Day Eight Of The Plague

Today's Covid Update: Still testing positive -- but BARELY. Like, so barely. The pink line was so freaking faint it was almost not there. But it WAS still there, so the decision has been made to stay out of work until Wednesday, when I will definitely be out of the ten-day quarantine/isolation period and can safely return. Both my coworkers have already tested negative and are going back tomorrow, so at least they'll be able to handle some of the work-build-up and it won't be all on me when I go back. *shakehead* This is not how I expected to start my February, but -- at least it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Just hope I can transition back to a more "normal" schedule without too much trouble. . .

Anyway -- back around again to a Fallout Sunday! How did that go?

Tumblr: Decently productive day on the tumblrs – did the dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice before and during lunch, then finished up the rest of the explanatory text for the next OT3 meme after lunch! Then, later on, between supper and YouTube, it was reblogging time over there – answering a reblog from Ace, then reblogging some of my old friend Taco, now Red’s, fanart – a couple of cute Victor/Victoria pieces, and some Victor and Alice sketches they did today. :D Said sketches also ended up going into the Valice Multiverse queue, since it was quiet over there today – no asks or threads at all! At least I have cute fanart to post. :)

Fallout 4: Had a good long session of this today, getting through two whole in-game days! Though that’s partially because one day was spent entirely at the Castle doing workshop stuff – here are the deets –

A) As stated, first day in-game was spent making the Castle a decent place to live – this included building a bunch of nice garden planters for the crops and moving them all over there, by the front wall of the fort; building a settlement recruitment beacon and putting it up on one of the “towers” to attract a few more people to help farm and such; clearing out the actual junk in the fort (as much as I could anyway); taking a break around midmorning when Victor suddenly started taking a bunch of rads thanks to a radstorm – fortunately some Rad-X and waiting at the table in the “planning room” for a couple of in-game hours changed the weather over to just rain; making a scavenger bench for one of the new arrivals to tinker at; getting all the remaining junk off of Nick and putting it in the workbench (except for Victor’s port-a-potty, he needs that); building proper bathroom facilities at the castle (outhouse and a shower with shack walls around it); building a few crafting benches (armor and weapon, plus a cooking station I didn’t realize I didn’t need as I’d forgotten about the one in the “kitchen” – I justified the outdoor campfire with a banjo a bit later); building a generator and hooking it up to that one power pylon outside (voila, Castle has light! Off one tiny generator, nice); and building a few nicer beds. Busy day for Victor! But I think it was all worth it to have a slightly-nicer settlement. :) He turned in shortly before 9 PM, content in a job well-done.

B) Next day, Victor woke up around 4:55 AM, and I sent him to fiddle with his weapons at the weapon workbench – that combat shotgun is definitely something I want him to improve, but it needs a shit-load of aluminum to upgrade it, hmph. I had him scrap some other guns he’d pick up for materials and move some of the mods off that one laser rifle he’d picked up over onto the Staggering one. . .though I’m starting to think that, for that one, I should probably change the muzzle from a beam focuser to a beam splitter. You want as many projectiles as possible for a Staggering weapon, right? Figure it out later. . .

C) Anyway, with that done, I decided he ought to be off – I had sidequests to complete, after all! And a Sanctuary to get back to, just for the power armor stored there. . . I had Victor pick up some necessaries from the workbench (like bottles to fill from one of the water pumps for purified water, and all the adhesive), built one more turret to make sure the place was adequately defended, then had him and Nick set out into the wastes! After consulting the map, I figured that the best settlement to hit first was Warwick Homestead, as it was the closest, and so the duo began weaving their way through the houses in that general direction.

D) Well, sort of – I ended up doing one of my weird little loops around the area first. XD In my defense this time, Nick and Victor suffered a very brief raider ambush on the way back to the broken-down highway near the flooded streets; then got distracted watching a Brotherhood of Steel vertibird take on something, before discovering that something was mirelurks; then found what was either a bus depot or a train station to explore and loot with some nesting mirelurks within (none of them gave Victor and the Two-Shot any trouble, though); then they found themselves back at the Mutant Barbecue Parking Lot, forcing me to double-check which direction Warwick actual lay. Look, it’s just VERY EASY to get lost in this game, okay? XD And it was a fruitful detour, got some decent stuff out of that depot.

E) Anyway, I figured out which direction to point the boys and started working my way back in the general direction of the South Boston checkpoint and such. Found the back of the South Boston Police Station, then went around and past a little raider camp. The raiders insisted on shooting at Victor and Nick, so they shot back and took them out – and one of them happened to be a Legendary! Unfortunately, the only thing he dropped was an Assassin’s Metal Chestpiece – and Victor’s already GOT a combat armor chest piece with the same effect. Took it to sell later, raided the camp, and proceeded on my way to the broken highway, where Victor and Nick found ANOTHER little raider camp! I tried to have them sneak past, but no dice, and Victor and Nick took THEM out too. One raider even managed to psych Victor out by looking like she was surrendering, before opening fire on him again, causing Nick to shotgun her. Sheesh! Well, it’s all XP, I suppose. . .

F) After raiding their little camp (and once again bemoaning a lack of aluminum), the pair continued onward! Past Jamaica Plain, in fact – I briefly contemplated stopping by, but then decided I could do that on the way back. After all, I don’t know where the Warwicks are sending me to clear out those super mutants bothering them – it might be nearby! I did pause near it to reorient myself, and proceeded in the direction of a flooded town with what looked like raider activity in it – I was able to have Victor loot a nearby garage with a power armor frame in it, but attempting to get closer to the flooded area just to mark it on the map resulted in a LOT of worrying beeping, so I had him back off and instead creep along to the left. He and Nick worked their way through a marsh around a quarry (which I took a particular interest in – Dunwich Borers? Or is it Vault 88? I will have to see later!), over to an old shed with a “Grey Tortoise” cigarettes billboard on it –

G) Where, suddenly, they were attacked! Turns out there were some Gunners in the area – and an ASSAULTRON! It looked like they were fighting either each other or something else, though, so I quickly had Victor take out the nearest Gunner, then (after throwing a mine without thinking) fling a pulse grenade at the other Gunner and the Assaultron before taking down the robot with the trusty Two-Shot. Nice! :D I ventured forward after looting the corpses (six aluminum on the Assaultron!) and discovered that, in fact, the trio had been fighting MINUTEMEN! As evidenced by the two corpses outside. :( There were still two alive in the building though – and LOADS of Wonderglue too, w00. :D I took all that, then went to go explore a nearby house wreckage –

H) Only to come under fire by more Gunners up on the highway. And when I retaliated with the Mighty Sniper. . .I saw someone in power armor. Wielding some kind of burning laser weapon.

Named Clint.

Cue me realizing “oh shit, these are the QUINCY Gunners” and trying to make a hasty retreat because, well, better to come back and take these guys on later, right? (Especially since if I’m doing a major assault on Gunners, that is either a Preston or a MacCready trip! Probably Preston in this case, since I remember correctly, Clint is the traitor, not one of the guys harassing MacCready. . .) Unfortunately, Nick and the remaining Minutemen refused to stand down, and I quickly realized I’d started off a firefight that I didn’t want to participate in and that my companion and Minutemen couldn’t win. :( Time to reload!

I) Fortunately, I’d saved right outside the Mysterious Flooded Town, so it was just a matter of working my way back again through the bit of marshland and over to the Grey Tortoise building. Minus side – no Assaultron to loot for aluminum parts. Plus side – all Minutemen were still alive, and the glue was still there. :) I took the glue and THIS time had Victor and Nick exit through the back and creep along the shoreline, avoiding notice from the Gunners and anyone else in Quincy. . .

J) Until the pair happened upon the Poseidon Energy factory! With all its raiders along the outside. Fortunately, the Mighty Sniper took most of them out pretty easily, and the guys who were a bit more resistant still went down in a couple of shots. (Though I am now VERY well aware of how LOUD the Mighty Sniper is! But a suppressor would bring down the range. . .hmm. . .) Anyway, having taken out the raiders and their dog, Victor and Nick climbed up and looted the bodies, took out the turret at the very top, and ended up camping up at the very top, with Victor doing a bunch of cooking before turning in around 9:10 PM (he has SO MUCH mirelurk meat, it’s not even funny. I was half-certain I could level up just from cooking mirelurk).

And that is essentially where I left it off, with Victor having woken up the next morning and surveying the fog from the top of the plant! Next time, we head over to the actual Warwick homestead, and learn where their greenskins are! And then maybe raid a few places along the way to try and get aluminum so I can have a really good shotgun. (Hell, I’m already AT Poseidon Energy, I might dip in there for goodies.)

Writing: Naturally, I updated the FO4 Playthrough Progression with all of Victor’s hard work making the Castle more livable before going off to talk to the folks at the Warwick Homestead! Main differences from what happened above being that the two settlers who showed up as per the recruitment beacon were just attracted by all the noise and of course actually HELPED with the clean up and building; Victor consulted with Preston (who doesn’t seem to be at the Castle currently in-game? Slightly concerned as to where he’s wandered off to) and the Minuteman running the radio, Carter, about how to handle the requests for aid (aka the sidequests) – they’re sending out requests to Minutemen in the area for Nordhagen and Somerville while Victor goes to Warwick; and two Minutemen, Dick (one of the original assault force on the Castle) and Theo (one of the new settlers), ended up joining Victor, Nick, and Alice on their little journey, helping them fight the mirelurks and raiders before eventually hooking up with the Minutemen in the Gray Tortoise building so they can keep an eye on the Gunners over there while Victor, Alice, and Nick moved over and cleared out the exterior of the Poseidon Energy plant. *double thumbs up* Teamwork! XD (I mean, it DOES make more sense than Victor doing it all himself like in-game. . .)

YouTube: As usual, the Sunday YouTubery ran a bit late, but it was worth it – we had some good stuff today –

A) First up, the latest from Call Me Kevin – “The best pirate game ever made,” aka Kevin plays Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag! Yes, this entry in the AC series is lauded as an excellent pirate game – but to get to that bit, you first must play through getting shipwrecked; chasing down a fellow survivor and shanking him; discovering he’s selling something valuable to the governor of Havana and stealing his clothes to disguise yourself as him; saving a merchant being harassed by soldiers (well, “merchant” – it’s Stede fucking Bonnet of Our Flag Means Death pirate fame, here NOT played by Rhys Darby) and using his ship to get to Cuba (crashing into every rock along the way); stopping a pickpocket from stealing Stede’s money (the game says “just tackle him,” but you can totally just shank the dude); tailing some guards (using a bunch of hired ladies to disguise your presence and distract them at key moments) and then sneaking into a fortress to steal back some personal effects and let Stede know where his sugar ended up; meeting with some dudes in the governor’s mansion and playing a shooting minigame (showing off how powerful your finger guns are) before demonstrating some assassinations for them (in the most awkward way possible); handing over your item to the governor (and then pickpocketing him and his friends while they go on about plot-important stuff); nearly having your cover blown by Stede the next day when he calls you by your real name, Edward, instead of your assumed one, Duncan, in front of your contact (fortunately you can just say you gave a fake name to HIM and the guy will be fine with it); running away in terror when the governor and his friends are attacked by assassins (he’ll be fine, he can glitch through the scenery in fascinating ways); catching a fleeing assassin to bring back to be jailed, learning in the process the “device” you handed over is actually pretty big news and probably more valuable than just the 1,000 reales you got for it (especially since you earned more than that playing the checkers minigame! Against a very dumb AI!); trying to infiltrate the mansion to steal the device back, only to get caught and put on a prison ship to Spain; and the FINALLY breaking out with a friend on the prison ship and freeing a bunch of fellow pirates to be your crew as you steal the best ship in the prison fleet. And even THEN you might fall victim to a bug that leaves your ship dead in the water and easy pickings for the other galleons. XD But if you can get through all that, then you can find your way to another settlement, taking down another boat along the way (and then wrecking your own by ramming into it just before it sinks) and shooting bolas and the like at the shore to beat up all the tourists. XD Yeah, as you might imagine, Kevin had a lot of fun playing this game in – maybe not the WRONG way, but certainly the not-quite-right way. XD

B) Then it was on to GrayStillPlays’s latest – “I made plane landings 1000x more dangerous,” aka Gray Plays Emergency Plane Landing! It’s another one of those “fling this thing across the board to reach a specified end point, and earn coins for wrecking in spectacular ways” mobile games, with the twist here being that you’re piloting an aircraft (generally planes, but the game also features the occasional helicopter and blimp) that is generally suffering some kind of emergency, and have to land it while its engines are on fire or something. However, as Gray discovered, you do NOT have to keep the plane in one piece – the only thing that matters is touching the green landing area. XD He proceeded to completely smash a plane into a freeway and cause a thirty-car pile-up; drive a helicopter into a Ferris wheel and a tiki bar; slam a fighter jet into multiple buildings in a city (all while trying to hit the hot air balloons around him – he was very sour when he accidentally completed the board before he could do that); smack another helicopter into a bunch of ice boulders in a ski resort; try to get a blimp through a tunnel; use that same blimp to smash into a whole BOARD full of various balloons and airships before switching to a proper plane to try and fly into a SECOND plane’s hangar as it flew away from him; and finally looped back to the freeway at the beginning only he was in a helicopter and aiming for a different runaway. He still crashed and caused a thirty-car pile-up. XD These kinds of games are always fun, if only to see just how much money Gray can earn with his ridiculous stunts (answer: a lot).

C) And finally we had Jon of Many A True Nerd’s latest – “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 15 - Tenpenny For Your Thoughts!” All about Tenpenny Tower and – well. How it is basically just a tower full of sin and tragedy. And how “happy” endings always seem to have a sting in the tail. . . Let’s go over the horrors together, shall we?

I. First off, right at the beginning of the episode is the tragedy of the romance between Wanda and Mr. Burke. For, you see, Wanda got two more love letters from Burke courtesy of Colin Moriarty, held for her while she was away in New Vegas – one from Burke talking about how much he misses her. . .and one saying that it’s cruel of him to keep her waiting for a summons that will probably never come and that while he loves her, he must let her fly free. Wanda of course rushed to Tenpenny Tower to talk to him –

Only he wasn’t there. Because the “Black Widow” way of resolving the Megaton situation so that Burke is too in love with you to blow it up – actually DESPAWNS him. If you agree to help him or simply refuse him, he’ll stay in his room in the tower, but if you flirt with him and get the love letters? He vanishes entirely after breaking up with you, presumably to start over elsewhere. Wanda, if she wishes to look for love, must look elsewhere. (Which is probably a good thing because, again, Wanda was 19 when she flirted with that asshole and made him fall head over heels, and it’s juuust a bit creepy.)

II. Then we have the tale of Herbert “Daring” Dashwood, the author and star of a radio drama on Galaxy News Radio, detailing one of this and his ghoul manservant Argyle’s adventures – mainly, the time they got mixed up with the slavers of Paradise Falls, stole away with what they thought was an innocent maiden to the ghoul city of Rockopolis, then learned the maiden, Penelope Chase, was in fact the LEADER of the slavers, and the whole thing ends with a literal cliffhanger – as in, after Argyle killed Penelope and the slavers invaded the city, Herbert found himself hanging off a cliff. There is no resolution in the radio drama – but Herbert lives in Tenpenny Tower, and you can figure out what happened if you ask him a bit about Argyle and then sneak into his room and have a look at his terminal. The radio drama keeps it light-hearted, but he was pretty fucking pissed about Penelope’s betrayal in real life, let me tell you! And it turns out, in the chaos, he was separated from Argyle and has no idea what happened to him – he’s just clinging onto the idea that the dude, who was his best friend and saved his bacon like a hundred times, is still out there and that they can be reunited. Sadly, if you go out and actually LOOK for Rockopolis (it’s near Girdershade, and the gap where you can find it glows at night), you’ll find proof that the slavers just took over the city and dragged the residents to their doom in the Pitt, and Argyle’s corpse by the rockslide blocking off the rest of the city (along with the Unarmed Bobblehead). Go back and tell Herbert that his friend is dead, and the guy just gives you all his adventuring gear in his safe, because he’s definitely retired now that he can’t have adventures with Argyle anymore. :( The only upside is his safe is where you find the final bottlecap mine schematic, meaning Wanda now gets three for the price of one when she crafts those. (Also, Dashwood has a habit of sneaking around and breaking into people’s rooms that can lead to some truly unintentional hilarity sometimes – see below. . .)

III. Then we have the drama that can be caused by trying to get a diplomatic solution to the “Tenpenny Tower” quest! This is a quest where you find yourself caught between two groups of people. On the one side, you have Roy Phillips and his band of ghouls, who live in a nearby metro station and want to move into the tower. Roy himself has gotten so pissed off at being denied entry that he’s planning on unleashing a bunch of his feral brethren into the tower to kill everyone – he just needs help getting them into the basement through the emergency tunnels that lead into the subway. On the other side, you have the residents of Tenpenny Tower themselves – and while most of them are either in favor of letting in the ghouls or at least ambivalent about it (the doctor, for example, says he’d want to give them all a thorough examination first), security is biased against them (you get the quest by talking to the head of security, who offers you 500 caps (or 700 plus a gun and ammo if you have enough Speech) to just blow Roy and his friends away), and so are five key residents – the Wellingtons, Edward and Millicent; Susan Lancaster; Anthony Ling; and – Ms. Montenegro, Jon barely spoke to her so I don’t recall her first name. Tenpenny himself is a recluse on the top floor who doesn’t care if the ghouls move in (mostly because he’s an asshole who wouldn’t have to deal with them and thinks it might be funny to hunt them if they “misbehave”), but won’t allow it until the five key residents above are swayed. Now, you CAN do this with a Speech check, if you have good enough Speech (Wanda’s current build gave her a three-quarters’ chance at telling them to tough it out or get out successfully), but there are more – interesting ways to resolve the situations:

a. With Ling and Montenegro, the trick is with their work – they are shopkeepers who live and work in the tower because Tenpenny promised them the best security. The easiest way to get them to leave and thus take their anti-ghoul bigotry with them is to crack their stores’ safes, steal the money inside, and then let them know that their savings have been stolen. They’re both so put out they immediately declare they’re leaving and trying their luck elsewhere. Fairly easy-peasy if you have enough Lockpick.

b. With the Wellingtons and Susan Lancaster. . .well, first of all, Susan is very cagey about her origins and how she bought her way into Tenpenny – and she’s right to be so, because as it turns out, she’s on the list of “special targets” you can get from the Paradise Falls slavers. Mostly because she used to be one of them, but left without “paying the exit fee.” So you could enslave her if you like if you have the Mesmetron and a collar (and the Mesmetron doesn’t frenzy her or make her head explode). BUT there’s actually an even more twisted way to remove her from the equation, and that has to do with her current job in Tenpenny – she’s the local sex worker! Who has an actual, followable schedule of sleeping with almost all of the named male NPCs in the building (excepting Tenpenny himself, who is of course hiding on the top floor, and Anthony Ling, who you instead see flirting with the male security staff). This includes Ed Wellington, who is of course married – but who has developed feelings for Susan (feelings Jon is pretty sure Susan does NOT reciprocate, given her dialogue with him is just kinda saucy and not at all fond). To the point where he has written Susan a love letter. Give that letter to Ed’s wife Millicent, and she says they’re both dead –

And she will indeed murder both her husband and Susan once your conversation with her is over, furiously informing the former that their vows were until “death do they part.” (. . .remember how I said Dashwood has a habit of sneaking around? Yeah, he scooted right through this emotional conversation, right before Millicent shot Edward in the hallway. The comments were all over it.) And after killing them, she will admit she feels “lost” and just leave the tower and go to a nearby train yard that hides the other entrance into Roy’s underground lair.

A train yard full of feral ghouls – including, if your character is high enough level, a Reaver (who is a truly dangerous enemy in FO3 – Wanda got murdered by one on her first attempt to clear the place). Yeah, the game doesn’t make it clear if this is an INTENTIONAL suicide, but it is pretty clear that she’s expected to die there (if you clear the place first, she just goes into a tunnel and stands there doing nothing). So yes, deliver one letter providing evidence of an affair to an angry wife, and presto! Two of your holdouts are dead, and one will be soon and at any rate has left the tower.

IV. Okay, well, that’s gotten rid of all the bigots, at least, and the ghouls are free to enter Tenpenny Tower, nice and peacefully! That’s a good ending, right? You even get both a 500 cap reward from Tenpenny AND a special Ghoul Mask from Roy (which makes ALL feral ghouls ignore you when you put it on) upon telling them the good news! You wouldn’t get both rewards if you hadn’t done the right thing!

Well, about that. . .if you go back to Tenpenny Tower after the ghouls move in and head to the top floor, you may find that a certain Allistair Tenpenny has been murdered in his own bathtub. Now, that in itself isn’t really a “bad ending” in my opinion, as Tenpenny is genuinely a fucking asshole (he’s the one who wants to blow up Megaton simply because it slightly spoils his view), and it looks like everybody else is getting along just fine with the now much-more-snazzily dressed ghouls. Surely that’s the extent of the horrible horrible killings, right?

Nope. Go back again a few days later, and you’ll find in the basement every human NPC, even the unnamed ones, stripped and murdered. Because Roy just hates “smoothskins” and felt they all had it coming. And when you confront him about it, you just get told to get out lest the same happen to you. Basically, there is no true “good” ending to this quest, because no matter what, people who don’t deserve to die are gonna die. And if you want that Ghoul Mask, one of the most useful items in the game, then you’re gonna have to bear the weight of the deaths of the humans in Tenpenny Tower. Ouch.

V. But hey, it’s not ALL doom and gloom, because there was one happy event that Jon showcased in this episode as well! Granted, it involved murdering someone, but hear me out – what happened was, right before leaving for Tenpenny Tower, Wanda blew Colin Moriarty’s head off. She did this because she had no more use for him – his only two real purposes in the game are to direct you to Galaxy News Radio and to deliver Mr. Burke’s letters. Everyone was rather upset at the time, of course, and Wanda had to flee for a few days. . .but when she came back from her Tenpenny adventures, she found that not only had everyone calmed down, but the bar Moriarty ran was under new management – GOB the ghoul’s new management! The guy that Moriarty insulted on the regular had taken over his bar! And, even more significantly, Nova, the town’s sex worker? Turns out she was NOT in that position willingly – Moriarty was FORCING her to be a prostitute. Now that he’s dead, she can retire and just rent spare rooms out like a normal hotel! So yeah, killing Moriarty in this instance actually IMPROVED the lives of two people! Isn’t that a nicer way to end the episode than all the human murder? *strained smile* We can only hope that next week’s adventures take Wanda somewhere nicer – Jon hasn’t actually decided yet.

XD So yeah, pretty solid day, if a bit depressing on the old YouTubes. :p And with that, I'm gonna try and just head to bed, because even if I'm not going back tomorrow, I AM almost certainly (barring major disaster) going back to work this week, and that means I gonna try and wrench my sleep schedule back a little bit. Ugh, I will miss having all this free time to get ahead on shit. . .at least this means I am going to be VERY well prepared for Valicertine's Day next week! Night all!