A Very Fallout Sunday

Which started later than I wanted, as I once again slept later than I wanted, thanks to staying UP later than I wanted -- basically, I REALLY have to learn to get to bed before freaking 2:30ish AM if I want to do anything on Sundays. *shakes head* But I got MOST of the things I wanted to do done, so here is the sum-up of my day --

Tumblr: Got a couple things done over here –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I worked some more on the “Valicer In The Dark Pets” post before lunch, cleaning up the section on Sooty some and doing the section on Guide (the white cat from Alice: Madness Returns, who in this universe helps the gang find Radcliffe when they discover his crimes and how he’s going to sell off his daughter to escape them, and is adopted after all is said and done). Not as much as I would have liked to have done, but any progress is good progress!

Valice Multiverse – And I threw another Toonsisters ask into my queue over here just now, with her sharing a bunch of Victor memes she found made by The Victor Brothers (whom she properly credited for their existence). The Cuddlepile Valicer trio was most amused, though Alice noted one meme (about Nell telling the town crier about Victor ruining a family dinner with an argument) seemed to have been uploaded three times by accident, with Victor saying “it IS the kind of thing that she’d tell him three times in a row, though.” And then noting he didn’t realize he had such interesting facial expressions, with Smiler assuring him that he was very meme-able and they loved him for it. XD So that was fun!

Fallout 4: Back to the Commonwealth this Sunday, with Victor and Ada finishing up their business in Greentech – and then taking an unexpected side trip…

A) Started with Victor having freshly woken up on the top floor of Greentech Genetics post courser-fight and freeing Jenny, ready to finish looting the place and then start the trek over to Diamond City. I thus had him grab whatever was good off the nearby corpses and out of the filing cabinets that Jenny was searching (sorry, but you’re an NPC, you’ll be fine), then had him retrace his steps back down the nearby stairs to that level with all the computer equipment behind security doors (stopping at one of the landings along the way to grab some Nuka-Colas out of the machine there). After reaching the bottom, I started by exploring the stairwell room, looking for any particularly interesting goodies –

And found another stairwell to the right. Which led me up to a little balcony office nook I’d spotted across from the Nuka-Cola machine but hadn’t been sure how to reach. Well then! :) There wasn’t much of interest there, granted, but I was able to grab some potato crisps and a stash containing 43 bottlecaps, some 10mm ammo, gum drops, and duct tape from the desk. Never say no to the duct tape!

B) With that side trip sorted, I headed back to the main stairwell room, took a second peek into the bathroom off to the left (still nothing of interest), then headed into the main computer room. I grabbed a box of Mentats sitting on some sort of mega-terminal thing (had a giant screen and its own in-built phone), then hacked the Novice-level terminal next to it to open the security door to the left. I then sent Victor into the little caged-off area to see what was available –

Aaaand it turned out to be “not much.” Granted, there was an enhanced targeting card sitting on the bank of computer equipment right in front of him, along with a toolbox that, when picked, provided some turpentine and Wonderglue, but other than that and a second box of Mentats he found in a drawer in the other bank of computer equipment, there really wasn’t anything to grab. Undaunted, I had him head out, around the back (checking out the desks there – nothing good in those either), then over to the other Novice terminal to open the security door on the right –

And found even less in THAT area. Like, one ammo box with a bit of ammo, and one first aid box with a stimpack and a Rad-X. Like, yes, okay, healing always good, but STILL. You think they would have snuck something more interesting into one of these areas! *grumble* Ah well, at least the hacking and the lockpicking gave me some more XP…

C) With the Disappointing Computer Room thus looted, I had Victor head back up to the top floor, grab the “Recon Boosted Agitated Improved Automatic Institute Pistol” off the floor near the courser (mostly because I was like “what the hell does ‘Recon Boosted’ mean” – still don’t know, will have to look it up later), then head up the nearby stairs to the top door to open it and check out if there was anything good on the roof. There was not – not only was there only one scientist skeleton with a box of flamer fuel next to him, meaning there were no goodies beyond that, the weather was miserable, so there wasn’t much to look at. Which was kind of a shame, as I got the feeling you could get some truly excellent views from up here if it was nicer out. I admired what I could (especially the absurdly bright wall of what I guessed to be Diamond City), then had Victor and Ada head back inside and take the newly-reactivated elevator down. This deposited them back near the beginning, in the first “bridge room” (the elevated bridges above the first-floor courtyard space, remember?), and from there they headed back around into the lobby (where Victor found yet more Nuka-Cola in one of the vending machines, along with taking some packs of cigarettes – he doesn’t smoke, but they’re good for cloth), and then out the door. Happily, the rain had stopped by that point, so I didn’t feel bad about making them wait at the front while I checked Victor’s quests and map to plan the route to Diamond City –

D) And then, in my “Miscellaneous” quests, I saw one that said “Search for caps at Monsignor Plaza.” And when I went to check where the hell that was on the map – I saw that it was barely around the corner from Greentech Genetics! (I also saw, when I accidentally went down too far, that the game for some reason thinks I FAILED completing the project at Cambridge Labs, but I know the truth, game! I have the damn power armor chest piece! Well, probably Ada has it, but STILL. Damn buggy Bethesda nonsense…) I was like “well, okay, why the hell not” and thus had Victor head down the stairs and turn left, following the nearby road around and over to the wreckage of Wright’s Inn, and from there to a mini-diner –

Which happened to have the lights on inside. Curious, I had Victor slip into crouch mode and, with his trusty Two-Shot combat rifle in hand, go and investigate. Nobody tried to attack him when he went around the side, and when he opened the door, he found, along with some junk, the corpse of a man named Richard. Who happened to have a note on him. Curious, I collected the note and the useful stuff from the body, then read the note. There wasn’t much to it, as it had been ripped in half at some point, but the first half demanded to know why people would buy papers if they could just come to Diamond City and get one direct –

And I was like “oh, I know who you are! You’re one of Piper’s distributors for Publick Occurrences, aren’t you?” Standing up and checking out the counter confirmed it – there was a copy of “The Synthetic Truth” lying near Richard, along with a box of more papers nearby. I ran into this on my very first run through the beginning of the game (before I started modding and thus started over), before I even met Piper! Though I swear he was in a different location...however, the wiki says that this is where he shows up, so maybe I found a DIFFERENT distributor last time? Either that or I just forgot I came here before – I did a lot of random wandering in my first go-round! *shrug* It’s nothing of any great import, really – just kind of a weird “blast from the past” moment for me!

E) Anyway – back to business! I had Victor and Ada head down the hill next to the diner, looking for an entrance into Monsignor Plaza (which the map basically said they were right on top of) – then, after that proved to bring them around to the back of TICONDEROGA, aka that Railroad safehouse where they dropped off H2 one time, had them head back up and back to the main road to try again. XD Fortunately, following the main drag DID take them to an entrance – specifically, to that little wooden shack affixed onto the front of the plaza that they passed during said trip with H2, home of some of the raiders they had to kill along the way. There was nobody in said wooden shack this time, fortunately – just an unguarded terminal that controlled at least one nearby turret. Victor used his turret hacking holotape to make sure it was on his side and not the raiders’, and then he and Ada headed inside!

...where they were immediately greeted by a gorgeous green fountain – with a body stuck atop it. Gotta love raider décor. *sigh* Anyway, prowling through the main room revealed that it was a pretty open area, with one side room off to the right, and a few raiders hanging around, along with one turret. A turret that may or may not have been on Victor’s side, as I heard something firing on the raiders at one point (and them yelling that they’d get it), but the turret I saw was marked in red and thus was hostile. *shrug* At any rate, they eventually became aware of Victor and Ada’s presence, but between Ada’s lasers, Victor’s Two-Shot combat rifle, and the tendency of any raider with a melee weapon to head straight for ADA over Victor, they were easily taken out. *shakehead* Guys – guys. I know Ada is a “scary robot,” but trust me, Victor is going to kill you a LOT faster than she ever will.

F) With the initial raiders dealt with, it was time to explore! A little poking around the initial level revealed a set of stairs heading up, and another set of homemade steps heading down. The quest marker indicated the caps were upstairs, but I chose to head downstairs to see what was going on there first. I looted a couple more raider corpses, then wrinkled my nose at a disturbing display of bodiless heads and headless bodies in the window of a nearby clothing store (apparently Monsignor Plaza is a shopping center – I’ve never been there, so I didn’t know) before heading around to a wide open space near the “back” of the building. This brought me to a bench with a skeleton clutching a Jangles Moon Monkey toy on it (creepy little bastard); an Eat-a-tronic over around the corner with a bunch of bones piled in front of it and a skeletal hand inside of it (did someone get their hand caught during the end of the world? Hell of a way to die, if so) –

And a cookpot! And as I will never say no to a cookpot, I promptly had Victor plop himself down there and cook up a bunch of teas, roasts, and other snacks to free up some carry weight (as carrying one thing is always lighter than carrying two). Amusingly, he got hungry while he was doing this, so once I was done with all the cooking I wanted him to do, I then had him eat an “afternoon snack” (deviled eggs and potato crisps, somehow made non-radioactive by the magic of being paired together) and drink some purified water. Om nom nom – just perfect for 1 AM in the morning. :p

G) Having cooked up a storm and thus gotten some room in his backpack to carry more goodies, Victor thus went down a side hall beside some elevators toward some drinking fountains, which proved to have a couple of entrances to some extremely wrecked bathrooms (seriously, these things were NOTHING but rubble). Exploring those revealed a ramp made out of the collapsed ceiling to the room above, and a hole in the left-hand wall leading into the clothing shop I’d passed before. I decided the latter was more exciting and had Victor head into the shop – there was nothing in there that he actually wanted, but if he ever NEEDS a baseball uniform or a bathrobe, well, now I know where to find them. :P Another hole in the wall then lead him into a bookstore (no perk magazine that I could find, darn), and from there he headed out the door to the end of the main downstairs hall, which led to a basketball hoop (with a body stuffed inside said hoop, an appliance store –

And a protectron pod at the very end! I had Victor go and hack the terminal, then activate the Protectron as a “Subway Steward” (meaning it will leave you alone so long as you have your token, and Victor has plenty) to keep an eye out for any other threats. I then sent Victor into the appliance store to check that place out, discovering a floor safe right behind the counter –

And then had to wait crouched behind the counter until the Protectron, who’d followed Victor in there, skedaddled because I wasn’t sure what its reaction would be to Victor picking the lock and I didn’t really want to have to fight the very robot I’d just activated. Fortunately, it went away after a minute, and Victor was free to check the place out. He went around looking at all the stuff on offer (pepper mills, various saucepans, other cooking implements), then opened all the fridges to see if there was anything good inside. Unfortunately, all he got was a box of Mentats, a couple of severed heads staring at him, and – on the last fridge – either a gun shooting at him or a grenade falling from the ceiling because the damn thing had a tension trigger on it that I’d missed. -.- Fortunately Victor wasn’t injured by the trap, and he was able to retreat back to the safe and unlock it, grabbing a TON of ammo (including more missiles – he may not use them, but he can certainly sell them) and some Pre-War money. So that was good, at least!

H) That pretty much settled the downstairs, so after getting the basketball from the court (I will never neglect the need for rubber again), I had Victor and Ada backtrack back to the homemade staircase so they could swing around and (after a quick trip into the “lounge” area that was over the bathrooms to loot it for goodies and, ironically, have a bathroom break) go up the “real” staircase to the third floor and the home of the caps! A turret was waiting for them right at the top of the stairs – it managed to wing Victor, but one shot from the Two-Shot very definitively took it out. Nearby was a Nuka-Cola vending machine with a Nuka-Quantum in it (nice) – and the entrance to a gun shop! I promptly had Victor head in there, where he found a bunch of ammo, and – when he went behind the counter to check out the goodies – a bathroom scale pressure plate trap and a grenade bouquet, which he disarmed. He also found the terminal of one Griswold, which, when accessed, had a little diary entry of sorts about how all the terminals were finally wired up and the turrets convinced to play nice (with an aside about how he had to do something nice for Jake after what happened to the guy’s pet mole rat, and some complaining about how Sue wouldn’t stop going on about how long it all took) –

And a holotape. OF THE GUY’S POETRY. His terrible, terrible, if mercifully short, poetry. XD Seriously, he was writing things such as “Lo, to die. To kill. To maim. I really like to watch men die. I hope nobody kills me. So I can kill them instead.” And two poems to his love interest Sue – saying how pretty and nice and good at shooting at night she is; and the other saying how she’s not so nice so he shot her twice. XD I made sure Victor took THAT with him before leaving – such terrible poetry must be shared with the world! Or perhaps at least the Atom Cats. XD

I) With that done (and more ammo stolen from a display of individual bullets), Victor and Ada proceeded down the hall to the Slocum Joe’s canteen area, and the chest where the caps were stashed! Things were complicated a bit by the fact that a ghoul raider was asleep in the bed next to said chest, but once they started to stir, they were pretty easy to kill, especially with Ada providing suppressive fire. Victor took a detour behind the counter of the little coffee shop to grab a few tins of coffee, then headed to the chest and popped it open –

And was rewarded with 121 caps! :D Not a bad haul for a little side quest! There were also some armor pieces in there, but I wasn’t interested in taking those – pretty happy with Victor’s current armor set-up, honestly. I instead had Victor check out the nearby terminal (which belonged to the unfortunate Sue, and had only one note on it – “shoot Griswold three times the next time I see him” XD), then hit the chem bench to combine some chems, make some cutting fluid, and brew up a few healing items. He started yawning as he did this, so I decided it was probably time to wrap up have him hit the sack –

J) But as I prepared to do that, I spotted a door nearby. A door that, when opened, lead into a long stairwell with a set of stairs leading down, and a bunch of can chimes everywhere. Intrigued, I stepped inside –

And failed to notice a tripwire in front of the door, triggering another little explosion from somewhere. It didn’t do much of anything to Victor, though, so I had him keep going, heading down and around the stairs, disabling can chimes all the way (he has soooo many cans now) –

Until suddenly, right near the bottom, Victor started taking rads. O.o Quite puzzled, I had him back up, then – after a moment’s thought – had him pop some Rad-X so he could continue down without getting TOO irradiated. Fortunately, he was able to make it down and disarm the final sets of chimes pretty quickly – and even more fortunately, there wasn’t a bunch of ghouls down there, like I’d feared – just some rad barrels shoved under the turn. There was also an expert-locked door leading out into Cambridge, so I had Victor pick that for the XP and head outside, where he found himself in a little courtyard area overlooking a pond or a little bay or something like that –

With one last raider psycho patrolling. Unfortunately, Victor’s first few attempts to kill him went poorly (I just for the life of me couldn’t line up the shot), but once he started firing back and got into a better position for VATS to tag him, he was easily taken out. I had Victor go over and loot the corpse, then refrain from going any further around because of frag mines (the little bastards) and instead head back to the nice flat stretch of concrete right outside the door, set up his tent, and settle in for a little nap. :) I left things with him having woken back up shortly before 1 PM, refreshed and ready to go. Next time, we’ll head over to Diamond City, sell all that spare shit he doesn’t need, and meet back up with Bobbi No-Nose to finally continue “The Big Dig!” Because THAT quest has been waiting WAY too long in my list, honestly.

Writing: Another Fallout Sunday, another update to the FO4 Playthrough Progression – and, as per usual with these updates, what happened in my game above was pretty much what happened in the fanfic universe, with the addition of Alice and a few “this makes more logical sense” tweaks –

A) Victor ate before they left Greentech (right after he woke up, in fact – I let him have a nice deathclaw steak and some hubflower tea), and didn’t bother to do as much cooking as I had him do when he discovered the cookpot in Monsignor Plaza – though he DID take some time to quickly brew up more tea. He’s trying to drink a little more healthily after chugging so much Nuka-Cola going after that courser. XD

B) The decision to go to Diamond City was made after Victor expressed disappointment in the poor looting on the “computers in cages” level, with Alice pointing out he barely had any room for any more stuff anyway and that he really needed to get rid of some weapons he doesn’t use, while the decision to go to Monsignor Plaza to get the caps was made when Victor found the actual note still tucked away in his things and realized the location was right up the road (since, you know, I don’t think he has a quest log in his Pip-Boy). Also I spared them from going the wrong way briefly after finding Richard because Victor’s probably better at following the map than I am. :p

C) Naturally Alice joined in on killing the raiders in Monsignor Plaza, and then went and explored the upstairs while Victor did the downstairs and Ada kept watch on the original level they entered in. Victor did pretty much all the same things that he did in the game on the downstairs level (apart from doing a massive amount of cooking and setting the Protectron to be a “subway steward” – he just woke it up), while Alice took care of the turret upstairs, then found Griswold’s terminal and had a good laugh at his terrible poetry. XD Her cracking up actually drew Victor and Ada upstairs to see what was so funny –

D) AND also woke up the ghoul at the end of the hallway, who I decided was in fact Sue (the raider is just anonymous in the game, but they were sleeping next to Sue’s terminal, so – feels logical)! She loped down, thinking they were Griswold and thus had three bullets with their name on it – she paused briefly when she saw Victor was some stranger, but, being a raider, decided to attack him anyway, and died for it. Shame. At least Victor was able to successfully retrieve the caps from her chest with no problems after that!

E) And poor Alice was the one to lockpick the door at the end of the slightly-radioactive staircase, only to open it onto the rising sun and get a bit of a burn. :( Fortunately Victor was able to give her a blood pack (he carries plenty for her) to help her heal up, and Ada helped her into her “sun safety” sleeping bag while Victor scouted the back courtyard and killed that one raider by the pond. Before getting into his own sleeping bag for a nap and telling Ada not to let him sleep past noon – she let him sleep until 12:47 PM (the time he woke up in-game), and blandly noted that it wasn’t past the noon hour, to Alice’s amusement. :p

So yeah – not TOO much changed, just the usual “taking advantage of the fact the fanfic group has three people who are allowed to wander away from each other to speed up exploring certain areas” thing and “hey this might be interesting” thing and whatnot. Next time, the group heads to Diamond City – and I suppose I need to work in a way for Bobbi to contact Victor so he knows that she’s ready to continue with her digging project...

YouTube: Unfortunately, I got to the YouTube stuff later than I wanted today – writing up all my Fallout 4 stuff above took longer than anticipated (why must I worry so much over word choice), plus tonight was “leftover birthday cake” night and it’s kind of impossible to watch a video while eating cake I’ve discovered – so my Sunday Two got reduced down to just Jon’s video tonight: “Fallout: London - Part 25 - Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey!” Featuring the continuing adventures of Lady Aria and Kiera as they –

A) Reported back to Apache Alice to tell her about clearing out the Hooligans from the school last episode and see about joining the Pistols! After Aria asked about relations between the gang and Westminster, because that’s important information to know (what with her recently having become “respectable” and all). Alice revealed that, thanks to concessions won when the Gentry took over Camden, if they pay their tithe, the Gentry have no say in their internal operations. Problem is, they seem to “forget” that sometimes – but Alice wasn’t willing to talk about that any further, so it appears THAT will be something to deal with later down the line. In the meantime, she revealed that becoming a Pistol required sponsorship from three members of the council, and told Aria to go see Palmira Romero in the hydroponics facility and Captain Reasonable at Camden Town Station and help them with their issues to see if they’d be willing to help. Aria was fine with that and headed to Camden Town station first, as it was closer, where she met with said Captain Reasonable. He told her that he needed a cache of guns retrieved from a police station over in Lewisham –

And told her that, if she did that, he’d give her a monkey. Jon was understandably “...what?!” about that, though he later realized it was probably slang for a specific amount of money (and indeed, the comments confirmed that it refers to 500 pounds). And then was sad it probably didn’t mean a literal monkey. XD While he was trying to figure that out, though, he had Aria ask who the guns actually belonged to so he could make sure he wasn’t setting off some sort of war with anyone – Reasonable explained that the guns were theirs, and that a former corrupt council leader, Malcolm, had not only embezzled funds while in office, and bought junk black market weapons that didn’t work in the field, he’d had his lackey sneak into the armory and steal guns that he could sell to their enemies! So basically this mission is just to get the good shit he sold back. Aria was totally on board with that and said she’d do it. Especially if it got her a monkey. XD

B) Headed over to see what Palmira’s issue was, since going to get the guns would take them out of Camden and Aria wanted to take care of any local issues first. Palmira’s hydroponics lab proved to be down in the local Catacombs, and when Aria asked about a sponsorship, Palmira told her that she’d get it once she got Polly Ester, the person in charge of the water plant, to stop throttling the water supply. Apparently Polly had locked herself in the plant and refused to come out, just insisting everything was under control over the intercom. Aria thus went over to the plant and managed to talk her way in (despite Polly claiming they were sick and quarantining), and eventually got Polly to confess what was wrong. Which was two things, actually – one, that the water they were receiving was suddenly REALLY radioactive, and the filters couldn’t deal with it; and two, one Mr. Grey, who had his own purifier and was the one providing water to all the non-Pistols residents, had died recently (bit by a fox, bit by a dog chasing the fox, then fell into Camden Loch and drowned going for medical treatment), meaning now the Pistols plant was having to cover more customers. Fortunately, Aria was on the case, and dealt with the problems by –

I. Heading to the two main sources of radiation (some old ruin nearby, and the Anarchist Tower she’d actually just cleared out for Alice), and killing the Glowing Ones that had decided to start living right by the purifiers set up there (Jon found that very suspicious, but there’s no sign of deliberate malfeasance yet)

II. Going to talk to Mr. Grey’s son, Jesse, to see if he’d be willing to lend the purifier to the Pistols or set up his own water-providing business – as it turned out, Jesse was a child, and still fairly upset over his father’s death (as it turned out, the fox that started the whole mess was HIS, as he was trying to make it a pet). Aria talked to him gently, learning that Mr. Grey had been a proud nonmember of the Pistols, but that he hadn’t hated the group – he just thought they were a bit too focused on their own. Jesse even had friends at school who were the children of Pistols, and their parents seemed nice. She thus encouraged him to keep an open mind about maybe joining up when he was of age, and said it would make a good impression if he lent them the water purifier. And once he learned that they wanted it to make sure they could keep everyone, including non-Pistols supplied with water, he was like, “okay, sure.” Just proves you don’t always need Charisma to talk someone over to your side! :p (Though it probably helps when they’re a small child.)

As you might imagine, Polly was very pleased by all this, and gave Aria some purified water as thanks before promising to stop throttling hydroponics. Palmira in turn was very pleased by this news and gave Aria money, food, and her unconditional sponsorship. Aria thanked her and, just out of interest, asked about her opinion of Alice – Palmira said she was one of her best mates, and thought she was doing an excellent job in charge –

No matter what Ariel Rotten had to say. Jon, who was STILL certain that the Pistols were too good and kind and everything (Polly even said, when asked about Mr. Grey, that she’d liked him and agreed with some of his points!), immediately seized on that and asked what Ariel Rotten’s problem was – however, it turned out to be that she just wanted to go to war with the Gentry already, and was frustrated Alice wasn’t ready to do so. Jon was like “I just want to know where the secret giant pile of corpses that proves you’re all evil is. :(” XD

C) Headed out into London proper again to get a start on tracking down those guns for Captain Reasonable – but then got sidetracked hitting the Liberty Spikes pub on the advice of a commenter and got embroiled in a quest to find an absurdly rare barrel of whiskey! You see, Rodrick Bomsborough and his lackey Percy had hired barman Zack The Knack to get for them the only barrel of the expensive and extremely posh Abhainn Oir from the Isle of Skye, but Percy hadn’t been able to retrieve it from its supposed place of honor in the St. Pancras International Hotel because of the murderous fez cultists there. Percy offered to refund the men the money they’d paid him, but Rodrick and Percy were like “oh no you don’t – you get that barrel or we’ll get the Tommies in. Or possibly burn the place down.” Aria inserted herself in the conversation, and Zack offered her 1,000 tickets to get it for him. Aria was perfectly fine with that (especially since she’d already cleared the St. Pancras Hotel earlier), and so set off after getting the Melee Beer Mat from a nearby table –

Cue poor Aria and Kiera having to run AROUND ALMOST ALL OF LONDON, gunning down Hooligans and turrets and whatnot, trying to find this magical mysterious golden barrel of super-rare, super-fine whiskey. For, you see, the people at St. Pancras, after saving the whiskey from floods in their basement, sent it over to the Golden Elm in Greenwich to protect it. The Golden Elm then sent it over the City Of London Pindar in Eastminster (located under the Government Rationing Center where Aria so long ago had that shoot-out with the police) because they felt that they would take better care of it. The Pindar then sold it to Coach House Pub in Tower Hamlets because the person cleaning out the inventory didn’t know what it was and wanted the money for proper food in tins. And finally the owner of the Coach House Pub sold it to the owner of the Four Leaf Pub in Southwark because she knew what it was and paid them a lot of money for it. Whew – was it any wonder that, by the time Aria actually found the barrel at the Four Leaf, Jon was half-certain the damn thing was just going to be empty? XD At least the trip allowed her to pick up a couple more very useful beer mats (including the Medicine Mat for 10% more healing from stimpacks and the Luck Mat for straight up one point of luck) and a level up from everything she killed! XD Anyway, she secured the barrel and headed back to the Liberty Spikes, where she took the cask into the back room with Zack so he could tap it for the bigwigs before delivering the barrel –

AND PROMPTLY DROPPED IT. Spilling its contents all over the floor. :O (Hilariously, the dialogue options for this incident included the fourth-wall-breaking phrase “I think there was a collision error,” though Jon sadly didn’t pick that.) Zack was horrified, and said that they had to think of a way to refill the barrel and give the toffs a sample that wouldn’t taste like anything they’d had before –

And Aria suggested they piss in the barrel to fill it, because fuck those asshole Gentry outside. Zack was initially like “what the FUCK” – and then said “actually wait, we mix that with Scotch and it just might work.” Meaning the quest ended with Aria and Zack pissing into a barrel, mixing it with Scotch, and bringing Rodrick and Percy a couple of glasses of it for them to taste. The pair were very happy with the drink (apparently not finding it salty at all), and Rodrick even gave Aria a gold bar and a pith helmet for her troubles! I was just like “oh my GOD” through it all. XD Aria, you chaotic force of nature, never ever change. XD

And that was that! Next week, the ladies leave behind the piss-swilling gentry and go to get those guns from Lewisham! We’ll see if that too leads to any urination fun, I suppose. XD

Workout: Hopped back on the bike this Sunday, starting the week off with “Best Sims 4 packs in 2024 rated by 15000 people!” by James Turner! Yes, once again he has polled his audience on what the best and worst packs for The Sims 4 are, and once again he has turned the results into a video to amuse, entertain, and inform us! Though he did do a few things differently this year – namely, he halved the effect the world score has on packs that come with a world, and he added a “bug score” to rate how buggy packs were, which would be factored into the final score. And let me tell you, those two tweaks have already made a big difference, especially in the game packs –

BECAUSE THAT SHITFEST “MY WEDDING STORIES” IS FINALLY DOWN IN THE BOTTOM THREE OF THOSE, WHERE IT BELONGS. That thing ALWAYS ranked RIDICULOUSLY high simply because it has a pretty world despite being released essentially BROKEN, and I am DEEPLY pleased to see it tumble down to the number 10 spot to join the perennially-busted Dine Out and the much-hated-unless-you’re-James Journey To Batuu as one of the lowest-ranking packs. Ha. *nods* Anyway, I haven’t completed the video (I’m near the end of the game pack rankings now, with James going through the top five), but I can tell you that the top-rated kit is Book Nook; the top-rated stuff pack is Tiny Living (with Home Chef Hustle, Crystal Creations, and Paranormal right behind it); and so far the occults are doing great in game packs, with Realm of Magic at #5 and Vampires at #4 – and Werewolves not having come up yet. Oh, and the top-rated world is still Henford-On-Bagley from Cottage Living, with Windenburg from Get Together a close second. *nods* I shall come back with the results for game packs and expansion packs tomorrow!

Whew! Another busy Sunday night, as you can see -- and now I really need to get to bed. *shakehead* Gotta be less wordy with this stuff, Vic... Night all!