No Time Wednesday

What I mean by that is:

-->My morning computer time was cut short because I found yet more little ants crawling around my cereal box when I had breakfast this morning and had to tell Mom (the cereal was summarily disposed of -- my parents got me a new box, and transferred all the cereal to a new plastic container with a snap lid)

-->And my evening computer time was also cut short because we had to discuss vacation plans after Mom and Dad watched some videos of some of the rides at the Canadian theme park we were thinking of going to (Canada's Wonderland), and Mom got spooked because it looks like a lot of them are extreme thrill rides (a swing ride that takes you way up into the sky, for example), and Mom's not a fan of those. (Despite CONSTANTLY going on coasters with Dad when I was younger and scared of them myself...) Cue us trying to find other things to do, like tour the Ben & Jerry's factory (this was eventually dismissed due to it being too far to drive for one thing), or hit up Boston for a day or two to do some stuff there (like the speedboat "Codzilla" ride). We're still not one hundred percent on what's going to happen, but it appears Canada's Wonderland is definitely out.

So yeah -- my time on the web was severely curtailed today, and thanks to PMS, I am extra not happy about that. *grumbles* Yes, I know it's a small problem in the scheme of things, but the hormones do not listen to logic. They only care that I didn't get to do everything I hoped to do tonight. *sigh* Speaking of which, here's the write-up:

Work – A pretty quiet, boring day at work – still not allowed to process, so I did what I could by going through the obituaries in the paper, then looking up more online. Along the way I also had another check-in call with the credit card people (useless as always, as all the person I talk to can do is forward the problems I point out to the guy who never seems to have time to fix them); helped stuff some envelopes for a mailing; and completed multiple puzzles from the paper while trying to look busy. *shrug* I have had days much worse! Probably better for my PMS for me to be bored rather than frustrated, honestly… We’ll see what tomorrow brings!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with the final chunk of “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 2: Rootbound!” Today was the big fight against the tree and its possessed villagers, and it went down roughly like so:

A) Happen – who was still trying to pretend to be a fully-possessed villager protecting the tree instead of just a partially-possessed one managing to fight off its influence – after his Web attack didn’t go off like planned, deciding to try and ignite the remaining shreds of web hanging from the tree by firing an arrow at the ax resting on the ground and hopefully sending a spray of sparks up onto them. However, when he rolled the attack roll, it proved to be time to praise Cadence, because crit 1. Happen thus accidentally killed one of the other villagers with an arrow to the forehead. He tried to play it off as “he meant the tree harm” –

And, luckily for him, that’s when Cressida and the others burst into the clearing with the three, and combat officially started, so he wasn’t immediately harmed. XD

B) Willowfine, Lug, Morven, and Happen all trying to take down the villagers and destroy the tree while Cressida dealt with the compulsion to protect it! This resulted in, among other things, the following:

I. Willowfine hitting the tree with a bunch of radiant damage (partially because the saving throw for avoiding it was Dex, which, as you might imagine, a tree was weak in) – which, while technically not being fire damage in and of itself, DID successfully ignite the webs shreds and get her some bonus damage due to fire being a weakness for, again, a tree

II. Lug successfully smacking some people around with his hammer for a change, killing one and getting the other stuck on the end

III. Morven walking into the crowd and casting Arms of Hadar to inflict a bunch of necrotic damage on the villagers (managing to use her sorcery to exclude Lug and Happen, but NOT Cressida – didn’t have enough points) – Johnny got in some REALLY good creepy description of the villagers rotting like WOOD rots instead of flesh, revealing horrible white roots where there should be a nervous system, brrr...and then describing Cressida feeling the seed inside her growing into HER nervous system

IV. Happen continually making his Constitution saving throws to avoid the tree’s influence, which was honestly pretty badass, even, if it was just the result of lucky die rolls, and shooting a couple more villagers

V. Ellen needing a moment to figure out what Cressida was going to do to “protect the tree” (leading to some fun moments of the others getting to use opportunity attacks – Lug tried to shove someone into the fiery webs, but failed, while Happen successfully cut open the belly of a passing villager and yanked a root from their stomach, eugh) – and then, when it came back to her, deciding that Cressida would try to throw a wineskin full of “water” on the tree to put it out. She did not succeeded, and everyone promptly called Cressida a “wine aunt.” XD

VI. Lug once again taking the lion’s share of the damage during combat by getting smacked by a tree branch for 13 bludgeoning damage (Johnny was SO delighted he wasn’t raging and thus had to take the full amount)

VII. Willowfine doing good work with the radiant damage and taking out the remaining villagers; Lug (not realizing Cressida was under the tree’s power) deciding to use his turn to get out of branch-smacking range so he could watch the tree burn; and Morven attempting to use Toll The Dead on the tree, only to fail and promptly Misty Step away in shame XD

VIII. Happen alerting the others to the fact that Cressida was possessed by using his turn to try and drag her away from the tree (she successfully resisted and tried to use Prestidigitation to put out the flames, which didn’t really work), which led to Willowfine trying to grapple her on HER turn to try and drag her away –

And BOTH LADIES getting crit 1s on their roll. (Praise Cadence!) It was initially decided that Willowfine did manage to grab Cressida, but couldn’t move thanks to how much she was squirming, then that they’d gotten pretty thoroughly entangled when Lug used his turn to pick up Willowfine (and thus Cressida by default) and carry them BOTH away. XD Well, that’s one way to solve the problem!

IX. And Morven happily hearing me shout at everyone “KILL THE TREE! KILL THE FUCKING TREE! IT’LL SOLVE YOUR POSSESSED FRIEND PROBLEM IF YOU KILL THE FUCKING TREE!” and slamming it with FIVE Magic Missiles. :D Granted, Johnny ruled that it still took two hours for the tree to finally die after all this abuse, but it was nice to see someone being proactive about KILLING THE FUCKING TREE.

C) Everyone watching the tree burn (restraining Cressida and, eventually, Happen (as it was decided he’d have to bork one of those saving throws EVENTUALLY) until the seeds inside them died and they were themselves again)...except that Morven finally nodded off at one point during all that, meaning, welcome back Robin! He was naturally rather bewildered about what was happening, and the gang (by which I mean Willowfine, as everyone else passed the buck, though Lug DID hop in at one point to help) explaining what happened and what’s going on with him. Robin was, understandably, not exactly keen on sharing his body with someone else’s spirit, but the others reassured him that no, of course they weren’t going to knock him out whenever there was an emergency – in fact, if he fell unconscious, they’d knock Morven out to get him back. (“Playing both sides,” as Happen put it. XD) Though Happen did make it clear that Morven probably saved their lives with her spellwork today, so they SHOULD at least think about getting her a body of her own to inhabit. But he was sure that Robin was just as capable in a fight! Cue Robin agreeing before checking if his bread had gone stale, then attempting to cast a spell through sheer willpower. XD I think you might be getting knocked out in an emergency, Robin!

D) And finally, a message coming through from the team investigating the North on the “copestone” message tables they were given, revealing that two of them were injured, and to be careful as the Wyrdwood was ANGRY. Willowfine tapped out a message back saying they were fine and asking if the North Team needed any help – and as she did so, Happen noticed a strange rabbit made of black shadow hop past the burning tree and into Willowfine’s shadow before melding into it…

Cue the end of the episode. XD Well, except for the rolling of the D100, aka the Ball Of Numbers, to see if anyone’s going to have Fun Times the next time they try to cast a spell – not yet! But yeah – seems like the next adventure, they might need to take care of that little bunny problem. Though they’ll want to do so carefully, mind, as they MIGHT be in trouble with the Wild Folk already for burning that parasitic ash. Key word there being “might” – as Johnny told Lug, them killing the tree was a bit of a weird situation, vis-a-vis keeping things chill with the Wild Folk. Because the tree was clearly a punishment on the village for breaking the “Windfall Bargain” (presumably “let the holben imps stay in their bramble homes in your veggie patches and you get to have nice vegetables”), BUT it attacking Lug and company, explicitly NON-villagers, could be construed as it getting greedy for more slaves and overreaching its bounds. *shrug* We’ll see what happens once some Wild Folk show up! Which I assume will happen eventually...

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice made a little forward progress in the latter portion of Grout’s maze today, finding her way out of the mostly-upside-down bedroom via discovering picking up the telephone makes the far wall turn (and that there was a convenient electric candle lever on the other side to shut it up again); going up some stairs and discovering a landing with a few different ways to go – and another clawed ghoul, who promptly attacked her (Alice was like “never thought I’d be happy to see one of YOU, but given you’re not a creepy mannequin); and managing to successfully lure the clawed ghoul back to the mostly-upside-down bedroom and trap him in there with judicious use of a kick to the ankle and that candle lever (she just didn’t want to have to fight and possibly kill him if she could avoid it). I left off with her deciding to check out the green corridor the ghoul was hanging out in and see what he was guarding – tomorrow, we get a creepy room with writing all over the walls! Every mansion-turned-makeshift-asylum has to have at least ONE.

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: No check – as stated above, my evening computer time was severely curtailed by the “what are we doing on our vacation” chat, and this resulted in me deciding to skip the YouTube entirely in favor of making sure I got my fanfic writing done. *sigh* Hopefully tomorrow will be better!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, thankfully! And while I wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to even put in there for the next few days, going looking through the “#blades in the dark” tag on tumblr introduced me to user “ghosts-just-wanna-have-fun,” who had a couple of things I wanted to put on my blog:

A) First, I stuck into my queue –

I. A post he reblogged from “door” (yes, that was the username) complaining about why so many fantasy books these days have exactly ONE nonbinary person in them for Thursday (mostly as a reminder to myself to make sure Smiler isn’t the only nonbinary person in Valicer In The Dark – I can probably at least put in some nonbinary background Advocates if nothing else!)

II. And a post he reblogged from “shisasan” with a quote from Franz Kafka: “I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly” for Friday (because awww, the OTP/OT3 mood~ :) )

B) And then I stuck in my drafts a really cool picture he drew of his BITD character, Lorelai (a woman with literally-smoking purple eyes and horns, in a blue Southern Belle-style dress, surrounded by the ghosts of women in various states of decay) because that was the thing that caused me to go on his blog in the first place – I’ll have to stick it in the queue during a particularly VITD-focused week.

So that’s all set for another couple of days, yay. :) We’ll sort out Song Saturday tomorrow!

And yes, as you might expect, I am officially up too late. *sigh* Time to get to bed and hope that tomorrow is a little better, or at least doesn't set off the PMS-rage so much. Night all!