Surprisingly Chillier And Gloomier Sunday
May. 18th, 2025 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickLike, it started out decently nice, but as the day went on the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up and the temperature dropped. It never actually RAINED, but it proved miserable enough that didn't play beanbags today. Though my parents DID get the lawn mowed, so -- something? *shrug* Anyway -- I just stayed inside and had a reasonably good day --
Tumblr: Decent day on the old social media site, all things considered:
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Was very productive over here, I am happy to say, accomplishing two main things of note –
A) First, I reblogged three things from my dash which spoke to me:
I. A post asking everyone to call their senators and ask them to oppose the “Interstate Obscenity Definition Act,” aka a federal porn ban with an EXTREMELY broad definition that’s gonna be weaponized against queer people, because, you know, that’s what happens
II. A Red Dwarf gif of Lister (one of the main characters) banging his head against a wall while Kryten (another main character, a robot) bangs him on the head with a pole whenever he lifts his head, with the caption “How life feels sometimes” – not in the fandom, but that is a mood
III. A post from “gift-from-the-bellow” demanding “username lore” – answered in the tags that my blog is named after my OTP, and that I tried to rename it after my OT3 late last year, but that broke all my links so I had to revert it (that’s why I refer to it as “Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)” over here – the (N Smiler) part is technically not official even if it’s now part of my blog title)
B) Then, I spent the rest of the time before lunch finishing off that “Help: How Do I Do Tav!Smiler” post I’d been working on – and then, because I’d included a poll in it that would run for an entire week – went ahead and just straight-up posted it! You can see it here if you are so inclined. I then ended up reblogging it later in the day (right before my workout, in fact), because it got absolutely no engagement when it initially posted (despite the stuff I reblogged right before it getting reblogged by some of my friends) – it’s picked up a couple of likes now, but – I do not have high hopes for anyone responding to it, I have to admit. *sigh* Why is it whenever I TRY to reach out for help or interaction, I’m always fucking ignored over there...
Valice Multiverse – Still no asks or thread replies or anything like that for me to reply to over here – but I discovered that I hadn’t actually ever reblogged my “hey here’s a link to read ‘A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded’ from the beginning now that the story’s done” post from Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), so I went ahead and threw that into the queue. *shrug* It’s SOMETHING!
Fallout 4: Had a short but reasonably-productive playsession in the Commonwealth today, getting Victor and Ada over to the Mechanist’s headquarters and taking a quick poke around inside –
A) Started where I left off a few weeks ago, with the pair at the little settlement just outside the Boston Airport (which I’m pretty sure was some sort of lounge or other waiting area, judging by the chairs), ready to go and start the final boss battle with the Mechanist already. I thus reactivated the “Restoring Order” quest in Victor’s Pip-Boy to make sure I had my quest markers ready (you people know how easily I get lost); had him quickly set up a little blue tent in the settlement so he’d have a place to sleep the next time he swung around this area; then had him and Ada head down the road past a bunch of flooded streets over to the RobCo Sales & Service Center! Once there, I hit quicksave and had Victor open the door to head inside –
And after the world’s LONGEST LOADING SCREEN (seriously, I don’t know WHY some locations take so freaking long to load – and it’s always the ones with the plain black loading screens, never the ones with the fun animated “have some fun facts about the game” loading screens), he and Ada found themselves in the opening lobby/store area of the Center! There were a bunch of wrecked shelves on the walls (Victor got himself a fuse off one); a little waiting area with a burned-out lamp and a crisped trade magazine; and a bunch of terminals lined up on rows in counters in the middle. Most of them were busted, as you might expect, but a few were still online, waiting for a customer to interact with them. And so Victor went around and checked out –
I. The E-330, the “most reliable client terminal” – which, naturally, was the only terminal whose main screen immediately got corrupted and which registered multiple internal faults :p
II. The RX-9000, the most advanced gaming terminal they had with “cutting-edge graphics” – I had Victor go ahead and pop the “Automatron” game holotape in there for a few rounds (which I did not do very well at because none of these holotapes explain their controls properly and I’d forgotten how you shoot the enemy robots)
III. The E-601, “streamlined for business,” which had the most stuff on it, including a Daily Itinerary function (automatically compiled from your calendar and contacts – some RobCo meetings about fourth-quarter earnings and the benefits of a global merger were listed as examples); a customizable calendar (where you could list things like anniversaries, doctor and dentist appointments, birthdays, and major holidays); a customizable contacts list (complete with fields for phone numbers, street addresses, and little notes about what each person is like); and a message system (basically internal e-mails, or “intramail” as they called it, with automatic timestamps and the ability to confirm when a message was opened – example message was someone e-mailing a colleague to tell them they should have a meeting to agree on the budget and dress code for the Halloween party (i.e., whether or not costumes were mandatory)). Dunno how I feel about the computer trying to guess what I should do each day rather than letting me decide, but other than that, actually seemed like a pretty solid computer option!
IV. And the RX-6550, a “personalized home computer for the whole family to enjoy,” which let you keep track of everything everybody was doing and protect everyone’s personal profile with their own password – there were entries for “Mom,” “Dad,” “Timmy,” and “Janine” on there, but none of them had anything in them.
Interesting stuff – even if I was kind of hoping there would be secret Mechanist files on at least one of them! Feels like a missed opportunity. Ah well, there will be plenty of time to snoop on the Mechanist’s personal logs later...
B) Of course, this room also had a front desk, with its own working terminal and – when I sent Victor around to check it out – a floor safe immediately underneath it. I had Victor crack the Advanced floor safe with his lockpicking skills (mostly ammo – including missiles – a gold watch, a subnosed .44 pistol, and some pre-War money – I had Victor take the non-missile ammo, the watch, and the money), then hack the Novice terminal to see what was on it. Beyond the safe controls, and a warning that all employees were subject to a Non-Disclosure Agreement so keep your yaps shut, there were two options, “Announcements” and “Service Requests.” “Service Requests” was just full of fun fluff text about people bringing in their computers to be repaired – including Henrietta Blanche, whose terminal just “suddenly stopped working” over a matter of days, crashing on boot (the front desk person suspected the computer was overheating due to the fact that the woman was apparently covered in cat hair); Bronwyn Sullivan, whose terminal refused to send intramail or notify her of anything (as per the tech, apparently a former employee sabotaged the computer before leaving the company – he recommended giving her a new computer as he wasn’t 100% sure he could fix the old one); and Calvin Crenshaw, who was complaining about his seven-year-old terminal crashing when he tried playing “Red Menace” (tech was like “he HAS to buy a new computer at this point, this one doesn’t have the memory for anything other than text-based games”) –
But “Announcements” had something more interesting in it – a message from the General Manager reminding all employees that following the code of conduct meant no tampering with ANY shipments labeled “RB-2851,” under threat of termination and prolonged questioning from the folks downstairs; wearing your name tag correctly; and no longer letting customers, friends, or family into the back room. Suspicious, eh? Well, to you – I already know what’s going on here, and it involves loads of unethical experimentation on people’s brains! You know, just standard Fallout science. :p
C) With the front room thus explored, and Victor and Ada now aware there was something fishy going on here even pre-War (who is surprised), it was time to head into the back room! After disarming a laser tripwire at the entrance, of course (free crystal and fiber optics, yay). Victor and Ada thus headed down a short hall, then around a small catwalk and down some steps into a very large room full of cabinets, crates, tools, and other such repair-related junk. I had Victor poke around for a bit, picking up some useful junk from some of the cabinets; checking out the one “working” terminal down there and the work order next to it (turns out it was Henrietta’s computer, and it did indeed need a clean – unfortunately, when Victor tried to get into it, all he got was a message about how “terminal unit systems have been stopped.” Maybe they didn’t get the cat hair out of it before the apocalypse); grabbing a laser pistol to disassemble later from behind a couple of the crates –
And finding a strange device on the wall, next to a bit that was slightly recessed. He called over Ada, who scanned it with her new M-SAT “I’m totally a Mechanist robot” scanner –
D) And sure enough, the wall opened up (after a prolonged sequence of hidden doors designed to resemble the door sequence from Mystery Science Theater 3000 – apparently the creators were fans :) ) to reveal a mysterious hallway sloping down to another security door at the bottom! Victor and Ada thus cautiously made their way down, avoiding some rad barrels, and I prepared myself for trying to find the terminal to open the doors –
Only for a voice to go, “Returning robot detected, opening security doors,” and, well, the security doors (all three sets of them) opening. Okay then! That’s useful! I made note of the sign on the wall saying this was “Robotics Technology Facility RB-2851” (aka where all those mystery shipments were going,” then had Victor head in. The opening area looked like some sort of big checkpoint, with a gated “front desk” with a skeleton slumped over it; a small personal storage area full of lockers; and a big old generator off to the side. I had Victor head into the locker area to look for goodies –
Just in time to hear the announcer say, “No biosigns detected. Continue.” What, is Victor suddenly not alive anymore? O.o I think I would have noticed if he wasn’t, announcer! (Though I guess maybe the announcer thinks he’s a robobrain because he’s with Ada...or it’s just broken. Either way.) Anyway, I had Victor grab a couple of items from the lockers, then have a nice healthy Hungry Man dinner and a can of water when he informed me he was hungry and thirsty. I then had him explore around a little more, discovering that dead ahead, past the check-in area, was a hallway full of all SORTS of laser traps to discourage unwanted visitors – but off to the side, at the back of the generator room, was a little tunnel dug into the foundations of the building. Meaning all I had to decide was whether I wanted to sneak down the tunnel, or spend my time disarming traps in the main hallway!
E) ...I chose Option 3: “Retreat back to the main repair room and have Victor set up his tent and go to sleep since he’s been tired since 6 PM and I expect him to crash any minute.” Yeah, no matter which path he chose, I wanted to make sure he had enough AP to take on whatever came his way. And so Victor headed back and hit the sack at 8:30 PM, getting a nice full eight hours of sleep before rising at 4:30 AM the next morning. I had him putter around the room a bit more, grabbing some Wonderglue and a flip lighter from a toolbox I hadn’t noticed before, then set up his portable workbench and had him scrap the laser pistol he’d found for parts –
Then noticed the weird Deadeye Submachine Gun that I’d picked up that was still hanging around in my inventory. And went, “You know what, I don’t intend to use it here, but it might be something I want to use in the future – maybe on a Silver Shroud mission? I know he has his own Silver Submachine gun, but this might be better than that...let’s go ahead and upgrade it!” So I went ahead and had Victor give it a Powerful Receiver, a Reflex Sight, a Short Light Barrel, a Recoil-Compensating Stock, a Large Quick-Eject Drum, and a Muzzle Brake. Required him to stop midway through to get more items with screws off Ada, but hey – worth it to get the gun fully upgraded! Have no idea if it’ll be a good gun for me, but we’ll give it a try during a future mission, see if the Deadeye ability makes firing these notoriously-inaccurate monsters a little more bearable. (And if not, well, now it’s worth more to any traders who might want it.)
And that is where I wrapped things up for the day! Next time, with Victor freshly rested and ready to go, the pair shall go off and start making their way through the Mechanist’s headquarters! Dunno yet if I’m going to do the big fight or sneak in via the back elevator, but I suspect I’ll have plenty of time to think about it. :P
Writing: Another Sunday spent playing Fallout 4, another Sunday spent updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression document – and while I was able to straight-up copy a few things from the above write-up (mainly the stuff about the computers on display in the front lobby of the RobCo Sales & Service Center, and all the Service Requests on that computer), I did also, as usual, make a number of changes to the fanfic version of events (beyond having Alice and her new cat tagging along, of course) –
A) Victor never bothered setting up a tent outside the Boston Airport, because he doesn’t consider that lounge area one of his settlements – to him, that’s Brotherhood of Steel territory (and it IS a VERY weird place to have a settlement, so I think his take is more logical)
B) Alice helped check out all the computers in the front room of the Center with Victor (looking at the E-330 and the E-601, and admitting the latter didn’t seem like a bad computer), and cracked open the floor safe behind the desk while Victor handled the terminal (and did indeed take the snubnosed .44 pistol that was in there, as SHE could use another gun). Also Victor did not waste any time trying to play a game on the RX-9000 (though he did mention he would try one of his game holotapes if they DID have the time), and got into the front desk computer thanks to Alice passing on a hint from Wonderland (“everyone went up in this even before the bombs, thanks to the tortoises having their way” – a reference to the fact that the right word for this terminal was “SMOKE” and that the brand on the in-game cigarettes you can collect for crafting (they give you cloth, funnily enough) is Grey Tortoise)
C) In a rare major change, I swapped around the order of events after the gang discovered the mysterious device on the wall next to the hidden doors! In this universe, Victor yawned midway through telling Ada to try the M-SAT on the device, realized how tired he was, and decided that it made more sense to camp out in the repair room for the night and did all his gun scrapping and upgrading the evening of 3/30/2288 before hitting the sack, then had Ada open the door so they could check out what was beyond it the morning of 3/31/2288. I felt that made a little more sense in a non-video-game universe than them STARTING to probe into the Mechanist’s lair, only to give up a few minutes in and head back to the repair room because Victor was tired. *taps head* Logic!
D) And, just to be thorough, Alice was the one who discovered the secret tunnel in the generator room, while Victor was checking the lockers in the storage area in the checkpoint (and getting confused when the announcer said “no biosigns detected,” since he was pretty sure he’d have noticed if he woke up dead. XD
So yeah – a handful of little changes, and one big one because I felt it made more sense timeline-wise. Nothing too dramatic, though, I’d say! Next time, Alice, Victor, and Ada (Kit has been left behind in the repair room with their cart of junk to lick his butt in safety) start working their way into the Mechanist’s lair! Remind me to have Victor take out the Tactical Tesla Electric Death Machine – I suspect it’s going to be useful in a facility full of robots.
YouTube: With Gray now officially part of my Sunday Workout Block (see below), the only video I had to worry about watching tonight was the latest from Jon of Many A True Nerd – “Fallout: London - Part 43 - It's Your Funeral!” The continuing adventures of Lady Aria as she –
A) Let Mad Jack tell her all about his absolutely horrible and heartbreaking backstory – turns out the reason he has some issues with fighting? It’s because he was abducted with a bunch of other boys from the orphanage where he grew up by raiders and made to fight all his friends to the death. Ending with his best friend Sam, who refused to fight him because Jack had practically raised him. D: Poor Jack became the best at fighting out of a mad desire to live, and ended up as their best prize fighter for a while, until other gangs began refusing to send people to fight him, because he was so good he just kept killing their best guys. Eventually Jack finally saw an opportunity for escape, mutilated his handlers, and fled. It was just – cripes, this poor man. No WONDER he struggles with depression and suicidal feelings – especially since the career he fell into once he was free was just straight-up beating people up again! I feel like his companion quest should be giving him a hug, because he DESERVES it. No wonder Jon said that probably the best part of the Fallout: London experience is getting to know the companions – they really do knock it out of the park with their personalities and backstories!
B) Decided to finally finish up some of her business with the Vagabonds, since she had a day to kill before the funeral of the woman she’d murdered to help advance Angel’s plans last episode – after all, she’d rather left them hanging after breaking Yvette’s friend out of an Isle of Dogs prison so long ago! So she proceeded to the safe house in Greenwich to cap off that quest (Yvette cheerfully thanking her for her good work), then headed back to the Vagabond’s pub headquarters to talk with leader Sebastian Gaunt. He was very pleased with her work and offered her a place in the Vagabonds permanently, if she wanted it, to share their blood and their fate. Aria was interested, but wanted to know what Gaunt saw as the Vagabond’s fate –
And as it turned out, what he wanted most of all was to wipe their enemies the Syndicate off the face of the earth. The gangs had been at war for ten freaking years, and Gaunt wanted to end it, and end it decisively in the Vagabond’s favor. Aria was a little “um, this seems a little worrying, why the hell are you so revenge-focused?” and managed to coax out of him the real reason he was angry – basically, his father, who was all about uniting the boroughs to try and stand up to the gentry, was killed by a Syndicate member. So now Gaunt wants them all dead, and damn the consequences. Accordingly, his final initiation task for Aria? Kill a Syndicate enforcer and bring him their lapel pin as proof. Aria was like “okay, I’ll do it, but I am thinking that maybe we should think about replacing you as leader, since you seem to be stuck in a terrible cycle of violence.” And to be fair, she may not be the only one who feels that way, as when she went to Johnny “Shrapnel” (a guy with, you guessed it, some shrapnel stuck in his head) for a few supplies for the job, she was able to use her Lovecraft-heightened Charisma to coax out of him that he too was starting to get tired of the bloodshed – where will it end and all that. Hmmmm...something to keep in mind going forward!
C) Went looking for a Syndicate enforcer (known as a Sniffer, amusingly enough) to kill for their lapel pin – in the heavily-irradiated MILLENNIUM DOME of all places. Because, apparently, there was a guy there, just hanging out in the middle of the London equivalent of the Glowing Sea of all places! Well, Aria had been meaning to finally check that place out, so she and Mad Jack ventured forth, starting at the Golden Elm pub on the edge of the irradiated hellhole and making their way inward. Fortunately, Aria’s supplies of Rad-X and Rad-Away were big enough that she could rely on them and not have to break out the hazmat suit to survive the rads – which is good, because along the way, she and Mad Jack ran into a whole flock of Lamphrey Floaters (which Aria eventually had to desperately outrun in a panic), a Legendary Glowing Deathclaw (which, again, was supposed to be a Womble – apparently they’ve glitched in Jon’s game and returned to their original reptilian form), and – right outside the Dome itself – a whole mess of bloatflies, including a bloatmother (ewww). Fortunately, the pair managed to survive all these encounters, and – after a quick trip into the nearby tube station, which mainly just had ghouls in it, along with a flooded tunnel that Jon suspected might be a back entrance into the Dome – got into the Dome without issue! Where they found everyone was chill with them –
EXCEPT the Isle of Dogs guy they were sent to kill, because apparently word has finally gotten around that Aria’s throwing her lot in with the Vagabonds. No more walking around the Isle of Dogs safe and sound in her neutrality for her, it seems! Anyway, Aria, who didn’t want a bloodbath, snuck up on the Sniffer and only killed him once he started shooting at her – then, once his lapel pin was collected, decided to see how this place could be one of the biggest trading hubs in London when it was in the middle of, you know, the most irradiated place in London. Answer?
Unclear! I mean, yes, a lot of the people in the main trading area were ghouls, and a number of the others were wearing hazmat suits, but there were still plenty of just regular people hanging around the shops, apparently deciding getting radiation poisoning was worth the selection. And the main market floor itself was in the middle of the dome, which is apparently FUCKING OPEN TO THE SKY. Like, even if the area wasn’t Radiation Central, wouldn’t you want a roof to keep out the weather? *shakehead* I guess It Just Works ™ Aria at least had a decent time wandering around the shops, and while she couldn’t get any of the named characters to chat with her (suggesting that the location is part of a faction quest line – at least if she has to come back here for Angel, she’s got the place marked so she can fast-travel now!), she was able to purchase some Magic Milk from a guy named Charlie, which can reduce a rad count of over 600, so – yeah. Totally worth it to brave the radiation and the Floaters and the Bloatflies to come here!
D) Returned to the Vagabonds to show Gaunt her newly-collected pin and get officially inducted into the gang – this involved him telling her to keep the pin as a trophy and bestowing upon her an official Vagabond hat, which just so happens to give +2 to Luck. A pretty decent hat for someone who loves her criticals as much as Aria – though I doubt she’ll ever be swapping her crown out for it. XD Anyway, with that sorted, Gaunt then invited her to join him and the boys in the lounge to talk about his big plans for the gang war – Aria went ahead and did so, and it transpired that what he wanted was to use Aria as a sort of elite Commando unit to help really put the hurt on the Syndicate and pay them back for the last time they ventured deep into Vagabond territory. Preferably before they got their nuclear reactor up and running, because THEN the Gentry would send their Tommies into the area to help secure the power source and the Syndicate would be basically untouchable. So he’d tasked three of his men to come up with plans on how to do that. Aria (with the help of some Intelligence-boosting drugs) noted that Blind Nelson, the guy USUALLY in charge of the plans, was nowhere to be seen – Gaunt explained that he was sitting this one out, as HE wanted them to lay low for a while, but Gaunt wasn’t having that. Aria quietly noted that Blind Nelson could potentially be an ally if and when it came time to overthrow Gaunt, then did the rounds and asked the three fellows present about their plans:
I. “Bullettooth” Anthony mentioned that one of the big problems they were facing was that the Syndicate simply had more and better guns than they did, and wanted to steal a bunch from a depot the Gentry had in a warehouse near West India Quay. Gaunt was like “there’s no way Aria could do that on her own” – Anthony tried to convince him by saying he had a friend who could just make a few crates go missing, so all Aria had to do was open the loading bay doors, but Gaunt insisted that the best thing to do would be to just blow the place to kingdom come and deny the Syndicate the weapons. If Aria could grab some stuff while getting the explosives placed, fine, but the important thing was to wreck the depot and cripple their enemies.
II. Johnny “Shrapnel” said that what HE wanted to do was take out the Dredge – a floating prison boat with a bunch of their guys on it. His plan consisted of freeing everyone on board, then sinking it to the bottom of the river – Gaunt was like “how the FUCK is she supposed to get on the most closely-guarded boat in the whole of London? And if we go blowing it up, we’re gonna get labeled as terrorists by the Syndicate – they’re already making noises to that effect, given how we busted out Yvette’s friend.” (Excuse me, weren’t you JUST team “blow it up” in regards to Anthony’s plan?) Johnny reminded him that the guys stuck on the boat had grit, and they’d be better back in the gang than rotting in prison; Gaunt admitted they could use more hands and said that Aria thought she was sneaky enough (which she most definitely is), she could try it. Johnny let her know where she should go (the warden’s office near the back of the boat, since that’s where all the cells were opened), and encouraged her to let everyone out and sink the boat as per his original idea – Gaunt was like “no, just get our guys, forget the others,” but Aria was already thinking about how she could curry favor with other gangs if she let their men out too…
III. And “Chill” Winston pointed out that the Syndicate had more general supplies – namely food and medicine – than they did, and that they should try to find a way to bleed off some of their excess – prompting Gaunt to go “I swear, Winston, if you’re going to suggest another fucking train robbery…” XD Winston was like “hear me out, I know just the train she can knick, it’ll be fine” – Gaunt countered that he let Winston talk him into breaking into the lab to get supplies, and they just barely broke even on THAT –
And Winston countered his counter by pointing out the lab is where Aria came from, and SHE’S proven to be a hell of an asset. Gaunt allowed the point and said if Aria wanted to try the job, she could. Winston told Aria what she’d have to do (get to Poplar Station, take out the Syndicate there, redirect the train to Canning Town Station, then hop on and ride it there to meet the Vagabonds who would be unloading the supplies), and Gaunt followed up by handing her some explosives and telling her that if things seemed like they were going south, she was to blow up the train to deny the supplies to the Syndicate and destroy one of their main supply lines. Seems like he’s perfectly in favor of blowing shit up if HE’S the one suggesting it. >( But yeah, that wrapped up the meeting, with Aria preparing for three very exciting jobs that Jon was eager to get to. Seems like going and continuing the Vagabond quest line was the right call after all! Though the comments were warning that there might be a bit of a sad ending to it...we’ll see what happens when we get closer to that point!
E) Returned to Westminster to attend the funeral of Cecily, the woman she murdered, and get Cecily’s friend, Baron Nigel Honeysett, to authenticate Smythe’s appointment as Lord Chancellor! Though Aria actually arrived at around 2 AM, long after the main funeral was over. Nigel was still there, though, mourning his friend – and while he found Aria presenting him with the documents to authenticate to be both highly irregular and very crass, a few carefully-chosen words on Aria’s part made him realize that she’d killed Cecily specifically to let him know that radical beliefs like hers (such as reducing the length of indentured servitude) would not be tolerated, and that he should try and “smooth the waters” as it were. He thus bitterly put his stamp on the documents, more or less securing Smythe’s position as the new Lord Chancellor. All Aria had to do now was deliver the documents to the Prime Minister!
...Except, well, she couldn’t. Because, as she found out during an earlier wander around Westminster, there isn’t one at the moment – the old one stood down given the chaos currently happening in government. Meaning, if Aria wants to get Smythe her chancellorship, she first has to help grease the wheels of democracy and get someone elected as Prime Minister! Which she was more than willing to do – next time. XD So yeah, next week, we’ll see Aria help out with the election process – and, if there’s time, start those Vagabond missions she picked up! And, if we’re lucky, perhaps Mad Jacks’ companion quest will pop up too...we will see next Sunday!
Workout: Back on the bike again tonight, pedaling my way through:
A) The entirety of the latest from GrayStillPlays – “I had to choo choo choose who lives,” aka Gray plays Choo-Choose! This is a rather bizarre little game based on the famous Trolley Problem (you know, the one where you have to pick if you’re going to kill one person or five while stuck on a runaway trolley), where you are nominally in control of a steam train, and you are regularly presented with choices on who or what that train should run over. These choices range from the traditional “one person vs five,” to “cat versus pregnant lady,” to “lesbian couple or gay couple,” to “people who urinate in the elevator but graduated with honors versus people who donate blood but cut veins” to “beaver vs the concept of democracy” to “Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse vs our version of Catdog” to “King Leonidas from 300 vs our stand-in for the Pope.” ...yeah, it’s a pretty bizarre little game. You’re given stats about the choices you made after the first couple of “acts” (how many people, kids, and cats you killed in Act 1; stuff like the average age of your victims, the sex ratio, your apparently most hated name, the act you were most likely to kill someone for, and the act you were most likely to spare someone for in Act 2), and newspaper articles showing how you affected the world in Acts 3 and 4 (the latter being an elimination tournament where whoever survives your deadly choices gets to be ruler of the world). Gray, of course, tried to make the worst choices possible – murdering as many people in a go as he could, sparing those who had bloody knives sitting next to them on the tracks, always prioritizing cats over people, destroying democracy instead of beavers, and making sure King Leonidas survived the elimination tournament – and thus got stuff like beavers building their own societies (in a nod to the game Timberborn), sleep being canceled (because he ran over a sleeping lady instead of Robin Hood), and “THIS IS SPARTA!” becoming the global greeting (guess what prompted that). Just – it was very weird. Even Gray thought so, and he’s the master of weird shit. XD But I suppose it was fun too! Good to see him branching out into games other than GTA V and Happy Wheels again!
B) The first ten-odd minutes of “D&D But... It's Pokémon | Oxventure” by, well, Oxventure! Yes, I am making an effort to start catching up on all these Oxventure videos I’ve missed, and we’re starting with “Luke Westaway crams a bunch of Pokemon into D&D and makes Ellen, Andy, and Johnny play the resultant hopefully-fun mess.” XD The situation so far is that Backpacker Pearl (Ellen) and Skull (Andy) have both joined Team Rocket – Skull because he enjoys making problems for people (being one of those NPCs who likes to block paths), Pearl because they won’t give her back her backpack until she gets them a Pikachu – and have been tasked by Leader Giovanni to investigate the viability of nearby Mount Moon and the cave systems within as a base. They’ve each been given two Pokemon (Skull a Weepinbell and a Magikarp – aka one okay Pokemon and one generally considered useless; Pearl a Ekans and a Spearow – aka two decent Pokemon who are natural enemies because Spearows like to eat Ekans) and a couple of potions, and put under the guidance of a seasoned Team Rocket member – Meowth (Johnny)! Except it’s not THAT Meowth, it’s another, more New York Meowth that also learned to talk and is very annoyed the more famous one won’t return his calls anymore. XD So far, Skull has managed through the luck of a Nat 20 on a Strength roll to beat a piece of beef into Pokemon-restoring chili, and both Pearl and Skull have used a Pokemon Center to make sure their Pokemon are at full health before they go on their journey. Also Skull renamed his Plant-Skull and Fish-Skull. XD I left off with them preparing to visit the market – we’ll see what they get and where their journey goes from here tomorrow!
Whew -- got a lot done there! AND it looks like I'll be getting to bed at least a LITTLE earlier than I usually do on a Sunday, yay~ :p So yeah, off to hit the sheets I go -- got a bit of a weird week coming up here, and I need my rest. Night all!
Tumblr: Decent day on the old social media site, all things considered:
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Was very productive over here, I am happy to say, accomplishing two main things of note –
A) First, I reblogged three things from my dash which spoke to me:
I. A post asking everyone to call their senators and ask them to oppose the “Interstate Obscenity Definition Act,” aka a federal porn ban with an EXTREMELY broad definition that’s gonna be weaponized against queer people, because, you know, that’s what happens
II. A Red Dwarf gif of Lister (one of the main characters) banging his head against a wall while Kryten (another main character, a robot) bangs him on the head with a pole whenever he lifts his head, with the caption “How life feels sometimes” – not in the fandom, but that is a mood
III. A post from “gift-from-the-bellow” demanding “username lore” – answered in the tags that my blog is named after my OTP, and that I tried to rename it after my OT3 late last year, but that broke all my links so I had to revert it (that’s why I refer to it as “Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)” over here – the (N Smiler) part is technically not official even if it’s now part of my blog title)
B) Then, I spent the rest of the time before lunch finishing off that “Help: How Do I Do Tav!Smiler” post I’d been working on – and then, because I’d included a poll in it that would run for an entire week – went ahead and just straight-up posted it! You can see it here if you are so inclined. I then ended up reblogging it later in the day (right before my workout, in fact), because it got absolutely no engagement when it initially posted (despite the stuff I reblogged right before it getting reblogged by some of my friends) – it’s picked up a couple of likes now, but – I do not have high hopes for anyone responding to it, I have to admit. *sigh* Why is it whenever I TRY to reach out for help or interaction, I’m always fucking ignored over there...
Valice Multiverse – Still no asks or thread replies or anything like that for me to reply to over here – but I discovered that I hadn’t actually ever reblogged my “hey here’s a link to read ‘A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded’ from the beginning now that the story’s done” post from Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), so I went ahead and threw that into the queue. *shrug* It’s SOMETHING!
Fallout 4: Had a short but reasonably-productive playsession in the Commonwealth today, getting Victor and Ada over to the Mechanist’s headquarters and taking a quick poke around inside –
A) Started where I left off a few weeks ago, with the pair at the little settlement just outside the Boston Airport (which I’m pretty sure was some sort of lounge or other waiting area, judging by the chairs), ready to go and start the final boss battle with the Mechanist already. I thus reactivated the “Restoring Order” quest in Victor’s Pip-Boy to make sure I had my quest markers ready (you people know how easily I get lost); had him quickly set up a little blue tent in the settlement so he’d have a place to sleep the next time he swung around this area; then had him and Ada head down the road past a bunch of flooded streets over to the RobCo Sales & Service Center! Once there, I hit quicksave and had Victor open the door to head inside –
And after the world’s LONGEST LOADING SCREEN (seriously, I don’t know WHY some locations take so freaking long to load – and it’s always the ones with the plain black loading screens, never the ones with the fun animated “have some fun facts about the game” loading screens), he and Ada found themselves in the opening lobby/store area of the Center! There were a bunch of wrecked shelves on the walls (Victor got himself a fuse off one); a little waiting area with a burned-out lamp and a crisped trade magazine; and a bunch of terminals lined up on rows in counters in the middle. Most of them were busted, as you might expect, but a few were still online, waiting for a customer to interact with them. And so Victor went around and checked out –
I. The E-330, the “most reliable client terminal” – which, naturally, was the only terminal whose main screen immediately got corrupted and which registered multiple internal faults :p
II. The RX-9000, the most advanced gaming terminal they had with “cutting-edge graphics” – I had Victor go ahead and pop the “Automatron” game holotape in there for a few rounds (which I did not do very well at because none of these holotapes explain their controls properly and I’d forgotten how you shoot the enemy robots)
III. The E-601, “streamlined for business,” which had the most stuff on it, including a Daily Itinerary function (automatically compiled from your calendar and contacts – some RobCo meetings about fourth-quarter earnings and the benefits of a global merger were listed as examples); a customizable calendar (where you could list things like anniversaries, doctor and dentist appointments, birthdays, and major holidays); a customizable contacts list (complete with fields for phone numbers, street addresses, and little notes about what each person is like); and a message system (basically internal e-mails, or “intramail” as they called it, with automatic timestamps and the ability to confirm when a message was opened – example message was someone e-mailing a colleague to tell them they should have a meeting to agree on the budget and dress code for the Halloween party (i.e., whether or not costumes were mandatory)). Dunno how I feel about the computer trying to guess what I should do each day rather than letting me decide, but other than that, actually seemed like a pretty solid computer option!
IV. And the RX-6550, a “personalized home computer for the whole family to enjoy,” which let you keep track of everything everybody was doing and protect everyone’s personal profile with their own password – there were entries for “Mom,” “Dad,” “Timmy,” and “Janine” on there, but none of them had anything in them.
Interesting stuff – even if I was kind of hoping there would be secret Mechanist files on at least one of them! Feels like a missed opportunity. Ah well, there will be plenty of time to snoop on the Mechanist’s personal logs later...
B) Of course, this room also had a front desk, with its own working terminal and – when I sent Victor around to check it out – a floor safe immediately underneath it. I had Victor crack the Advanced floor safe with his lockpicking skills (mostly ammo – including missiles – a gold watch, a subnosed .44 pistol, and some pre-War money – I had Victor take the non-missile ammo, the watch, and the money), then hack the Novice terminal to see what was on it. Beyond the safe controls, and a warning that all employees were subject to a Non-Disclosure Agreement so keep your yaps shut, there were two options, “Announcements” and “Service Requests.” “Service Requests” was just full of fun fluff text about people bringing in their computers to be repaired – including Henrietta Blanche, whose terminal just “suddenly stopped working” over a matter of days, crashing on boot (the front desk person suspected the computer was overheating due to the fact that the woman was apparently covered in cat hair); Bronwyn Sullivan, whose terminal refused to send intramail or notify her of anything (as per the tech, apparently a former employee sabotaged the computer before leaving the company – he recommended giving her a new computer as he wasn’t 100% sure he could fix the old one); and Calvin Crenshaw, who was complaining about his seven-year-old terminal crashing when he tried playing “Red Menace” (tech was like “he HAS to buy a new computer at this point, this one doesn’t have the memory for anything other than text-based games”) –
But “Announcements” had something more interesting in it – a message from the General Manager reminding all employees that following the code of conduct meant no tampering with ANY shipments labeled “RB-2851,” under threat of termination and prolonged questioning from the folks downstairs; wearing your name tag correctly; and no longer letting customers, friends, or family into the back room. Suspicious, eh? Well, to you – I already know what’s going on here, and it involves loads of unethical experimentation on people’s brains! You know, just standard Fallout science. :p
C) With the front room thus explored, and Victor and Ada now aware there was something fishy going on here even pre-War (who is surprised), it was time to head into the back room! After disarming a laser tripwire at the entrance, of course (free crystal and fiber optics, yay). Victor and Ada thus headed down a short hall, then around a small catwalk and down some steps into a very large room full of cabinets, crates, tools, and other such repair-related junk. I had Victor poke around for a bit, picking up some useful junk from some of the cabinets; checking out the one “working” terminal down there and the work order next to it (turns out it was Henrietta’s computer, and it did indeed need a clean – unfortunately, when Victor tried to get into it, all he got was a message about how “terminal unit systems have been stopped.” Maybe they didn’t get the cat hair out of it before the apocalypse); grabbing a laser pistol to disassemble later from behind a couple of the crates –
And finding a strange device on the wall, next to a bit that was slightly recessed. He called over Ada, who scanned it with her new M-SAT “I’m totally a Mechanist robot” scanner –
D) And sure enough, the wall opened up (after a prolonged sequence of hidden doors designed to resemble the door sequence from Mystery Science Theater 3000 – apparently the creators were fans :) ) to reveal a mysterious hallway sloping down to another security door at the bottom! Victor and Ada thus cautiously made their way down, avoiding some rad barrels, and I prepared myself for trying to find the terminal to open the doors –
Only for a voice to go, “Returning robot detected, opening security doors,” and, well, the security doors (all three sets of them) opening. Okay then! That’s useful! I made note of the sign on the wall saying this was “Robotics Technology Facility RB-2851” (aka where all those mystery shipments were going,” then had Victor head in. The opening area looked like some sort of big checkpoint, with a gated “front desk” with a skeleton slumped over it; a small personal storage area full of lockers; and a big old generator off to the side. I had Victor head into the locker area to look for goodies –
Just in time to hear the announcer say, “No biosigns detected. Continue.” What, is Victor suddenly not alive anymore? O.o I think I would have noticed if he wasn’t, announcer! (Though I guess maybe the announcer thinks he’s a robobrain because he’s with Ada...or it’s just broken. Either way.) Anyway, I had Victor grab a couple of items from the lockers, then have a nice healthy Hungry Man dinner and a can of water when he informed me he was hungry and thirsty. I then had him explore around a little more, discovering that dead ahead, past the check-in area, was a hallway full of all SORTS of laser traps to discourage unwanted visitors – but off to the side, at the back of the generator room, was a little tunnel dug into the foundations of the building. Meaning all I had to decide was whether I wanted to sneak down the tunnel, or spend my time disarming traps in the main hallway!
E) ...I chose Option 3: “Retreat back to the main repair room and have Victor set up his tent and go to sleep since he’s been tired since 6 PM and I expect him to crash any minute.” Yeah, no matter which path he chose, I wanted to make sure he had enough AP to take on whatever came his way. And so Victor headed back and hit the sack at 8:30 PM, getting a nice full eight hours of sleep before rising at 4:30 AM the next morning. I had him putter around the room a bit more, grabbing some Wonderglue and a flip lighter from a toolbox I hadn’t noticed before, then set up his portable workbench and had him scrap the laser pistol he’d found for parts –
Then noticed the weird Deadeye Submachine Gun that I’d picked up that was still hanging around in my inventory. And went, “You know what, I don’t intend to use it here, but it might be something I want to use in the future – maybe on a Silver Shroud mission? I know he has his own Silver Submachine gun, but this might be better than that...let’s go ahead and upgrade it!” So I went ahead and had Victor give it a Powerful Receiver, a Reflex Sight, a Short Light Barrel, a Recoil-Compensating Stock, a Large Quick-Eject Drum, and a Muzzle Brake. Required him to stop midway through to get more items with screws off Ada, but hey – worth it to get the gun fully upgraded! Have no idea if it’ll be a good gun for me, but we’ll give it a try during a future mission, see if the Deadeye ability makes firing these notoriously-inaccurate monsters a little more bearable. (And if not, well, now it’s worth more to any traders who might want it.)
And that is where I wrapped things up for the day! Next time, with Victor freshly rested and ready to go, the pair shall go off and start making their way through the Mechanist’s headquarters! Dunno yet if I’m going to do the big fight or sneak in via the back elevator, but I suspect I’ll have plenty of time to think about it. :P
Writing: Another Sunday spent playing Fallout 4, another Sunday spent updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression document – and while I was able to straight-up copy a few things from the above write-up (mainly the stuff about the computers on display in the front lobby of the RobCo Sales & Service Center, and all the Service Requests on that computer), I did also, as usual, make a number of changes to the fanfic version of events (beyond having Alice and her new cat tagging along, of course) –
A) Victor never bothered setting up a tent outside the Boston Airport, because he doesn’t consider that lounge area one of his settlements – to him, that’s Brotherhood of Steel territory (and it IS a VERY weird place to have a settlement, so I think his take is more logical)
B) Alice helped check out all the computers in the front room of the Center with Victor (looking at the E-330 and the E-601, and admitting the latter didn’t seem like a bad computer), and cracked open the floor safe behind the desk while Victor handled the terminal (and did indeed take the snubnosed .44 pistol that was in there, as SHE could use another gun). Also Victor did not waste any time trying to play a game on the RX-9000 (though he did mention he would try one of his game holotapes if they DID have the time), and got into the front desk computer thanks to Alice passing on a hint from Wonderland (“everyone went up in this even before the bombs, thanks to the tortoises having their way” – a reference to the fact that the right word for this terminal was “SMOKE” and that the brand on the in-game cigarettes you can collect for crafting (they give you cloth, funnily enough) is Grey Tortoise)
C) In a rare major change, I swapped around the order of events after the gang discovered the mysterious device on the wall next to the hidden doors! In this universe, Victor yawned midway through telling Ada to try the M-SAT on the device, realized how tired he was, and decided that it made more sense to camp out in the repair room for the night and did all his gun scrapping and upgrading the evening of 3/30/2288 before hitting the sack, then had Ada open the door so they could check out what was beyond it the morning of 3/31/2288. I felt that made a little more sense in a non-video-game universe than them STARTING to probe into the Mechanist’s lair, only to give up a few minutes in and head back to the repair room because Victor was tired. *taps head* Logic!
D) And, just to be thorough, Alice was the one who discovered the secret tunnel in the generator room, while Victor was checking the lockers in the storage area in the checkpoint (and getting confused when the announcer said “no biosigns detected,” since he was pretty sure he’d have noticed if he woke up dead. XD
So yeah – a handful of little changes, and one big one because I felt it made more sense timeline-wise. Nothing too dramatic, though, I’d say! Next time, Alice, Victor, and Ada (Kit has been left behind in the repair room with their cart of junk to lick his butt in safety) start working their way into the Mechanist’s lair! Remind me to have Victor take out the Tactical Tesla Electric Death Machine – I suspect it’s going to be useful in a facility full of robots.
YouTube: With Gray now officially part of my Sunday Workout Block (see below), the only video I had to worry about watching tonight was the latest from Jon of Many A True Nerd – “Fallout: London - Part 43 - It's Your Funeral!” The continuing adventures of Lady Aria as she –
A) Let Mad Jack tell her all about his absolutely horrible and heartbreaking backstory – turns out the reason he has some issues with fighting? It’s because he was abducted with a bunch of other boys from the orphanage where he grew up by raiders and made to fight all his friends to the death. Ending with his best friend Sam, who refused to fight him because Jack had practically raised him. D: Poor Jack became the best at fighting out of a mad desire to live, and ended up as their best prize fighter for a while, until other gangs began refusing to send people to fight him, because he was so good he just kept killing their best guys. Eventually Jack finally saw an opportunity for escape, mutilated his handlers, and fled. It was just – cripes, this poor man. No WONDER he struggles with depression and suicidal feelings – especially since the career he fell into once he was free was just straight-up beating people up again! I feel like his companion quest should be giving him a hug, because he DESERVES it. No wonder Jon said that probably the best part of the Fallout: London experience is getting to know the companions – they really do knock it out of the park with their personalities and backstories!
B) Decided to finally finish up some of her business with the Vagabonds, since she had a day to kill before the funeral of the woman she’d murdered to help advance Angel’s plans last episode – after all, she’d rather left them hanging after breaking Yvette’s friend out of an Isle of Dogs prison so long ago! So she proceeded to the safe house in Greenwich to cap off that quest (Yvette cheerfully thanking her for her good work), then headed back to the Vagabond’s pub headquarters to talk with leader Sebastian Gaunt. He was very pleased with her work and offered her a place in the Vagabonds permanently, if she wanted it, to share their blood and their fate. Aria was interested, but wanted to know what Gaunt saw as the Vagabond’s fate –
And as it turned out, what he wanted most of all was to wipe their enemies the Syndicate off the face of the earth. The gangs had been at war for ten freaking years, and Gaunt wanted to end it, and end it decisively in the Vagabond’s favor. Aria was a little “um, this seems a little worrying, why the hell are you so revenge-focused?” and managed to coax out of him the real reason he was angry – basically, his father, who was all about uniting the boroughs to try and stand up to the gentry, was killed by a Syndicate member. So now Gaunt wants them all dead, and damn the consequences. Accordingly, his final initiation task for Aria? Kill a Syndicate enforcer and bring him their lapel pin as proof. Aria was like “okay, I’ll do it, but I am thinking that maybe we should think about replacing you as leader, since you seem to be stuck in a terrible cycle of violence.” And to be fair, she may not be the only one who feels that way, as when she went to Johnny “Shrapnel” (a guy with, you guessed it, some shrapnel stuck in his head) for a few supplies for the job, she was able to use her Lovecraft-heightened Charisma to coax out of him that he too was starting to get tired of the bloodshed – where will it end and all that. Hmmmm...something to keep in mind going forward!
C) Went looking for a Syndicate enforcer (known as a Sniffer, amusingly enough) to kill for their lapel pin – in the heavily-irradiated MILLENNIUM DOME of all places. Because, apparently, there was a guy there, just hanging out in the middle of the London equivalent of the Glowing Sea of all places! Well, Aria had been meaning to finally check that place out, so she and Mad Jack ventured forth, starting at the Golden Elm pub on the edge of the irradiated hellhole and making their way inward. Fortunately, Aria’s supplies of Rad-X and Rad-Away were big enough that she could rely on them and not have to break out the hazmat suit to survive the rads – which is good, because along the way, she and Mad Jack ran into a whole flock of Lamphrey Floaters (which Aria eventually had to desperately outrun in a panic), a Legendary Glowing Deathclaw (which, again, was supposed to be a Womble – apparently they’ve glitched in Jon’s game and returned to their original reptilian form), and – right outside the Dome itself – a whole mess of bloatflies, including a bloatmother (ewww). Fortunately, the pair managed to survive all these encounters, and – after a quick trip into the nearby tube station, which mainly just had ghouls in it, along with a flooded tunnel that Jon suspected might be a back entrance into the Dome – got into the Dome without issue! Where they found everyone was chill with them –
EXCEPT the Isle of Dogs guy they were sent to kill, because apparently word has finally gotten around that Aria’s throwing her lot in with the Vagabonds. No more walking around the Isle of Dogs safe and sound in her neutrality for her, it seems! Anyway, Aria, who didn’t want a bloodbath, snuck up on the Sniffer and only killed him once he started shooting at her – then, once his lapel pin was collected, decided to see how this place could be one of the biggest trading hubs in London when it was in the middle of, you know, the most irradiated place in London. Answer?
Unclear! I mean, yes, a lot of the people in the main trading area were ghouls, and a number of the others were wearing hazmat suits, but there were still plenty of just regular people hanging around the shops, apparently deciding getting radiation poisoning was worth the selection. And the main market floor itself was in the middle of the dome, which is apparently FUCKING OPEN TO THE SKY. Like, even if the area wasn’t Radiation Central, wouldn’t you want a roof to keep out the weather? *shakehead* I guess It Just Works ™ Aria at least had a decent time wandering around the shops, and while she couldn’t get any of the named characters to chat with her (suggesting that the location is part of a faction quest line – at least if she has to come back here for Angel, she’s got the place marked so she can fast-travel now!), she was able to purchase some Magic Milk from a guy named Charlie, which can reduce a rad count of over 600, so – yeah. Totally worth it to brave the radiation and the Floaters and the Bloatflies to come here!
D) Returned to the Vagabonds to show Gaunt her newly-collected pin and get officially inducted into the gang – this involved him telling her to keep the pin as a trophy and bestowing upon her an official Vagabond hat, which just so happens to give +2 to Luck. A pretty decent hat for someone who loves her criticals as much as Aria – though I doubt she’ll ever be swapping her crown out for it. XD Anyway, with that sorted, Gaunt then invited her to join him and the boys in the lounge to talk about his big plans for the gang war – Aria went ahead and did so, and it transpired that what he wanted was to use Aria as a sort of elite Commando unit to help really put the hurt on the Syndicate and pay them back for the last time they ventured deep into Vagabond territory. Preferably before they got their nuclear reactor up and running, because THEN the Gentry would send their Tommies into the area to help secure the power source and the Syndicate would be basically untouchable. So he’d tasked three of his men to come up with plans on how to do that. Aria (with the help of some Intelligence-boosting drugs) noted that Blind Nelson, the guy USUALLY in charge of the plans, was nowhere to be seen – Gaunt explained that he was sitting this one out, as HE wanted them to lay low for a while, but Gaunt wasn’t having that. Aria quietly noted that Blind Nelson could potentially be an ally if and when it came time to overthrow Gaunt, then did the rounds and asked the three fellows present about their plans:
I. “Bullettooth” Anthony mentioned that one of the big problems they were facing was that the Syndicate simply had more and better guns than they did, and wanted to steal a bunch from a depot the Gentry had in a warehouse near West India Quay. Gaunt was like “there’s no way Aria could do that on her own” – Anthony tried to convince him by saying he had a friend who could just make a few crates go missing, so all Aria had to do was open the loading bay doors, but Gaunt insisted that the best thing to do would be to just blow the place to kingdom come and deny the Syndicate the weapons. If Aria could grab some stuff while getting the explosives placed, fine, but the important thing was to wreck the depot and cripple their enemies.
II. Johnny “Shrapnel” said that what HE wanted to do was take out the Dredge – a floating prison boat with a bunch of their guys on it. His plan consisted of freeing everyone on board, then sinking it to the bottom of the river – Gaunt was like “how the FUCK is she supposed to get on the most closely-guarded boat in the whole of London? And if we go blowing it up, we’re gonna get labeled as terrorists by the Syndicate – they’re already making noises to that effect, given how we busted out Yvette’s friend.” (Excuse me, weren’t you JUST team “blow it up” in regards to Anthony’s plan?) Johnny reminded him that the guys stuck on the boat had grit, and they’d be better back in the gang than rotting in prison; Gaunt admitted they could use more hands and said that Aria thought she was sneaky enough (which she most definitely is), she could try it. Johnny let her know where she should go (the warden’s office near the back of the boat, since that’s where all the cells were opened), and encouraged her to let everyone out and sink the boat as per his original idea – Gaunt was like “no, just get our guys, forget the others,” but Aria was already thinking about how she could curry favor with other gangs if she let their men out too…
III. And “Chill” Winston pointed out that the Syndicate had more general supplies – namely food and medicine – than they did, and that they should try to find a way to bleed off some of their excess – prompting Gaunt to go “I swear, Winston, if you’re going to suggest another fucking train robbery…” XD Winston was like “hear me out, I know just the train she can knick, it’ll be fine” – Gaunt countered that he let Winston talk him into breaking into the lab to get supplies, and they just barely broke even on THAT –
And Winston countered his counter by pointing out the lab is where Aria came from, and SHE’S proven to be a hell of an asset. Gaunt allowed the point and said if Aria wanted to try the job, she could. Winston told Aria what she’d have to do (get to Poplar Station, take out the Syndicate there, redirect the train to Canning Town Station, then hop on and ride it there to meet the Vagabonds who would be unloading the supplies), and Gaunt followed up by handing her some explosives and telling her that if things seemed like they were going south, she was to blow up the train to deny the supplies to the Syndicate and destroy one of their main supply lines. Seems like he’s perfectly in favor of blowing shit up if HE’S the one suggesting it. >( But yeah, that wrapped up the meeting, with Aria preparing for three very exciting jobs that Jon was eager to get to. Seems like going and continuing the Vagabond quest line was the right call after all! Though the comments were warning that there might be a bit of a sad ending to it...we’ll see what happens when we get closer to that point!
E) Returned to Westminster to attend the funeral of Cecily, the woman she murdered, and get Cecily’s friend, Baron Nigel Honeysett, to authenticate Smythe’s appointment as Lord Chancellor! Though Aria actually arrived at around 2 AM, long after the main funeral was over. Nigel was still there, though, mourning his friend – and while he found Aria presenting him with the documents to authenticate to be both highly irregular and very crass, a few carefully-chosen words on Aria’s part made him realize that she’d killed Cecily specifically to let him know that radical beliefs like hers (such as reducing the length of indentured servitude) would not be tolerated, and that he should try and “smooth the waters” as it were. He thus bitterly put his stamp on the documents, more or less securing Smythe’s position as the new Lord Chancellor. All Aria had to do now was deliver the documents to the Prime Minister!
...Except, well, she couldn’t. Because, as she found out during an earlier wander around Westminster, there isn’t one at the moment – the old one stood down given the chaos currently happening in government. Meaning, if Aria wants to get Smythe her chancellorship, she first has to help grease the wheels of democracy and get someone elected as Prime Minister! Which she was more than willing to do – next time. XD So yeah, next week, we’ll see Aria help out with the election process – and, if there’s time, start those Vagabond missions she picked up! And, if we’re lucky, perhaps Mad Jacks’ companion quest will pop up too...we will see next Sunday!
Workout: Back on the bike again tonight, pedaling my way through:
A) The entirety of the latest from GrayStillPlays – “I had to choo choo choose who lives,” aka Gray plays Choo-Choose! This is a rather bizarre little game based on the famous Trolley Problem (you know, the one where you have to pick if you’re going to kill one person or five while stuck on a runaway trolley), where you are nominally in control of a steam train, and you are regularly presented with choices on who or what that train should run over. These choices range from the traditional “one person vs five,” to “cat versus pregnant lady,” to “lesbian couple or gay couple,” to “people who urinate in the elevator but graduated with honors versus people who donate blood but cut veins” to “beaver vs the concept of democracy” to “Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse vs our version of Catdog” to “King Leonidas from 300 vs our stand-in for the Pope.” ...yeah, it’s a pretty bizarre little game. You’re given stats about the choices you made after the first couple of “acts” (how many people, kids, and cats you killed in Act 1; stuff like the average age of your victims, the sex ratio, your apparently most hated name, the act you were most likely to kill someone for, and the act you were most likely to spare someone for in Act 2), and newspaper articles showing how you affected the world in Acts 3 and 4 (the latter being an elimination tournament where whoever survives your deadly choices gets to be ruler of the world). Gray, of course, tried to make the worst choices possible – murdering as many people in a go as he could, sparing those who had bloody knives sitting next to them on the tracks, always prioritizing cats over people, destroying democracy instead of beavers, and making sure King Leonidas survived the elimination tournament – and thus got stuff like beavers building their own societies (in a nod to the game Timberborn), sleep being canceled (because he ran over a sleeping lady instead of Robin Hood), and “THIS IS SPARTA!” becoming the global greeting (guess what prompted that). Just – it was very weird. Even Gray thought so, and he’s the master of weird shit. XD But I suppose it was fun too! Good to see him branching out into games other than GTA V and Happy Wheels again!
B) The first ten-odd minutes of “D&D But... It's Pokémon | Oxventure” by, well, Oxventure! Yes, I am making an effort to start catching up on all these Oxventure videos I’ve missed, and we’re starting with “Luke Westaway crams a bunch of Pokemon into D&D and makes Ellen, Andy, and Johnny play the resultant hopefully-fun mess.” XD The situation so far is that Backpacker Pearl (Ellen) and Skull (Andy) have both joined Team Rocket – Skull because he enjoys making problems for people (being one of those NPCs who likes to block paths), Pearl because they won’t give her back her backpack until she gets them a Pikachu – and have been tasked by Leader Giovanni to investigate the viability of nearby Mount Moon and the cave systems within as a base. They’ve each been given two Pokemon (Skull a Weepinbell and a Magikarp – aka one okay Pokemon and one generally considered useless; Pearl a Ekans and a Spearow – aka two decent Pokemon who are natural enemies because Spearows like to eat Ekans) and a couple of potions, and put under the guidance of a seasoned Team Rocket member – Meowth (Johnny)! Except it’s not THAT Meowth, it’s another, more New York Meowth that also learned to talk and is very annoyed the more famous one won’t return his calls anymore. XD So far, Skull has managed through the luck of a Nat 20 on a Strength roll to beat a piece of beef into Pokemon-restoring chili, and both Pearl and Skull have used a Pokemon Center to make sure their Pokemon are at full health before they go on their journey. Also Skull renamed his Plant-Skull and Fish-Skull. XD I left off with them preparing to visit the market – we’ll see what they get and where their journey goes from here tomorrow!
Whew -- got a lot done there! AND it looks like I'll be getting to bed at least a LITTLE earlier than I usually do on a Sunday, yay~ :p So yeah, off to hit the sheets I go -- got a bit of a weird week coming up here, and I need my rest. Night all!
