Slightly Stressful Thursday Evening
May. 8th, 2025 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickLike, most of my day was fine -- it was decent weather for the most part, and my workday wasn't too taxing, as you shall soon see -- but the ride home from work was more trafficky than I would have liked; there was a rumble of thunder in the afternoon before my workout (fortunately just the one though); we ate supper late because Mom isn't used to cooking salmon in the oven anymore, just on the stovetop; my parents were kind of grumpy during dinner (I don't think they liked the show we were watching, plus I suspect my Dad in particular was in pain because he seemed to be rubbing his knee a lot); and I got back to the computer late because it took a while to get all the dishes from dinner and then me making my last lunch of the workweek cleaned up. *grumbles* Why does everything always take longer than I think it's going to take... Anyway, yeah, that threw me off a little, but I still got everything I needed to get done, done --
Work – Another quiet day – pretty sure the phone, or at least my phone, didn’t ring once. O.o Spent my time doing roster maintenance, going over a QC file for the latest billing, putting on one big check that we received as per my boss, and listening to my coworkers watch the announcement of the new Pope (Leo XIV, apparently, aka Robert Prevost). My coworkers were chattier than normal even before the pope announcement, which was annoying, but I got through it. Just one more day to go!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Oxventure in BALDUR'S GATE 3 | Co-op Multiplayer Baldur's Gate with Oxventure Characters” by Outside XBox! And I am pleased to say that, despite yet more chaos, the party did succeed in their goal to find the necessary dirt on Kagha to make her stop being a dick to the tieflings –
A) First, though, Corazon found something arguably even more important – a shovel! Very useful for digging up buried treasure spots, as he found when he dug up a chest containing a bunch of gold and some amber. Mike joked that Andy was pickpocketing the ground now. XD
B) Then, the party found the confrontation between Auntie Ethel and Mayrina’s brothers, Johl and Demir. Egbert’s attempts at diplomacy (namely, saying he wouldn’t let them hurt Ethel) led to the men assuming he was in league with the hag and starting a fight –
A fight that was very quickly finished by Prudence’s new spell, Cloud of Daggers. Like, those two got minced RIGHT quick. O.O (Then again, I suppose I shouldn’t be THAT surprised, given how effectively their nemesis Liliana used it against the Egbert clones when they went rogue…) Ethel faked being horrified by the men’s deaths, admitted to having Mayrina at her place (claiming she asked Ethel not to tell her brothers where she was), then invited the group around to her house to be thanked properly. They didn’t end up going there, though, possibly because Mike didn’t want any more “Egbert is hot for hag” jokes popping up in the chat. :P
C) Then they found out (with the help of an insight check Egbert managed to reroll successfully – inspiration yay) that the pretty meadow they were crossing in an attempt to find the swamp they were looking for was in fact the swamp they were looking for. They were pretty startled by the change, and proceeded to blunder around it for a while, Corazon encountering redcaps pretending to be sheep while Egbert and Lae’zel both fell afoul of traps and had to be healed with Egbert’s healing spells so they weren’t bleeding or rotting all over the place.
D) THEN they found their way to the tree where Kagha was supposed to meet with her mysterious contact – only to get drawn into a fight with wood woads and mud mephits! The former weren’t too bad – a little tanky, but one of them glitched out and actually refused to attack the group after getting caught in a Cloud of Daggers courtesy of Prudence, which made their lives easier – but the latter were real dicks, flying around, spitting mud at everyone to make it harder for them to move, and summoning more of themselves to fill the battlefield. The fight was very hard-won, with both Corazon and Lae’zel getting downed at one point (admittedly, Lae’zel kind of downed HERSELF by Thunderwaving a bunch of mephits close to her and getting damaged by their death bursts – or possibly her own Thunderwave, in a very Dob-like move) and Prudence’s Eldritch Blasts not exactly doing the job of slaying their enemies (so many misses!), but it was won, and after a short rest to restore hit points, the gang was able to search the tree –
And find a letter from Archdruid Aelis of the Shadow Druids (aka evil druids), congratulating Kagha on her good work on starting the Rite of Thorns to shut off the Emerald Grove and promising that she would be First Druid once it was successfully cloistered! Now that is some serious dirt on the woman! The party promptly fast-traveled back to the Emerald Grove –
E) And then confronted Kagha with what they’d found out! Causing the rats in the room to reveal themselves as the Shadow Druids she’d been working with. Kagha attempted to justify her actions by saying that they’d be safe in the shadows, but her fellow druid Rath wasn’t having it, and the Shadow Druids ordered her to start killing everyone in the room, starting with the “snitch” – aka Egbert, as he was the one carrying the plot-important letter. HOWEVER, at the point where I left it, Egbert was considering a couple of dialogue options to try and persuade Kagha back to the side of the light – we’ll see tomorrow if he manages to convince her to stop being evil with his Oath Of The Ancients, or if we’re in for another tough fight!
2. Start outlining “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got the doc for the next story started, writing up the main objective for the score (stealing a bunch of Coin from the Van Dort’s vault, because they were dicks to Victor and also because the trio ran into two people, Kasimir and Barnaby, who were going to rob the vault anyway and who were amendable to a team-up) and all of the “have to happen” moments! Which, uh, took a lot longer than writing up the ones for “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded,” because a lot more of this story is just regular story rather than me doing solo play to see how events go. I have some very specific stuff I want to cover, after all – from Victor pretending he doesn’t want to be a Whisper when he really does, but he feels he can’t because of his duty to his parents; to the gang arriving at the Van Dort house...only to find a party in full swing; to Victor reuniting with his parents, only to find they care more about the Everglots breaking his engagement than if he was in any danger while he was missing – and then overhearing Nell derisively ask what ghost would marry him while talking about his story with William; to Victor bumping into Barnaby, clocking he’s here to rob the place, and suggesting the team-up; to Smiler asking Alice if she minds if they move in with her (partly to get access to the Fox-Lloyd alchemy bench, partly to make sure she has living company); to them seeing Kasimir sneaking around and ending up assisting in the kitchen to keep an eye on him; to them following Kasimir to the Van Dort greenhouse and being utterly AMAZED by it (to be fair, it’s basically a greenhouse housed in a MASSIVE AQUARIUM full of radiant fish, so); to the trio reuniting in the greenhouse and Victor revealing what assholes his parents are before asking if he too can move in with Alice; to getting Victor’s stuff and Victor stripping an old masquerade mask to use as a future spirit mask because there’s nothing stopping him from becoming a Whisper now! Oh, and the formal creation of the Three Pillars after the score, with Victor blurting out the name when the trio are confronted by the leader of the Gray Cloaks upon their return to Six Towers. XD Basically there’s a lot that has to happen in this story! But I’m willing to keep the robbery itself a little more loosey-goosey – and I actually did sneak in a roll earlier, with Smiler attempting to Sway the Van Dorts’ head cook into thinking they and Alice were new hires when they first started following Kasimir! Unfortunately, they rolled a 1 and a 3, so they failed at this – the cook let the two stay because a minor emergency happened and she needed the help, but she’s quite suspicious of them, and may prove to be an obstacle when they go for the vault. *nods* Tomorrow, I hope to actually outline what protections they’ll have to get past to access the vault, figure out what type of score this is (I’m guessing Stealth) and everyone’s loads, and at least do the engagement roll! :) Feels good to be getting back into this – I do enjoy doing a bit of solo-play to figure out how their scores go!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Substitution check – the only thing in the Subs this Thursday was another GrayStillPlays compilation (two hours of GTA V challenges), so I instead caught up with another CaFae Latte compilation by C. M. Alongi – “CaFae Latte Season 46 - TikTok Compilation!” This season featured:
I. Erik having to help caffeine up Cyrus and Bob after they spent a late night at the Stoughton St Coven’s Beltane festival (with Cyrus having tried to jump the giant bonfire after Herla dared him to – Bob said that Herla meant on HORSEBACK, but Cyrus was like “I’m not going to endanger an innocent horse!” XD)
II. Drek and Cyrus helping a deaf customer (with Cyrus showing off his command of sign), only for a potential Karen to poke her head in and demand to know what they were doing – however, upon being told that the person she was pestering was DEAF, she immediately turned to leave in embarrassment –
And bumped into an arriving Patrick, soaking his shirt with her cold coffee. She fled, and Patrick took off his shirt, asking if it could be soaked in the back...cue Drek having a panicky “oh no he’s hot” moment and then revealing to Rethu and Cyrus in the back that he’d JUST figured out he was gay. Cue Cyrus being like “PATRICK led you to realize this???” (Drek: “You dated his cousin!”), Rethu being annoyed because they’d lost $20 to Husniya (who had Drek clocked from shift one), and Drek arguing that there was no way he could have figured out he was gay earlier (cue the “Drek is pretty obviously gay” flashback sequence XD). Also cue Patrick revealing when Cyrus came back up to the front to give him some scones that werewolf hearing is WAAAY better than fairy or goblin hearing, and Cyrus telling him not to embarrass the kid before very reluctantly admitting that he was probably the best choice for a first crush (even if he is the straightest person in the room), which is not something he ever WANTED to say to someone he considers like a brother, thanks XD
III. Drek asking Bob for some time off on Saturday so he and his friends could go to a party – followed by JC, having overheard, insisting on adding their contact information to his phone so if something went wrong or he got drunk and needed a ride home, he could call them for help (instead of contacting his parents if he didn’t feel comfortable doing that)…
IV. And then Drek taking them up on that offer when he thought someone had roofied their friend/designated driver Melody. JC and Nicole rushed off to the party to make sure Melody was all right – but, fortunately, it turned out there was no maliciousness involved, only ignorance. Namely, Kurt, the host of the party, had given Melody some Mike’s Hard Lemonade, not realizing that “Hard” stood for “alcoholic,” and Melody was just a lightweight since she normally doesn’t drink at all. JC and Nicole gave her, Drek, and their friend Xander (also slightly drunk) rides home, after a stop at McDonalds, and JC and Nicole ended up bonding with Drek’s parents over stories of coming out to their parents (apparently Drek’s human mom’s parents STILL think her relationship with Drek’s goblin dad is a “phase”)
V. And finally, Erik arriving early to a shift and learning of Drek’s hangover, then offering to clock in early to relieve Husniya...only for Husniya to decide to stay when a controlling asshole and his girlfriend came in, with the controlling asshole insisting on ordering tea for said girlfriend and not letting her have and food as she “still needed to lose some weight.” The controlling asshole then asked the girlfriend why she’d insisted on coming here, and Husniya clocked that the woman was planning on breaking up with him –
And THAT’S where C. M. Alongi ended that compilation! Mean. XD Well, I guess well see how that goes for everyone when I finally get to compilation 47!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Got two things done over here:
A) Put up a post this evening complaining a bit about how I looked at the Poe/Rey/Finn OT3 gifset I reblogged via my queue earlier in the day and thought the quotes used for the three would be PERFECT for the VITD version of my Valicer trio...but how I can’t really do my OWN cool gif post using the quotes with them, because, well, I don’t have any cool gifs of the VITD Valicer trio, because they only exist in my head. :( The most I have are some Sims pictures of them in CAS sporting appropriate outfits. *sigh* It’s tough being a weird crossover OT3 crackshipper who loves AUs sometimes!
B) And I finished writing up the main text and tags on my Song Saturday reblog of “Angel With A Shotgun” by The Cab, explaining how I wanted to give the song another airing because one, I felt like it fit the vibes of “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded” (with Alice being willing to do anything to help keep the Houndsditch kids safe, or at least safer), and two, because it got no notes the first time I posted it and I felt bad for the song. :p So THAT’S all set now, yay~
Valice Multiverse – Just one ask to throw into the queue over here – from The Coven Wars! Featuring a panicked Seth frantically knocking on the door to Victor and Alice’s home and asking Alice to please open up. *grimace* Forgotten Vows!Alice did indeed open the door to ask what was wrong, with Victor wandering in to see what was going on. I suspect something’s happened to Richard, his little brother – we’ll see when The Coven Wars replies!
*whew* And once again, I have stayed up later than intended doing all this. Time to hit the sheets -- night all!
Work – Another quiet day – pretty sure the phone, or at least my phone, didn’t ring once. O.o Spent my time doing roster maintenance, going over a QC file for the latest billing, putting on one big check that we received as per my boss, and listening to my coworkers watch the announcement of the new Pope (Leo XIV, apparently, aka Robert Prevost). My coworkers were chattier than normal even before the pope announcement, which was annoying, but I got through it. Just one more day to go!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Oxventure in BALDUR'S GATE 3 | Co-op Multiplayer Baldur's Gate with Oxventure Characters” by Outside XBox! And I am pleased to say that, despite yet more chaos, the party did succeed in their goal to find the necessary dirt on Kagha to make her stop being a dick to the tieflings –
A) First, though, Corazon found something arguably even more important – a shovel! Very useful for digging up buried treasure spots, as he found when he dug up a chest containing a bunch of gold and some amber. Mike joked that Andy was pickpocketing the ground now. XD
B) Then, the party found the confrontation between Auntie Ethel and Mayrina’s brothers, Johl and Demir. Egbert’s attempts at diplomacy (namely, saying he wouldn’t let them hurt Ethel) led to the men assuming he was in league with the hag and starting a fight –
A fight that was very quickly finished by Prudence’s new spell, Cloud of Daggers. Like, those two got minced RIGHT quick. O.O (Then again, I suppose I shouldn’t be THAT surprised, given how effectively their nemesis Liliana used it against the Egbert clones when they went rogue…) Ethel faked being horrified by the men’s deaths, admitted to having Mayrina at her place (claiming she asked Ethel not to tell her brothers where she was), then invited the group around to her house to be thanked properly. They didn’t end up going there, though, possibly because Mike didn’t want any more “Egbert is hot for hag” jokes popping up in the chat. :P
C) Then they found out (with the help of an insight check Egbert managed to reroll successfully – inspiration yay) that the pretty meadow they were crossing in an attempt to find the swamp they were looking for was in fact the swamp they were looking for. They were pretty startled by the change, and proceeded to blunder around it for a while, Corazon encountering redcaps pretending to be sheep while Egbert and Lae’zel both fell afoul of traps and had to be healed with Egbert’s healing spells so they weren’t bleeding or rotting all over the place.
D) THEN they found their way to the tree where Kagha was supposed to meet with her mysterious contact – only to get drawn into a fight with wood woads and mud mephits! The former weren’t too bad – a little tanky, but one of them glitched out and actually refused to attack the group after getting caught in a Cloud of Daggers courtesy of Prudence, which made their lives easier – but the latter were real dicks, flying around, spitting mud at everyone to make it harder for them to move, and summoning more of themselves to fill the battlefield. The fight was very hard-won, with both Corazon and Lae’zel getting downed at one point (admittedly, Lae’zel kind of downed HERSELF by Thunderwaving a bunch of mephits close to her and getting damaged by their death bursts – or possibly her own Thunderwave, in a very Dob-like move) and Prudence’s Eldritch Blasts not exactly doing the job of slaying their enemies (so many misses!), but it was won, and after a short rest to restore hit points, the gang was able to search the tree –
And find a letter from Archdruid Aelis of the Shadow Druids (aka evil druids), congratulating Kagha on her good work on starting the Rite of Thorns to shut off the Emerald Grove and promising that she would be First Druid once it was successfully cloistered! Now that is some serious dirt on the woman! The party promptly fast-traveled back to the Emerald Grove –
E) And then confronted Kagha with what they’d found out! Causing the rats in the room to reveal themselves as the Shadow Druids she’d been working with. Kagha attempted to justify her actions by saying that they’d be safe in the shadows, but her fellow druid Rath wasn’t having it, and the Shadow Druids ordered her to start killing everyone in the room, starting with the “snitch” – aka Egbert, as he was the one carrying the plot-important letter. HOWEVER, at the point where I left it, Egbert was considering a couple of dialogue options to try and persuade Kagha back to the side of the light – we’ll see tomorrow if he manages to convince her to stop being evil with his Oath Of The Ancients, or if we’re in for another tough fight!
2. Start outlining “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got the doc for the next story started, writing up the main objective for the score (stealing a bunch of Coin from the Van Dort’s vault, because they were dicks to Victor and also because the trio ran into two people, Kasimir and Barnaby, who were going to rob the vault anyway and who were amendable to a team-up) and all of the “have to happen” moments! Which, uh, took a lot longer than writing up the ones for “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded,” because a lot more of this story is just regular story rather than me doing solo play to see how events go. I have some very specific stuff I want to cover, after all – from Victor pretending he doesn’t want to be a Whisper when he really does, but he feels he can’t because of his duty to his parents; to the gang arriving at the Van Dort house...only to find a party in full swing; to Victor reuniting with his parents, only to find they care more about the Everglots breaking his engagement than if he was in any danger while he was missing – and then overhearing Nell derisively ask what ghost would marry him while talking about his story with William; to Victor bumping into Barnaby, clocking he’s here to rob the place, and suggesting the team-up; to Smiler asking Alice if she minds if they move in with her (partly to get access to the Fox-Lloyd alchemy bench, partly to make sure she has living company); to them seeing Kasimir sneaking around and ending up assisting in the kitchen to keep an eye on him; to them following Kasimir to the Van Dort greenhouse and being utterly AMAZED by it (to be fair, it’s basically a greenhouse housed in a MASSIVE AQUARIUM full of radiant fish, so); to the trio reuniting in the greenhouse and Victor revealing what assholes his parents are before asking if he too can move in with Alice; to getting Victor’s stuff and Victor stripping an old masquerade mask to use as a future spirit mask because there’s nothing stopping him from becoming a Whisper now! Oh, and the formal creation of the Three Pillars after the score, with Victor blurting out the name when the trio are confronted by the leader of the Gray Cloaks upon their return to Six Towers. XD Basically there’s a lot that has to happen in this story! But I’m willing to keep the robbery itself a little more loosey-goosey – and I actually did sneak in a roll earlier, with Smiler attempting to Sway the Van Dorts’ head cook into thinking they and Alice were new hires when they first started following Kasimir! Unfortunately, they rolled a 1 and a 3, so they failed at this – the cook let the two stay because a minor emergency happened and she needed the help, but she’s quite suspicious of them, and may prove to be an obstacle when they go for the vault. *nods* Tomorrow, I hope to actually outline what protections they’ll have to get past to access the vault, figure out what type of score this is (I’m guessing Stealth) and everyone’s loads, and at least do the engagement roll! :) Feels good to be getting back into this – I do enjoy doing a bit of solo-play to figure out how their scores go!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Substitution check – the only thing in the Subs this Thursday was another GrayStillPlays compilation (two hours of GTA V challenges), so I instead caught up with another CaFae Latte compilation by C. M. Alongi – “CaFae Latte Season 46 - TikTok Compilation!” This season featured:
I. Erik having to help caffeine up Cyrus and Bob after they spent a late night at the Stoughton St Coven’s Beltane festival (with Cyrus having tried to jump the giant bonfire after Herla dared him to – Bob said that Herla meant on HORSEBACK, but Cyrus was like “I’m not going to endanger an innocent horse!” XD)
II. Drek and Cyrus helping a deaf customer (with Cyrus showing off his command of sign), only for a potential Karen to poke her head in and demand to know what they were doing – however, upon being told that the person she was pestering was DEAF, she immediately turned to leave in embarrassment –
And bumped into an arriving Patrick, soaking his shirt with her cold coffee. She fled, and Patrick took off his shirt, asking if it could be soaked in the back...cue Drek having a panicky “oh no he’s hot” moment and then revealing to Rethu and Cyrus in the back that he’d JUST figured out he was gay. Cue Cyrus being like “PATRICK led you to realize this???” (Drek: “You dated his cousin!”), Rethu being annoyed because they’d lost $20 to Husniya (who had Drek clocked from shift one), and Drek arguing that there was no way he could have figured out he was gay earlier (cue the “Drek is pretty obviously gay” flashback sequence XD). Also cue Patrick revealing when Cyrus came back up to the front to give him some scones that werewolf hearing is WAAAY better than fairy or goblin hearing, and Cyrus telling him not to embarrass the kid before very reluctantly admitting that he was probably the best choice for a first crush (even if he is the straightest person in the room), which is not something he ever WANTED to say to someone he considers like a brother, thanks XD
III. Drek asking Bob for some time off on Saturday so he and his friends could go to a party – followed by JC, having overheard, insisting on adding their contact information to his phone so if something went wrong or he got drunk and needed a ride home, he could call them for help (instead of contacting his parents if he didn’t feel comfortable doing that)…
IV. And then Drek taking them up on that offer when he thought someone had roofied their friend/designated driver Melody. JC and Nicole rushed off to the party to make sure Melody was all right – but, fortunately, it turned out there was no maliciousness involved, only ignorance. Namely, Kurt, the host of the party, had given Melody some Mike’s Hard Lemonade, not realizing that “Hard” stood for “alcoholic,” and Melody was just a lightweight since she normally doesn’t drink at all. JC and Nicole gave her, Drek, and their friend Xander (also slightly drunk) rides home, after a stop at McDonalds, and JC and Nicole ended up bonding with Drek’s parents over stories of coming out to their parents (apparently Drek’s human mom’s parents STILL think her relationship with Drek’s goblin dad is a “phase”)
V. And finally, Erik arriving early to a shift and learning of Drek’s hangover, then offering to clock in early to relieve Husniya...only for Husniya to decide to stay when a controlling asshole and his girlfriend came in, with the controlling asshole insisting on ordering tea for said girlfriend and not letting her have and food as she “still needed to lose some weight.” The controlling asshole then asked the girlfriend why she’d insisted on coming here, and Husniya clocked that the woman was planning on breaking up with him –
And THAT’S where C. M. Alongi ended that compilation! Mean. XD Well, I guess well see how that goes for everyone when I finally get to compilation 47!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Got two things done over here:
A) Put up a post this evening complaining a bit about how I looked at the Poe/Rey/Finn OT3 gifset I reblogged via my queue earlier in the day and thought the quotes used for the three would be PERFECT for the VITD version of my Valicer trio...but how I can’t really do my OWN cool gif post using the quotes with them, because, well, I don’t have any cool gifs of the VITD Valicer trio, because they only exist in my head. :( The most I have are some Sims pictures of them in CAS sporting appropriate outfits. *sigh* It’s tough being a weird crossover OT3 crackshipper who loves AUs sometimes!
B) And I finished writing up the main text and tags on my Song Saturday reblog of “Angel With A Shotgun” by The Cab, explaining how I wanted to give the song another airing because one, I felt like it fit the vibes of “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded” (with Alice being willing to do anything to help keep the Houndsditch kids safe, or at least safer), and two, because it got no notes the first time I posted it and I felt bad for the song. :p So THAT’S all set now, yay~
Valice Multiverse – Just one ask to throw into the queue over here – from The Coven Wars! Featuring a panicked Seth frantically knocking on the door to Victor and Alice’s home and asking Alice to please open up. *grimace* Forgotten Vows!Alice did indeed open the door to ask what was wrong, with Victor wandering in to see what was going on. I suspect something’s happened to Richard, his little brother – we’ll see when The Coven Wars replies!
*whew* And once again, I have stayed up later than intended doing all this. Time to hit the sheets -- night all!
no subject
Date: 2025-05-09 07:04 pm (UTC)The bit with the deaf customer and Drek's gay awakening is one of my favorite parts of this season, and JC and Nicole helping the kids out of a situation.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-11 03:42 am (UTC)*snork* Yeah, both excellent moments. Poor Drek was so "oh no he's hot," and it's excellent to see JC being the Responsible Adult and makings sure Drek and his friends feel like they're a safe person to come to with a problem. Being the person they needed when they were younger!