Decent Enough Sunday

Dad once again had a tough day (for some reason he's feeling really queasy a lot, so he can't eat much at all), meaning the vibes around the house weren't great, but I still managed to get done almost everything I wanted to get done:

Tumblr: It proved to be another nothing day over on Valice Multiverse (as I kind of suspected it would be) – but I had a very productive time indeed on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) –

A) First, I reblogged a short two-post thread into my drafts for later – jennaflare posting an image from a game she was playing of a dialogue option reading “‘Let’s fuck him together. You and me.’ (Hold out your hand.)” stating “oh wonderful i will get some mileage out of this as a new reaction image,” followed by lethalwizard putting the words “let’s fuck him together” over an image of a man in a baseball cap holding out his hand. XD I actually tried to find an appropriate screenshot of Smiler and Alice together from my old Sims 4 Chill Valicer Save that I could put the original dialogue option on like one of those “text post memes” first, but came up short, so instead I just stuck the post in my drafts with some tags indicating that it would be something Smiler would gleefully say to Alice and that eventually I would find a good screenshot to go with the text!

B) And second, I edited my “VITD Timeline” post and made some very good progress on it – cleaning up the opening a bit and adding plot summaries to all the stories in the timeline save the last (the “meeting Preston” story) – and that was only because I ran out of time before being called to lunch. *nods* I might actually be able to finish this thing up tomorrow, if I can keep up the momentum – would be nice if I could add it to my queue for this week! We’ll see, though.

Writing: While unfortunately I didn’t do any “proper” writing (either gift fic or “Londerland Bloodlines”), I did at least add a couple of things to a couple of my master docs:

A) First, in the Valicer In The Dark master doc, I added three new vague ideas for stories, because my brain simply will NOT stop producing them –

I. One where I put a version of the Sierra Madre casino in the Deathlands around Duskwall (probably in the Lost District), obviously inspired by the fact that I’m watching Jon take on “Dead Money” in F:NV YOLO Remastered these days (I put a note next to it asking why my brain couldn’t wait until Jon had actually FINISHED THE DLC)

II. One that I came up with while working on the above “VITD Timeline” post – specifically, while trying to come up with titles for some of the stories that don’t have ones yet. Basically, I pondered if one of the stories where they’re trying to break into The Sanctuary or Lord Rowan’s place should have a title that references the Resident Evil franchise – then thought “No, that doesn’t fit, you’d need something with zombies for a title like that. ...Or Hollows, since they’re the closest things to zombies in the Shattered Isles. ...wait, shit, Deep Cuts actually has a collection of Hollows that are under some mysterious master’s control and have been abducting people for fell purposes, I could probably do something with that. Have them target Victor, only for Alice and Smiler to not let him go without a fight?” So yeah, that’s in the master doc now – we’ll see if anything comes of it

III. And one that’s actually been bumming around in my head for a bit, and finally got committed to virtual paper – a post-retirement story that sees the trio called out for one last job (lured by the promise of a MASSIVE paycheck that would help them lift Six Towers fully out of poverty) and has them discover the Gates of Death (possibly a literal magical gate) that were broken during the cataclysm. And learning that the Gates were broken deliberately by either the head of the Spirit Wardens...or the Immortal Emperor himself. Because I actually had a thought recently about the Emperor and his immortality...namely, if it might be related to how many spirits get sacrificed daily in the Bellweather Crematorium, never mind the rest of the empire. *wince* Fortunately this story would end with the trio repairing the gates, allowing Death to come and claim the Emperor (or the head of the Spirit Wardens...or both, if they were working together) before calling any remaining ghosts to the afterlife, and getting a boon where none of them can die except of pure old age. Because that’s what they deserve, damn it.

*shakehead* Brain, I would really appreciate it if you would calm down on making stories for this verse for a bit. XD

B) And second, in the BG3 Tav!Smiler master doc, I added a couple more ideas for potential script scenes inspired by recent play sessions:

I. Nettie asking Smiler during her examination of them if anything “strange” has happened to them lately – cue Smiler thinking about the last couple of days and telling her “you’re going to have to be more specific”

II. And Lae’zel going on about how a devil and his paltry wings is nothing compared to a red dragon, only for Smiler to go “so no thoughts on the deal he offered us?” Causing her to reply “...he offered us a deal?”

XD What can I say, I thought they were funny! Hopefully one day I’ll find the time to actually write some of these out – and come up with some for Courier Victor too. We’ll see!

Fallout: New Vegas: Hit the Mojave today to check in with Courier Victor, and I’m pleased to say that he actually made some progress in his quest to get to Primm and get some answers regarding the delivery that nearly got him killed this play session –

A) I picked up where I left off last time, with Victor hanging out in the little campsite just past the Goodsprings Source wells, getting ready to spend the night in the caravan parked by the rocks before he continued on his journey. The poor guy was extremely thirsty, though (to the point where it was going to start affecting his stats), so I quickly had him hike up the nearby slope to the nearest of the Source wells and take two good slurps out of the water valve there. Once rehydrated, he then went down the slope to the nearest campfire to cook up five more gecko steaks (after all, he has the meat), then had one for dinner to make sure he didn’t go to bed hungry either. And then he just kinda wandered around the general area until I decided it was late enough for him to go to bed, finally hitting the mattress at 9:10 PM. *nods* Keeping your couriers fed, watered, and well-rested is important, y’all!

B) Victor woke up the next morning (10/25/2281, if you’re curious) feeling pretty good, if a little thirsty again – I had him grab one of the empty Nuka-Cola bottles out of the caravan, then head back up to the same well he visited last night to get another drink and see if maybe he could fill his bottle up with water. Sadly, there did not seem to be an option for that, and Victor was forced to leave without a fresh bottle of water. :( Come on, guys, there’s so many empty bottles in this stupid campsite – let me fill ‘em up! I could do it in Fallout 4 (with, er, the help of mods, admittedly…)!

Anyway – having had his drink and thus staved off dehydration for a bit, Victor proceeded to head back toward the road so he could get back on track – but while he was making his way through the campsite, he saw a hunter sitting at the tent surrounded by all the tires, hanging out before the bonfire while her dog chilled a little ways away. She didn’t seem hostile, so I had Victor put away his 9mm and approach her to say hi –

And, to my delight, she turned out to be a trader! Though she didn’t have much in the way of wares when Victor asked to see them – just some antivenom, ten 20 Gauge hulls, a gecko hide, a knife, and 55 caps. Still, I wanted the antivenom – that’s just useful to have in a world that includes both little and giant scorpions – so I had Victor take then, then give her three gecko hides, a mantis egg, an empty scotch bottle, two cherry bombs, and 7 caps in return. *nod* Fair trade. :p She declared him another satisfied customer, and the two parted ways on friendly terms. :) Gotta say, it was nice to be able to offload some of the crap he was carrying and get some useful stuff in return! Hopefully he will encounter another trader too with a few more caps so he can get rid of some guns he doesn’t need…

( Always gotta have one of these )

Workout: Well, annoyingly, Jon once again uploaded the next episode of the F:NV YOLO Remastered series a bit late, meaning it wasn’t ready when I went downstairs to work out. And I had no idea how much of a grace period to give him, leading to me instead starting one of the Oxventure one-shots I had to catch up on (along with the next seasons of Wyrdwood and Deadlands) – “D&D But... Everyone Has Amnesia Again | Oxventure | D&D with Scratch Card Character Sheets!” Yes, it was time for another adventure where the players – Jane, Mike, and Andy – had no idea who their characters were or what they could do at the start, and could only discover the pertinent facts – like ability scores and special powers – by scratching them off on their special scratch-off character sheets! Just like last time, Luke kept things simple by saying that any special abilities could be used once when they were initially revealed, then once more at any point after said reveal (because this kind of play wasn’t exactly conducive to using spell slots and the like); UNLIKE last time, the characters didn’t start washed up on a deserted island with no clue who the hell they were, but rather woke up in a dirty inn room in the middle of a rather disreputable part of a city – with no clue who the hell they were. Basically, think The Hangover movies, only with more amnesia and even more nonsense on account of people having magic. XD The first half-hour covered:

A) The trio waking up all tangled up on a bed in their room, and seeing who they were with the help of a cracked and cloudy mirror on the other wall – Jane being a dwarf with black hair and blood down her face, dressed in blue silks; Mike a Goliath (basically a very tall humanoid descended from proper giants – he’s 8 foot as per Luke) with greyish skin, dressed in white silks; and Andy a human man with close-cropped hair dressed in brown silks. Naturally, after establishing nobody could remember anything about who any of them were or why they were here, they became Ms. Blue, Mr. White, and Mr. Brown for the time being (insert your own joke about either Clue or Reservoir Dogs here).

B) Ms. Blue trying to determine if the blood on her face was hers or someone else’s, and discovering that she was very smart (Intelligence 18) and had a huge bonus to history; her roll proved good enough that Mike declared she should be able to figure out her blood type and what she ate for the past few days. XD Luke confirmed it was her blood and that, while she hadn’t broken her nose, she’d certainly banged it up a bit, hence the bleeding. (Oh, and that her blood type was O-. XD)

C) The trio’s musings about what was going on being interrupted by the landlord banging on their door and informing them they had to get out – Brown asked if the bill was already settled, and the landlord confirmed it was. Though he seemed very eager to hurry them out of the room once they let him in, refusing to answer any questions they had about what had happened the previous night. Brown in particular noted that the otherwise-dirty man had a very clean piece of paper tucked into one pocket, and thus tried to get it off him while Blue attempted to use the distraction of Brown chatting with him to scurry away and check the ledger downstairs for clues to their identity –

But alas, while Brown proved to have incredibly high Dexerity and Sleight-Of-Hand bonuses, he rolled a critical 1. And Blue proved to have no sneaking skills at all and rolled a mere 7 on her attempt get out of the room. Luke thus ruled that, while Brown clearly was EXCELLENT at stealing things, this particular attempt went awry when the landlord turned and caught him upon hearing Blue bang into one of the side tables by the bed. He grabbed Brown’s wrist, declaring him a thief; White grabbed his wrist to stop him doing anything nasty; the landlord took a swing at Brown with his other hand regardless –

And rolled his own critical 1, busting his hand against the mirror. *wince* Ouch. I mean, pretty much deserved, but – ouch. *nods*

D) Initiative officially being rolled for a fight, and Mr. White getting to go first – Mike took the opportunity to reveal one of his abilities, and discovered the man had the ability to cast a portal spell! (I think Dimensional Door, but I didn’t catch the name). He thus put one portal on the wall of the room nearby, and was going to put the other out on the street (at ground level, he didn’t want to kill the landlord) and shove the landlord through so they could make their escape while he was disoriented –

But then Brown/Andy suggested putting him into a cupboard or something else they could secure, and upon confirming with Luke there was a wardrobe in the room, putting the other portal in there and sticking the landlord in the cupboard. The landlord did manage to knock the doors on the front open briefly on his go, but Brown was on the case and managed (after convincing Luke to let him use his incredible Dexerity instead of strength) to close them again and wedge a hat rack through the handles to temporarily trap the landlord inside. The trio then fled downstairs, stolen paper in hand, and Blue checked the ledger –

To discover their names weren’t written down inside (of course not, that would be too easy), but instead the landlord had put down a 3, an X – and a “58g.” Everyone was very confused about what that meant, because it was a hell of a high price to pay for a room, but it didn’t make sense as a debt either…

E) The trio escaping outside into an alley and reading the paper that Brown had stolen – to discover that it was a letter from “E” to someone, apparently about their upcoming nuptials! Going on about how “today was the day” and how they hadn’t thought it would ever arrive and how they’d included a token of their undying love and how it was very important for the recipient to be at the church at 5 o’clock – and don’t forget the speech! The group realized they’d probably attended some sort of bachelor/bachelorette party and had gotten WAY hammered (explaining why they didn’t remember anything) – and then were briefly like “oh no, did we just steal the landlord’s letter from his beloved and stop him from attending his own wedding?” As per Luke, though, another look at the fancy paper and calligraphy and all that made them realize “no, this is antithetical to that guy’s whole deal.” And then Blue realized that the token the letter mentioned was missing…

Making them go “hey, wait a minute, maybe he stole from us! When one of us might be getting married!” (Mr. White was immediately put forth as the most likely candidate, given he was dressed in white silks.) Cue the group going back to the inn and ransacking the front room to see if they could find anything –

And while Mr. Brown rolled middlingly well and didn’t come up with anything, and Mr. White rolled a whole 2 and got stuck trying to open a jammed cutlery drawer, Blue rolled fabulously thanks to her high Intelligence and Investigation and quickly realized that one of the bookcases had a scrape in front of it indicating a secret door (Luke suggesting that this was something she was very familiar with, in fact)…

F) The trio opening the secret bookcase door to find a big old metal safe behind it. Brown, of course, immediately chose to tackle the lock, grabbing a quill and inserting it into the opening at the front. Luke informed him that he would need to roll very high indeed to actually get this thing open –

Cue Brown getting a natural 20. And then revealing that, if you let him add all his bonuses, he’d in fact gotten a 33. XD Luke was like “...yes, you somehow manage to jimmy open this magically locked safe with a quill.” XD The gang thus opened it up and found three things inside –

I. A pouch with 58 gold in it

II. A receipt from “Fuzzbug’s Fast Gold Exchange,” indicating that someone had pawned a diamond ring for said 58 gold

III. And a matchbook with a logo for a place called “The Quenching Tub”

Brown immediately accused the landlord of stealing the ring off them and pawning it for fast cash, but Blue and White were both like “we don’t know it was him, it could have been us, maybe we’re that sort of people.” Brown reluctantly admitted that could be the case, but said they should still take the stuff and track down this “Fuzzbug’s” place, with White agreeing and insisting they had to get the ring back, because there was a wedding and you couldn’t have one of those without a ring!

And so the chunk ended with the three fleeing with the pouch, the receipt, and the matchbook, right as they heard the landlord finally bash his way out of the wardrobe upstairs. XD Next time, the group ask around to see where the hell Fuzzbug’s is, and we see if anyone else reveals any special abilities or particularly strong stats! I’m already guessing that Andy’s character should be a Rogue of some sort, given those Dex and Sleight of Hand scores, but you never do know for certain...

YouTube: Well, after doing the two write-ups above, I didn’t really have time to watch the latest from Jon of Many A True Nerd...but I really, really wanted to watch it, so I decided to split it up and watch half tonight and half tomorrow. *nods* So, after having some cookies for dessert, I got my plushie friends and sat down to take in the first twenty-two minutes of “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 34 - Radio Silence!” This first half of the episode featured:

A) Jon taking a moment at the very beginning to both call himself a “genius” again for walking straight into a bear trap last week (we told you to take Light Step, Jon!) and to explain to some confused commenters how P. D. was able to sneak right past the Ghost People in the last episode, when in their experience those assholes are perceptive as fuck and spot you instantly! Basically, it’s all down to him having the Silent Running perk – because, while the Ghost People do have incredibly high “detecting the Courier” skills thanks to their level (Jon believes they all should be spawning in as Level 35 enemies because P. D. came in at Level 30, and the higher the enemy level, the better they are at finding the player character), they do have to play by normal detection rules – that is, they have to be able to hear or see P. D. to detect her. And thanks to Silent Running, P. D. makes no sound as she scoot-runs around the place at hyper speed. So they can only detect her if they can see her – and if she comes up on them from behind...yeah. Leads to moments like P. D. successfully sneaking past a Ghost Person while coming within inches of brushing up against them! (And leads to me noting down Silent Running as probably a good perk to give to Courier Victor in the future! He deserves it – besides, Victor can be pretty silent when he moves, based on the “keeping away from Emily” sequence in the movie!)

B) P. D. heading off to the Medical Villa to get Christine, the next member of her little heist crew, and learning the gimmick of the area when Father Elijah warned her about the degraded speakers scattered around, telling her that they too emitted a tone that could set off her collar if she lingered around them too long. There were damaged speakers and shielded speakers, and the intended gameplay loop is that you stay back and destroy the damaged ones at range to make life easier for yourself –

But, of course, P. D. didn’t have that option due to this being a melee-only run. She wasn’t allowed to even toss a throwing spear at the damn things. Fortunately, since New Vegas was designed by developers who gave a shit, they accounted for the fact that a player might have run out of ammo when encountering speakers and made sure it was always possible to just get past the things without shooting them. And since P. D. is basically equal to Sonic when she’s running around crouched, it was even easier for her to take advantage of those routes. :p Her trip through the first part of the Villa thus consisted of:

I. Speeding down the first hallway past the dangerous speaker and into a safe zone

II. Ducking in and out of an archway to try and get a bead on the Ghost Person beyond it (without staying in the danger zone of the speaker longer than she had to), until she could finally zip through and hide behind a pillar until the Ghost Person moved to a more advantageous area to be attacked

III. Sneaking up on the Ghost Person and using the “Cross” special unarmed attack on him with her new Bear Trap Fist! Why a cross? Because that not only does 10% more damage overall, it also does 2.5 times the limb damage – and Ghost People of course die when you destroy a limb. Or their head, as P. D. aptly demonstrated with her cross against this guy. Just exploded right into confetti, it did

IV. Zipping past another radio in the ceiling of another area, then sneaking around up a set of stairs and dropping down into another plaza to sneak up and kill another Ghost Person without incident

V. Then finally going back up the stairs and traversing the roofs to find another one of Dean’s stashes and get around to the main clinic’s back door, as going in the front would have put her into unnecessary danger

*nods* It’s times like these that you realize that Jon is in fact very good at Fallout: New Vegas. He just also happens to walk into bear traps sometimes. :P

C) P. D. entering the Medical Clinic through the aforementioned back door, then – after getting the scoop on holograms from Father Elijah (basically “they can damage you, but you can’t damage them, so don’t try to fight them”) – using the terminal by the door to send the holographic security guard downstairs so she could get to his emitter and use her excellent Repair skill to turn him off entirely. *nods* Smart. Thus almost perfectly safe (beyond one shielded radio causing problems down one hallway), she proceeded to go around the place looting goodies and picking up useful information, such as:

I. The fact that the Auto Docs in this place could repair damaged vocal cords from an entry about Dean Domino worrying about his friend Vera Keyes’s voice on the Chief Physician’s terminal

II. The vending machine codes for mentats and – via downloading it from a different terminal – Med-X (the latter being the more useful to P. D. as it confers damage resistance)

III. A bunch of chips off the headless corpses in the room where Father Elijah was clearly working on the bomb collars earlier

IV. And an Assassin Suit out of that same room, which was decent armor but not as good as the stuff she was wearing – she took it only because it was worth a lot and thus could be sold for a decent price

Not a bad haul, honestly! And that information about the Auto Docs and vocal cords would be coming in handy later, as per Jon…

D) P. D. then descending into the basement and using the terminal down there to turn off the main power, thus disabling the radio and letting her go down that one hall to go free Christine from the malfunctioning Auto Doc she was trapped in! And learning her gimmick in the process – her vocal cords were cut during her time in the Doc (as she indicates post-release), so she can’t actually talk, only mime. Meaning that, unless you pass the skill and SPECIAL checks that the game throws at you, your character is going to have a hard time understanding her. Fortunately, there were no checks needed to get through their first “conversation” – P. D. just had to reassure the suspicious Christine that she was a friend, not a foe, when she was initially released; stop her trying to take off the bomb collar when she noticed it and started fiddling with the lock; and confirm that they were in fact in the same boat when Christine finally noticed P. D. was also wearing a collar. She then sent Christine off to the Fountain in the middle of the main plaza to join Dog in waiting for her…

Only for Christine, after running off, to come back and start miming about what the deal is with the speakers and the collar. Because her companion perk actually makes it so you can spend more time near decayed speakers without your collar going off, and the game insists that she tell you about it even if she’s not going to be your companion right away. XD Jon found it very amusing – though I must say, as railroading goes, it’s a very mild example. Even makes sense in-universe – who the hell else is she going to ask about the speakers when she first sees one on her way out of the clinic?

E) And P. D. leaving the clinic through the back door to avoid some of the Ghost People the game had just spawned in near the front, using a dose of her Implant GRX Turbo to get past a troublesome speaker and up some stairs back onto the roof without getting popped, then proceeding to clamber around said roofs trying to get a bead on the one Ghost Person she felt she had to kill in the plaza below –

Only to drop down, accidentally knock some trash onto the ground, and discover that the Ghost Person from the plaza next door, whom she’d hoped to ignore, had wandered over in this direction and was in a perfect position to see her. I left off with her preparing to use another dose of GRX Turbo to just straight up run away from him and his friend – tomorrow, we’ll see how well that went, and finish off this episode! Should be fun. :)

*nods* Yeah, not bad at all. But now it is very late and I really need to head to bed. Tomorrow's goals: work some more on the VITD Timeline post on VLA(NS); get some PROPER writing done (I gotta figure out something for a Newt gift fic!); play some Portal 2; and finish off the F:NV YOLO Remastered episode above. Hopefully all achievable goals -- we shall see. Night all!