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Another Late Night Sunday Update
Oct. 16th, 2022 11:52 pmThough I had a MUCH better day today, which I'm sure is helped by the fact that I got up at 9:30 AM instead of 10:30 AM and thus had a bit more time for things. (Granted, I got to bed at 2:30 AM, and woke up a couple of times trying to get comfortable, but... I'll fix my screwed-up sleep cycle later.) As you will see:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – pretty easy one today, given it was mostly just Victor, Piper, and Alice working their way up the Mass Fusion building, shooting Gunners, reading terminals, avoiding traps, picking locks, hacking turrets, and looting everything that seemed even slightly useful. :p Though I did retcon in Victor picking up the Destroyer gear from Daisy during his initial trip to Goodneighbor, instead of having to run back and get it like I did in the actual playsession, below. But yeah, short and sweet – we’ll see if that trend continues next week! :P
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's latest Fallout video: Check, though in a bit of a weird way. . .
A) First up, a surprise when I returned to YouTube after playing Fallout 4 myself – Jon was hosting a stream! “Fallout 4: The 25th Anniversary Fallout Special (Also Featuring Dog)” to be specific. I guess this weekend is the 25th anniversary of the release of the original Fallout game? At any rate, Jon wanted to celebrate, and the Next Fallout Series isn’t quite ready to start yet, so FO4 stream featuring his character “Johnny Cleanhands” running around Boston with Codsworth, fighting feral ghouls, collecting magazines (and talking about how companion bonuses stack with robot bonuses for robot companions, making them a touch OP), and “accidentally” stealing Jet from the Third Rail. XD At least, that’s the bit I saw. Also stories about his and Claire’s dog Teddy, who apparently shares Jon’s lack of perception (poor pup ran straight into a glass door as it was closing once). XD Surprising, but hey, glad I caught a bit of it. (And then, after returning to YouTube after beanbags and such, I found that the livestream had ended and the archival video was just under two hours long – too long for me to watch tonight, but perhaps I can take a gander at some point in the future!)
B) Then, this evening, we had our two Subs videos, starting with Call Me Kevin and “The current state of Cyberpunk 2077!” Yes, Kevin is back to that game now that five million patches have been released for it and it’s actually halfway playable. After using some medication to force sleep paralysis demon Keanu Reeves to leave him alone, Kevin’s V went for a fun stroll around town in nothing but his pants (and possibly not even that, given this game WILL let you be fully nude I believe). The fun stroll included things like accidentally setting off a mustard gas grenade in an elevator, then shooting himself in said elevator by accident; hijacking multiple cars and getting into multiple car accidents along the way; trying to help the police in a shootout – which actually went reasonably well, although it did not net him any pants; meeting with a plot-important character in a diner after dragging a whole bunch of police over there for his many crimes, and getting distracted by the guy at the next table over taking his time with a burger; getting hit-and-run by a self-driving car in a parking garage, going to get his settlement from the office, and ending up tracking down the AI running the place’s missing cars (well, one of them) and driving them very dangerously back to the office; learning some brawl moves from a dude inhabiting a pair of bodies (like twins except it’s technically one person); and trying to track down his missing partner Evelyn by working his way through various places, including a brothel where you could talk to “dolls” who seemed to have weird insights into what was happening (and where Kevin killed a dude in a toilet to get a VIP card and punched the boss of the whole place to death, but wasn’t able to hurt anyone else) and a clinic for cyberpunk mods where he robbed the doctor blind before punching him out. Oh, and he nearly met with another plot-important character, but he’d wandered in there by accident because he liked her bead curtain door, so he just backed away before plot could happen. XD I can’t say that I followed any of the plot, but Kevin causing chaos is always a good time.
C) And then we had GrayStillPlays and “When you take compulsive lying to the extremes,” aka Gray plays The Perfect Lie! This is a ridiculous mobile game where you play as a kid who, after lying to his mother about failing a test, gets cursed Pinocchio-style by a random Tinkerbell knockoff, but instead of repenting of his sins, he must become the world’s best liar to remove the curse. Cue him bunking off of school and claiming his aunt died; adopting a stray and then blaming the barking on the dog outside; yanking a fellow student’s chair out from under him and then claiming he saw a roach on it; throwing a ball at his teacher and then blaming the kids outside (causing her to yeet herself out of the window to chase them); ELECTROCUTING HIS FATHER for grounding him for playing too many video games; and eventually GETTING HIS FATHER TO BUY HIM A CAR SO HE WON’T TELL MOM DAD’S CHEATING. This kid is in ELEMENTARY school, let me tell you. It was absolutely bonkers, as are most of Gray’s Terrible Mobile Game Adventures, and I am here for it. XD
3. Play Fallout 4, get the Destroyer gear from Daisy, then start working through Mass Fusion to the Strength Bobblehead: Check – simple playsession today, though it wasn’t without some pain –
-->Started outside Mass Fusion, where I had Victor reorient himself toward Goodneighbor and start over there to get the Destroyer gear (which is combat armor, nice) from Daisy – only to promptly run into a mine and get him blown up. Whoops.
-->Okay, let’s try that again, and take things more carefully this time! Which amounted to “move a lot more slowly, keep eyes on the road, and somehow skirt around the mine despite never actually figuring out where it was.” O.o Well, anyway, Victor and Piper made it successfully back to Goodneighbor this time, where Victor went to Daisy and bought both bits of Destroyer gear she sells (a chest piece with the Assassin’s effect – reduces damage from humans by 15% – and a left leg piece with the Sprinter’s effect – increases movement speed by 10%), selling her a fuck-ton of food and chems and such in order to be able to afford them without completely bankrupting himself of caps. Suddenly I’m grateful for all of my food mods for an entirely different reason than usual! XD
-->With the items procured, it was over to a nearby alley where Victor could plop down his portable workbench out of the rain and start modding his new armor! Chestpiece got the best material mod and the deep pocketed mod from Victor’s current chestpiece, while the left leg got a material upgrade but no pocket mod because Victor only JUST had the materials – and his current left leg was a METAL piece, meaning I don’t think the Deep Pocketed mod on that could be switched over. Ah well. . .once the modding was done, I had Victor swap over to the new gear and give the old stuff to Piper – though not before noting that it looked like his metal left leg was STILL better than the Destroyer right leg when it came to damage resistances. O.o Hmmm. Might have to keep that around!
-->Still, Victor had some lovely new kit, including a chest piece that would be very useful against all the human enemies in Mass Fusion, so over he and Piper went (once again carefully skirting the spot where Victor blew up before) and headed into the building. Reception proved to only be home to a pair of Gunner Conscripts, who were easily taken out with Victor’s Two-Shot. I took a moment to read the Customer Service terminal (turns out Mass Fusion was a power plant, providing electricity to homes around the Boston area – and were VERY SPECIFIC on the fact that all these radiation-poisoning symptoms were NOT caused by their power boxes, no, the lead shielding is working great, it only leaks a LITTLE radiation) and the main Reception terminal (featuring some mail about the opening of the employee store, increased security measures after a sit-in protest by the public, and the upcoming company holiday party) and explored to do as much looting as possible (including cracking a safe in a side office and a storage closet nearby, both with some nice goodies). Also found my way into the security office, where after hacking the computer, I learned that a certain Dr. Chandrew was persona non grata with the company after an unspecified amount of time. This also contained the turret controls, so I had Victor use his Total Hack turret tape to hack them and make sure they were on his side. :p I was tempted to let the Protectrons go roaming as well, but it’s so easy to aggro them, I elected to leave them where they were.
-->With the lower floor sorted, Victor and Piper proceeded upstairs, taking out one gunner lurking in another side office. They entered the office to have a better view of the nearby catwalk across to the other side of the building, and Victor attempted to take some shots at a Gunner over there.
Not only do ALL of his shots hit the scenery, because he’s in a bad spot, but it turns out that particular Gunner has a missile launcher.
Cue Victor and Piper doing a bit of a panic dance in the office as I tried to defend them against a bunch of Gunners zeroing in on their location. They stayed alive longer than I thought – long enough to kill a Legendary Gunner nearby, in fact – but in the end, the missiles got them. Damn.
-->Okay, let’s try that all again, shall we? Having saved right at the beginning of Mass Fusion, I had Victor retrace his steps, kill the two reception Gunners, get all his loot back, rehack the turrets (and make sure they were active), then head upstairs a bit more cautiously. A guy actually managed to sneak up on him and Piper from behind, but they were able to take him out pretty quickly before moving forward and taking out the original Conscript from the office. This time they didn’t aggro everyone on the other side of the little bridge immediately, and Victor was able to take out one with his Mighty Sniper – while noting that there was an explosion from the room behind them. He and Piper made it up the stairs behind them without issue – and came across a bathroom scale trap at the top. I had Victor disarm it –
-->And then when he went inside, the damn thing went off anyway, setting off a Tesla arc reactor spitting out beams of electric pain. >( Victor moved out of the way in time, but Piper did get zapped a bit. Oi, I disarmed that thing! Ah well. . .the pair got into the room all right, where Victor did some more looting and unlocked a storage closet (whole PACKAGE of duct tape in there – we had adhesive for days :D). They made it across the bridge without worry, killing and looting the Gunners there, before finally making it to the other side and discovering a bathroom –
With Missile Launcher Gunner inside, dead by a stall with a tension trigger of some kind. I’m assuming that she either triggered a bomb stepping back unwisely trying to fire the launcher, or fired the launcher IN the room, damaging herself and then setting off the trap to finish the job. Either way, ha ha. :p
-->With her taken care of, Victor and Piper looted and found a ramp of old floor tiles leading up through a hole in the ceiling into the Records room. This had another terminal, detailing the woes of one V. Summers and Jenny Berlin – apparently the former was wooing the latter and tried to propose, only for Jenny to kind of ghost him. This naturally led to some resentment, as you might imagine. With that sorted, Victor and Piper moved onward, killing some more Gunners as they moved through more offices and looting everything possible. By the time I called it quits, they’d found their way into the mainframe room, which was nice (and found passage into the bathroom below, which allowed Victor to pick up more ammo). Left Victor parked by the mainframe computer – we’ll see what that does and continue the trek upward next Sunday! :)
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – caught up on the Victor Luvs Alice dash while having my breakfast smoothie, then my tracked tags after lunch, before getting all the pictures and some starter text up for each of this week’s Chill Save update posts (four in all, as is becoming usual) in the drafts pre-Fallout 4. Have to finish that tomorrow. . . Then this evening, got two ask replies and three thread replies in the queue on Valice Multiverse. Keeping up with everything, slowly but surely!
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike tonight, and back with the Oxventure Orbpocalypse with Episode 7, “Party Fowl!” After an off-screen timeskip during which the current four (Dob is still missing in action, and I am curious as to what was going on with Luke during this time period) found their way back to Corazon’s ship, grabbed a rowboat, and dragged it all the way over a mountain to Geth’s Lake District, we rejoined the gang as they were fishing on a very nice lake on a very nice day, looking for – well, originally the gang thought they were looking for Dob’s map (thrown in a lake – Johnny did say that he’d though to laminate it first when Corazon pointed out that a map would disintegrate in the water) so they could use that to determine where all their treasure and the shard was (thrown in a DIFFERENT lake), but Johnny said that they’d gotten past the two-factor authentication (though not all the jokes about it) and that they were on the lake with the treasure. (Marked by a papier-mache Dob.) Prudence successfully caught a turbit on the end of her line; Corazon dead-eyed a pike with his crossbow and got Egbert to flamebreath it for him; and Merilwen turned into an octopus to help speed up figuring out where this shard was by going down to the bottom directly. She ate Prudence’s turbit and took a dive, and did find a whole bunch of treasure – including Jacques Darkfall’s boots, which had held up very well for having been sitting at the bottom of a lake (Corazon was very happy to get them back) – but no shard. She also began, mysteriously, to feel a tiny bit sick – the others were concerned something was in the water, but when she took a little sip, she wasn’t able to determine anything unusual. She decided it was probably the turbit, hauled herself up on the boat, and became an elf again, which (due to the vagaries of shapeshifting) put the turbit back in her mouth. She spat it out on the bottom of the boat –
And out of its mouth came none other than the shard! Well then! Prudence was thrilled and went to put it in the orb, but Corazon felt like this had all come too easily and demanded to know what the catch was. (“The turbit,” as per Merilwen and Prudence. XD) Despite his misgivings, the key was inserted, and the orb –
Spat out some green motes and collapsed into a flat disc thing with an inscription! Before anyone could read it, though, someone greeted them from the prow of their little boat, over Corazon’s shoulder – someone with the upper half of a man and the lower half of a blue-feathered rooster. He introduced himself as Vocatus, a cheerful chap who was very happy to be free of that orb! Apparently some do-gooders had shoved him in there centuries ago, and he hadn’t known what to do until he spotted Prudence looking at the orb in the “awful museum” (Seal Gaiman ignored this slight) and got her to take him with. He said he’d been observing the Oxventurers along the way and was extremely pleased with how little time it had taken them to open the thing up – Corazon immediately asked if he’d been watching them use the toilet. Vocatus never actually denied this. XD At any rate, the others were concerned about him having been shoved in the orb by “do-gooders” and asked what kind of “do-badder” he was – he said he wasn’t really “bad,” he just hated how BORING Geth was, with all the “get up, eat, go to work, eat, go to bed” routines of the peasantry. He wanted to shake things up a bit, make things interesting again!
And to do that, he needed “starter cash,” so to speak, so he was going to rob them. Via the means of pointing at Prudence and making her feel odd for a moment, diving into the lake, and running away. A worried Corazon checked on the treasure and their money on-board, but none of that seemed to be affected. . .and then it hit him that “starter cash” might not have been literal. He quickly called on Prudence to cast Eldritch Blast (with her deliberately casting Agonizing Blast with one hand aimed at the water and one at Corazon when he tried to specify “not on me”) –
Nothing. Not a hint of magic. And when she tried to use her pact bond to talk to Cthulhu, she found him cut off from her by some sort of strange living screen. As you might imagine, she was QUITE upset. Merilwen offered hugs while Egbert and Corazon made jokes about her being a “were-lock” and a “was-lock” (Prudence preferred the former). Corazon DID have a nice moment where he told her to write down all the things she wanted to say to Cthulhu-Dad (who was apparently freaking out as much as she was about this state of affairs, from what little Prudence could tell over the severed bond) so she could say them all to him later – and then promptly ruined it by declaring that they’d get after Vocatus once they’d drained the lake to reclaim their treasure. And then, when Prudence told him that she couldn’t live without her magic, so neither could the party, he asked if she planned to Eldritch Blast him. XD Johnny awarded him inspiration, but made sure to make it clear it was for the NICE bit. XD
Anyway – Corazon was easily persuaded to leave the treasure be for the moment and track the rooster man, though he said that it would probably be a good idea to research him the first chance they got. (Prudence promptly accused him of being a nerd and asked where the real Corazon had gone.) They did try checking out the inscription on the orb, which was basically a long warning about how, if they’d read this, they’d fucked up; Geth was in peril; and that it was Vocatus’s appetites that would endanger Geth but also allow him to be defeated. Egbert asked if this meant they had to stuff him full of seed. XD Merilwen said that it could be referring to his appetite for excitement, so Corazon wondered if that meant they had to take him on an absolute rager of a night out. XD (Get the Stag Lads back, stat!) They couldn’t do anything without him actually BEING there, though, so they rowed themselves to shore, where Egbert summoned his steed Dogbert to start tracking. The scent led them over a nearby hillock, from which they could see a port town. Corazon checked it out with his spyglass and, upon seeing an exploded warehouse, recognized it as Port Fairwind! You know, the furniture-making town from “Bad Chair Day,” the adventure where Dob managed to thoroughly derail Johnny and nearly got Corazon and Merilwen accidentally kidnapped by disguising the former as a chair. XD The gang took a moment to remember if they had been run out of Fairwind or not (“no,” said Johnny, “we just had to leave the room in a hurry because we’d overrun”) – upon realizing that their karma there was largely neutral, Egbert hopped on Dogbert and rode down to the town, telling the others he’d see them when they caught up. Very noble? Eh, sort of – Egbert really just wanted to ride around on his awesome dog. XD
Upon arriving at the outskirts of Fairwind, Egbert found that most of the townsfolk appeared to be enjoying a party of sorts, drinking from mysterious cauldrons of wine that never seemed to empty. Catching a random passerby, he learned from her that a wine merchant in weirdly baggy trousers had shown up, told them all that they worked very hard and should take a moment to relax and have some fun, and started setting up the wine cauldrons, leading to the whole town deciding to have a piss-up. Egbert asked if the “merchant” was still around, and the woman said that he might be – he’d seemed to be working his way toward the town square. Egbert thanked her and warned her not to overindulge, in a rare case of trying to be the adult in the room. XD We’ll see tomorrow what happens when he reaches the town square – and perhaps even get a (figurative) look at the special amended character sheet Johnny made for not-warlock Prudence. . .
Additionally:
-->Did our Halloween decorating this morning – Mom ended up hanging up the skeleton, witch ghosts, and bats while I was finishing my breakfast and getting dressed and all that, so I mainly helped with stretching the fake spiderweb all around the front porch and garden (mainly around the path). It looks pretty damn good, if I say so myself. :)
-->Answered my friend Ace’s latest FF.net PM – and very pleased to see FF.net actually sent me an e-mail about it, as the site had been really bad about that lately. Hopefully it continues actually alerting me when I have stuff in the inbox!
-->Despite increasing clouds, we did get a chance to play more beanbags – and after dominating the game yesterday, poor Mom was just plain off today, not getting a single win. Dad and I ended up distributing the wins a bit more equally between us instead – final scores were me W-W-2-2-3; Dad 2-3-W-W-W; Mom 3-2-3-3-2. Ah well – I guess it balances out between the two days! XD
And I JUST finished answering all of Moose's messages, so I gotta head out now and get some sleep before starting the work week. Five days this week, meeeh. . .hopefully it won't be too bad. Night all!
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – pretty easy one today, given it was mostly just Victor, Piper, and Alice working their way up the Mass Fusion building, shooting Gunners, reading terminals, avoiding traps, picking locks, hacking turrets, and looting everything that seemed even slightly useful. :p Though I did retcon in Victor picking up the Destroyer gear from Daisy during his initial trip to Goodneighbor, instead of having to run back and get it like I did in the actual playsession, below. But yeah, short and sweet – we’ll see if that trend continues next week! :P
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's latest Fallout video: Check, though in a bit of a weird way. . .
A) First up, a surprise when I returned to YouTube after playing Fallout 4 myself – Jon was hosting a stream! “Fallout 4: The 25th Anniversary Fallout Special (Also Featuring Dog)” to be specific. I guess this weekend is the 25th anniversary of the release of the original Fallout game? At any rate, Jon wanted to celebrate, and the Next Fallout Series isn’t quite ready to start yet, so FO4 stream featuring his character “Johnny Cleanhands” running around Boston with Codsworth, fighting feral ghouls, collecting magazines (and talking about how companion bonuses stack with robot bonuses for robot companions, making them a touch OP), and “accidentally” stealing Jet from the Third Rail. XD At least, that’s the bit I saw. Also stories about his and Claire’s dog Teddy, who apparently shares Jon’s lack of perception (poor pup ran straight into a glass door as it was closing once). XD Surprising, but hey, glad I caught a bit of it. (And then, after returning to YouTube after beanbags and such, I found that the livestream had ended and the archival video was just under two hours long – too long for me to watch tonight, but perhaps I can take a gander at some point in the future!)
B) Then, this evening, we had our two Subs videos, starting with Call Me Kevin and “The current state of Cyberpunk 2077!” Yes, Kevin is back to that game now that five million patches have been released for it and it’s actually halfway playable. After using some medication to force sleep paralysis demon Keanu Reeves to leave him alone, Kevin’s V went for a fun stroll around town in nothing but his pants (and possibly not even that, given this game WILL let you be fully nude I believe). The fun stroll included things like accidentally setting off a mustard gas grenade in an elevator, then shooting himself in said elevator by accident; hijacking multiple cars and getting into multiple car accidents along the way; trying to help the police in a shootout – which actually went reasonably well, although it did not net him any pants; meeting with a plot-important character in a diner after dragging a whole bunch of police over there for his many crimes, and getting distracted by the guy at the next table over taking his time with a burger; getting hit-and-run by a self-driving car in a parking garage, going to get his settlement from the office, and ending up tracking down the AI running the place’s missing cars (well, one of them) and driving them very dangerously back to the office; learning some brawl moves from a dude inhabiting a pair of bodies (like twins except it’s technically one person); and trying to track down his missing partner Evelyn by working his way through various places, including a brothel where you could talk to “dolls” who seemed to have weird insights into what was happening (and where Kevin killed a dude in a toilet to get a VIP card and punched the boss of the whole place to death, but wasn’t able to hurt anyone else) and a clinic for cyberpunk mods where he robbed the doctor blind before punching him out. Oh, and he nearly met with another plot-important character, but he’d wandered in there by accident because he liked her bead curtain door, so he just backed away before plot could happen. XD I can’t say that I followed any of the plot, but Kevin causing chaos is always a good time.
C) And then we had GrayStillPlays and “When you take compulsive lying to the extremes,” aka Gray plays The Perfect Lie! This is a ridiculous mobile game where you play as a kid who, after lying to his mother about failing a test, gets cursed Pinocchio-style by a random Tinkerbell knockoff, but instead of repenting of his sins, he must become the world’s best liar to remove the curse. Cue him bunking off of school and claiming his aunt died; adopting a stray and then blaming the barking on the dog outside; yanking a fellow student’s chair out from under him and then claiming he saw a roach on it; throwing a ball at his teacher and then blaming the kids outside (causing her to yeet herself out of the window to chase them); ELECTROCUTING HIS FATHER for grounding him for playing too many video games; and eventually GETTING HIS FATHER TO BUY HIM A CAR SO HE WON’T TELL MOM DAD’S CHEATING. This kid is in ELEMENTARY school, let me tell you. It was absolutely bonkers, as are most of Gray’s Terrible Mobile Game Adventures, and I am here for it. XD
3. Play Fallout 4, get the Destroyer gear from Daisy, then start working through Mass Fusion to the Strength Bobblehead: Check – simple playsession today, though it wasn’t without some pain –
-->Started outside Mass Fusion, where I had Victor reorient himself toward Goodneighbor and start over there to get the Destroyer gear (which is combat armor, nice) from Daisy – only to promptly run into a mine and get him blown up. Whoops.
-->Okay, let’s try that again, and take things more carefully this time! Which amounted to “move a lot more slowly, keep eyes on the road, and somehow skirt around the mine despite never actually figuring out where it was.” O.o Well, anyway, Victor and Piper made it successfully back to Goodneighbor this time, where Victor went to Daisy and bought both bits of Destroyer gear she sells (a chest piece with the Assassin’s effect – reduces damage from humans by 15% – and a left leg piece with the Sprinter’s effect – increases movement speed by 10%), selling her a fuck-ton of food and chems and such in order to be able to afford them without completely bankrupting himself of caps. Suddenly I’m grateful for all of my food mods for an entirely different reason than usual! XD
-->With the items procured, it was over to a nearby alley where Victor could plop down his portable workbench out of the rain and start modding his new armor! Chestpiece got the best material mod and the deep pocketed mod from Victor’s current chestpiece, while the left leg got a material upgrade but no pocket mod because Victor only JUST had the materials – and his current left leg was a METAL piece, meaning I don’t think the Deep Pocketed mod on that could be switched over. Ah well. . .once the modding was done, I had Victor swap over to the new gear and give the old stuff to Piper – though not before noting that it looked like his metal left leg was STILL better than the Destroyer right leg when it came to damage resistances. O.o Hmmm. Might have to keep that around!
-->Still, Victor had some lovely new kit, including a chest piece that would be very useful against all the human enemies in Mass Fusion, so over he and Piper went (once again carefully skirting the spot where Victor blew up before) and headed into the building. Reception proved to only be home to a pair of Gunner Conscripts, who were easily taken out with Victor’s Two-Shot. I took a moment to read the Customer Service terminal (turns out Mass Fusion was a power plant, providing electricity to homes around the Boston area – and were VERY SPECIFIC on the fact that all these radiation-poisoning symptoms were NOT caused by their power boxes, no, the lead shielding is working great, it only leaks a LITTLE radiation) and the main Reception terminal (featuring some mail about the opening of the employee store, increased security measures after a sit-in protest by the public, and the upcoming company holiday party) and explored to do as much looting as possible (including cracking a safe in a side office and a storage closet nearby, both with some nice goodies). Also found my way into the security office, where after hacking the computer, I learned that a certain Dr. Chandrew was persona non grata with the company after an unspecified amount of time. This also contained the turret controls, so I had Victor use his Total Hack turret tape to hack them and make sure they were on his side. :p I was tempted to let the Protectrons go roaming as well, but it’s so easy to aggro them, I elected to leave them where they were.
-->With the lower floor sorted, Victor and Piper proceeded upstairs, taking out one gunner lurking in another side office. They entered the office to have a better view of the nearby catwalk across to the other side of the building, and Victor attempted to take some shots at a Gunner over there.
Not only do ALL of his shots hit the scenery, because he’s in a bad spot, but it turns out that particular Gunner has a missile launcher.
Cue Victor and Piper doing a bit of a panic dance in the office as I tried to defend them against a bunch of Gunners zeroing in on their location. They stayed alive longer than I thought – long enough to kill a Legendary Gunner nearby, in fact – but in the end, the missiles got them. Damn.
-->Okay, let’s try that all again, shall we? Having saved right at the beginning of Mass Fusion, I had Victor retrace his steps, kill the two reception Gunners, get all his loot back, rehack the turrets (and make sure they were active), then head upstairs a bit more cautiously. A guy actually managed to sneak up on him and Piper from behind, but they were able to take him out pretty quickly before moving forward and taking out the original Conscript from the office. This time they didn’t aggro everyone on the other side of the little bridge immediately, and Victor was able to take out one with his Mighty Sniper – while noting that there was an explosion from the room behind them. He and Piper made it up the stairs behind them without issue – and came across a bathroom scale trap at the top. I had Victor disarm it –
-->And then when he went inside, the damn thing went off anyway, setting off a Tesla arc reactor spitting out beams of electric pain. >( Victor moved out of the way in time, but Piper did get zapped a bit. Oi, I disarmed that thing! Ah well. . .the pair got into the room all right, where Victor did some more looting and unlocked a storage closet (whole PACKAGE of duct tape in there – we had adhesive for days :D). They made it across the bridge without worry, killing and looting the Gunners there, before finally making it to the other side and discovering a bathroom –
With Missile Launcher Gunner inside, dead by a stall with a tension trigger of some kind. I’m assuming that she either triggered a bomb stepping back unwisely trying to fire the launcher, or fired the launcher IN the room, damaging herself and then setting off the trap to finish the job. Either way, ha ha. :p
-->With her taken care of, Victor and Piper looted and found a ramp of old floor tiles leading up through a hole in the ceiling into the Records room. This had another terminal, detailing the woes of one V. Summers and Jenny Berlin – apparently the former was wooing the latter and tried to propose, only for Jenny to kind of ghost him. This naturally led to some resentment, as you might imagine. With that sorted, Victor and Piper moved onward, killing some more Gunners as they moved through more offices and looting everything possible. By the time I called it quits, they’d found their way into the mainframe room, which was nice (and found passage into the bathroom below, which allowed Victor to pick up more ammo). Left Victor parked by the mainframe computer – we’ll see what that does and continue the trek upward next Sunday! :)
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – caught up on the Victor Luvs Alice dash while having my breakfast smoothie, then my tracked tags after lunch, before getting all the pictures and some starter text up for each of this week’s Chill Save update posts (four in all, as is becoming usual) in the drafts pre-Fallout 4. Have to finish that tomorrow. . . Then this evening, got two ask replies and three thread replies in the queue on Valice Multiverse. Keeping up with everything, slowly but surely!
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike tonight, and back with the Oxventure Orbpocalypse with Episode 7, “Party Fowl!” After an off-screen timeskip during which the current four (Dob is still missing in action, and I am curious as to what was going on with Luke during this time period) found their way back to Corazon’s ship, grabbed a rowboat, and dragged it all the way over a mountain to Geth’s Lake District, we rejoined the gang as they were fishing on a very nice lake on a very nice day, looking for – well, originally the gang thought they were looking for Dob’s map (thrown in a lake – Johnny did say that he’d though to laminate it first when Corazon pointed out that a map would disintegrate in the water) so they could use that to determine where all their treasure and the shard was (thrown in a DIFFERENT lake), but Johnny said that they’d gotten past the two-factor authentication (though not all the jokes about it) and that they were on the lake with the treasure. (Marked by a papier-mache Dob.) Prudence successfully caught a turbit on the end of her line; Corazon dead-eyed a pike with his crossbow and got Egbert to flamebreath it for him; and Merilwen turned into an octopus to help speed up figuring out where this shard was by going down to the bottom directly. She ate Prudence’s turbit and took a dive, and did find a whole bunch of treasure – including Jacques Darkfall’s boots, which had held up very well for having been sitting at the bottom of a lake (Corazon was very happy to get them back) – but no shard. She also began, mysteriously, to feel a tiny bit sick – the others were concerned something was in the water, but when she took a little sip, she wasn’t able to determine anything unusual. She decided it was probably the turbit, hauled herself up on the boat, and became an elf again, which (due to the vagaries of shapeshifting) put the turbit back in her mouth. She spat it out on the bottom of the boat –
And out of its mouth came none other than the shard! Well then! Prudence was thrilled and went to put it in the orb, but Corazon felt like this had all come too easily and demanded to know what the catch was. (“The turbit,” as per Merilwen and Prudence. XD) Despite his misgivings, the key was inserted, and the orb –
Spat out some green motes and collapsed into a flat disc thing with an inscription! Before anyone could read it, though, someone greeted them from the prow of their little boat, over Corazon’s shoulder – someone with the upper half of a man and the lower half of a blue-feathered rooster. He introduced himself as Vocatus, a cheerful chap who was very happy to be free of that orb! Apparently some do-gooders had shoved him in there centuries ago, and he hadn’t known what to do until he spotted Prudence looking at the orb in the “awful museum” (Seal Gaiman ignored this slight) and got her to take him with. He said he’d been observing the Oxventurers along the way and was extremely pleased with how little time it had taken them to open the thing up – Corazon immediately asked if he’d been watching them use the toilet. Vocatus never actually denied this. XD At any rate, the others were concerned about him having been shoved in the orb by “do-gooders” and asked what kind of “do-badder” he was – he said he wasn’t really “bad,” he just hated how BORING Geth was, with all the “get up, eat, go to work, eat, go to bed” routines of the peasantry. He wanted to shake things up a bit, make things interesting again!
And to do that, he needed “starter cash,” so to speak, so he was going to rob them. Via the means of pointing at Prudence and making her feel odd for a moment, diving into the lake, and running away. A worried Corazon checked on the treasure and their money on-board, but none of that seemed to be affected. . .and then it hit him that “starter cash” might not have been literal. He quickly called on Prudence to cast Eldritch Blast (with her deliberately casting Agonizing Blast with one hand aimed at the water and one at Corazon when he tried to specify “not on me”) –
Nothing. Not a hint of magic. And when she tried to use her pact bond to talk to Cthulhu, she found him cut off from her by some sort of strange living screen. As you might imagine, she was QUITE upset. Merilwen offered hugs while Egbert and Corazon made jokes about her being a “were-lock” and a “was-lock” (Prudence preferred the former). Corazon DID have a nice moment where he told her to write down all the things she wanted to say to Cthulhu-Dad (who was apparently freaking out as much as she was about this state of affairs, from what little Prudence could tell over the severed bond) so she could say them all to him later – and then promptly ruined it by declaring that they’d get after Vocatus once they’d drained the lake to reclaim their treasure. And then, when Prudence told him that she couldn’t live without her magic, so neither could the party, he asked if she planned to Eldritch Blast him. XD Johnny awarded him inspiration, but made sure to make it clear it was for the NICE bit. XD
Anyway – Corazon was easily persuaded to leave the treasure be for the moment and track the rooster man, though he said that it would probably be a good idea to research him the first chance they got. (Prudence promptly accused him of being a nerd and asked where the real Corazon had gone.) They did try checking out the inscription on the orb, which was basically a long warning about how, if they’d read this, they’d fucked up; Geth was in peril; and that it was Vocatus’s appetites that would endanger Geth but also allow him to be defeated. Egbert asked if this meant they had to stuff him full of seed. XD Merilwen said that it could be referring to his appetite for excitement, so Corazon wondered if that meant they had to take him on an absolute rager of a night out. XD (Get the Stag Lads back, stat!) They couldn’t do anything without him actually BEING there, though, so they rowed themselves to shore, where Egbert summoned his steed Dogbert to start tracking. The scent led them over a nearby hillock, from which they could see a port town. Corazon checked it out with his spyglass and, upon seeing an exploded warehouse, recognized it as Port Fairwind! You know, the furniture-making town from “Bad Chair Day,” the adventure where Dob managed to thoroughly derail Johnny and nearly got Corazon and Merilwen accidentally kidnapped by disguising the former as a chair. XD The gang took a moment to remember if they had been run out of Fairwind or not (“no,” said Johnny, “we just had to leave the room in a hurry because we’d overrun”) – upon realizing that their karma there was largely neutral, Egbert hopped on Dogbert and rode down to the town, telling the others he’d see them when they caught up. Very noble? Eh, sort of – Egbert really just wanted to ride around on his awesome dog. XD
Upon arriving at the outskirts of Fairwind, Egbert found that most of the townsfolk appeared to be enjoying a party of sorts, drinking from mysterious cauldrons of wine that never seemed to empty. Catching a random passerby, he learned from her that a wine merchant in weirdly baggy trousers had shown up, told them all that they worked very hard and should take a moment to relax and have some fun, and started setting up the wine cauldrons, leading to the whole town deciding to have a piss-up. Egbert asked if the “merchant” was still around, and the woman said that he might be – he’d seemed to be working his way toward the town square. Egbert thanked her and warned her not to overindulge, in a rare case of trying to be the adult in the room. XD We’ll see tomorrow what happens when he reaches the town square – and perhaps even get a (figurative) look at the special amended character sheet Johnny made for not-warlock Prudence. . .
Additionally:
-->Did our Halloween decorating this morning – Mom ended up hanging up the skeleton, witch ghosts, and bats while I was finishing my breakfast and getting dressed and all that, so I mainly helped with stretching the fake spiderweb all around the front porch and garden (mainly around the path). It looks pretty damn good, if I say so myself. :)
-->Answered my friend Ace’s latest FF.net PM – and very pleased to see FF.net actually sent me an e-mail about it, as the site had been really bad about that lately. Hopefully it continues actually alerting me when I have stuff in the inbox!
-->Despite increasing clouds, we did get a chance to play more beanbags – and after dominating the game yesterday, poor Mom was just plain off today, not getting a single win. Dad and I ended up distributing the wins a bit more equally between us instead – final scores were me W-W-2-2-3; Dad 2-3-W-W-W; Mom 3-2-3-3-2. Ah well – I guess it balances out between the two days! XD
And I JUST finished answering all of Moose's messages, so I gotta head out now and get some sleep before starting the work week. Five days this week, meeeh. . .hopefully it won't be too bad. Night all!
