Little Earlier Than Yesterday

Though I had a little bit less on my plate, I suppose. . .still, it is late, I don't have time to muck around, so here are the deets on my day --

Work – Spreadsheets day, mostly – spent the morning working on a spreadsheet of various donors and their pledges; spent the afternoon looking up people who were owed thank-yous and confirming that, indeed, they were owed a thank-you. XD We also got new phones and I put on a couple of checks. *shrug* Lunch was later than I would have liked because of the phone thing, but other than that it wasn’t too bad. Until I tried to leave and encountered ALL the traffic because the auditorium had a THING going on. . . *grumbles* Hate that. Made it through, but it didn’t make for a fun ride home!

Beanbags – Despite a drizzly morning, it dried out enough this afternoon for us to play. And again, I didn’t have a great day – just could not get it together! Bugs literally buzzing directly in my ear did not help anyway, that’s for sure. >( Final scores were me 2-2-3; Dad W-3-W; Mom 3-W-2. Maybe tomorrow, if it isn’t raining!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back to the Oxventure Stream “Snow Mercy!” Caught up as the bartering with a kobold trouser-merchant continued – Egbert tried to offer them some hempen rope, but the kobold – shortly to be named “Snicket” – wasn’t having that either. However, the presence of the rope clued them into the fact that Egbert was an adventurer, and they said that they’d hand over the trousers in exchange for protection, which the other kobolds were also keen on. (They were also much more keen on the Marsh-Merlots, to everyone’s pleasure.) It seems every time a blizzard rolls in – and blizzards roll in a LOT around Frostmaiden – a kobold goes missing, vanishing into the frozen wastes. Hell, one of their own had disappeared just now – poor little Travis was missing from the market! (Not Travis!) Egbert was happy to offer up his services, and that of his friends, and the gang decided in a whisper-huddle that they would try their best to protect the kobolds – and if that didn’t work out they’d destroy them as Plan B. XD Snicket in particular did not endear themselves to Egbert by offering to buy Seal Gaiman as a delicious treat after spotting the seal in Egbert’s pack. XD

But they were going to try to protect them first, and that necessarily involved them figuring out what was going on. The kobolds were convinced it was some sort of curse, but that didn’t really give them any leads. With another blizzard rolling in, they decided on the rather hasty plan of disguising Egbert as a bunch of kobolds and sending him out as bait, with him taking a Marsh-Merlot to squeeze and leave a trail of mulled wine should he be kidnapped. Dob’s attempt to make a good costume was undone by a roll of a two, causing him to make something generally fairly offensive to kobold-kind, while Corazon’s attempt to keep track of Egbert with his spyglass was undone by a roll of an eight. Egbert, however, somehow nat-20ed a roll to keep his wits about him in the snow, and thus knew exactly how to get back should shit go down! And so he sat and waited. . . The others, meanwhile, corralled all the kobolds together to keep an eye on all of them at once. Corazon instantly took advantage of the captive audience to start telling pirate tales – and another low roll meant most of the kobolds started trying to give themselves hypothermia so they’d hibernate and not have to listen to them. XD (To be fair, at least ONE was intrigued by his tales of being swallowed by a kraken. . .) Dob, in an attempt to bond, got naked too and rubbed snow all over himself (fortunately not falling unconscious, though he treated this as a minus) and got them all to buddy up so it would be easier to spot any who might be missing (or allow the kidnapper to take two at once, which was pointed out). Hey, they were trying! They don’t usually try to HELP kobolds.

Meanwhile, Egbert, sitting out in the snow, found himself attacked by – two kobolds! Trying to gnaw on his legs but not making good progress thanks to his armor, his dragonborn scaly skin, and the disguise. Egbert managed to grab one by the scruff of its neck (the other, thanks to a nat 20 on Johnny’s side, danced away), and was more than a little shocked to discover it was, essentially, a zombie kobold. O.o He promptly raced back to town to show the others, who were appropriately grossed-out. Those kobolds still awake were downright horrified (with one of them identifying the zombie as the unfortunate Travis! Not Travis!), but Dob managed to calm them with Calm Emotions –

At least, until twenty more zombie kobolds emerged from the snow to attack! Roll initiative, folks! Corazon and Egbert both got the highest numbers, and Corazon promptly deferred to the Paladin who has, you know, Paladin-stuff they can use in these cases. Egbert considered his options –

And tried to take down a load of the zombie kobolds with a tail sweep. XD (To be fair, he DID quickly ask if zombie kobolds count as a type of fiend, leading me to believe most of his magic is centered around repelling DEVILS and whatnot, not undead.) Unfortunately, ANOTHER bad roll meant that the cold weather rendered his tail stiff, and he just plain missed. Corazon, frustrated, grabbed one of Egbert’s bombs and launched it over the assembled kobolds, living and dead, to try and blow up a bunch of the zombies from the back. Johnny said this was going to be a tricky throw and demanded a high roll –

And FINALLY Corazon came through, with a 21. He managed to partially dismember/set seven of them on fire, though – being zombies – they did just keep right on coming. Still, it’s a start! I left it with Prudence attacking the bridge the market was under with a bit of Eldritch Blast to dislodge a bunch of snow and icicles to try and I guess bury or otherwise incapacitate part of the zombie hoard – I guess we’ll see how that goes tomorrow!

2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – less watching LP action than I expected for this bit! Though, admittedly, the only dialogue I needed was Mercurio greeting you on the beach when you go back to Santa Monica for the Elizabeth Dane mission. . .anyway, Alice has met back up with him and gotten his loyalty for not ratting him out to LaCroix, and now she’s checking in with Copper and Julius, currently the only thinbloods left on the beach in this reality. Copper has still got it in his head that if they can kill the “head vampire,” he can turn back into human. *shakehead* You’re lucky both Alice and I are trying to keep this a “high Humanity run,” so to speak, Copper! There’s plenty of players who will unscrupulously hand you a stake and point you at your doom. . .

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Two-thirds check – I was right, today was a Gray-only upload day! Meaning, ladies, gentlemen, and those of other persuasions –

A) I FINALLY caught up with the first episode of James Turner’s Rags To Riches Werewolves LP (which I will personally be calling “Ruffs to Riches” because I don’t know if James has an “official” name for it yet)! Angus and Nina got an early start on the family tradition, moving out to Moonwood Mill while still teenagers and taking up residence by an abandoned factory (which was pure debug items just for show) and exploring the new world in which they found themselves! Nina located the entrance into the secret tunnels from the port-a-potties and started exploring, while Angus stayed above ground chatting to people, swimming in the local lake to clear off some of the dirt, and trying and failing to fish to earn either money or food for him and his sister. Fortunately, the lake is near the Moonwood Collective’s gathering place, and he was able to grab some of their hot dogs and formed an immediate connection with the leader, Kristoph. Because they have the same hair and beard. Which means Angus is now going to try and become Kristoph’s heir. XD Well, why not? Meanwhile, Nina kept exploring the tunnels, finding first a way into the secret hideout underneath the bar (where she happily took advantage of the facilities); then a ball that she could sell for a tiny bit of cash (they have $5 to their name, w000); and finally –

A werewolf! A very angry werewolf! Nina managed to escape the beast, but not without being bitten – and contracting a case of werebies! This is the werewolf disease, and it literally leaves you foaming at the mouth. It’s curable if you catch it in time, but of course Nina wasn’t going to bother about THAT. XD Instead she grabbed some food from the Moonwood Collective’s grill, and got to know some of the locals a little bit better before heading to the bar for some drinks – which is a real supernatural/sci-fi hot spot, let me tell you. We had Lilith Vatore, known vampire, and a servo hanging out there, along with one of the local werewolves – and who knows, one of the regular-looking Sims sitting at the bartop could have been a mermaid or a spellcaster! Hell, there is in fact one known spellcaster in town –

Reginald Bigwallet! Yes, Column’s perma-toddler son has FINALLY been allowed to age up! Mostly because James is eager to see how all the different occults get on. So he’s chilling out in the local starter home, ready for the world’s weirdest family reunion with his – second cousins? I don’t know, genealogy with this family is HARD. XD (Oh, and speaking of aging up, so did Angus – he is now a young adult, and he is also Self-Assured, as James figured he could use the confidence for taking over the Moonwood Collective pack.)

But yeah, so far, things are a bit rough for Angus and Nina. Angus can’t fish to save his life, Nina’s still foaming at the mouth from werebies, and they’ve been reduced to sleeping under the stairs and in the abandoned factory library to get some rest. We will see how things progressed once I FINALLY get to episode two!

B) And then, of course, it was time for GrayStillPlays, and “GTA 5 but EVERYTHING costs money” – aka, as per the comments’ request, Alex and Danny make a GTA V board based on microtransactions! Or, rather, they both made a board, with Danny making the warm-up and Alex making the board proper:

Danny – pretty simple – you have your pick of three motorcycles to buy to complete a big-ass jump across thirty helicopters and a trio of inconveniently-spaced windmills! Gray attempted very very hard to complete it with the cheap trike (trying to get a windmill to smack him all the way to the end) and the mid-point motorcycle (trying to cheat-fly across the propellers – and he did get pretty far not gonna lie), but in the end, he had to shell out for the special futuristic bike – and even THEN he had to figure out how to properly “feather” it across the spinning props to get to the win! But at least he made it with minimal fuss.

Alex – and then we got to Alex and everything became MAXIMAL FUSS. Mostly because what Alex did was a trio of wall rides, each with a different horrible twist to them. First wall ride – bits of the wall ride either move – as in, there’s a smaller platform going up and down that Gray had to guess the timing on – or just disappear entirely, and there are multiple transfers, jumps, and switches. Second wall ride – Gray had to do the entire thing BACKWARDS due to stop sticks at the front, navigating around windmills and platforms and through a thumbnail hole. Third wall ride – not only are parts of it offset to start with, you also had a car being flung in a zig-zag pattern through a series of five magnets; a helicopter shooting rockets at you; fists trying to punch you off the board; and an extra-narrow section with a weirdly-placed checkpoint before you get through the final thumbnail hole and reach the end. There were three cars for sale, each with different strengths – the electric had the best traction; the ravager had a jump function and a parachute for gliding; and the faux-DeLorean (as I thought of it) had the best speed – plus – if Gray really wanted it – a helicopter for $500 real-life US dollars. Did Gray buy the helicopter?

. . .yes, but only because Alex tricked him – in front of the third wall ride, there was a cheeky little teleport Gray couldn’t resist checking out, which sent him ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND ONE. Gray couldn’t bring himself to do it again and used the helicopter as a quick shortcut back to the third one. But he did all the wall rides legit – using the ravager’s jumping to avoid the gaps in the first wall ride; the electric’s stability and traction to make it backwards through the second; and the faux-DeLorean’s speed to blast through the third. Even when he discovered that the weirdly-placed checkpoint was a troll that put you on a platform with a ramp that made it so you had to go backwards through the beginning of the course to reset yourself so you could try the whole thing again. Poor guy sounded a bit genuinely weepy by the end – which made him finally reaching the win all the sweeter. :D GrayStillPlays – the guy who will NOT give up! At least when it comes to a wall ride. XD

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – reset the Victor Luvs Alice queue speed back to one, then found myself a Friday post (Corpse Bride icons reblog) and a Saturday one (the Snuff episode of Wyrd Sisters Podcast, as Raising Steam should be coming up shortly and they never did put the episode up themselves on their tumblr). So that’s all set for the rest of the week, yay~

*nods* Not too shabby -- it's good to feel like I'm actually making progress catching up on the Subs! (Granted, the Watch Later is now filling up with stuff. . .maybe I can make a dent in that this weekend.) And now it's time to head to bed and try and get some sleep. Night all!