A Quiet (But Humid) Thursday
Jul. 24th, 2025 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, the heat and humidity definitely picked up today, with it being quite unpleasantly sticky when I left work this afternoon, bleh. >( And tomorrow's supposed to be even worse, with a chance for thunderstorms, double-bleh. But while the weather wasn't fantastic, my actual day was honestly pretty good overall:
Work – Another pretty quiet day at work – I took one credit card call in the morning, then spent most of the rest of the day working on obituaries and related roster-maintenance-related tasks. Though I did have to contact one of the people who works on our database to ask if she could add pledge overpayments to the new “hey, these gifts were posted to the wrong campaign” report after a look at today’s GL revealed that we had about $600 in “one-time gifts” for the 2025 Appeal from people overpaying their pledges. And then my supervisor wanted me to track down the reason the pledges ended up overpaid so we could reach out to people as necessary and let them know what happened. Which, you know, is only polite. So I’ll be working on that during the half-day tomorrow! Should make the time go by, at least. :)
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 4: The Path of Broken Oaths!” We picked up with the gang – having all had a good night’s sleep except for Robin, who was very tired and needed a pee – waking up and heading off to investigate the nearby hamlet and find out why they hadn’t renewed their bonds with the local Green Man to clear their debt to the Wyrdwood for killing that ash tree a couple of episodes ago! This involved:
A) The gang finding that the Green Man had kindly given them some provisions for the journey – little wicker baskets with mushrooms and nuts. Cressida was rather sad to find they did not contain any wine – Robin was like “It’s six o’clock in the morning!” to which Cressida replied “It’s wine o’clock somewhere!” Ellen immediately tried to make that non-canon but Johnny was like “noooo, she definitely said that.” XD
B) The gang heading to the hamlet (getting there in mere minutes thanks to the power of the Wyrdwood) and finding a bustling, apparently normal town – and then Willowfine called out “hello good people” and almost everyone ran inside. Fortunately, one woman stayed out and asked what they were on about – Willowfine introduced the group and said they were there on behalf of the Green Man, who wanted to know why they were late renewing their bonds –
Cue the woman, Gracie, going “hasn’t he had enough from us?!” The group proceeded to question her and her husband Lionel, and learned that APPARENTLY the Green Man has been showing up on the regular and demanding things from the town – six chickens, all the town’s silver, bolts of cloth, etc. The quintet quickly reached the conclusion that the town was being shaken down by a fraudster pretending to be the Green Man (Happen briefly considered the idea that the Green Man was just getting greedy, but then was like “no, he would have sent us with a more specific demand if that was the case,” and Johnny confirmed these bonds were held up more by acts of service than material goods anyway). Though it was a fraudster with powers of his own, if so, as Lionel explained that they’d tried to argue the first time the “Green Man” demanded something –
And then he’d had to watch as his friend Mark dropped down dead from merely a glance. They decided trying to fight back wasn’t worth it after that. :( Happen then nearly tanked the entire investigation by asking where Mark was buried and saying that he wanted to dig the grave up to make sure there was a body in there, in case Mark was in fact an accomplice. Lionel was very offended, and Robin had to grab Happen and steer him away before his -1 Charisma got him into any more trouble. XD Fortunately, they did get out of Lionel where the town made its offerings – a large flat stone just outside of town – and that plus Willowfine using Locate Object to try and detect where the town’s silver might have ended up (with her getting a MASSIVE ping from Cressida’s fancy dress – she wealthy) gave them a direction to go in and start investigating.
C) The gang heading toward the stone and giving it a look-over to see what they could find! Poor Investigation rolls meant that Willowfine, Lug, Happen, and Cressida all just looked at the big stone table they found there and thought “STONE” – but simple country boy Robin noticed that there was still grass under the stone table. Dead grass, yes, but still present grass – meaning this stone had only been put into place here recently. There was also a lack of cart wheel tracks or any sign that the stone had been dragged – just some footprints – meaning whoever put it there was possibly enormously strong. Robin communicated this to the rest of the group, and Happen led the others in following the tracks over to where there was a little “bolthole” of sorts in a big craggy chunk of stone sticking out of the hills of the moors. (Finding a little bag of silver along the way, which was promptly passed along to Cressida because her talents included keeping money safe. XD) The gang wanted to scout the area, but was worried about whoever lived in there seeing them from this angle –
And then Willowfine went, “Hey, remember when Cressida was invisible yesterday? Wasn’t that neat?” XD Happen politely asked Cressida if she could find it in herself to help them by using her talents to check the cave – Cressida was fine with that and very carefully picked her way over to the cave’s entrance (holding up her dress so she didn’t ruin it any further). She didn’t see any signs of anyone being inside, so she returned and reported this to the others. Reassured that they weren’t walking into an ambush, the quintet proceeded forward, led by Willowfine and Robin –
And then Willowfine, on a good Perception check, stopped suddenly short, because she realized that the ground directly in front of the cave looked a little TOO natural. Like it was an illusion covering a trap. A hypothesis immediately proved by Robin, who walked forward, stepped on a spike in the secret Spike Growth trap, took six points of piercing damage –
And, because he only has four hit points total, promptly passed out from the pain, allowing Morven to take control again! She was obviously baffled, but the others brought her up to speed as she got herself out of the trap. Once she understood what they were doing and why, she Misty Stepped into the cave to find a chest full of silver; fancy bolts of cloth against the wall; a pot with a chicken dish in it; and the remains of a Green Man costume. She called her findings back to the others, then cast Detect Thoughts to see if she could sense any people around –
And got a ping from right above her. Moments before the ground underneath the other four exploded with terrible grasping mushroomy tendrils which tried to make a grab at them. Cressida managed to escape (with a lucky Inspiration-fueled reroll), but Lug and Willowfine were firmly restrained around the calves – and Happen got full-on yanked halfway into the ground thanks to crit 1. Praise Cadence! XD
D) The gang thus starting a battle against the Fraudulent Green Man, who happened to be standing atop his cave home in partial costume and was ready to rumble! The first round of combat so far has consisted of:
I. Morven Dispelling Magic and getting the Spike Growth and grasping mushroom tendrils to go away, rolling her eyes about how she has to do everything around here XD
II. Happen attempting to shoot the Fraudulent Green Man – and rolling another crit 1. XD Johnny was going to have the shot hit Lug instead (because, as the dice once again decreed, it’s ALWAYS poor Lug), but Luke pulled out the old Blades In The Dark mechanics for a moment to offer Johnny a Devil’s Bargain – in exchange for not hurting his teammates, Luke would have Happen’s bowstring snap, meaning Happen would get hurt AND be without his preferred weapon. Johnny was like “that’s actually worse than what I was planning to do!” and rolled that Happen took six points of slashing damage from the snapped string. Everyone was like “oh, the old Luck Pervert must be loving this,” but Luke admitted he was starting to feel like Happen was finding it harder and harder to rejoice in bad luck now that he was away from his temple and shit like this kept happening. XD
III. The Fraudulent Green Man attempting to hit poor Happen with a Mind Spike to give him a potentially-deadly headache – only for Morven to Counterspell it, complaining about how she had to use up all her good spell slots on this sort of nonsense. XD
IV. And Cressida taking advantage of Invisibility to sneak into the cave and get her hands on the silver, hoping to hold it for ransom! (And maybe take some for herself, like all good banks. :P)
And that is where I left it! Next time, Lug and Willowfine take their turns as the Fraudulent Green Man comes around to try and confront the gang at closer range, and we see how this adventure wraps up! As the TV Tropes page said, it is kind of amusing that this particular problem is just the village dealing with a trumped-up Scooby Doo Hoax instead of anything more dangerous. XD But then again, I guess we don’t know how dangerous the Fraudulent Green Man really is yet...we’ll find out!
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice made it through Grout’s little museum room to his wife, containing not only trinkets of their time together, but also her expertly-preserved corpse, her expertly-preserved brain, and her-less-than-expertly-preserved heart (turned into a necklace – the Queen of Hearts thought it a striking fashion statement). Seems like Grout lost the struggle against the Malkavian insanity a lot earlier than he originally thought! Alice was appropriately creeped out by it all. But she persevered, found out how to open the door to Grout’s bedroom (with a little help from Cheshire and a little fumbling with the phonograph), and charged in, ready to give the primogen a piece of her mind –
Only to find a man-sized ash pile on the bed, with chains trailing from it to the bedposts and a big old stake stuck into it at about chest height. Uh-oh. (Yes, I know you find a skeleton in the actual game, but given that makes no sense given every other vampire crumbles to ash when killed, I made the Executive Decision to change it. I’m allowed to do that every so often.) And unfortunately, things are only about to get worse...though at least Alice gets a small reprieve in that I’m not starting THAT bit until next week! :p Enjoy the pause, girl – you’ll wish you had if you don’t!
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – went with another onlyabidoang video tonight in my quest to clean up my Watch Later a little bit: “ALL ABOUT FAIRIES in The Sims 4! (Enchanted by Nature)!” A more in-depth look at the new Fairy occult state and how it works in the new pack! Covering:
A) How one becomes a fairy (it’s a two-part process, with the potential fairy obtaining a special seedling to summon Mother Nature and get the “become a fairy” potion, then heading to the Moondrop Springs pond in Everdew to bathe in the waters and complete the transformation)
B) All the unlockable abilities fairies get (including inflicting and curing ailments; learning important information about a Sim like Likes & Dislikes, Turn-Ons & Turn-Offs, career, and traits; the ability to bring gnomes to life to help with cleaning, repairing, gardening, and protection; the ability to make any object either broken, burned, or pristine, and unspoil or spoil food and drinks; changing a Sim’s emotional state to one of their choosing; releasing their emotions and inflicting them on everyone else in the room; influencing relationships between themselves and other Sims, or between two other Sims entirely; instantly tending plants and later being able to enchant them to tend themselves for a while; instantly grow all plants in a given area to maturity; generate random uncommon and rare harvestables into their inventory; get more emotional force from positive interactions or negative interactions; amplify the relationship changes caused by using fairy powers, or negate them completely; and improve their self-emotional-force regeneration, or gain the ability to regenerate emotional force by sleeping, among many, MANY others)
C) And all fairy abilities and other interactions NOT tied to the skill tree (there was a pretty good amount of overlap with yesterday’s “10 Features” video here, though it did also include the reveal that fairies do have a teleport along with their natural flying ability (“Instantly Fly Here”); how to stop being a fairy – another two-part process involving summoning Mother Nature to bottle up your fairy essence and then returning it to Moondrop Springs; and the fact that fairy abilities NEVER FAIL. Like, EVER.)
Interesting video – though yeah, the sheer amount of STUFF fairies can learn how to do/just do naturally and the fact that their abilities never EVER fail has convinced me this lifestate is INCREDIBLY overpowered. I mean, I’m sure they’re fun to play with, but if vampires, werewolves, and spellcasters can have their abilities fail occasionally, especially when they’re at the lower power levels, I think fairies should have the same limitation! (Mermaids, aliens, and plantsims can be cut a break since they don’t get the fun skill trees other occults get.) Ah well – I don’t have the pack yet, so I can’t really bitch too much about it. And given that Abi’s most RECENT video is about all the bugs the pack currently has, I might not be picking it up anytime soon...
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – another nothing day over on Valice Multiverse (who is surprised), but I got something new into my Victor Luvs Alice queue for Friday – my VITD fic snippet “Blessing!” All about Smiler waking up the “morning” after the party where they first presented Joy Serum to the Advocates...and discovering that they now have glowing yellow eyes because an impressed Mar-Mal bestowed a blessing in the form of a second marmalisation during their sleep. They are a little ?! about it at first, as you might imagine. XD Felt like a good follow-up to reblogging the “Eating Gods” story yesterday, since that got me thinking a lot about Smiler and Mar-Mal’s relationship to each other in the relevant AUs. Hopefully people like it!
Yeah, not bad! And now I have to run off and get to bed, since I still have a half-day of work to get through tomorrow. :p Night all!
Work – Another pretty quiet day at work – I took one credit card call in the morning, then spent most of the rest of the day working on obituaries and related roster-maintenance-related tasks. Though I did have to contact one of the people who works on our database to ask if she could add pledge overpayments to the new “hey, these gifts were posted to the wrong campaign” report after a look at today’s GL revealed that we had about $600 in “one-time gifts” for the 2025 Appeal from people overpaying their pledges. And then my supervisor wanted me to track down the reason the pledges ended up overpaid so we could reach out to people as necessary and let them know what happened. Which, you know, is only polite. So I’ll be working on that during the half-day tomorrow! Should make the time go by, at least. :)
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 4: The Path of Broken Oaths!” We picked up with the gang – having all had a good night’s sleep except for Robin, who was very tired and needed a pee – waking up and heading off to investigate the nearby hamlet and find out why they hadn’t renewed their bonds with the local Green Man to clear their debt to the Wyrdwood for killing that ash tree a couple of episodes ago! This involved:
A) The gang finding that the Green Man had kindly given them some provisions for the journey – little wicker baskets with mushrooms and nuts. Cressida was rather sad to find they did not contain any wine – Robin was like “It’s six o’clock in the morning!” to which Cressida replied “It’s wine o’clock somewhere!” Ellen immediately tried to make that non-canon but Johnny was like “noooo, she definitely said that.” XD
B) The gang heading to the hamlet (getting there in mere minutes thanks to the power of the Wyrdwood) and finding a bustling, apparently normal town – and then Willowfine called out “hello good people” and almost everyone ran inside. Fortunately, one woman stayed out and asked what they were on about – Willowfine introduced the group and said they were there on behalf of the Green Man, who wanted to know why they were late renewing their bonds –
Cue the woman, Gracie, going “hasn’t he had enough from us?!” The group proceeded to question her and her husband Lionel, and learned that APPARENTLY the Green Man has been showing up on the regular and demanding things from the town – six chickens, all the town’s silver, bolts of cloth, etc. The quintet quickly reached the conclusion that the town was being shaken down by a fraudster pretending to be the Green Man (Happen briefly considered the idea that the Green Man was just getting greedy, but then was like “no, he would have sent us with a more specific demand if that was the case,” and Johnny confirmed these bonds were held up more by acts of service than material goods anyway). Though it was a fraudster with powers of his own, if so, as Lionel explained that they’d tried to argue the first time the “Green Man” demanded something –
And then he’d had to watch as his friend Mark dropped down dead from merely a glance. They decided trying to fight back wasn’t worth it after that. :( Happen then nearly tanked the entire investigation by asking where Mark was buried and saying that he wanted to dig the grave up to make sure there was a body in there, in case Mark was in fact an accomplice. Lionel was very offended, and Robin had to grab Happen and steer him away before his -1 Charisma got him into any more trouble. XD Fortunately, they did get out of Lionel where the town made its offerings – a large flat stone just outside of town – and that plus Willowfine using Locate Object to try and detect where the town’s silver might have ended up (with her getting a MASSIVE ping from Cressida’s fancy dress – she wealthy) gave them a direction to go in and start investigating.
C) The gang heading toward the stone and giving it a look-over to see what they could find! Poor Investigation rolls meant that Willowfine, Lug, Happen, and Cressida all just looked at the big stone table they found there and thought “STONE” – but simple country boy Robin noticed that there was still grass under the stone table. Dead grass, yes, but still present grass – meaning this stone had only been put into place here recently. There was also a lack of cart wheel tracks or any sign that the stone had been dragged – just some footprints – meaning whoever put it there was possibly enormously strong. Robin communicated this to the rest of the group, and Happen led the others in following the tracks over to where there was a little “bolthole” of sorts in a big craggy chunk of stone sticking out of the hills of the moors. (Finding a little bag of silver along the way, which was promptly passed along to Cressida because her talents included keeping money safe. XD) The gang wanted to scout the area, but was worried about whoever lived in there seeing them from this angle –
And then Willowfine went, “Hey, remember when Cressida was invisible yesterday? Wasn’t that neat?” XD Happen politely asked Cressida if she could find it in herself to help them by using her talents to check the cave – Cressida was fine with that and very carefully picked her way over to the cave’s entrance (holding up her dress so she didn’t ruin it any further). She didn’t see any signs of anyone being inside, so she returned and reported this to the others. Reassured that they weren’t walking into an ambush, the quintet proceeded forward, led by Willowfine and Robin –
And then Willowfine, on a good Perception check, stopped suddenly short, because she realized that the ground directly in front of the cave looked a little TOO natural. Like it was an illusion covering a trap. A hypothesis immediately proved by Robin, who walked forward, stepped on a spike in the secret Spike Growth trap, took six points of piercing damage –
And, because he only has four hit points total, promptly passed out from the pain, allowing Morven to take control again! She was obviously baffled, but the others brought her up to speed as she got herself out of the trap. Once she understood what they were doing and why, she Misty Stepped into the cave to find a chest full of silver; fancy bolts of cloth against the wall; a pot with a chicken dish in it; and the remains of a Green Man costume. She called her findings back to the others, then cast Detect Thoughts to see if she could sense any people around –
And got a ping from right above her. Moments before the ground underneath the other four exploded with terrible grasping mushroomy tendrils which tried to make a grab at them. Cressida managed to escape (with a lucky Inspiration-fueled reroll), but Lug and Willowfine were firmly restrained around the calves – and Happen got full-on yanked halfway into the ground thanks to crit 1. Praise Cadence! XD
D) The gang thus starting a battle against the Fraudulent Green Man, who happened to be standing atop his cave home in partial costume and was ready to rumble! The first round of combat so far has consisted of:
I. Morven Dispelling Magic and getting the Spike Growth and grasping mushroom tendrils to go away, rolling her eyes about how she has to do everything around here XD
II. Happen attempting to shoot the Fraudulent Green Man – and rolling another crit 1. XD Johnny was going to have the shot hit Lug instead (because, as the dice once again decreed, it’s ALWAYS poor Lug), but Luke pulled out the old Blades In The Dark mechanics for a moment to offer Johnny a Devil’s Bargain – in exchange for not hurting his teammates, Luke would have Happen’s bowstring snap, meaning Happen would get hurt AND be without his preferred weapon. Johnny was like “that’s actually worse than what I was planning to do!” and rolled that Happen took six points of slashing damage from the snapped string. Everyone was like “oh, the old Luck Pervert must be loving this,” but Luke admitted he was starting to feel like Happen was finding it harder and harder to rejoice in bad luck now that he was away from his temple and shit like this kept happening. XD
III. The Fraudulent Green Man attempting to hit poor Happen with a Mind Spike to give him a potentially-deadly headache – only for Morven to Counterspell it, complaining about how she had to use up all her good spell slots on this sort of nonsense. XD
IV. And Cressida taking advantage of Invisibility to sneak into the cave and get her hands on the silver, hoping to hold it for ransom! (And maybe take some for herself, like all good banks. :P)
And that is where I left it! Next time, Lug and Willowfine take their turns as the Fraudulent Green Man comes around to try and confront the gang at closer range, and we see how this adventure wraps up! As the TV Tropes page said, it is kind of amusing that this particular problem is just the village dealing with a trumped-up Scooby Doo Hoax instead of anything more dangerous. XD But then again, I guess we don’t know how dangerous the Fraudulent Green Man really is yet...we’ll find out!
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice made it through Grout’s little museum room to his wife, containing not only trinkets of their time together, but also her expertly-preserved corpse, her expertly-preserved brain, and her-less-than-expertly-preserved heart (turned into a necklace – the Queen of Hearts thought it a striking fashion statement). Seems like Grout lost the struggle against the Malkavian insanity a lot earlier than he originally thought! Alice was appropriately creeped out by it all. But she persevered, found out how to open the door to Grout’s bedroom (with a little help from Cheshire and a little fumbling with the phonograph), and charged in, ready to give the primogen a piece of her mind –
Only to find a man-sized ash pile on the bed, with chains trailing from it to the bedposts and a big old stake stuck into it at about chest height. Uh-oh. (Yes, I know you find a skeleton in the actual game, but given that makes no sense given every other vampire crumbles to ash when killed, I made the Executive Decision to change it. I’m allowed to do that every so often.) And unfortunately, things are only about to get worse...though at least Alice gets a small reprieve in that I’m not starting THAT bit until next week! :p Enjoy the pause, girl – you’ll wish you had if you don’t!
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – went with another onlyabidoang video tonight in my quest to clean up my Watch Later a little bit: “ALL ABOUT FAIRIES in The Sims 4! (Enchanted by Nature)!” A more in-depth look at the new Fairy occult state and how it works in the new pack! Covering:
A) How one becomes a fairy (it’s a two-part process, with the potential fairy obtaining a special seedling to summon Mother Nature and get the “become a fairy” potion, then heading to the Moondrop Springs pond in Everdew to bathe in the waters and complete the transformation)
B) All the unlockable abilities fairies get (including inflicting and curing ailments; learning important information about a Sim like Likes & Dislikes, Turn-Ons & Turn-Offs, career, and traits; the ability to bring gnomes to life to help with cleaning, repairing, gardening, and protection; the ability to make any object either broken, burned, or pristine, and unspoil or spoil food and drinks; changing a Sim’s emotional state to one of their choosing; releasing their emotions and inflicting them on everyone else in the room; influencing relationships between themselves and other Sims, or between two other Sims entirely; instantly tending plants and later being able to enchant them to tend themselves for a while; instantly grow all plants in a given area to maturity; generate random uncommon and rare harvestables into their inventory; get more emotional force from positive interactions or negative interactions; amplify the relationship changes caused by using fairy powers, or negate them completely; and improve their self-emotional-force regeneration, or gain the ability to regenerate emotional force by sleeping, among many, MANY others)
C) And all fairy abilities and other interactions NOT tied to the skill tree (there was a pretty good amount of overlap with yesterday’s “10 Features” video here, though it did also include the reveal that fairies do have a teleport along with their natural flying ability (“Instantly Fly Here”); how to stop being a fairy – another two-part process involving summoning Mother Nature to bottle up your fairy essence and then returning it to Moondrop Springs; and the fact that fairy abilities NEVER FAIL. Like, EVER.)
Interesting video – though yeah, the sheer amount of STUFF fairies can learn how to do/just do naturally and the fact that their abilities never EVER fail has convinced me this lifestate is INCREDIBLY overpowered. I mean, I’m sure they’re fun to play with, but if vampires, werewolves, and spellcasters can have their abilities fail occasionally, especially when they’re at the lower power levels, I think fairies should have the same limitation! (Mermaids, aliens, and plantsims can be cut a break since they don’t get the fun skill trees other occults get.) Ah well – I don’t have the pack yet, so I can’t really bitch too much about it. And given that Abi’s most RECENT video is about all the bugs the pack currently has, I might not be picking it up anytime soon...
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – another nothing day over on Valice Multiverse (who is surprised), but I got something new into my Victor Luvs Alice queue for Friday – my VITD fic snippet “Blessing!” All about Smiler waking up the “morning” after the party where they first presented Joy Serum to the Advocates...and discovering that they now have glowing yellow eyes because an impressed Mar-Mal bestowed a blessing in the form of a second marmalisation during their sleep. They are a little ?! about it at first, as you might imagine. XD Felt like a good follow-up to reblogging the “Eating Gods” story yesterday, since that got me thinking a lot about Smiler and Mar-Mal’s relationship to each other in the relevant AUs. Hopefully people like it!
Yeah, not bad! And now I have to run off and get to bed, since I still have a half-day of work to get through tomorrow. :p Night all!
