Mostly Typical Sunday

Morning was a little irritating (my parents went out to Wal-Mart for some essentials, meaning I had to have water with my breakfast -- banana bread, for the curious -- and then I had to rewash some plates I found that still had stuff stuck to them), as was my evening (came up from my workout just in time to hear thunder as a little storm passed overhead, meaning instead of my usual "take shower, then eat supper" routine, I had to eat supper, THEN take my shower when we were sure the lightning had passed -- fortunately I wasn't too sweaty), but overall the day was pretty decent, and I got everything I wanted to get done, done --

Tumblr: Nothing happening on Valice Multiverse (no surprise), but on Victor Luvs Alice, I got the image alt text sorted on all five of my Chill Valicer Save posts for this upcoming Wednesday – four before lunch, then one after lunch. :) So THAT is out of my hair, and I can concentrate on drafting other posts I want to do now! Yay!

Fallout 4: Victor and Ada ended up spending the day at the Red Rocket, finishing off the Headhunting quest and doing some building and whatnot – here’s how that all went –

A) Picked up with Victor actually down the road in Sanctuary, as I’d had him run up there at the end of the last playsession to see if there were any spare fiber optics in the Sanctuary workbench for him to use on his Telsa Rifle (there were not). I had him quickly check to see if scrapping a short laser musket would get him the fiber optics he needed (sadly no), then ran him back down the road in the rain to set Jezebel the robobrain head up with her new body! After building a new Protectron frame, I had Victor attach Jezebel’s brain to the top, then give her a robobrain torso, an assaultron left arm, a sentrybot right arm, and assaultron legs from the mods he had on him, along with an olive green paint job as I felt it suited her. And the name “Jezebel v2” (because, well, it is). He then let her out of the robot workbench so she could test out her new body –

And she promptly was like “this is not the body I would have chosen, it’s a bunch of junk welded together by an idiot.” I thus promptly had Victor get all sarcastic with her about how the “royal tailor” was out today, so the task fell to him instead – she said that if he was trying to use sarcasm to be intimidating, it wouldn’t work. No, he’s trying to use sarcasm to show you’re a bitch, Jezebel, keep up. XD

B) However, a body was a body, and Jezebel was willing to keep her word (not in the least because she could tell Victor didn’t like her company, and she felt the same, so better to get everything over with). Victor asked her about the Mechanist, and Jezebel praised – okay, I know the Mechanist is a “her” thanks to spoiling myself with lots of Fallout 4 videos, so that’s the pronouns I’m going to use – her for her ingenuity and said that she’d been following the Mechanist’s orders to help people for quite a while now. Victor was like “seriously?” and she confirmed that the Mechanist had made “help people” her prime directive.

And then she revealed that, according to her lovely robot math, the best way to help a person in the Commonwealth was, basically, to kill them. Victor was like “wait, the Mechanist told you to KILL people to help them?” and Jezebel admitted that no, she just said to help them – it was Jezebel and her ilk who had made the decision to start murdering. After all, by her calculations, if they helped someone to the best of their ability, there was only a 25% chance of the person actually continuing to live happily. Better to kill them and save them from future pain and suffering! Not that someone with such a tiny intellect as Victor could understand that. Victor was like “can we skip the bickering and get to the part where you tell me how to get into the Mechanist’s lair?” XD Jezebel, fortunately, was willing to do that, and told him that he would need a special robot modification called an M-SAT to open up the doors in the lair, downloading the schematics to his Pip-Boy. She then said that she’d just hang out and see what happened after he confronted the Mechanist, because she was curious as to what would happen. And also because, once she’s done with her role in the quest, she just becomes a generic, if rude, settler. Meaning we now have a potentially-murderous robot just wandering around the Red Rocket settlement. She’d better not hurt the dogs. >(

C) With the answers pried out of Jezebel, it was time to wrap up “Headhunting” and move onto the final quest in the Automatron quest line, “Restoring Order” – but while Victor was having his rude little chat with Jezebel, I spotted a random woman wandering past in the background. Once he was out of the conversation and had gotten his XP, I had him run over to see who this mysterious person was –

Trashcan Carla! Well, she’s always a welcome sight. :) I had Victor ask to examine her goods, then went straight to the junk section to see what she had on her. And, to my absolute delight, along with duct tape, a plunger, some rat poison, a phone, a silver pocket watch, a typewriter, and two things of Wonderglue, she also had two microscopes – both of which had a single thing of fiber optics! :D I promptly had Victor grab all of that, then pay her back with a bunch of unwanted food and a couple of caps. :D Meaning I FINALLY had the means to upgrade the Tactical Telsa Rifle, yay! About freaking time!

D) However, before any upgrading could be done, Victor did need to have a chat with Ada about what he’d learned from Jezebel (never mind that she was PRESENT for it – she always acts like you did the quest on your own without her there. It’s weird). Anyway, Victor asked for her opinion on the possibility of all the robobrains misinterpreting orders like Jezebel did, and Ada admitted she’d considered it – after all, those broadcasts contradicted what the robots were actually doing pretty strongly. But even if it wasn’t directly the Mechanist’s fault, she was still a danger and had to be stopped. Victor told her about the M-SAT and the plans he’d gotten off of Jezebel – Ada admitted it was a smart idea to have a special modification on a robot that essentially served as a keycard and robot identification chip, and said it would probably be required to open multiple doors in the lair. She then revealed that she’d decoded the final radar beacon signal and found that the Mechanist’s hideout was somewhere in a Robco Sales & Service center, so once Victor installed the M-SAT on a robot, they should be ready to go. She asked him if he had a plan for what he wanted to do about their adversary – Victor turned it back around on her and asked if she had any ideas, and she admitted that while she did want the Mechanist to suffer the same fate as Jackson and her friends, she knew that was her personality subroutine (aka her emotions) talking, and that when she compartmentalized, she wanted to actually talk to the Mechanist first and see what her intentions actually were. Hence why she’s leaving the final decision of what to do up to Victor – she doesn’t quite trust herself to make the right call in the heat of the moment. *nods* Smart move, Ada – it takes a wise robot to know when she might not be the right person for the job.

E) With quest-advancing chat over, it was then time to do some stuff around the settlement! I had Victor build a scavenging station around the side of his little “bedroom” area to keep Jezebel busy (if she’s going to hang around, she may as well get me junk), then had him get all the spare skill magazines, non-quest related holotapes, and non-quest-related notes and books out of his inventory and into the correct storage containers around the place. And once that was all settled, it was straight over to the workbench to upgrade the Tactical Telsa with its charging shotgun barrel! :D Oh, I am looking forward to trying that out… I also went ahead and gave the Alien Blaster a sharpshooter’s grip and a short scope, as I had the means – I may not use the gun much, but I do intend to use it as part of the Cabot questline (since their whole thing is weird alien artifacts), so I might as well prep it for that! I then hit the chem bench to make some Rad-Away and a robot repair kit, and started looking at more syringes for the Syringer he was carrying on him –

And then realized “okay, uh, maybe make the M-SAT for Ada before you accidentally use up all the stuff you need to make it.” XD So I headed over to the robot bench and did just that. I also checked out a few other mods for Ada (new arms and more armor and stuff), but to be honest, I feel weird about modifying her too much – I don’t want her to not look like herself! She’s doing well enough with her current set of gear, anyway. After all, her main role in any combat encounter is to be bait so Victor can hit the other combatants at his leisure. XD Anyway, with the M-SAT mod sorted, I had Victor have a bit of melon flambe for lunch, then check his Pip-Boy to see where this Mechanist lair actually was –

Aaaand discovered it’s all the way on the OTHER SIDE OF THE MAP. Like, seriously – the pair were at the Red Rocket, and the Robco Sales & Service Center that they needed to get to was over by Boston Airport, aka BOS headquarters, near the coast. WELL then. I considered for a moment if I wanted to get a vertibird there, or just walk over and see what was what along the way – and quickly opted for the latter, as I do have a bunch of other quests that I have to finish up on the path there. Like finding that courser! Joining Bobbi for her Big Dig! Stopping by Railroad Headquarters to see Dr. Carrington and Tinker Tom! Maybe even getting the next damn Silver Shroud mission I have to do! The possibilities are endless.

F) With that sorted out, I decided that it would be better if Victor just hung out at the Red Rocket for the rest of the in-game day and left on his grand journey first thing in the morning. This of course left me with some time to fill at the settlement while I waited for him to get tired so he could go to bed, but I managed to find some stuff for him to do –

I. He did some cooking on the spit outside the garage, since he’s always carrying SOMETHING that needs to be cooked up, and it’s a good way for him to get some extra XP

II. He got all the robot mods and spare bits of armor off Ada, put the robot mods in the robotics bench, then went to the armor bench to see if he wanted to do anything with the Powered Metal Left Arm and Sprinter’s Combat Right Leg – however, after comparing them to his current kit, I don’t think I can justify giving up the Champion’s (which gives Victor +1 Strength and Endurance) Metal Left Arm or the Powered (which increases his AP refresh speed) Synth Right Leg – their effects are just too crucial to my build! Even if the base stats on the Sprinter’s Combat Right Leg in particular are better. Guess those are gonna get sold to somebody – probably Arturo in Diamond City, since I have to stop there anyway.

III. He built a little display over his piano in his bedroom for Kellogg’s Pistol – despite this apparently being a really good gun, the simple fact of the matter is I never USE the damn thing. If I want a pistol, I automatically reach for the “gives you so many fucking VATS shots like damn” Deliverer. But I didn’t want to just toss it or give it away either, so onto the wall it goes!

IV. He ran up to Sanctuary just to see if there were any crops he could harvest – there were not, so he instead just took a plunger that was lying behind the bathroom area for the rubber. XD Hey, I’ve learned the importance of that stuff!

V. He ran back home to take a shower to clean himself off and get rid of the last rads he still had in his system, aaah~ Nothing like being clean!

VI. He hung up a Minuteman flag on the side of his little bedroom area – and then, because I had the appropriate meat and hide in his inventory, also hung up a mounted deathclaw head and a mounted mirelurk claw. Because he’s had to rumble with SO many deathclaws and mirelurks lately, he deserves to have his wins against them memorialized. XD

VII. And, right as he got tired for the evening, he filled up all of his spare beer bottles with nice purified water, yay. :)

And so the playsession ended with Victor heading to bed at 8 PM and getting a solid eight hours in his home base, waking up refreshed and at full health at 4 AM, ready to start his grand journey across the Commonwealth! :D Next Sunday, we’ll kick things off by working our way around to find that courser!

Writing: As per usual, I updated the FO4 Playthrough Progression document with the latest in-game developments, and, as per usual, a few things changed between game and fanfic-verse (beyond Alice being around, of course) –

A) Jezebel actually did get to design her own body this time around, as Victor had her pick from the various robot parts he had on him. This did not stop her from complaining about the finished product at all. Victor was very annoyed, as you might guess.

B) Jezebel’s actual reason for sticking around the Red Rocket after she gave Victor the plans for the M-SAT device? Victor, not being an idiot, didn’t give her any working weapons in her new body. XD Because no, he did not trust her not to shoot him once she had access to lasers again! Victor told her just to be grateful him putting her on scavenger duty allows her to move around. :p

C) Ada, of course, actually heard the conversation between Victor and Jezebel, meaning the follow-up conversation with her and Alice in the back office of the Red Rocket (they had to go there after the sun came out post-rainstorm) was a little more natural. Victor also asked Ada if she was okay with having the M-SAT installed on her (she was), and learned from Ada that the RobCo Sales & Service Center they were heading to was across the map earlier than I was (with Ada specifically planning a route that would take them by CIT so he could take out that courser, and visit the Railroad). They also all agreed that they would confront and talk to the Mechanist first, instead of just jumping to murder like a robobrain. :p

D) A few things happened in a different order – for example, Victor mounted Kellogg’s pistol on a display rack immediately after upgrading the Tesla Rifle and the alien blaster (because that’s when he found it in his pack), and he decorated his cabin with his deathclaw head, mirelurk claw, and Minuteman flag before taking his shower. I also skipped some things that just didn’t make sense in a fanfic context – for example, Victor never ran up to Sanctuary to check to see if they had any crops available (he would have known from visiting last night that there was nothing ready yet), and he didn’t do anything with the spare armor Ada was carrying, as he was already satisfied with his kit. *shrug* No sense in having him fiddle around with things if it’s not going to amount to anything!

But yeah – much like in the game, the gang now knows where the Mechanist is, and Ada is appropriately outfitted to get them through the doors; Victor was able to get some microscopes off Trashcan Carla and upgrade his Tesla Rifle to be ridiculously electric; and the Red Rocket is nicely decorated and has a new salvage robot running around making rude remarks. :p Next week, we’ll see how they handle their trip across the Commonwealth! Should be fun. :)

YouTube: You know the drill – Usual Sunday Two –

A) First up, before my workout, we had GrayStillPlays – “I was hired to ruin the environment,” aka Gray plays Lumberwhack! Though the title on this one is rather misleading, as in this game, you don’t play the lumberjacks coming to destroy the forest (which contains both snow-covered deciduous trees and tropical palms, for reasons) – you play the animals protecting it! Specifically, this is one of those games where you have to spawn various fighting units to defeat waves of enemies and protect your home base – your main character is a monkey who throws coconuts (or, if you get the right skill, hives full of deadly bees), and your units consist of apes that can both do melee attacks and – if your main monkey gets a certain skill – pick up dropped coconuts to become coconut-throwers themselves; gorillas who can just smack people around real fucking hard; alligators that spawn from the other side of the screen and walk through the waves of lumberjacks from the rear chomping on every one they can find; lions that can roar to increase your other animals’ capabilities; and stags that can heal all the animals around them – and each other, meaning once you have two out, they basically cannot die. It very quickly becomes an unfair fight against the lumberjacks – especially if you’re Gray and are willing to either throw real money at the game or hack it to get loads of acorns and leaves to upgrade your animals. XD I mean, they do their best, bringing in guys with guns and guys with saws and guys with parachutes and their own medics, but the animals do so much damage so fast, Gray barely had any trouble holding the ‘jacks back. And he delighted in every minute of it. Because why wouldn’t you. XD Good cartoony plaid-based mayhem! We love to see it.

B) And second up, after supper, we had the Sunday Jon video – “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 46 - The Big Bang!” Featuring the continuing adventures of Mayor Bob as he works to stop his Commonwealth kingdom from being taken over by the Gunners, and the continuing adventures of me as I fight YouTube buffering to watch my videos. *sigh* But I got through it, so let’s see how quickly I can sum it up for you all –

I. Started with Bob and the Department Heads meeting with Theresa, that woman who we must have recruited at some point but I genuinely don’t remember where from – you know what, hang on. *looks her up on the SS2 Wiki* Oooooh, she was with Hubert’s group! The guys who ended up settling at the Red Rocket outside Sanctuary! That was AGES ago near the start of this series, so no wonder I don’t remember her. She’s a former Minuteman and Gunner, apparently, so I understand why everyone values her opinion now. Okay, gotcha. Glad to have that cleared up.

ANYWAY – the point is, the meeting was so that Theresa could inform everyone that, after investigating some reports of weird shit in the water from nearby settlements, she’d discovered that the Gunners apparently had full-on military ships (something nobody expected them to have, since even small fishing boats are a rarity in the post-apocalypse) patrolling the coast, looking for weaknesses and places where they could land troops to start a ground invasion. Everyone was like “this is very bad,” but Aiden said that they could actually turn this intel to their advantage if they were fast – if they built up a place on the coast as an official military outpost using Jake’s ASAMs, with loads of artillery, they could sink any ships coming in and stop the Gunners in their tracks. Three places were offered up as potential locales – Spectacle Island, Warwick Homestead, and the good old Castle. Bob, who had been meaning to build up Spectacle for a while anyway, picked that as the best location, and Lupe and Aiden thus prepared to head there with all their supplies to make a proper fort –

II. And Bob decided to take the long way around past Vault 88, going up toward Warwick Homestead, because there were two places that he needed to hit in that area in order to get some Important Protagonist Collectibles. Specifically, he visited the Poseidon Energy plant controlled by Cutty and his raiders to get the Endurance Bobblehead (which wasn’t too difficult to snag with his Explosive Sniper at his side – he also tried out the Two-Shot Shotgun while he was wandering the lower levels taking out mirelurks and protectrons, but quickly came to the conclusion that it was only properly badass when he was confronted with an enemy right up in his face – otherwise the poor accuracy and range meant the thing just wasn’t doing the damage it should), and the wreck of the FMS Northern Star controlled by the ghoulified Norwegian raiders to get the Agility Bobblehead (which also wasn’t too difficult to snag given THAT location was in range of the Castle’s artillery and thus he could just bring down a barrage of cannon fire upon them, before taking out the stragglers with his beloved Explosive Sniper). No good Legendary gear out of the trip, sadly, but he did pick up a Level-Up that allowed him to get Concentrated Fire 3 and thus start doing some real damage to people in VATS when he focused on a specific body part. Who knew the Perception perks were so freaking good? :D

III. Anyway – with the bobbleheads got, Bob took a quick snooze, stopped at Warwick for some water and tatos, then swam over to Spectacle, where he met up with Lupe and Aiden. Lupe informed him that everything was ready to go whenever he gave the word, and asked if he wanted to do any building personally or just let the team set up a pre-determined design – Bob was like “you guys build it, I trust you.” Lupe thus gave him a quick run-down of what they were planning – artillery, a radio tower to connect to HQ, and a lot of martial plots, big thick walls, and turrets –

And then she and her team proceeded, in a very cool overhead spinny cutscene, to build a lovely citadel up on the high ground of the island, with walls made of big old shipping containers and salvaged boats put on their sides, and a big old tower in the middle. Bob was deeply impressed with it all. :D After his little tour of the place, he met up with Lupe and Aiden as they prepared to set up radio contact with HQ, waiting with Aiden as Lupe got the comms ready –

IV. And then a weird message came through on the radio – a garbled robotic voice, followed by a surprisingly clear message between some of the Gunner ships, talking about some of the places where they planned to send their first few troop ships to start the invasion proper. Aiden was like “good intel, now we need to warn Jake” – but when Lupe finally got them patched in to HQ, Jake revealed they’d already heard it too, as it had come straight through the Comm Array. No idea who sent it or why. (Algernon, maybe, using a robot proxy? But I don’t know if he went with the other Gunners when they were driven out of the base…) Bob was like “we have other things to worry about right now” and Jake agreed –

And then realized something – if they used the radio tower in the new outpost to trace the signal they got, they could lock onto the Gunner fleet and just take it out with their artillery right then and there! Clean strike, everyone dead, Commonwealth saved! Bob was like “do it!” and Lupe did her stuff –

And a couple of minutes later, the cannons started blasting, taking out some ships way, WAAAY in the distance (Bob could just barely see them). Nice – so they’d already crippled the Gunners before they could even make their initial landings. All was well, right?

V. Except that, as they finished up firing on the ships, a whole fleet of VERTIBIRDS came over, ready to ruin everyone’s day! A startled Lupe said that maybe there was a carrier ship somewhere else that they didn’t know about, and Aiden told her to find the ship and sink it while the local security started firing on the passing ‘birds. Most of the vertibirds got away, but one was clipped and forced to land nearby – which just meant a bunch of Gunner troops poured out of it to try and attack the new outpost. Fortunately Bob and Aiden were on the case, as were the turrets, and the Gunners were quickly dispatched. Bob and Aiden then hurried back to Lupe to see how things were going with tracking the carrier ship –

Just in time to hear Mansfield’s voice come over the radio. Apparently one specific vertibird had gone off to attack HQ – and according to Jake, it had a fucking nuke on it, ready to blow up the place. The people at HQ were holding it off for the time being, but they were running out of ammo fast, so they needed someone to come in and help them. Fortunately for everyone involved, the Gunner vertibird they clipped was nearby, and Lupe was certain she could get it airborne again. However, someone had to stay behind and make sure they could fire on the carrier ship once the tower got a lock on it – Aiden initially said that he and Bob would go back to HQ, but Lupe pointed out he had no idea how to fly a vertibird, so it would be better if she and Bob went (a sentiment Bob agreed with, as he felt Aiden was more capable of holding off any more assaults on the place).

VI. And so Bob and Lupe headed over to the vertibird on the beach and got it airborne – Lupe at the controls, Bob on the minigun! Despite Lupe having to admit that she’s only flown remote control planes before, she managed to get them over to HQ, where she and Bob proceeded to have an aerial dogfight with the nuke-bird, Lupe shooting missiles while Bob fired on it with his minigun whenever it was in range. It took a few sweeps as the ‘birds circled each other, but eventually Bob and Lupe brought the nuke-bird down –

Where it, well, exploded. Causing their vertibird to crash. Bob blacked out, and after a hazy cutscene where he heard Aiden complaining about Cassandra treating some Gunners, and asking about Bob’s status (not great), he woke up to find Jake sitting next to him, having apparently just woken up from an accidental doze in his chair. Jake greeted him warmly and gave him the scoop – basically, Bob had been out for three weeks due to his injuries, which were extensive (Cassandra needed to operate on his head to relieve cranial pressure and everything – Lupe, meanwhile, survived without a scratch, which makes me Suspicious about her); he was down in the new basement infirmary, because they cleaned out the hangar where the Horror Movie Albino Ghoul was living to get some more space; and uh, shit had gone down in the Commonwealth while he was unconscious. Meaning, hilariously, Bob ended the episode having to prepare to attend another department meeting to get up to speed on what the latest nonsense was with the Gunners. Poor guy ended up basically right where he began. Only, you know, with a lot more medical problems, poor guy. *wince* But yeah, that was an exciting episode! I did not expect a freaking mid-air helicopter battle out of this mod! And according to the comments, this is where Act III of the mod REALLY begins, so – that’s fun. I’m looking forward to discovering what’s become of the Commonwealth while Bob was out next Sunday!

Workout: Back on the bike for another week, and back with the GrayStillPlays compilations, with “When you live a life of constant suffering,” aka a compilation of Happy Wheels videos! So far I have re-experienced the wonders of Segway Nixon braving a haunted mansion (complete with ghosts, monsters, and discount Jason Vorhees); Segway Nixon surviving a day in Florida (complete with killer coconuts, giant seagulls with swords, and a seabed laced with land minds); Pogo Guy going to see Biden to get him to unban Tik-Tok (complete with having to dodge the spike walls on the White House lawn and the battle axes in the main hallway); and Bike Dad and Tom Hardy battling a variety of people in various rounds of combat (culminating with Bike Dad having to kill Santa after Santa stabbed his wife). I left off with Pogo Guy having just robbed a bank (after doing a particularly hard and tall pogo fight) – we’ll see what other wonders await us tomorrow!

*nods* Not bad, not bad at all. :) I do enjoy my Fallout Sundays! And now I have to head to bed because, despite it being my vacation, I actually have to get up a bit early because we're going to Roger Williams Park Zoo tomorrow! Because apparently tomorrow is going to be the best day of the week, and so it is the best day to go to the zoo and see its "Dragon and Mythical Creatures" exhibit on the wetland trail. I've heard commercials for it on the radio and have wanted to check it out for a while -- hopefully it's as cool as it sounds! :) Fingers crossed, everybody -- night all!