Another Running Late Sunday
Sep. 29th, 2024 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, don't be fooled by that timestamp above -- I may have made sure to get to Dreamwidth relatively early, but I had a LOT to get through tonight, thanks to some nonsense in the middle of the day that screwed up my Fallout 4 playing and basically threw my (and my parents') whole afternoon off. You'll see it in the to-do list below --
Tumblr: Well, I did get all five Chill Valicer Save posts sorted with their image alt text on Victor Luvs Alice before lunch, so those are ready to go on Wednesday. But there were two asks on Valice Multiverse that I just didn’t get a chance to get to tonight, so I’ll have to do those tomorrow morning. Might have been able to sort them if they’d shown up earlier in the day, before the nonsense below, but – eh. Not the first time I’ve had to do an emergency morning queue over there!
Fallout 4: Well, despite my playsession being broken up twice by my parents fucking with our modem to get our “smart TV” working again (those quotes are very sarcastic, I assure you – and no, they never did get the channel they were trying to load in to load in), I did manage to complete both Vault 75 and its related quest today –
A) Started with Victor and Ada hanging out at the end of the big “stairs” corridor from last time, fresh off an eight-hour snooze and ready to explore! Since, while Victor did have the keycard to the Admin area and thus the Overseer’s office, I obviously wanted to see what was at the bottom of all those stairs in the center of the area! Can’t leave any goodies or lore unfound, after all…a point proven five seconds later when I quickly checked the area they’d camped in for goodies and found a stimpack and a whole pack of duct tape. :D Once those were pocketed, I had them head to the central landing (noting with interest that it was glass so people passing overhead could see those in the corridor just below), then headed down the stairs on the left to find what I could find. I quickly discovered a lot of computer equipment; more glass floors looking into the corridors below; a little sleeping area with bunk beds and a desk; a little side office area with more fancy science equipment; and – through a sliding door on the right side of the wall – a bigger office with some skeletons within and – next to one of the desks, a wastebasket with some Wonderglue inside!
A wastebasket that I proceeded to knock over in such a way that I could no longer access the top of it and thus retrieve the Wonderglue. :( I attempted to knock it back around by having Victor jump around and on top of it, but no dice, so I figured “what if I tried to bash it with my gun?” and tried to remember the button to do that on a controller –
Aaaand accidentally threw a grenade at the problem. Which would have been fine if the explosion had actually knocked the wastebasket into a more accessible position, but instead all it did was blow up Ada’s legs (as I’d hastily scrambled out of exploding range when I realized what I’d done). Fortunately I’d quicksaved mere moments previous, but still. *wince* Sorry about that, Ada!
B) Having reloaded to before I threw a grenade at a wastebasket, I forced myself to leave the forbidden Wonderglue behind and instead investigate the door on the other side of the office – which turned out to lead to the area on the other side of the stairs! Convenient! There I found another little side office full of computer equipment; another sleeping area that went around a corner, and featured a Jangles toy monkey hiding behind a wall made up of comfy pillows on one of the top bunks (frankly terrifying in the dimly-lit space), and – most importantly – a researcher’s terminal at the very base of the stairs! Once I was done exploring and looting the other areas, I had Victor hop onto that to see what was inside. There was a section on how to use the aerobics station to measure aerobic health with the treadmills; a list of heart rate guidelines for different age groups (covering what the minimum, target, and preferred heart rates were); a set of acceptable and unacceptable side effect guidelines (you were not to stop testing if participants started feeling bad, vomiting, or even passed out – only if there was a significant risk of cardiac arrest or death); and – most enlightening – the researcher’s personal logs! Which revealed that –
I. The researcher was one of the kids who lived in the vault, who’d been recruited to the science team upon their graduation
II. Said researcher had a friend, Nina (with whom they’d speculated that the Overseer had to have SOME adult helpers in the vault, even if they’d never seen them), and that they hoped that she could join them when she graduated in two years
III. After a few months, they already felt more mature than the kids they were monitoring, including two kids named James and Rohit (who were apparently trying to secretly plan to take over the vault), and that Nina was not doing great on her academic scores, but had top-notch physical scores, so she would probably be selected for an “up-top” team and that they hoped they could see her one more time before then
IV. One of the chief researchers, Bissell, lost some notes from his clipboard at one point and roped the researcher into trying to find them before anyone else found out – the researcher realized that they’d gotten caught in a vent, but couldn’t retrieve them without going into the testing side of the vault...and then saw Rohit snag them from said testing side, but instead chose to tell Bissell that they hadn’t found them
V. And that they’d tried to ask the Overseer for supplies to repair and improve the shooting gallery, only for the Overseer to tell them they’d have to make do, and wondering why she hadn’t asked for one of the “up-top” teams to get materials (then rationalizing that it was probably too dangerous for her to go out on her own to find them and that she might ask the next time there was a graduation and she was leading the latest teams out)
All veeeery interesting stuff, as I’m sure you will agree. I know that every Vault has its share of shady shit, but this shit seemed particularly shady indeed…
C) Anyway – with that read, I returned to the big office spanning the stairs to head back through to the other side and explore the sleeping area and side office on the left properly...but couldn’t help but pause a moment by that damn wastebasket I’d knocked over. I was extremely loathe to leave the Wonderglue there (you always need adhesive in the wasteland), so I pondered the problem for another moment –
And thought “okay, I don’t think I can hit it with my gun – but what if I used Big Jim? That’s a melee weapon, after all – I can’t fuck up trying to swing THAT.” So I swapped over to the oversized wrench and started smacking the wastebasket –
And success! :D Took a few hits, but I finally turned it around enough that I could access the inside of the basket and get my Wonderglue (and the coffee cup that was in there too, for good measure). :D Hooray!
D) With THAT mess finally sorted, I thus proceeded over to the left side of the stairs once more, and – after sweeping the sleeping area and making sure I’d gotten everything useful out of that – headed into the little side office, finding some more desks, a shot of Psycho (not for me, but good for selling), and – around the corner, near some microscope thing – an “Assistant’s Terminal.” I had Victor log onto that, and found the names of assistants James and Rohit; a testing schedule (which looked to have glitched out at some point, stopping testing after 12 PM); a corrupted set of testing guidelines, and something called [PR]V4TE]. Clicking on that brought up a message indicating that if you were not James or Rohit, you needed to butt out, but as they were almost certainly long dead, I had Victor continue on, finding –
I. A message from Rohit to James, telling him that he’d deliberately messed up the testing schedule so nobody would be tested after lunch for a bit; that it should be safe for them to leave messages for each other on this computer now; and that they needed to work on smuggling ammo out of the shooting range (a bullet or two at a time)...and that they’d need to come up with a fuse for their design at some point, but that could wait until they’d gotten enough gunpowder, which wouldn’t be for a while
II. A “chatlog” of sorts between James and Rohit about what they expected to face when they enacted their plan to take over the vault (James thought worst-case, they’d be facing off against all the “Superiors” who had graduated, but it was likely just to be geeks and robots, and that they were being trained SPECIFICALLY to overpower people like that, sooo)
III. And a second “chatlog” between them about how to keep the little kids safe when they tried to breach the door (James suggested going during naptime, and they agreed that they needed someone to stay behind and keep an eye on them, with them roping their friend Alma into the plan to do just that)
I think we have an idea of what might have happened to this vault now!
E) With me having successfully explored the hell out of the area and learned a lot about what was going on in there (namely, horrible experiments on children, and a sense that at least some of the kids were ready to start a rebellion), I decided it was time to head off to the Admin area! I had Victor and Ada thus hoof it back to the lab and the door to the Overseer’s office and swipe their new keycard. Beyond the door was a staircase, which led to some sort of central lab area, with a pillar with terminals in the middle –
And a Gunner Corporal hanging out at the sole working terminal in the corner. Fortunately, a couple of shots from the Two-Shot in VATS killed him easily enough, and I had Victor loot the body (stopping briefly to wonder if he wanted the guy’s clothes since they offered slightly more regular damage protection than Victor’s plain military fatigues – I eventually decided against it as Victor probably wasn’t the type to wear Gunner clothing) before heading out through the nearby doorway up some more stairs to a fancy office with a couple of Gunners inside, messing around with the computer on the desk). I killed those two as well with nice handy sneak attacks and took a quick look around, noting an expert-locked door in the corner –
F) But then decided, “no, let’s do this properly and check out the terminal in the previous room first.” So I head back down the stairs to the computer pillar room, where I hopped on the terminal in the corner, which proved to belong to one Chief Scientist Gibson. Which just so happened to contain upon it the prime directive of the vault – improving the human genome! Via an experiment involving selective breeding, hormonal therapies, genetic modifications, and an “accelerated generational cycle” to see how rapidly it could be improved. And where were they getting their raw materials for the genetic modifications and such?
From the so-called “Superiors” of the graduating classes. Yes, it appears that, should an outgoing eighteen-year-old be ranked “superior” or “excellent” in all categories, they were taken to the “genomics” lab, and – under the guise of “getting vaccinated” – HARVESTED for their organs and DNA so they could be studied and their bits used to improve the next generation. Any kids who were really smart but had bad physical scores could be recruited to the science team to keep THEIR numbers up (since, as a multi-generational experiment, the members of the original team would slowly but surely die off), and everyone else? Just straight up murdered and incinerated. No big deal, right? D: The terminal also included Gibson’s notes on the most recent round of graduations, including how they’d had an exceptional harvest that year, but that he was getting concerned about growing aggression in the population (noting that they’d had psychological breakdowns before due to the testing, but that there had been increased incidents this year); how they’d only recruited one new researcher, Washington, to their staff (who was an excellent problem-solver, but whom the Overseer was a bit worried was too attached to younger friends still in the vault – Gibson was sure it would be fine, though, the kid was very suggestible and they just had to keep him in the dark about some of their true duties until his friends graduated out); and how they’d had an exceptionally low disposal overhead this year...with only 74% of the graduates needing to be incinerated. And how that would be an excellent job for young Washington! D: Cripes, every time you think the vaults can’t possibly get any more fucked up…
G) Anyway – having confirmed that this vault was one of the most horrible to ever fucking exist in the universe of the games, I unlocked the Advanced-locked door to the right (discovering a sleeping and bathroom area right beyond), then headed back to the Overseer’s office and unlocked her Expert-locked door to find a rather nicer bathroom and sleeping area beyond – plus a Grognak comic that increased the damage of melee and unarmed critical hits by 5%. Not a perk Victor will ever be using, but hey, I like collecting comics and magazines. XD I then hit up the Overseer’s terminal (which completed the “Vault 75” quest) to see what was on there – mostly information that we’d already learned (like the purpose of the vault to improve the genome and the fucked-up methods by which they were doing so), though it did confirm that all of the 17-year-old-plus residents who entered with the kids when the bombs dropped were “disposed of” by security (with any kids who refused to enter the atrium without their parents being part of the massacre) and that the vault was repopulating itself via use of artificially-grown embryos using the genes of the harvested 18-year-olds (since, you know, they were killing everyone who might have eventually had kids naturally). It also had her personal notes, with her worrying about Washington and how she wasn’t sure she should have let herself been talked into bringing him on; pondering a capacity problem in the nursery (apparently they had too many little kids at one point?); and talking about a fire in the archives, which damaged some important hardware and wiped out a bunch of the old data the scientists had (why do I think a certain pair of “research assistants” might have been behind that…). Nothing too exciting, but I guess it’s good to confirm that everyone in this vault was fucked up in one way or another!
Oh, and it revealed to me that there was a safe somewhere around the area, since it had the option to unlock it. I always prefer unlocking these things manually if I can to get the lockpick XP, so I logged off and went looking, and found it tucked into a bottom drawer of the desk. Took a few bobby pins to crack, since it was Master-locked, but I got in eventually and scored a good amount of ammo and some pre-War cash. Plus a laser gun to break down later for parts. *nods* Not bad.
H) And so, having discovered all there was to discover about Vault 75 and how fucked up it was, it was time to head for Victor and Ada to head out. I had them leave via the doorway to the atrium, which led to two other locked doors that allowed me to access the two balcony areas that I hadn’t been able to reach before – the little “corner office” balcony overlooking the main atrium itself, and the balcony that had once been been attached to the main reactor room via a fallen stairwell (though, unfortunately, the Gunner I’d killed up there had despawned in the meantime). I had Victor jump down back into the main reactor room from the latter, then loop his way back around through the atrium and the hallways beyond to the elevator, then (after taking a moment to properly get Ada to follow Victor into said elevator) took it up to the entrance, where the pair headed out and through the doors back into the school and the Commonwealth! After stopped for a moment to eat a quick deathclaw steak and mutfruit juice lunch, that is. :p I ended it with Victor and Ada heading up the stairs to the barred door to head back out into the Commonwealth proper –
And then noticing a tension trigger by the door that I quickly disarmed, going “how the fuck didn’t I see that earlier??” XD Well, at least they won’t fall victim to any traps when they leave, at least. Next time – well, I haven’t fully decided yet, but I probably SHOULD start heading in the direction of Cambridge and that damn courser. Gotta get back on the main plot at SOME point! As fun as these little side excursions are.
Writing: Another Sunday, another update to the FO4 Playthrough Progression, featuring the fanfic’s take on today’s session wrapping up the stuff in Vault 75! And while bits of it were similar enough to what happened above that I was able to copy and paste a chunk of what I wrote above into my fanfic doc (what I wrote about the notes on the Researcher’s Terminal), there were a few significant differences –
A) While exploring the researcher bunks and offices at the bottom of the stairs in the corridor, Victor and Alice split up, with Victor reading through the Researcher’s Terminal and Alice reading through the Assistants’ Terminal, before meeting up again to tell each other their findings! Figured it made sense since they’d already wiped out all the enemies in the area and that meant they could figure out what was going on that much quicker
B) Similarly, Alice unlocked the doors in the Chief Scientist’s room and the Overseer’s office (claiming the Grognak comic in the latter to give to Victor later to help him feel better) while Victor looked at the terminals and learned the truth about the Vault 75’s experiments in rapidly improving the human genome and what it meant for the kids there, to save them a little bit of time in their explorations. Honestly, Victor was horrified enough by what he found on the Chief Scientist’s computer about the kids being “harvested” when they turned 18 (he has a real THING about kids being hurt thanks to a superior officer trying to get him to shoot a couple throwing rocks at an Army camp while he was helping guard the Alaska pipeline – he ended up shooting the officer instead) that he wanted to leave the Vault then and there, but voices upstairs alerted him and his companions to some Gunners still being present, so they went up to take them out, and he figured he might as well look at the Overseer’s terminal while he was up there. :( I kind of want to give him all the hugs now – sorry for making you explore one of the Fallout universe’s worst vaults, buddy!
C) And, on a much smaller and lighter note, while I had Victor knock over the wastebasket with the Wonderglue in it in that one office, I was able to acknowledge that, as a regular person instead of a video game character with limited movement, he was able to, you know, just bend over and pick it up. XD We need more of that in games, devs! I would prefer not to have to smack things with a wrench to get them back into a position I can use!
But yeah – much like me, the trio found out the horrible secrets of Vault 75, were horrified by them, then left after getting all the goodies and unlocking all the doors because they just didn’t want to be there anymore. *sigh* I’ll try to find something nicer for you to do next time! There must be something fun you can encounter on the way to that courser...
YouTube: Welp, thanks to my Fallout 4 session running long due to all the nonsense with the “smart TV” and just generally having more to do than anticipated, I only had time for half of my Sunday Two – and I chose to prioritize the longer half and make sure I got through Jon and “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 54 - Magnusson Opus!” Which featured Bob actually going to clear out the cache Magnusson told him about and start working on more of his quests, instead of getting distracted by boosting up his military might against the Gunners. :p And I am running very late with my write-ups tonight, so I am going to try and get through what happened as quickly as possible –
I. Bob found Magnusson’s cache, which was in a secret bunker room tucked away in the Wildwood cemetery’s mausoleum (I will have to see if that particular location is in the regular game or not – I didn’t recall seeing it while wandering Wildwood myself earlier!). Contained a whole bunch of good, useful junk stored away in a box; a weapon workbench; a sleeping area and bathroom; a trio of audio logs detailing Magnusson’s time with RobCo (specifically, his initial hiring, which involved a guy named Mallard trying to kick him and his secret, far-fetched project out the door because he didn’t see the value in it – up until Magnusson revealed that he was buddies with CEO Robert House, and that House had already approved the plan, forcing Mallard to sign Magnusson’s contract; Mallard coming to demand that Magnusson give RobCo something of immediate value to justify them funding his “Project Selene” – and pointing out that the “advanced survey and activity monitoring sensors” could make an excellent product if Magnusson streamlined them a bit...Magnusson rebuffed him and told his assistant that the dude’s threats were as empty as his head; and finally Mallard revealing to Magnusson that one of his underlings had created the ASAMS as we know them for him, and now that they had a viable product to sell, he was terminating the guy’s contract and ending his project); and a very special gun – the Stheno! Which was a rifle that used electrical ammo and had both armor penetration and a 25% chance to stun enemies, which, nice. Bob wasn’t willing to use it until he could fully upgrade it, though, and not even the massive amount of stuff in the cache was enough to do so (he was lacking some very necessary rubber, sadly – I know the feel, Bob), so he pocketed it until he could get back to the Marina and headed out, mildly surprised that Magnusson did not immediately call him on the radio to start his next quest. I mean, I was expecting that too, but I guess the NPCs don’t always play by the rules!
(Oh, and if you were worried, Bob finally remembered to take his two level-ups from the end of the last video after finishing all of that – he upped his Luck and then took “Critical Banker” because Jon loves that perk. XD Well, about TIME, Jon!)
II. Bob then headed over to Starlight Drive-In to turn it into an outpost so he could use it to recruit new warriors and liberate Oberland – and met two new named potential settlers hanging out there! Specifically, he met Lacey Buckles, a former Diamond City shopkeep with a grudge against Mayor McDonough (who apparently ran her out of town), who offered to set up shop in one of Bob’s settlements if he did her the favor of stealing McDonough’s Batter-Up Buttercup toy from his office (Bob was keen); and Noman Sland (yes, Jon was VERY suspicious of the pun), a rather desperate-looking fellow who wanted to report a crime. A crime –
Involving the Quincy Massacre. You see, shortly before the massacre, Noman was in the Dugout Inn, and overheard this trader who’d had a little too much talking about how much safer Quincy was, and then – at the prompting of some lowlife – detailing all their defenses. As Quincy was hit just three days later, Noman thinks that the information the trader gave them helped the Gunners in their operation. And that if that’s the case, then the trader should be killed for what he did. He asked Bob to investigate “Danny V” and see if the information he blabbed helped lead to the Massacre. Bob was like “...okay, I’ll get around to that eventually” –
And I was like, “Jon. JON NOMAN IS CLEARLY DANNY V HIMSELF AND IS TRYING TO DEAL WITH THE GUILT OF HAVING POSSIBLY HELPED KILL ALL THOSE PEOPLE.” I mean, I MIGHT be wrong, but it certainly FEELS right! We’ll see for sure whenever Jon gets around to the quest.
III. Bob then started the campaign to liberate Oberland Station with his new warriors! This went – pretty much the same way all of Bob’s campaigns to liberate settlements go. Namely, he successfully killed all the Gunners, but he ALSO managed to harm or kill a settler in the process, so now Oberland Station hates him. XD And he wasn’t even using the Explosive Sniper this time! He didn’t have the ammo for it! Everyone just knows what Bob is like at this point and is ready to shoot him before he shoots them, I guess. XD
IV. Bob was then told by the game to radio Magnusson again and start working on his next quest. Magnusson explained that the Stheno is his creation, and that if Bob has noticed similar guns being used by the Gunners – well, a lot of his inventions were copied or stolen over the years, and the Gunners have gotten their hands on a knock-off version courtesy of their employer. But the Stheno is definitely the better gun, trust him on that. Anyway, he acknowledged that the Stheno itself wasn’t going to win Bob the war against the Gunners –
So that’s why he wanted to help the man get his hands on a way to hijack at least one of the satellites floating above Earth that could rain tactical nuclear fire down on the enemy. Bob was like “You have my attention.” XD The problem was, Magnusson was unable to remember where Bob needed to go next to get the next part he needed for this plan – his memory wasn’t what it was after so many years, after all. All he had in his head was the name “St. James” – which sounded like a church, but Magnusson was certain that wasn’t the case. He did associate it with three other locations though – the Warren Theater, the Proust Bar, and the Boyleston Club. He suggested Bob check those places for clues about “St. James” so they could figure out where he needed to go next – Bob, very eager to get his hands on Death From Above, agreed. XD
V. Bob then stopped by the Marina to quickly upgrade the Stheno into something he could use day-to-day, then teleported to the Institute and out again so he could hit up Diamond City for some ammo and suchlike. He ended up also getting April Li the dog trainer’s packages from Percy the Diamond City Surplus robot and Penny the butcher, and stole the Batter-Up Buttercup from the Mayor for Lacey while he was waiting for all the shops to open for the day (because he got the city rather early, you see). Productive trip to old Fenway!
VI. Bob then headed over to Boston Common to check out Magnusson’s old haunts (taking a moment to stop by the pond and kill Swan with the Stheno to test it out; he was not impressed with the gun’s damage, but found the stun, combined with his own “Sniper” knockback perks, VERY useful). He hit the Boyleston Club first and found an audio log of Magnusson meeting with one Madison from Vault-Tec, in order to get her company’s help with his project, in exchange for not only helping them with the ASAMS project they were working on with RobCo –
But also to help them out with the cryo-tech in Vault 111. Ooooh. WELL then. And at the end of the audio tape, we learned that Madison’s last name – was none other than St. James! So THAT’S why Magnusson remembered it!
And then Jon’s game crashed and he had to do all that again because he’s playing in Survival and you can only save when you sleep in that mode. XD There are reasons that I only play with modded-in survival mechanics, people!
VII. Anyway – after redoing all that, Bob then checked out the Proust Bar (where he found Magnusson’s old hat – which, given it gave +2 to Charisma and +1 to Intelligence, Bob immediately donned – and a note about him having come in with a lady on a hot date that mentioned that Magnusson was an astronaut) and the Warren Theater (which was NOT the Combat Zone, as Jon had thought, but a building past it – I’m actually pretty sure that it’s the building I had to visit to get the musical instrument plans for my “build your own playable instruments” mod! In Jon’s version, it had a bunch of mannequins on stage with a decaying synth hiding among them – good thing Bob’s on good terms with the Institute right now – and a note telling the cast that they were to give a rose to Madison in the audience instead of “The Countess” with a message about her beauty, which does suggest that Magnusson and Madison WERE dating) before calling up Magnusson to let him know what he’d found and play a bit of the holotape. That jogged Magnusson’s memory, allowing him to recall that Madison was the Chief Procurement Officer for Vault-Tec and had helped him save his project (which he was still being very coy about, only relaying that it was a grand plan to survive the end of the world and he just needed the means to make it achievable when Bob asked). Which made him remember that the next item Bob needed –
Was in Vault fucking 111. Yeah. Have to go all the way back to where it all started. Bob agreed to head back, and Magnusson let him know that he’d call up Jake and tell him to meet him there. And assured him that he knew going back there would probably bring up lots of complicated emotions for Bob, but it really was necessary to get ahold of his Atomic Fire. You’re lucky Bob is NOT sentimental about his late wife and kid, Magnusson. XD
And so the episode ended with Bob preparing to head in the direction of Vault 111, and maybe see if he could take back some Gunner-conquered territories along the way, like Forest Grove Marsh and the Federal Ration Stockpile. We’ll see how that works out for him, and what it is Magnusson wants him to get, next week!
Workout: Back on the bike to start the week, pedaling my way through the following videos –
A) “It's Called Magic, Tina, Look It Up... For Your Mother's Sake | Super Sim Series 13” by Petey Plays It! Yeah, I really wanted to watch this, so I delayed the GSP compilations a day to watch up on it. As you might guess from that title, this episode was all about Tina embracing the spellcaster life – specifically so she could find a way to bring her mother Sally back to life and keep her alive forever! This journey involved –
I. Tina traveling to the Magic Realm and throwing massive amounts of shade on the base version of the Magical HQ (which, honestly, soooo deserves it) before meeting L. Faba and getting the Rite of Ascension from her (which apparently did NOT require Tina to go around and get motes because she had an Ancient Bloodline already – I don’t know if this is an actual feature or a storyline thing Petey did, but if it’s the former, that’s kinda neat!)
II. Tina powering her way through the Untamed Magic and Alchemy portions of her spellbook (completing the Purveyor of Potions aspiration as she did) to learn the Necrocall and Dedeathify spells and the Potion of Immortality recipe to revive Sally – along the way, she ranked all the way up to Virtuoso, bought a ton of stuff from the vendors in Caster Alley to get as much of the magical artifacts collection sorted as possible, and learned a bunch of other fun spells, like Inferniate! Which led to...
III. Tina deciding to play a little prank on her ex Sergio by going by his and setting his barbecue on fire with Inferniate while he was using it...only for the spell to seemingly not function correctly – and then the barbecue caught fire anyway and set Sergio alight. Trapping Tina on the lot with no way to either help him or put out the fire because she’d never actually been invited in, meaning she couldn’t actually get to the fire on the little patio. Meaning Sergio died, and Tina had to stay in the front yard, occasionally panicking over the fire with Sergio’s roommate Joaquim, until the fire spread to a spot where she could call the fire department to help...and then they didn’t put out the fire correctly, forcing her to wait longer until the damn fire FINALLY moved into a position where she could Chillio it all and actually LEAVE THE LOT. Made her late for a day of work, damn it! She later returned and took his urn home with her because she had some weird feelings regarding the whole matter and she wanted his remains close for reasons even she couldn’t say.
IV. Tina celebrating learning “Dedeathify” and getting one step closer to resurrecting her mother by inviting Darryl to the Moonlight Cinema park, hoping to start a relationship with him – only for him not to get the hint. Mostly because he’s Unflirty, which Tina knew, but – well, she has a very high opinion of herself, so… XD Maybe another time, Tina!
V. Tina getting to the top of the Tech Guru’s Start Up Entrepreneur branch! Which was a very small accomplishment in the grand scheme of things, but came with a really nice paycheck, so it helped her keep on top of the bills if nothing else.
VI. And Tina finally learning the Potion of Immortality recipe from L. Faba (after learning EVERY OTHER ONE on her own), and bringing her mother back from the dead and gifting her with eternal life! And that annoying glowing infinity symbol that comes with it, meaning Tina won’t be drinking any Immortality potions until the end of the series. XD Anyway, she got Sally set up in the guest bedroom for the moment, and prepared to figure out how to find a house for her –
And then the ghost of Sergio showed up. And Tina was suddenly confronted with a decision – use her new magical powers to resurrect him, or leave him dead? A decision that she just could not make on her own –
So Petey tossed it over to the community! Yes, the main reason I wanted to watch this sooner rather than later is that Petey recently put up a poll regarding Sergio’s fate (though I didn’t know that when I first saw the post, I just saw that it had something to do with the latest episode) and I wanted to vote in it. I voted for bringing him back, but the vast majority of the player base wants to leave him dead. XD Though a few people said “see if you can use him to complete that one Home Chef Hustle aspiration where where you have to bring a ghost back by selling them ambrosia,” which feels like a good middle ground! We’ll see what happens in the next episode, and if Petey takes any of those suggestions under consideration!
B) “Severance S1E4-5 - Helly's Self-Destruction And Rescue By Mark” by RipGore! A clip (or possibly a collection of clips) showing off the moment in the series where Helly tries to hang herself in the elevator to both free herself from the Severed Floor and stick it to her Outie, only to be found by Mark when he calls the elevator down to leave for the day and causing him a WHOLE boatload of trauma. D: Also features Dylan reading a horrible poem from “The You You Are,” the terrible self-help book that nonetheless gives the Innies something to fight for, and Irving discovering that Burt’s department, Optics & Design, is actually a lot bigger than he initially let on. All very dramatic stuff! Yes, even the terrible poem – it gets a lot more dramatic when it’s overlaid on Helly trying to kill herself. :( Sad show is very sad sometimes.
Aaaand that all took WAY longer than I wanted it to, and I have to go to bed. *sigh* I am so done with Sundays like this -- night all!
Tumblr: Well, I did get all five Chill Valicer Save posts sorted with their image alt text on Victor Luvs Alice before lunch, so those are ready to go on Wednesday. But there were two asks on Valice Multiverse that I just didn’t get a chance to get to tonight, so I’ll have to do those tomorrow morning. Might have been able to sort them if they’d shown up earlier in the day, before the nonsense below, but – eh. Not the first time I’ve had to do an emergency morning queue over there!
Fallout 4: Well, despite my playsession being broken up twice by my parents fucking with our modem to get our “smart TV” working again (those quotes are very sarcastic, I assure you – and no, they never did get the channel they were trying to load in to load in), I did manage to complete both Vault 75 and its related quest today –
A) Started with Victor and Ada hanging out at the end of the big “stairs” corridor from last time, fresh off an eight-hour snooze and ready to explore! Since, while Victor did have the keycard to the Admin area and thus the Overseer’s office, I obviously wanted to see what was at the bottom of all those stairs in the center of the area! Can’t leave any goodies or lore unfound, after all…a point proven five seconds later when I quickly checked the area they’d camped in for goodies and found a stimpack and a whole pack of duct tape. :D Once those were pocketed, I had them head to the central landing (noting with interest that it was glass so people passing overhead could see those in the corridor just below), then headed down the stairs on the left to find what I could find. I quickly discovered a lot of computer equipment; more glass floors looking into the corridors below; a little sleeping area with bunk beds and a desk; a little side office area with more fancy science equipment; and – through a sliding door on the right side of the wall – a bigger office with some skeletons within and – next to one of the desks, a wastebasket with some Wonderglue inside!
A wastebasket that I proceeded to knock over in such a way that I could no longer access the top of it and thus retrieve the Wonderglue. :( I attempted to knock it back around by having Victor jump around and on top of it, but no dice, so I figured “what if I tried to bash it with my gun?” and tried to remember the button to do that on a controller –
Aaaand accidentally threw a grenade at the problem. Which would have been fine if the explosion had actually knocked the wastebasket into a more accessible position, but instead all it did was blow up Ada’s legs (as I’d hastily scrambled out of exploding range when I realized what I’d done). Fortunately I’d quicksaved mere moments previous, but still. *wince* Sorry about that, Ada!
B) Having reloaded to before I threw a grenade at a wastebasket, I forced myself to leave the forbidden Wonderglue behind and instead investigate the door on the other side of the office – which turned out to lead to the area on the other side of the stairs! Convenient! There I found another little side office full of computer equipment; another sleeping area that went around a corner, and featured a Jangles toy monkey hiding behind a wall made up of comfy pillows on one of the top bunks (frankly terrifying in the dimly-lit space), and – most importantly – a researcher’s terminal at the very base of the stairs! Once I was done exploring and looting the other areas, I had Victor hop onto that to see what was inside. There was a section on how to use the aerobics station to measure aerobic health with the treadmills; a list of heart rate guidelines for different age groups (covering what the minimum, target, and preferred heart rates were); a set of acceptable and unacceptable side effect guidelines (you were not to stop testing if participants started feeling bad, vomiting, or even passed out – only if there was a significant risk of cardiac arrest or death); and – most enlightening – the researcher’s personal logs! Which revealed that –
I. The researcher was one of the kids who lived in the vault, who’d been recruited to the science team upon their graduation
II. Said researcher had a friend, Nina (with whom they’d speculated that the Overseer had to have SOME adult helpers in the vault, even if they’d never seen them), and that they hoped that she could join them when she graduated in two years
III. After a few months, they already felt more mature than the kids they were monitoring, including two kids named James and Rohit (who were apparently trying to secretly plan to take over the vault), and that Nina was not doing great on her academic scores, but had top-notch physical scores, so she would probably be selected for an “up-top” team and that they hoped they could see her one more time before then
IV. One of the chief researchers, Bissell, lost some notes from his clipboard at one point and roped the researcher into trying to find them before anyone else found out – the researcher realized that they’d gotten caught in a vent, but couldn’t retrieve them without going into the testing side of the vault...and then saw Rohit snag them from said testing side, but instead chose to tell Bissell that they hadn’t found them
V. And that they’d tried to ask the Overseer for supplies to repair and improve the shooting gallery, only for the Overseer to tell them they’d have to make do, and wondering why she hadn’t asked for one of the “up-top” teams to get materials (then rationalizing that it was probably too dangerous for her to go out on her own to find them and that she might ask the next time there was a graduation and she was leading the latest teams out)
All veeeery interesting stuff, as I’m sure you will agree. I know that every Vault has its share of shady shit, but this shit seemed particularly shady indeed…
C) Anyway – with that read, I returned to the big office spanning the stairs to head back through to the other side and explore the sleeping area and side office on the left properly...but couldn’t help but pause a moment by that damn wastebasket I’d knocked over. I was extremely loathe to leave the Wonderglue there (you always need adhesive in the wasteland), so I pondered the problem for another moment –
And thought “okay, I don’t think I can hit it with my gun – but what if I used Big Jim? That’s a melee weapon, after all – I can’t fuck up trying to swing THAT.” So I swapped over to the oversized wrench and started smacking the wastebasket –
And success! :D Took a few hits, but I finally turned it around enough that I could access the inside of the basket and get my Wonderglue (and the coffee cup that was in there too, for good measure). :D Hooray!
D) With THAT mess finally sorted, I thus proceeded over to the left side of the stairs once more, and – after sweeping the sleeping area and making sure I’d gotten everything useful out of that – headed into the little side office, finding some more desks, a shot of Psycho (not for me, but good for selling), and – around the corner, near some microscope thing – an “Assistant’s Terminal.” I had Victor log onto that, and found the names of assistants James and Rohit; a testing schedule (which looked to have glitched out at some point, stopping testing after 12 PM); a corrupted set of testing guidelines, and something called [PR]V4TE]. Clicking on that brought up a message indicating that if you were not James or Rohit, you needed to butt out, but as they were almost certainly long dead, I had Victor continue on, finding –
I. A message from Rohit to James, telling him that he’d deliberately messed up the testing schedule so nobody would be tested after lunch for a bit; that it should be safe for them to leave messages for each other on this computer now; and that they needed to work on smuggling ammo out of the shooting range (a bullet or two at a time)...and that they’d need to come up with a fuse for their design at some point, but that could wait until they’d gotten enough gunpowder, which wouldn’t be for a while
II. A “chatlog” of sorts between James and Rohit about what they expected to face when they enacted their plan to take over the vault (James thought worst-case, they’d be facing off against all the “Superiors” who had graduated, but it was likely just to be geeks and robots, and that they were being trained SPECIFICALLY to overpower people like that, sooo)
III. And a second “chatlog” between them about how to keep the little kids safe when they tried to breach the door (James suggested going during naptime, and they agreed that they needed someone to stay behind and keep an eye on them, with them roping their friend Alma into the plan to do just that)
I think we have an idea of what might have happened to this vault now!
E) With me having successfully explored the hell out of the area and learned a lot about what was going on in there (namely, horrible experiments on children, and a sense that at least some of the kids were ready to start a rebellion), I decided it was time to head off to the Admin area! I had Victor and Ada thus hoof it back to the lab and the door to the Overseer’s office and swipe their new keycard. Beyond the door was a staircase, which led to some sort of central lab area, with a pillar with terminals in the middle –
And a Gunner Corporal hanging out at the sole working terminal in the corner. Fortunately, a couple of shots from the Two-Shot in VATS killed him easily enough, and I had Victor loot the body (stopping briefly to wonder if he wanted the guy’s clothes since they offered slightly more regular damage protection than Victor’s plain military fatigues – I eventually decided against it as Victor probably wasn’t the type to wear Gunner clothing) before heading out through the nearby doorway up some more stairs to a fancy office with a couple of Gunners inside, messing around with the computer on the desk). I killed those two as well with nice handy sneak attacks and took a quick look around, noting an expert-locked door in the corner –
F) But then decided, “no, let’s do this properly and check out the terminal in the previous room first.” So I head back down the stairs to the computer pillar room, where I hopped on the terminal in the corner, which proved to belong to one Chief Scientist Gibson. Which just so happened to contain upon it the prime directive of the vault – improving the human genome! Via an experiment involving selective breeding, hormonal therapies, genetic modifications, and an “accelerated generational cycle” to see how rapidly it could be improved. And where were they getting their raw materials for the genetic modifications and such?
From the so-called “Superiors” of the graduating classes. Yes, it appears that, should an outgoing eighteen-year-old be ranked “superior” or “excellent” in all categories, they were taken to the “genomics” lab, and – under the guise of “getting vaccinated” – HARVESTED for their organs and DNA so they could be studied and their bits used to improve the next generation. Any kids who were really smart but had bad physical scores could be recruited to the science team to keep THEIR numbers up (since, as a multi-generational experiment, the members of the original team would slowly but surely die off), and everyone else? Just straight up murdered and incinerated. No big deal, right? D: The terminal also included Gibson’s notes on the most recent round of graduations, including how they’d had an exceptional harvest that year, but that he was getting concerned about growing aggression in the population (noting that they’d had psychological breakdowns before due to the testing, but that there had been increased incidents this year); how they’d only recruited one new researcher, Washington, to their staff (who was an excellent problem-solver, but whom the Overseer was a bit worried was too attached to younger friends still in the vault – Gibson was sure it would be fine, though, the kid was very suggestible and they just had to keep him in the dark about some of their true duties until his friends graduated out); and how they’d had an exceptionally low disposal overhead this year...with only 74% of the graduates needing to be incinerated. And how that would be an excellent job for young Washington! D: Cripes, every time you think the vaults can’t possibly get any more fucked up…
G) Anyway – having confirmed that this vault was one of the most horrible to ever fucking exist in the universe of the games, I unlocked the Advanced-locked door to the right (discovering a sleeping and bathroom area right beyond), then headed back to the Overseer’s office and unlocked her Expert-locked door to find a rather nicer bathroom and sleeping area beyond – plus a Grognak comic that increased the damage of melee and unarmed critical hits by 5%. Not a perk Victor will ever be using, but hey, I like collecting comics and magazines. XD I then hit up the Overseer’s terminal (which completed the “Vault 75” quest) to see what was on there – mostly information that we’d already learned (like the purpose of the vault to improve the genome and the fucked-up methods by which they were doing so), though it did confirm that all of the 17-year-old-plus residents who entered with the kids when the bombs dropped were “disposed of” by security (with any kids who refused to enter the atrium without their parents being part of the massacre) and that the vault was repopulating itself via use of artificially-grown embryos using the genes of the harvested 18-year-olds (since, you know, they were killing everyone who might have eventually had kids naturally). It also had her personal notes, with her worrying about Washington and how she wasn’t sure she should have let herself been talked into bringing him on; pondering a capacity problem in the nursery (apparently they had too many little kids at one point?); and talking about a fire in the archives, which damaged some important hardware and wiped out a bunch of the old data the scientists had (why do I think a certain pair of “research assistants” might have been behind that…). Nothing too exciting, but I guess it’s good to confirm that everyone in this vault was fucked up in one way or another!
Oh, and it revealed to me that there was a safe somewhere around the area, since it had the option to unlock it. I always prefer unlocking these things manually if I can to get the lockpick XP, so I logged off and went looking, and found it tucked into a bottom drawer of the desk. Took a few bobby pins to crack, since it was Master-locked, but I got in eventually and scored a good amount of ammo and some pre-War cash. Plus a laser gun to break down later for parts. *nods* Not bad.
H) And so, having discovered all there was to discover about Vault 75 and how fucked up it was, it was time to head for Victor and Ada to head out. I had them leave via the doorway to the atrium, which led to two other locked doors that allowed me to access the two balcony areas that I hadn’t been able to reach before – the little “corner office” balcony overlooking the main atrium itself, and the balcony that had once been been attached to the main reactor room via a fallen stairwell (though, unfortunately, the Gunner I’d killed up there had despawned in the meantime). I had Victor jump down back into the main reactor room from the latter, then loop his way back around through the atrium and the hallways beyond to the elevator, then (after taking a moment to properly get Ada to follow Victor into said elevator) took it up to the entrance, where the pair headed out and through the doors back into the school and the Commonwealth! After stopped for a moment to eat a quick deathclaw steak and mutfruit juice lunch, that is. :p I ended it with Victor and Ada heading up the stairs to the barred door to head back out into the Commonwealth proper –
And then noticing a tension trigger by the door that I quickly disarmed, going “how the fuck didn’t I see that earlier??” XD Well, at least they won’t fall victim to any traps when they leave, at least. Next time – well, I haven’t fully decided yet, but I probably SHOULD start heading in the direction of Cambridge and that damn courser. Gotta get back on the main plot at SOME point! As fun as these little side excursions are.
Writing: Another Sunday, another update to the FO4 Playthrough Progression, featuring the fanfic’s take on today’s session wrapping up the stuff in Vault 75! And while bits of it were similar enough to what happened above that I was able to copy and paste a chunk of what I wrote above into my fanfic doc (what I wrote about the notes on the Researcher’s Terminal), there were a few significant differences –
A) While exploring the researcher bunks and offices at the bottom of the stairs in the corridor, Victor and Alice split up, with Victor reading through the Researcher’s Terminal and Alice reading through the Assistants’ Terminal, before meeting up again to tell each other their findings! Figured it made sense since they’d already wiped out all the enemies in the area and that meant they could figure out what was going on that much quicker
B) Similarly, Alice unlocked the doors in the Chief Scientist’s room and the Overseer’s office (claiming the Grognak comic in the latter to give to Victor later to help him feel better) while Victor looked at the terminals and learned the truth about the Vault 75’s experiments in rapidly improving the human genome and what it meant for the kids there, to save them a little bit of time in their explorations. Honestly, Victor was horrified enough by what he found on the Chief Scientist’s computer about the kids being “harvested” when they turned 18 (he has a real THING about kids being hurt thanks to a superior officer trying to get him to shoot a couple throwing rocks at an Army camp while he was helping guard the Alaska pipeline – he ended up shooting the officer instead) that he wanted to leave the Vault then and there, but voices upstairs alerted him and his companions to some Gunners still being present, so they went up to take them out, and he figured he might as well look at the Overseer’s terminal while he was up there. :( I kind of want to give him all the hugs now – sorry for making you explore one of the Fallout universe’s worst vaults, buddy!
C) And, on a much smaller and lighter note, while I had Victor knock over the wastebasket with the Wonderglue in it in that one office, I was able to acknowledge that, as a regular person instead of a video game character with limited movement, he was able to, you know, just bend over and pick it up. XD We need more of that in games, devs! I would prefer not to have to smack things with a wrench to get them back into a position I can use!
But yeah – much like me, the trio found out the horrible secrets of Vault 75, were horrified by them, then left after getting all the goodies and unlocking all the doors because they just didn’t want to be there anymore. *sigh* I’ll try to find something nicer for you to do next time! There must be something fun you can encounter on the way to that courser...
YouTube: Welp, thanks to my Fallout 4 session running long due to all the nonsense with the “smart TV” and just generally having more to do than anticipated, I only had time for half of my Sunday Two – and I chose to prioritize the longer half and make sure I got through Jon and “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 54 - Magnusson Opus!” Which featured Bob actually going to clear out the cache Magnusson told him about and start working on more of his quests, instead of getting distracted by boosting up his military might against the Gunners. :p And I am running very late with my write-ups tonight, so I am going to try and get through what happened as quickly as possible –
I. Bob found Magnusson’s cache, which was in a secret bunker room tucked away in the Wildwood cemetery’s mausoleum (I will have to see if that particular location is in the regular game or not – I didn’t recall seeing it while wandering Wildwood myself earlier!). Contained a whole bunch of good, useful junk stored away in a box; a weapon workbench; a sleeping area and bathroom; a trio of audio logs detailing Magnusson’s time with RobCo (specifically, his initial hiring, which involved a guy named Mallard trying to kick him and his secret, far-fetched project out the door because he didn’t see the value in it – up until Magnusson revealed that he was buddies with CEO Robert House, and that House had already approved the plan, forcing Mallard to sign Magnusson’s contract; Mallard coming to demand that Magnusson give RobCo something of immediate value to justify them funding his “Project Selene” – and pointing out that the “advanced survey and activity monitoring sensors” could make an excellent product if Magnusson streamlined them a bit...Magnusson rebuffed him and told his assistant that the dude’s threats were as empty as his head; and finally Mallard revealing to Magnusson that one of his underlings had created the ASAMS as we know them for him, and now that they had a viable product to sell, he was terminating the guy’s contract and ending his project); and a very special gun – the Stheno! Which was a rifle that used electrical ammo and had both armor penetration and a 25% chance to stun enemies, which, nice. Bob wasn’t willing to use it until he could fully upgrade it, though, and not even the massive amount of stuff in the cache was enough to do so (he was lacking some very necessary rubber, sadly – I know the feel, Bob), so he pocketed it until he could get back to the Marina and headed out, mildly surprised that Magnusson did not immediately call him on the radio to start his next quest. I mean, I was expecting that too, but I guess the NPCs don’t always play by the rules!
(Oh, and if you were worried, Bob finally remembered to take his two level-ups from the end of the last video after finishing all of that – he upped his Luck and then took “Critical Banker” because Jon loves that perk. XD Well, about TIME, Jon!)
II. Bob then headed over to Starlight Drive-In to turn it into an outpost so he could use it to recruit new warriors and liberate Oberland – and met two new named potential settlers hanging out there! Specifically, he met Lacey Buckles, a former Diamond City shopkeep with a grudge against Mayor McDonough (who apparently ran her out of town), who offered to set up shop in one of Bob’s settlements if he did her the favor of stealing McDonough’s Batter-Up Buttercup toy from his office (Bob was keen); and Noman Sland (yes, Jon was VERY suspicious of the pun), a rather desperate-looking fellow who wanted to report a crime. A crime –
Involving the Quincy Massacre. You see, shortly before the massacre, Noman was in the Dugout Inn, and overheard this trader who’d had a little too much talking about how much safer Quincy was, and then – at the prompting of some lowlife – detailing all their defenses. As Quincy was hit just three days later, Noman thinks that the information the trader gave them helped the Gunners in their operation. And that if that’s the case, then the trader should be killed for what he did. He asked Bob to investigate “Danny V” and see if the information he blabbed helped lead to the Massacre. Bob was like “...okay, I’ll get around to that eventually” –
And I was like, “Jon. JON NOMAN IS CLEARLY DANNY V HIMSELF AND IS TRYING TO DEAL WITH THE GUILT OF HAVING POSSIBLY HELPED KILL ALL THOSE PEOPLE.” I mean, I MIGHT be wrong, but it certainly FEELS right! We’ll see for sure whenever Jon gets around to the quest.
III. Bob then started the campaign to liberate Oberland Station with his new warriors! This went – pretty much the same way all of Bob’s campaigns to liberate settlements go. Namely, he successfully killed all the Gunners, but he ALSO managed to harm or kill a settler in the process, so now Oberland Station hates him. XD And he wasn’t even using the Explosive Sniper this time! He didn’t have the ammo for it! Everyone just knows what Bob is like at this point and is ready to shoot him before he shoots them, I guess. XD
IV. Bob was then told by the game to radio Magnusson again and start working on his next quest. Magnusson explained that the Stheno is his creation, and that if Bob has noticed similar guns being used by the Gunners – well, a lot of his inventions were copied or stolen over the years, and the Gunners have gotten their hands on a knock-off version courtesy of their employer. But the Stheno is definitely the better gun, trust him on that. Anyway, he acknowledged that the Stheno itself wasn’t going to win Bob the war against the Gunners –
So that’s why he wanted to help the man get his hands on a way to hijack at least one of the satellites floating above Earth that could rain tactical nuclear fire down on the enemy. Bob was like “You have my attention.” XD The problem was, Magnusson was unable to remember where Bob needed to go next to get the next part he needed for this plan – his memory wasn’t what it was after so many years, after all. All he had in his head was the name “St. James” – which sounded like a church, but Magnusson was certain that wasn’t the case. He did associate it with three other locations though – the Warren Theater, the Proust Bar, and the Boyleston Club. He suggested Bob check those places for clues about “St. James” so they could figure out where he needed to go next – Bob, very eager to get his hands on Death From Above, agreed. XD
V. Bob then stopped by the Marina to quickly upgrade the Stheno into something he could use day-to-day, then teleported to the Institute and out again so he could hit up Diamond City for some ammo and suchlike. He ended up also getting April Li the dog trainer’s packages from Percy the Diamond City Surplus robot and Penny the butcher, and stole the Batter-Up Buttercup from the Mayor for Lacey while he was waiting for all the shops to open for the day (because he got the city rather early, you see). Productive trip to old Fenway!
VI. Bob then headed over to Boston Common to check out Magnusson’s old haunts (taking a moment to stop by the pond and kill Swan with the Stheno to test it out; he was not impressed with the gun’s damage, but found the stun, combined with his own “Sniper” knockback perks, VERY useful). He hit the Boyleston Club first and found an audio log of Magnusson meeting with one Madison from Vault-Tec, in order to get her company’s help with his project, in exchange for not only helping them with the ASAMS project they were working on with RobCo –
But also to help them out with the cryo-tech in Vault 111. Ooooh. WELL then. And at the end of the audio tape, we learned that Madison’s last name – was none other than St. James! So THAT’S why Magnusson remembered it!
And then Jon’s game crashed and he had to do all that again because he’s playing in Survival and you can only save when you sleep in that mode. XD There are reasons that I only play with modded-in survival mechanics, people!
VII. Anyway – after redoing all that, Bob then checked out the Proust Bar (where he found Magnusson’s old hat – which, given it gave +2 to Charisma and +1 to Intelligence, Bob immediately donned – and a note about him having come in with a lady on a hot date that mentioned that Magnusson was an astronaut) and the Warren Theater (which was NOT the Combat Zone, as Jon had thought, but a building past it – I’m actually pretty sure that it’s the building I had to visit to get the musical instrument plans for my “build your own playable instruments” mod! In Jon’s version, it had a bunch of mannequins on stage with a decaying synth hiding among them – good thing Bob’s on good terms with the Institute right now – and a note telling the cast that they were to give a rose to Madison in the audience instead of “The Countess” with a message about her beauty, which does suggest that Magnusson and Madison WERE dating) before calling up Magnusson to let him know what he’d found and play a bit of the holotape. That jogged Magnusson’s memory, allowing him to recall that Madison was the Chief Procurement Officer for Vault-Tec and had helped him save his project (which he was still being very coy about, only relaying that it was a grand plan to survive the end of the world and he just needed the means to make it achievable when Bob asked). Which made him remember that the next item Bob needed –
Was in Vault fucking 111. Yeah. Have to go all the way back to where it all started. Bob agreed to head back, and Magnusson let him know that he’d call up Jake and tell him to meet him there. And assured him that he knew going back there would probably bring up lots of complicated emotions for Bob, but it really was necessary to get ahold of his Atomic Fire. You’re lucky Bob is NOT sentimental about his late wife and kid, Magnusson. XD
And so the episode ended with Bob preparing to head in the direction of Vault 111, and maybe see if he could take back some Gunner-conquered territories along the way, like Forest Grove Marsh and the Federal Ration Stockpile. We’ll see how that works out for him, and what it is Magnusson wants him to get, next week!
Workout: Back on the bike to start the week, pedaling my way through the following videos –
A) “It's Called Magic, Tina, Look It Up... For Your Mother's Sake | Super Sim Series 13” by Petey Plays It! Yeah, I really wanted to watch this, so I delayed the GSP compilations a day to watch up on it. As you might guess from that title, this episode was all about Tina embracing the spellcaster life – specifically so she could find a way to bring her mother Sally back to life and keep her alive forever! This journey involved –
I. Tina traveling to the Magic Realm and throwing massive amounts of shade on the base version of the Magical HQ (which, honestly, soooo deserves it) before meeting L. Faba and getting the Rite of Ascension from her (which apparently did NOT require Tina to go around and get motes because she had an Ancient Bloodline already – I don’t know if this is an actual feature or a storyline thing Petey did, but if it’s the former, that’s kinda neat!)
II. Tina powering her way through the Untamed Magic and Alchemy portions of her spellbook (completing the Purveyor of Potions aspiration as she did) to learn the Necrocall and Dedeathify spells and the Potion of Immortality recipe to revive Sally – along the way, she ranked all the way up to Virtuoso, bought a ton of stuff from the vendors in Caster Alley to get as much of the magical artifacts collection sorted as possible, and learned a bunch of other fun spells, like Inferniate! Which led to...
III. Tina deciding to play a little prank on her ex Sergio by going by his and setting his barbecue on fire with Inferniate while he was using it...only for the spell to seemingly not function correctly – and then the barbecue caught fire anyway and set Sergio alight. Trapping Tina on the lot with no way to either help him or put out the fire because she’d never actually been invited in, meaning she couldn’t actually get to the fire on the little patio. Meaning Sergio died, and Tina had to stay in the front yard, occasionally panicking over the fire with Sergio’s roommate Joaquim, until the fire spread to a spot where she could call the fire department to help...and then they didn’t put out the fire correctly, forcing her to wait longer until the damn fire FINALLY moved into a position where she could Chillio it all and actually LEAVE THE LOT. Made her late for a day of work, damn it! She later returned and took his urn home with her because she had some weird feelings regarding the whole matter and she wanted his remains close for reasons even she couldn’t say.
IV. Tina celebrating learning “Dedeathify” and getting one step closer to resurrecting her mother by inviting Darryl to the Moonlight Cinema park, hoping to start a relationship with him – only for him not to get the hint. Mostly because he’s Unflirty, which Tina knew, but – well, she has a very high opinion of herself, so… XD Maybe another time, Tina!
V. Tina getting to the top of the Tech Guru’s Start Up Entrepreneur branch! Which was a very small accomplishment in the grand scheme of things, but came with a really nice paycheck, so it helped her keep on top of the bills if nothing else.
VI. And Tina finally learning the Potion of Immortality recipe from L. Faba (after learning EVERY OTHER ONE on her own), and bringing her mother back from the dead and gifting her with eternal life! And that annoying glowing infinity symbol that comes with it, meaning Tina won’t be drinking any Immortality potions until the end of the series. XD Anyway, she got Sally set up in the guest bedroom for the moment, and prepared to figure out how to find a house for her –
And then the ghost of Sergio showed up. And Tina was suddenly confronted with a decision – use her new magical powers to resurrect him, or leave him dead? A decision that she just could not make on her own –
So Petey tossed it over to the community! Yes, the main reason I wanted to watch this sooner rather than later is that Petey recently put up a poll regarding Sergio’s fate (though I didn’t know that when I first saw the post, I just saw that it had something to do with the latest episode) and I wanted to vote in it. I voted for bringing him back, but the vast majority of the player base wants to leave him dead. XD Though a few people said “see if you can use him to complete that one Home Chef Hustle aspiration where where you have to bring a ghost back by selling them ambrosia,” which feels like a good middle ground! We’ll see what happens in the next episode, and if Petey takes any of those suggestions under consideration!
B) “Severance S1E4-5 - Helly's Self-Destruction And Rescue By Mark” by RipGore! A clip (or possibly a collection of clips) showing off the moment in the series where Helly tries to hang herself in the elevator to both free herself from the Severed Floor and stick it to her Outie, only to be found by Mark when he calls the elevator down to leave for the day and causing him a WHOLE boatload of trauma. D: Also features Dylan reading a horrible poem from “The You You Are,” the terrible self-help book that nonetheless gives the Innies something to fight for, and Irving discovering that Burt’s department, Optics & Design, is actually a lot bigger than he initially let on. All very dramatic stuff! Yes, even the terrible poem – it gets a lot more dramatic when it’s overlaid on Helly trying to kill herself. :( Sad show is very sad sometimes.
Aaaand that all took WAY longer than I wanted it to, and I have to go to bed. *sigh* I am so done with Sundays like this -- night all!
