got control of the town. He promptly handed control of the town to Hubert (that amusing dude who sounds like he’s from Minnesota, who’s friends with the Children of Atom but really bad with numbers, originally part of the group now living at the Red Rocket near Sanctuary) and left them to build up the place into a proper settlement.
Sunshine Tidings – Never actually made it here because he realized Oberland Station was a lot closer and could be more easily built up (plus it already had a caravan station as part of the “daisy chain” Bob set up earlier to get goods from Sanctuary to the Marina), so he headed over there instead, put Sneake the raider (who he fought back near the beginning of all this, and who became a good citizen after Bob beat him) in charge, and let THEM get on with building things up (being quite impressed with the extension they built onto the back of the little railroad watchtower thing the original residents were living in).
Walden Pond – Another instance of no muss, no fuss – Bob swung by the pond, descended into the tunnels under the gift shop through the drainpipe, and picked up Big Jim the Crippling Wrench (an odd weapon, but might as well get it while you’re there) and the sexbot stash (decent, especially with four duct tape, but not good enough that Bob was going to go out of his way to get them). Better yet, as he was heading over to Concord from the Pond, he hit level 64 fighting the ghouls at Gorski’s cabin and thus was able to get Armorer 4, meaning he can now put max-level ballistic weave on his clothes, NICE. :D We love to see it!
III. With his side trips sorted, Bob then made his way to Concord, where, after a quick stop in the church to see how everyone was getting on (Red Handed Harriet is apparently actually interacting with society a bit, yay!), he went and found the settler who bought the parts. As it turns out, he was familiar with Bob’s reputation as The Commonwealth’s Salvation and very pleased to see him working with the New Liberty Trading Company, as it made them seem more trustworthy – he wasn’t sure about them at first. That being said, he told Bob that the generator was running like a dream with the new parts (raiders apparently smashed it up previously) and was only too happy to hand over the 100 caps for the first installment. Bob was like “okay, seems like they DID sell that guy a quality product for a – REASONABLY fair price; installment plans are always predatory but that’s relatively small potatoes compared to what they could be doing” and headed back to NLTC headquarters –
IV. Where he found Glatton talking with a guy about if he was SURE he wanted to invest in this big, risky scheme, and the guy being like “your last tip got us all the ammo we need for winter, I am IN.” Bob came in as the guy left and asked about it – Glatton claimed that he was a “friend” whom Glatton was helping to see the potential in investing in the Commonwealth. Jon immediately was like, “hang on, are you going around telling your customers to invest in YOUR schemes so you don’t have to risk your own money? Don’t like that, I think,” but had Bob hand over the payment anyway, because, well, still trying to keep an open mind –
And then Glatton asked him what he thought about Allison. Bob, instantly on the alert because he likes Allison, replied that it seemed like she could handle herself, but Glatton said that wasn’t why he was concerned about her. He then wove Bob a tale about how Allison was a violent psychopath, who led an insurrection against the company over a misunderstanding that culminated her shooting his superior and mentor – only to turn on her own insurrection when they put her on their payroll. Basically, he only employs her because she can be controlled with the promise of a paycheck. Just wanted to let Bob know, since they’re starting to trust each other and all. Bob said “thanks for the warning” while Jon vowed to have Bob check in with Allison and hear HER side later, and then went to go as he had no more contracts with the NLTC –
V. Only for Lydia to stop him and ask for a private word while he was heading out. Bob agreed, though he did briefly pull Deliverer in a panic when Lydia took him to the basement. Fortunately it was a nice basement and not a murder basement. XD They made their way to their office, where Lydia asked his opinion on Glatton – Bob admitted he didn’t trust the guy, and Lydia told him that his intuition was right on the money. She thus told him the future of the Commonwealth if it kept dealing with the NLTC as it is – namely, predatory interest would drain the people of caps, any talented people would be lured away with better prospects, then – once the region was bled dry – the NLTC would cut them off and leave, turning the once-prosperous land into easily-abandonable slums. She’s seen it happen many times under Glatton, and even confirmed Allison’s story about growing up in the slums around the Home Office. She, however, was actually interested in a more mutually-beneficial partnership with the Commonwealth, and so wanted Bob’s help in deposing Glatton (not killing him, just disgracing him in the eyes of the Board via proving he was in breach of contract or something – paper means everything to them, after all) so she could take over and convince the Board the Commonwealth was a good long-term investment. Jon was like “but I don’t particularly trust you either,” but decided to let Bob listen to her plan – after all, there was no guarantee she’d be worse.
VI. Onto the plan – the first step was to get a particular manifest out of his office – apparently he normally lets Lydia handle all the paperwork for their contracts, but he insisted on doing this one himself, which let her know that he doesn’t want her seeing it for some reason. So, naturally, she wanted to see it and figure out what he was up to. She recommended Bob get Allison’s help, and wrote him out a payslip to hand over to her to ensure her cooperation. Bob thus went go get Allison, first letting her know that Glatton mentioned her (Allison was like “not surprised, he tells the ‘she’s a psychopath’ story to anyone I might close to who isn’t my mercs – asshole”), then showing her the payslip from Lydia. Allison was more than happy to help with the scheme, and asked if Bob wanted her to distract Glatton or get the manifest – Bob, seeing how excited she was, decided she’d be best for distracting while he snuck in. Allison thus happily went to tell Glatton a lie about someone taking potshots at his beloved boat, causing him to run to check on it, and Bob snuck into the office, grabbed the manifest, confirmed he couldn’t access the guy’s computer, then got out and headed down to the basement –
Where he met Charlotte, a lady sporting a yellow fedora and trenchcoat (hey, that’s the Vault-Tec Rep’s look XD), who informed him she was a smuggler and could get him NLTC goods on the sly in exchange for caps. I – feel like telling Bob this while in their basement offices right in front of their big old security vault was not the smartest plan. XD Bob was open to her pitch (might solve the food problem back at HQ), but declined to set up any deals with her just yet, figuring it could wait until later – though he DID take the opportunity to make Egret Tours Marina the official Capital City of his Empire. :D So that was nice!
VII. Anyway, back to business – he gave the manifest to Lydia, who could see that it was a definite garbage contract, but couldn’t get an angle on what exactly Glatton was trying to pull. She decided to get Bob to go after the latest sale listed in the manifest – some water purifier parts sold to ANOTHER Concord resident (Jon was like “why are you exclusively doing business in Concord??” Because I think this was all supposed to happen EARLIER in the main questline, Jon) and get the receipt and one of the parts if he could. Bob thus went over to the house in question, where the woman mistook him for a handyman the company had sent out in response to her sending a note that her purifier was making some weird noises – apparently her first fix was on the house! She happily gave him the bill of sale as proof, and Bob decided he didn’t want to leave her high and dry and fixed the purifier along with snagging the part he needed – er, AFTER he brought his Intelligence up from a mere 1 from being dehydrated by running up the road to the Red Rocket and getting some water. Irony. XD He thus headed back to the main offices with part and receipt in hand –
VIII. To find her arguing with Allison, who had apparently cottoned onto the whole “Lydia wants to depose Glatton” plan and wanted in. Lydia was resistant as she didn’t trust her, but ALSO didn’t want her alerting Glatton – Bob asked Allison her stakes, and she said it was as simple as “you want to fuck over Glatton, I want to fuck over Glatton.” Bob decided that was enough for him and said they should let her help, and Lydia reluctantly said that she could probably make use of Allison’s mercenaries (Allison was appropriately smug). Bob thus handed over the part and the bill of sale to Lydia – she said that the part looked pretty standard to her, but Allison immediately clocked it as a dud from her days of childhood scrapyard scavenging, unsuited for the machinery up here – and with the logo scratched off too. Lydia realized that Glatton was apparently SABOTAGING HIS OWN FAMILY’S PARTS so he could sell faulty stuff to people that would break down faster (which meant his skilled craftsmen family would NOT be sticking up for him to the Board) – AND when she looked at the bill of sale, she declared it a nonbinding piece of gobbledygook that wouldn’t hold up at the Home Office at ALL. So it seems this team is already a good chunk of the way toward kicking out Glatton! The episode ended with Lydia saying the next step was for Bob to help her meet with The Ron in Diamond City so they could mutually exchange information (The Ron’s apparently been ignoring her written requests), which Bob was only too happy to do since he and The Ron are pretty tight, and he trusts the guy’s opinions. :) Things are getting spicy in this tale of corporate sabotage – I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes next week! And if Jon is right not to trust Lydia any more than he trusts Glatton...
Workout: Back on the bike this week, and back to my friend Squid’s Baldur’s Gate 3 cutscene movie starring their character Runa – Act II, Part 1! I’m actually going to be watching this for a few days this week because I want to finish the video off after having had to skip a couple of Sundays with it to watch GrayStillPlays compilations and James Turner challenge videos – I feel bad that I haven’t gotten further through it! Picked up where I left off, with Runa agreeing to play hide-and-seek with a mysterious tiefling child she and her party encountered in the shadow-cursed lands, and got through –
A) Her and her friends winning two rounds of the game against the kid, Oliver (and him reluctantly handing over a reward so he wouldn’t be seen as a bad sport)
B) The group finding the body of a deceased Githyanki warrior during the game who, via Speak With Dead, told them of a nearby creche of Githyanki (Lae’zel was very interested, especially when they later found a map to the place – that stuff is apparently in a different video, though, as Runa didn’t go to the creche in this “canonical” run)
C) Runa having a chat with Gale about Mystra charging him to blow himself up to stop the Absolute (Gale saying that Mystra probably doesn’t have permission to intervene herself from the top god, Ao, and that Elminister, powerful as he is, would probably struggle against such a foe, so it really is all up to him – and that he’s glad that his death will at least have a purpose; Runa is still not convinced it’s a good idea)
D) Runa surprising Wyll practicing his dance steps and sharing a lovely little dance with him – only to have to turn her head away at the last moment because this is actually Wyll’s first romance scene and she’s with Astarion as her one and only, aw :( He took it pretty well, at least, though his sad face was sad :(
E) The group encountering a gold-obsessed toll collector in front of a river, and Runa getting her to back down by pointing out that there was no one she was collecting the toll FOR (I think she in fact explodes herself if this is pointed out to her)
F) The group locating a temple to Shar, with a blood offering plate and plaques asking if they accepted things like having their intellect challenged, and whether they believed they could convert anyone to Shar’s cause (Runa did the “intellect challenged” one, but had Shadowheart do all the rest, including the offering – I mean, it’s HER goddess!)
G) The group making it into Moonrise Towers and having their first encounter with Ketheric Thorm, the immortal general – by watching him first take a giant axe to the chest from an angry goblin (who’d been sentenced to death for failing to secure the artifact keeping Runa and company safe), then – after he handed it back and told her to “try again” – taking it to the NECK. He just pulled it out and killed the goblin, then left the rest of the killing to his second-in-command, who then put it on Runa. Who suffocated the goblins. O.o As you might imagine, a few party members disapproved (though Lae’zel was totally into it)
H) Getting a mission from Ketheric’s second-in-command, to find a cultist who went out looking for a relic and went missing. Runa’s playing along for now, because it’s safer and gets her access to the cultist’s stuff, but we’ll see what happens when she actually finds the relic!
Lot going on! I left it off with the gang finding more discs of Githyanki lore about Orpheus, Prince of the Comet, and Lae’zel expressing an interest in them – we’ll see how that goes, and how much more we get through, tomorrow!
Not bad, not bad at all. And now I have the pleasure of going to bed at an actually halfway-decent time for a Sunday. *nods* We'll see how my Monday goes -- night all!
