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Thunderstorm Tuesday
Aug. 23rd, 2022 11:46 pmIndeed, it was freaking COOKING out there for a good portion of the afternoon! Fortunately eased up just in time for me to head out and get home, but there was heavy rain, there was wind, there was a lot of thunder and a smattering of lightning. . .it was a Time, let me tell you. Damn. Talk about making up for lost time in the drought here!
Despite all that, though, I did pretty well on the old to-do list:
Work – Quietish day – not a lot going on in the office, but the phone rang a fair amount with people looking for totals, balances, or to end their pledges. *shrug* Also worked my way through the expired cards and such, so that little project’s more or less over with. We’ll see if anything happens with the credit card nonsense tomorrow!
Beanbags – Nope, because of, you know, THE MASSIVE AMOUNT OF RAIN THIS AFTERNOON. I swear we’ve gotten an entire month’s worth of rain in two days now. O.o We’ll see if it gets any better tomorrow, but I dunno – supposed to be sunny, but I think it’s supposed to be muggy too. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check, even with the damn near constant thunderstorm today (though I ended up having to quickly wipe myself down before supper and take a proper shower AFTER because it was thundering again when I came up) – back on the bike, and back with the Oxventure “Sail Of The Century!” We picked up with Egbert, in his role as explosives expert, volunteering to try and make some homemade “sea mines” out of the gunpowder barrels lying around –
And rolling really well, creating some genuine things of beauty! Unfortunately, he got cocky and said that once he cracked the first, he should be able to mass-produce them – Johnny had him roll a D10, and he got a one. XD Johnny decided that while they were things of intricate mechanical awesomeness (basically there was an internal barrel full of black powder, poked full of holes stuffed with paper with more powder in them, then a series of metal tines on the outside, each tipped with flint where they stuck into the outer barrel – the idea was a ship that brushed up against them would stab the flint spear into the paper and powder, creating a little spark that leads to a big explosion), but because of that, Egbert was only able to fashion two with any sort of speed. Still, that’s two more than they had before!
While this was going on, Prudence decided to check out the map room and see if they had any sea charts of the coral reef they were coming up on. A roll of thirteen had her conquer what Corazon called a filing system to find the maps she needed, giving the gang advantage on any rolls to maneuver through the coral. Dob, meanwhile, was making plans with Corazon, along the lines of “we sail through the coral, throw me overboard tied to a rope, I find a place to hide and Major Illusion more coral for the Inevitability to avoid, thus making it more likely they will run aground on the actual coral.” The gang was debating the merits of this plan (and whether they should take advantage of Merilwen’s absence to go ahead and blow up a coral reef without being lectured XD) when suddenly –
Cannon fire! The group rushed to check out what was going on, and found that the Inevitability was firing its “chase cannons” at them – but, fortunately, the Joyful Damnation had indeed made the most of its head start, and was comfortably out of cannon range. Unfortunately, Corazon noticed an even BIGGER gun being ratcheted up amongst the others – a gun that fired SOMETHING at the ship in a way that suggested that it might actually hit. Dob tried to find out if he could try a more direct way to disable the ship (Johnny ruled that no, the Inevitability would need a good couple of hours to even try to catch up with them properly) while the others talked about when a good time to deploy Egbert’s mines would be –
But then the SOMETHING hit the sail and tore its way down it with a blade, in VERY cool style! The gang readied themselves for a fight as the interloper, bristling with pistols and holding two cutlasses, turned on them –
And then recognized them, because who the fuck should Liliana have hired to kill her hated enemies but their old friend from I believe “The Corn Ultimatum” – Rust-On-The-Harbor, awesome cat-person rogue! Everyone was very happy to see him, even if he did admit that he’d been hired (at his standard One Gold Piece rate, because Rust CANNOT figure out any amount of money higher than that) to kill them all. Fortunately, he was not very keen on that plan now that he realized that he was attacking friends, and Dob was easily able to talk him around to “Peter Pan rules” – a fancy and daring fight that just ends with someone being kicked in the water instead of brutally murdered because kids are watching. XD (This also led to an interlude where the gang made jokes about a Peter Pan bread brand over there, with Johnny saying it was tragic because he would never find yeast and thus never grow up (causing Merilwen, making good progress with her couples’ therapy in the whale, to groan for no particular reason), and Mike earning everyone inspiration with the pun “Never Leavened Land.” XD) Corazon then offered a one-on-one duel, saying that if he won, Rust could join their side, which Rust also readily agreed to. The pair squared off for battle at the end of Part One. . .
And then in Part Two, Corazon easily defeated Rust by flicking two gold pieces into the air to utterly stun him (poor Rust not making his Intelligence saving throw) and then disarming him while he was distracted. Johnny went to Luke to rule if this meant that Corazon just won outright, and Luke said that it could unless Rust could pull off the Peter Pan move of standing on the tip of Corazon’s sword. Rust was unable to do that, so he admitted his loss, and Corazon bought his services with a gold piece (quickly distracting him from another brain break when he put it with the other by offering him rum). They pumped Rust for information on the boat and Liliana – Rust told them they had mortars to try and set the boat on fire, a backup boarding party in case he failed, and, oh yes, a whole hold FULL of Cloneberts. He also confirmed that Liliana very much wanted them all, save possibly Egbert, dead – and no, she didn’t mention Dob at all. Dob went off to sulk by a cannon, and Prudence joined him to sulk about Corazon declaring Rust First Mate over her. XD There was also some discussion about how many Egberts is a good number of Egberts (in reference to their plan to ground the Inevitability on the coral and then scuttle it with the mines/depth charges and how much death they were willing to accept in that course), as Egbert is still hopeful that some of his clones can be turned over to the side of good, while Prudence sometimes thinks one Egbert is too many Egberts. XD
There wasn’t a lot of time to debate the issue, though – while Corazon was able to keenly observe the ship (dude’s rolling all the nat 20s today) and note that the “rail gun” used to send Rust over was definitely out of commission for a while, he also spotted that the boarding party Rust warned them about was on its way over – lowering lifeboats into the water and then using magic users to Create Water and produce a jet wave (like Merilwen herself has done in the past). I have left it there, with the gang needing to deal with those little boats post-haste! But hey, Rust is back, so nothing can go too badly from now on. :D
2. Continue writing “As Long As You Love Me”: Check – I have started Chapter Seven, aka “Not Your Murder Buddy!” I have decided for this draft to skip straight to the Barkis murder chapter, and have just written the opening, with Victor and Alice tooling around a nice little suburban neighborhood, discussing getting lunch – and how Victor has really come around on the whole “holistic assassin” thing. XD Though he has pointed out that Alice has almost always treated him well, and he’s now gotten a good look at the kind of people she kills and how – yeah, a lot of times, the murder seems very necessary. And he likes how he can just be himself with her, because she doesn’t want him to try and be anyone else. :) A nice moment – that is soon to be ruined, because the car is about to stall near their next target. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – quick two in, two out –
A) First up was Call Me Kevin – “Doing everything Saints Row didn't want me to do!” Yes, Epic Games sponsored him to play the new remake of the original Saints Row game, and he repaid them by creating the terror that is long-nosed, glossy and veiny Wizard Jim Pickens. XD After an opening showing Wizard Jim getting either knocked out or murdered and buried, the game flashed back to a few months, with Jim on a strike team taking out some sort of bad guy with his own jet, then promptly stealing a chopper to head back to his pad with his gang and start doing crimes! XD Kevin then proceeded to help his friends rob a place and then serve as the distraction for the cops so they could make rent for the month; track down a foreign spy for some guy with a podcast (who was worried he could be Russian, or even CANADIAN), kick him the face repeatedly, and then stab him with extreme prejudice; go wingsuiting to blow up a bunch of satellite dishes for “The Associate” and then gain access to his own wing suit whenever he wanted, yay; leave a terrible review for a donut place for a woman and then FIGHT OFF THE KILL SQUAD THAT SHOWED UP TO AVENGE THE REVIEW (running them over with their own car); and finally do another strike team mission following some mysterious convoy before needing to shoot everyone on the convoy before finally dropping a truck on the final dude. XD All the while stealing a variety of cars, bikes, and once even a bus; buying a wizard hat to complete Wizard Jim’s look; and attempting and failing repeatedly to do a cool jump onto a train. XD The game looks hilariously over the top with its cartoony graphics and completely wild missions (I mean, seriously, Kevin was openly saying he felt like an action movie star during the strike team bits), and I am here for it. Willing to watch more if you’re willing to do more, Kevin!
B) And second up, GrayStillPlays – “When you make a hacker level human vehicle!” Yes, Human Vehicle is back because Gray was in no way done with this mental mobile game where you collect people to build yourself a variety of cars, planes, and even TANKS to run the various courses the game presents to you. XD And so he did another episode to complete the game, unlocking such things as a tank, a drone, a missile launcher, and a MAMMOTH tank (all with, of course, human ammo). He proceeded to have quite a lot of fun running through the courses and hoovering up gems before blasting his way through all the various walls erected to reduce his vehicles to nothing. XD It was a bit tricky at times – after all, if he didn’t get enough people, he had no ammo with which to blast, and he deliberately used all the first-tier cars and planes during the final levels along with the Mammoth just to test them out (though, admittedly, they all drove and flew fine) – but he did indeed conquer every level in the game, and got to do his victory lap blasting wall after wall with human bodies. XD Weirdest thing we’ve had on the channel so far, I swear.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check on both fronts –
Victor Luvs Alice – Four-part Chill Save Update (Valicer settling into their new house) on Wednesday, my post of “Fallout of Darkness” pets for Victor and Alice on Thursday, and a reblog of the messages of Fallout 4 on Friday! Probably should reblog one of my “Fallout of Darkness” Song Saturday choices for Saturday then – I’ll decide on that tomorrow.
Valice Multiverse – No thread reply today, so just three ask replies slotted into the queue for tomorrow. Keepin’ on keepin’ on!
*nods* Better than I thought I'd do with the storms forcing me to have a late shower! And now it's time to reset all those and head to bed, because it's not even midweek yet. Meeh. Night all!
Despite all that, though, I did pretty well on the old to-do list:
Work – Quietish day – not a lot going on in the office, but the phone rang a fair amount with people looking for totals, balances, or to end their pledges. *shrug* Also worked my way through the expired cards and such, so that little project’s more or less over with. We’ll see if anything happens with the credit card nonsense tomorrow!
Beanbags – Nope, because of, you know, THE MASSIVE AMOUNT OF RAIN THIS AFTERNOON. I swear we’ve gotten an entire month’s worth of rain in two days now. O.o We’ll see if it gets any better tomorrow, but I dunno – supposed to be sunny, but I think it’s supposed to be muggy too. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check, even with the damn near constant thunderstorm today (though I ended up having to quickly wipe myself down before supper and take a proper shower AFTER because it was thundering again when I came up) – back on the bike, and back with the Oxventure “Sail Of The Century!” We picked up with Egbert, in his role as explosives expert, volunteering to try and make some homemade “sea mines” out of the gunpowder barrels lying around –
And rolling really well, creating some genuine things of beauty! Unfortunately, he got cocky and said that once he cracked the first, he should be able to mass-produce them – Johnny had him roll a D10, and he got a one. XD Johnny decided that while they were things of intricate mechanical awesomeness (basically there was an internal barrel full of black powder, poked full of holes stuffed with paper with more powder in them, then a series of metal tines on the outside, each tipped with flint where they stuck into the outer barrel – the idea was a ship that brushed up against them would stab the flint spear into the paper and powder, creating a little spark that leads to a big explosion), but because of that, Egbert was only able to fashion two with any sort of speed. Still, that’s two more than they had before!
While this was going on, Prudence decided to check out the map room and see if they had any sea charts of the coral reef they were coming up on. A roll of thirteen had her conquer what Corazon called a filing system to find the maps she needed, giving the gang advantage on any rolls to maneuver through the coral. Dob, meanwhile, was making plans with Corazon, along the lines of “we sail through the coral, throw me overboard tied to a rope, I find a place to hide and Major Illusion more coral for the Inevitability to avoid, thus making it more likely they will run aground on the actual coral.” The gang was debating the merits of this plan (and whether they should take advantage of Merilwen’s absence to go ahead and blow up a coral reef without being lectured XD) when suddenly –
Cannon fire! The group rushed to check out what was going on, and found that the Inevitability was firing its “chase cannons” at them – but, fortunately, the Joyful Damnation had indeed made the most of its head start, and was comfortably out of cannon range. Unfortunately, Corazon noticed an even BIGGER gun being ratcheted up amongst the others – a gun that fired SOMETHING at the ship in a way that suggested that it might actually hit. Dob tried to find out if he could try a more direct way to disable the ship (Johnny ruled that no, the Inevitability would need a good couple of hours to even try to catch up with them properly) while the others talked about when a good time to deploy Egbert’s mines would be –
But then the SOMETHING hit the sail and tore its way down it with a blade, in VERY cool style! The gang readied themselves for a fight as the interloper, bristling with pistols and holding two cutlasses, turned on them –
And then recognized them, because who the fuck should Liliana have hired to kill her hated enemies but their old friend from I believe “The Corn Ultimatum” – Rust-On-The-Harbor, awesome cat-person rogue! Everyone was very happy to see him, even if he did admit that he’d been hired (at his standard One Gold Piece rate, because Rust CANNOT figure out any amount of money higher than that) to kill them all. Fortunately, he was not very keen on that plan now that he realized that he was attacking friends, and Dob was easily able to talk him around to “Peter Pan rules” – a fancy and daring fight that just ends with someone being kicked in the water instead of brutally murdered because kids are watching. XD (This also led to an interlude where the gang made jokes about a Peter Pan bread brand over there, with Johnny saying it was tragic because he would never find yeast and thus never grow up (causing Merilwen, making good progress with her couples’ therapy in the whale, to groan for no particular reason), and Mike earning everyone inspiration with the pun “Never Leavened Land.” XD) Corazon then offered a one-on-one duel, saying that if he won, Rust could join their side, which Rust also readily agreed to. The pair squared off for battle at the end of Part One. . .
And then in Part Two, Corazon easily defeated Rust by flicking two gold pieces into the air to utterly stun him (poor Rust not making his Intelligence saving throw) and then disarming him while he was distracted. Johnny went to Luke to rule if this meant that Corazon just won outright, and Luke said that it could unless Rust could pull off the Peter Pan move of standing on the tip of Corazon’s sword. Rust was unable to do that, so he admitted his loss, and Corazon bought his services with a gold piece (quickly distracting him from another brain break when he put it with the other by offering him rum). They pumped Rust for information on the boat and Liliana – Rust told them they had mortars to try and set the boat on fire, a backup boarding party in case he failed, and, oh yes, a whole hold FULL of Cloneberts. He also confirmed that Liliana very much wanted them all, save possibly Egbert, dead – and no, she didn’t mention Dob at all. Dob went off to sulk by a cannon, and Prudence joined him to sulk about Corazon declaring Rust First Mate over her. XD There was also some discussion about how many Egberts is a good number of Egberts (in reference to their plan to ground the Inevitability on the coral and then scuttle it with the mines/depth charges and how much death they were willing to accept in that course), as Egbert is still hopeful that some of his clones can be turned over to the side of good, while Prudence sometimes thinks one Egbert is too many Egberts. XD
There wasn’t a lot of time to debate the issue, though – while Corazon was able to keenly observe the ship (dude’s rolling all the nat 20s today) and note that the “rail gun” used to send Rust over was definitely out of commission for a while, he also spotted that the boarding party Rust warned them about was on its way over – lowering lifeboats into the water and then using magic users to Create Water and produce a jet wave (like Merilwen herself has done in the past). I have left it there, with the gang needing to deal with those little boats post-haste! But hey, Rust is back, so nothing can go too badly from now on. :D
2. Continue writing “As Long As You Love Me”: Check – I have started Chapter Seven, aka “Not Your Murder Buddy!” I have decided for this draft to skip straight to the Barkis murder chapter, and have just written the opening, with Victor and Alice tooling around a nice little suburban neighborhood, discussing getting lunch – and how Victor has really come around on the whole “holistic assassin” thing. XD Though he has pointed out that Alice has almost always treated him well, and he’s now gotten a good look at the kind of people she kills and how – yeah, a lot of times, the murder seems very necessary. And he likes how he can just be himself with her, because she doesn’t want him to try and be anyone else. :) A nice moment – that is soon to be ruined, because the car is about to stall near their next target. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – quick two in, two out –
A) First up was Call Me Kevin – “Doing everything Saints Row didn't want me to do!” Yes, Epic Games sponsored him to play the new remake of the original Saints Row game, and he repaid them by creating the terror that is long-nosed, glossy and veiny Wizard Jim Pickens. XD After an opening showing Wizard Jim getting either knocked out or murdered and buried, the game flashed back to a few months, with Jim on a strike team taking out some sort of bad guy with his own jet, then promptly stealing a chopper to head back to his pad with his gang and start doing crimes! XD Kevin then proceeded to help his friends rob a place and then serve as the distraction for the cops so they could make rent for the month; track down a foreign spy for some guy with a podcast (who was worried he could be Russian, or even CANADIAN), kick him the face repeatedly, and then stab him with extreme prejudice; go wingsuiting to blow up a bunch of satellite dishes for “The Associate” and then gain access to his own wing suit whenever he wanted, yay; leave a terrible review for a donut place for a woman and then FIGHT OFF THE KILL SQUAD THAT SHOWED UP TO AVENGE THE REVIEW (running them over with their own car); and finally do another strike team mission following some mysterious convoy before needing to shoot everyone on the convoy before finally dropping a truck on the final dude. XD All the while stealing a variety of cars, bikes, and once even a bus; buying a wizard hat to complete Wizard Jim’s look; and attempting and failing repeatedly to do a cool jump onto a train. XD The game looks hilariously over the top with its cartoony graphics and completely wild missions (I mean, seriously, Kevin was openly saying he felt like an action movie star during the strike team bits), and I am here for it. Willing to watch more if you’re willing to do more, Kevin!
B) And second up, GrayStillPlays – “When you make a hacker level human vehicle!” Yes, Human Vehicle is back because Gray was in no way done with this mental mobile game where you collect people to build yourself a variety of cars, planes, and even TANKS to run the various courses the game presents to you. XD And so he did another episode to complete the game, unlocking such things as a tank, a drone, a missile launcher, and a MAMMOTH tank (all with, of course, human ammo). He proceeded to have quite a lot of fun running through the courses and hoovering up gems before blasting his way through all the various walls erected to reduce his vehicles to nothing. XD It was a bit tricky at times – after all, if he didn’t get enough people, he had no ammo with which to blast, and he deliberately used all the first-tier cars and planes during the final levels along with the Mammoth just to test them out (though, admittedly, they all drove and flew fine) – but he did indeed conquer every level in the game, and got to do his victory lap blasting wall after wall with human bodies. XD Weirdest thing we’ve had on the channel so far, I swear.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check on both fronts –
Victor Luvs Alice – Four-part Chill Save Update (Valicer settling into their new house) on Wednesday, my post of “Fallout of Darkness” pets for Victor and Alice on Thursday, and a reblog of the messages of Fallout 4 on Friday! Probably should reblog one of my “Fallout of Darkness” Song Saturday choices for Saturday then – I’ll decide on that tomorrow.
Valice Multiverse – No thread reply today, so just three ask replies slotted into the queue for tomorrow. Keepin’ on keepin’ on!
*nods* Better than I thought I'd do with the storms forcing me to have a late shower! And now it's time to reset all those and head to bed, because it's not even midweek yet. Meeh. Night all!
