Slightly Late Tuesday

Just had to finish up a few things on the old to-dos while also doing the social thing:

Work – Busy, but fortunately not too overwhelmingly busy – we had plenty to catch up with, sure, and my coworker needed my help with all the GL stuff, but I got my lunch (a bit late), and all my breaks, and caught up with just about everything I needed to catch up with. So that’s better than I was expecting for my first day back. Now we’ll see how the REST of the week goes. . .

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, and another night with the Oxventure Stream “Hunter Pressure!” Prudence’s attempt to buy off the villainous Rodrigo Bellaforte so she and her friends wouldn’t be hunted upon the morrow was unsuccessful – Rodrigo admitted it was tempting, but he valued his repeat business more. Prudence respected him keeping up his evil brand. XD Corazon managed to lure him close enough to smash him against the bars and snarl some threats, but held off on actually biting his face (despite other members of the team saying he should indulge himself). Rodrigo was more amused than anything and left with his hunters – Ashlin and Orbo both lingering a moment to say “I’ll see you later” to Corazon, for vastly different reasons. XD

And so the group was left alone in the cell, to figure out what to do with themselves. A weird opportunity arose at dinnertime, however – Johnny ruled that Rodrigo was willing to fulfill “last meal” requests! Dob got some very nice paella (in the top three of paella he’s eaten); Merilwen asked for a variety of salmon dishes and spent some time cycling through her various animal forms to enjoy them; Prudence declared she lived on “hatred” again and got some nice tobacco in a long pipe and a jug of bitter black coffee; Egbert asked for a platter of Scotch eggs because he was craving them after hearing about Seal Gaiman going to town on the larder (and pocketed three for later); and Corazon?

Corazon asked for a bony fish meal (which was later determined to be poached marlin), dexterously extracted the skeleton, and started using some bones as lockpicks! He also removed the head as an emergency shiv. XD While that was going on, Dob thought of another plan and (after reviewing the necessary materials with Johnny) Messaged Rodrigo’s niece, the damsel in distress in the courtyard, after hearing her trying her luck again and realizing the courtyard was nearby. He gave her some long rambly praise on her performance, before saying that surely her uncle appreciated what a good talent she had? Predictably, she started complaining about how Rodrigo doesn’t respect her and her craft at all, and how three summers ago he promised her that he’d get a better set-up so she could play another part. . .the others started complaining that Dob was taking too long to get to the point, so Dob attempted to turn her against her uncle, offering to help her with her acting ambitions if she’d come and let them go – unfortunately, he didn’t roll well enough to really persuade her, as she told him she’d had such empty promises before. Prudence promptly picked up the mystical telephone and threatened her, which probably didn’t make anything better. XD

On the plus side, while all that was going on, Corazon rolled super well on his attempt to pick the lock, and busted them all out of there! They gathered their equipment (and a stuffed-to-the-metaphorical-gills Seal Gaiman) from a nearby chest, and then (after convincing Egbert that just because Rodrigo said they were going to die tomorrow, they don’t have to stay and die, no matter how convincing he was, and no Dob, being hunted does not sound like fun, we’ll hunt you ourselves later) they started down the corridor toward freedom!

Only for Dob to be stopped by a hand grabbing his sleeve. Turned out Johnny decided to dump an old NPC friend of his in the cells as well – one Robin, a former pub owner who owns The Redbreast, a pub Dob used to frequent. Dob was very happy to see Robin again, introduced him to the party, and insisted that they rescue him too, using Heat Metal to slowly melt Robin’s door (and yes, Luke did lampshade that apparently Dob can’t cast magic without his equipment – though, given he’s a bard, I assume his lute does help!) and catch up in the meantime (poor guy was trapped on the way to his daughter’s wedding!). Corazon, annoyed at how long this was taking, scouted ahead and found that the staircase that led toward daylight in fact led toward a kitchen, and staff cooking both breakfast and the cakes they were meant to jump out of for the hunt. Corazon got the others to come on once Robin was freed (Dob giving him his weapons, and Egbert giving him a Scotch egg), and they all burst into the kitchen and declared that they were escaping and that they’d kill them if they raised the alarm. The head chef agreed in a terrible French accent and just asked they not harm the cakes.

Prudence, unable to help herself, smashed a cake. The chef got one of the other staff to run to raise the alarm – Corazon chased after them, but Merilwen’s arrow got there first, hitting the guy between the shoulder blades and dropping them stone dead to the floor. Prudence may have also killed the head chef – I believe that was mentioned in the chaos. XD Also Egbert ate the smashed cake, because waste not want not. This at least gave them the leverage they needed to get the rest of the kitchen staff to stay put, and the gang emerged into the mansion’s foyer, in front of some grand staircases (Johnny later described it as being like the Resident Evil mansion). Corazon, remembering what Rodrigo said about Orbo the Goliath never giving up on a hunt, was all for killing the other hunters in their sleep, which Prudence and Merilwen were for and Dob against (saying “I make my moral choices on a case by case basis and this one’s feeling like a hard no”). Majority rules, I think, though I left it with them still in the foyer, getting the lay of the land – just over an hour to go! I suspect this is going to turn into some sort of mutual hunt through the house. . .

2. Start editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale of Tears”: Check! I have separated out Chapter 6 from its brethren, and am currently going over it with the fine-toothed comb in FF.net’s document editor. About four pages in, with Alice having met up with Tung, gone into the sewers, and learned about the clans with him. About to do the bit on the sects, and then – warehouse time!

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just one today, with some bonus vids –

A) Started with OXtra’s latest list video: “7 Embarrassingly Easy Platinum Trophies You Can Win in 30 Minutes!” Yes, they have covered platinum trophies on PlayStation that are VERY hard to get, and now they are looking at the easiest ones! And taking the opportunity to rag on games they don’t like, like Slyde (a sliding-puzzle game using stock photos that, if you get enough points, you can get every trophy in the game in under two minutes) and Chickens on the Road (an awful game about running over brown chickens – never green ones – on a busy road for points – again, get enough points, you pop the platinum). Though they made sure to mention some good games too – Storm Boy may have some oddly easy trophies, but it’s a tender and kinda sad game about a boy on an Australian beach who raises a trio of orphaned pelicans, aww. And Gravity Duck is a fun puzzle platformer about a duck who manipulates gravity which has a lot of MISSED trophy opportunities (you only get a trophy for completing the first level, for example – none of the remaining ones), meaning the platinum comes sooner than you think. I guess the moral here is never judge a game by its platinum? And always make sure you have enough trophies with enough challenge?

B) Then, just for fun, watched “Theme Park Worldwide’s” video from last year ranking all of the Alton Towers coasters! Obviously he put the “little kid” coasters near the bottom for adults, while one of the earliest coasters, and probably one of the flagships of the park, Nemesis, got the top spot. I was pleased to see The Smiler at number three, though! :D (She says, having never ridden it and who knows if she ever will. . .) And it was fun to see some of the on-ride footage he had for all of the rides. Living the Alton Tower dream vicariously!

C) And finally we had our Subs video – GrayStillPlays and “GTA but you get paid each time I die!” Or, rather, Alex gets paid, if I remember the creator of the previous $1,000 board in his roller coaster challenges correctly. Apparently Alex sent Gray a challenge – a series of four linked escape rooms in GTA V. Every time Gray dies, he must pay Alex $100. And the instructions he sent Gray were a textual Rickroll. XD Gray would not let THAT insult go and plunged into the boards!

Board 1 – a room with spike walls, a bunch of cars with different plates, and a 60 second timer! Gray ran around for a little bit trying to figure out what the hell he needed to do, but eventually realized that the license plates spelled out messages. A couple of them were trolls – “Not Today Satan,” “Death To GSP,” but two said “Look Under,” and there was a locked car called “Tickle” right behind one called “Bump.” Took about three deaths, but Gray figured it out – use “Bump” to knock “Tickle” backwards, and fall down the uncovered hole before the timer ran out and the walls started closing in – and then sprint toward the exit as the room below has spiky walls too. Whew! $300 down, but not too bad.

Board 2 – a cylinder with no timer, but a bunch of pizza slice moving platforms – that moved into various “shelves,” meaning if you didn’t react quickly enough to hop onto the shelf, you’d fall onto the spike floor below. The trick was to ride the slice to each platform, hop onto it, then rinse and repeat until you were above the winning platform – and then make sure you were properly POSITIONED above it, because it didn’t go all the way out to the main cylinder. Still, just another three deaths to move on!

Board 3 – Another cylinder room, with a variation on the previous level – now you were riding a wheel with protruding spokes, and had to run up and down the spoke to avoid the walls in front of you before falling onto the win. Gray wasn’t exactly graceful, but he made it through with minimal deaths.

Board 4 – And the final cylinder room, with two sets of spokes rotating in opposite directions above the win. You had to jump to a platform, carefully time stepping onto the first spoke, ride it and jump to a second platform, then rinse and repeat before reaching the win. And you can’t cheat it, as Gray found, because the win is JUST low enough that you die on impact if you jump to it directly (it’s basically right below you at the start). So you have to do it legit.

GRAY DIED MORE TIMES ON THIS PART OF THE BOARD THAN IN ALL THE OTHERS COMBINED. The fiddliness of the timing, combined with the fact his character jumps farther and with more force than anticipated, meant that he kept landing on the spike floor time and time and time again. Poor Gray wanted to try and keep his losses to under $1,000 – he ended up paying out $2,600 in the end thanks to this final room. At least he got to jump in a pool with Meaty Bits and all the beer in the game at the end? XD

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check! On Victor Luvs Alice, I have the Wednesday Chill Save, Thursday “As Long As You Love Me” sequel write-up, and Friday Alton Towers shitposts ready to go; on Valice Multiverse, a couple of ask replies, including an awful “Aurora bore you Alice” pun. XD Good times!

Not bad, not bad at all. Hopefully I can keep this up as the week goes on. *nods* For now, night all!