Another Very Lazy Sunday
Sep. 21st, 2025 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI dunno why, but I just didn't want to do much. Though possibly it had something to do with coming off a fairly busy and stressful vacation, then spending the past two days recapping said vacation for everyone online. :p However, despite my lazy mood, I did get stuff done, I'm pleased to say:
Tumblr: A not-so-busy day on the tumbls today, but some progress was made on various things –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Despite my general tired malaise, I did manage to chuck two things into my queue for tomorrow over here this afternoon:
A) A reblog of my friend Newt’s (aka dont-offend-the-bees) “WIP Monday” post from a week ago, where, after being tagged by his friend dear-monday, he shared a snippet of a Dead Boys Detective Agency fic he’s working on! Featuring an OC named Paul getting goaded into goofily flirting with the Cat King from DBDA by his friends, and having a bit of a mental crisis about it thanks to how gorgeous he finds the King. And said King happily going along with the goofy flirting, because it’s implied he can tell how flustered Paul is and he is loving it. XD It was a very good snippet – though I’m not particularly familiar with the series beyond what Newt reblogs onto his tumblr (which is – admittedly a lot), I feel like he captured the essence of the Cat King, or at least of a man who is really a cat, very well. And there was some truly excellent lines, including “The smile widens; Paul is treated to a sudden vivid vision of his own heart, chewed up and stuck between its teeth.” Like damn Newt, that is excellent stuff. Made sure to say as much in my tags! *nods* Though I didn’t reblog this just to be a good friend – I also reblogged it because Newt tagged me at the end to share a snippet of one of my WIPs in turn! Which led straight into –
B) My own WIP Monday post! :D Which, as you might expect, featured a snippet from “The Van Dort Vacancy,” since that’s what I’ve been working on the most recently. Specifically, it featured the bit where Victor runs into Barnaby “The Butcher” Fortescue III at his mother’s party, so I could show off how I’d described Barnaby from Victor’s perspective. Because, well, I thought it was pretty funny. XD Especially the paragraph about Barnaby being perpetually drunk – I very happily rambled on in my tags about every reference to certain events in the Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark series I stuck into that particular bit. Hopefully those who read my blog will enjoy it! :D I also made sure to tag some of my writer friends to share bits of their WIPs in return – specifically thesatiricaldemon, nebbychan, gaydragonwizards, and ace-of-tales. I don’t expect gaydragonwizards (aka Squid) to do it, as they generally only write cooperatively with other people and don’t usually participate in memes like these – I just wanted them to feel included. But we’ll see if we get any snippets from the other three! Wouldn’t mind another bit of “Beneath A Broken Sky” from Satirical, that’s for sure...
Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had one anon ask to chuck into the queue tonight, featuring the anon saying that, if you hate something, you really need to want to see it destroyed – otherwise what’s the fun in hating it? I had the Valicer In The Dark trio respond, with a puzzled Alice going “well, I agree that wanting the thing you hate destroyed is a big part of actually hating it, but I feel like ‘hatred’ and ‘fun’ should be opposite emotions” – only for Victor to point out that his old bully Gordon Tannen got a LOT of fun out of hating him, and Smiler reminding her that there are some people who just revel in negative emotions (“I don’t understand it either”). I clarified in the tags that Alice was just thinking in terms of how she didn’t have any fun hating Dr. Bumby – she doesn’t know about the more interesting forms of hate we have in the modern world. :P
Fallout 4: Okay, so, thanks to my general tiredness, I didn’t really play any of this game today – but, late this afternoon, while thinking about how long it had been since I’d actually played Fallout 4, I decided, “You know what? I should really at least open up Vortex to make sure I haven’t been logged out – or, if I have, to log back in again. Save me some trouble later on.” So I booted up Steam, and once that was done, booted up Vortex to see what was what. To my mild surprise and relief, I was still logged in, despite the extended absence from the game. “Okay,” I thought, “that’s good, don’t have to worry about that anyway…
“But you know what? Just to make sure that I stay logged in – and to make sure that everything’s still fine with the game – let’s hop into FO4 for just a minute or two. Just to be positive everything is kosher.”
So that’s exactly what I did! And I am pleased to say that yes, everything in Fallout 4 is working fine, and I am still safe from Bethesda’s updates. *nods* As for what I did for those few minutes in the game, I just had Victor wander around the main room of the surgery area, scoring a couple of stimpacks from a locker and a first aid kit respectively, plus some rubber lying next to a flask on a nearby shelving unit, then pop into Cerebral Reconditioning to grab the Buffout and Psycho from the wall-mounted first-aid kit there and a couple of purified water cans from the shelves below. *shrug* Nothing fancy, just getting the good stuff! I left him next to the “Brain Extraction” terminal in CR – next time I play properly, we’ll see what that says and continue poking around this horrible, terrible area! XD Gotta make sure I get all the goodies before going to confront the Mechanist, after all!
Writing: Ended up in a similar situation to my gaming here, in that I didn’t really do any actual writing today – but going and copying the snippet from Chapter Two of “The Van Dort Vacancy” for my “WIP Monday” post on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) led to me reading almost the entire story over again and doing a little bit of light editing here and there. Nothing major – just fixing a few missed words and tweaking a bit of phrasing here and there – but given I’m coming off eight or so days of not writing at all, I will take it! And it’s a good way to prep for spending the rest of the week getting the epilogue done and wrapping up the first draft of this thing. *nods* Hopefully I can get properly back into the groove tomorrow!
Workout: Hopped back on the bike tonight for the first time in over a week, and returned to watching those who you call when there’s something strange and it don’t look good with Ghostbusters: Answer The Call, aka the 2016 all-female-main-cast reboot! Which IS funny and IS a decent entry in the series and I will fight people on that. *shakehead* Anyway, I got through about the first half-hour today, covering Erin, Abby, and Holtz investigating the Aldridge Mansion and encountering the ghost there; the trio then getting kicked out of their respective universities and setting up shop above a Chinese restaurant (because the firehouse was waaaay too expensive in this universe); Patty discovering a ghost on the subway tracks in the station where she works after seeing the main villain go down there; and the main villain, Rowan, monologuing to himself about how he’s been bullied all his life, and now it’s his turn to be the bully as he prepares to spawn ghosts everywhere. I left off with Kevin, the dumb-as-rocks muscle man showing up, and Abby, Erin, and Holtz getting ready to interview him as their receptionist – we’ll see how much farther I get into the movie tomorrow!
FreeTube: As promised, got a double dose of Jon of Many A True Nerd Fallout content for you tonight –
A) First up, here’s the recap of “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 9 - Live Fast, Die Young” that I simply wasn’t able to get myself to complete yesterday due to distraction and tiredness reasons. This episode followed our favorite melee-only courier P. D. Shoot as she –
I. Headed to The Strip’s North Gate in Freeside to hit the heart of New Vegas itself! Well, after being warned by friendly NPC Old Ben not to run past the securitron greeter or else she’d get gunned down by said greeter and his buddies; standing back a moment immediately after said warning to watch some idiot run past the securitron greeter and get gunned down by said greeter and his buddies (WITHOUT being caught in the crossfire – very important that); and submitting to the necessary “credit check” by the greeter, which she easily passed due to her wealth of caps. The niceties must be observed. :P Anyway, she made it inside no problem, where she was greeted by everyone’s favorite cowboy AI Victor (temporarily hijacking one of the guard securitrons, as he does), who informed her that Mr. House, head honcho of New Vegas, was very eager to meet her, and that she should report to the Lucky 38 as soon as possible. And as Jon had indicated at the end of Part 8 he was both eager to meet House and make some money selling all of P. D.’s collectible snow globes (which apparently you do in the Lucky 38, as the NPC who takes them hangs out there), you’d think she would have gotten right on that, correct?
Nope! Because Jon had realized something over the intervening week between parts – namely, that entering and then exiting the Lucky 38 would trigger someone from the NCR to run up to P. D. and go “oh hey, we in the NCR just realized that you’re the protagonist! We’d like to invite you to do protagonist stuff for us, and to facilitate that, we are completely resetting our faction reputation with you! Any crimes you may have committed against us are now automatically forgiven!” Which would have been very handy –
If P. D.’s reputation with the NCR wasn’t currently “Accepted,” meaning they already liked her. Meaning going into the Lucky 38 now wouldn’t actually benefit P. D. in any way. Leading Jon to declare that he wanted to save the Lucky 38, and thus the faction reputation reset, for a while – at least until P. D. had actually committed some crimes against the NCR that could then be forgiven. (Well – crimes that they KNEW about, unlike the slaughter of Camp Forlorn Hope.) Which, fair enough – so instead, it was over to The Tops to confront Benny and get that quest moving in the right direction, right?
Wrong! Because entering and exiting The Tops triggers someone from Caesar’s Legion to run up to you and do the whole “hi protagonist, here’s a free faction reset so you can do stuff for us” speech! And again, P. D.’s reputation with them was currently “Neutral,” meaning there was no benefit from getting a reset at that time. So, basically, House and Benny were both off-limits until P. D. wrecked her reputation with those two factions. Which, uh, Jon indicated she would be doing – just not this very moment. XD
II. Headed to two other places in The Strip to advance her goals of getting loads of goodies, since she couldn’t take advantage of the main quest stuff. Specifically, she hit –
a. Gomorrah, one of the seedier casinos, to see what kind of drugs they were selling at the bar in the back! Since, you know, P. D. can use all drugs without fear and get them to last longer thanks to her special combinations of traits. Specifically, she was looking for Turbo – a drug that causes the protagonist to move in super-speed for a few moments (represented in the game by everything around the player moving in slow motion). As you might imagine (and will see later), that sort of thing would be very useful for her if she got into trouble out in the wilds! Happily, the ghoul bartender had five doses, and P. D. cheerfully snapped up the lot. Yay!
b. Michael Angelo’s, where the eponymous Michael made billboards for various places around the Mojave Wasteland, to get some very easy money and XP off him! Specifically, after greeting him, she first pretended to be a messenger from House asking why the billboards weren’t done yet for a couple rounds of conversation to grab a little “Speech check” XP, then let him know she was just kidding (mostly because she didn’t have QUITE enough Speech to extort 300 caps out of him XD) and switched tactics to pick up his quest, “Classic Inspiration!” For you see, the reason Michael hadn’t finished the billboards was because he’d lost his muse, and the reason he’d lost his muse was because the poor guy has agoraphobia and thus can’t go outside to look at the sights of the Mojave. P. D. was able to use her new Follower’s lab coat, some mentats, and a skill magazine to boost her Medicine skill up enough to diagnose him, then offered to help him get his inspiration back by taking pictures of inspiring signs and items throughout the wasteland for him. Michael happily handed over a camera and some film, and P. D. thus hit the fast travel road, taking pictures of:
1. the Bison Steve sign in Primm (which still looked pretty lawful, fortunately – good job, Primm Slimm)
2. the dinosaur thermometer in Novac (which led to her getting another dose of Turbo off traveling trader Dr. Ada, yay)
3. the Helios One sign at, well, Helios One (which panicked the locals a bit as the camera is TECHNICALLY a gun and they reacted as if she was shooting randomly)
4. the Camp McCarran sign at, well, Camp McCarran (which got P. D. up to level 11 and allowed her to up her Sneak, Speech, Unarmed, and Science skills)
5. and the Sunset Sarsaparilla HQ “Bottle” sign (from across the highway, because the sign itself was in Fiend territory and P. D. was NOT tangling with that group! Fortunately the game is VERY FORGIVING about the quality of the pictures you take and easily accepted that far-away shot).
Pics in hand, she then returned to Michael, who not only gave her a bunch of XP, but 1,250 caps – 750 for the job itself, and 500 as an extra reward for helping him. :D Easiest XP and money in the game, according to Jon! Definitely worth doing if you’re playing this installment!
III. Returned to Freeside and Mick & Ralph’s to pick up the Naughty Nightwear Mick was selling (which boosts Speech +10 and Luck +1 – very useful for P. D.), then decided to make the journey over to the Follower’s safehouse outside of town to loot the place for more goodies to sell so she could afford Mick’s fun toys (like that Mantis arm “unarmed” weapon mentioned last week). Said journey featured –
a. P. D. looping around the edge of Freeside so she could tag the North Gate of the place and thus visit her new buddies the Followers more easily without taking the risk of walking through Freeside itself (since she wasn’t in the mood to get any more light stab wounds from more muggers)
b. P. D. trying to get close enough to the H&H Tool Factory to tag it and get the location discovery XP – only to have to change course and do a big loop around the area to avoid a Fiend who’d spawned there (a particularly nasty type of raider who could be carrying very dangerous laser weaponry)
c. P. D. stopping by the shack of Pauline and Sammy Wins, a wanna-be Bonnie-and-Clyde-style crime pair who had stolen a fancy 9mm submachine gun (Vance’s 9mm submachine gun, to be precise – I don’t know who Vance is) and were planning on using it to rob at least one casino on The Strip. P. D., seeing an opportunity, slapped on her Naughty Nightwear and told Pauline “that sounds like a GREAT plan” –
Causing Pauline to second-guess herself as she went over all the ways that the plan could go wrong, and ask P. D. to take the damn gun off Sammy so it wouldn’t be a temptation. XD Even better, Sammy was also not keen on the plan and immediately gave P. D. the combination to the safe where the gun was stored when she asked, and P. D. cheerfully cleaned it out of not only the gun, but all the other useful stuff she could sell. XD Another very easy way to get some XP and some free stuff!
d. P. D. swinging by Westside and tagging its front gate for later (yay exploration XP)
e. And P. D. very carefully sneaking along the road to the safehouse in the growing dawn light, desperately avoiding the cazadors (horrible murder-bugs) on either side (along with some unseen Viper gang members). She fortunately got through without ever alerting anything to her presence – which was good, as a little while later Jon discovered she’d been wearing the Naughty Nightwear instead of, you know, actual armor the whole time. XD It is pretty hilarious how he keeps forgetting how to change out of his Charisma outfits in dangerous situations!
IV. Found and looted the Follower’s safehouse! She was sadly unable to get some free medicine to sell from the local doctor, Dr. Luria, because she naffed off almost the second P. D. stepped through the door (and was NOT just outside when P. D. checked), but she was able to pick up loads of other goodies lying around the place. Including skill magazines and a skill book (if you’re wondering what the difference is, magazines only temporarily boost a skill – if you want a permanent boost, you need to read a book), a bunch of stuff to sell including explosives, ammo, weapons, and some reinforced combat armor (which had a VERY high value) –
And, most importantly, the All-Purpose Science Suit! A set of light armor which has a DT of 13 for only 2 weight – meaning it’s one of the best light armors in the entire game when it comes to damage-threshold-versus-weight ratios! The only issue with it is that it came with a built-in helmet, so P. D. couldn’t put on a hat or glasses while wearing it (unlike with her space suit, where the helmet was a separate item). Jon considered this to be only a minor flaw, however, and promptly made it P. D.’s new extra-sneaky suit, as you might imagine!
V. Headed up and into the mountains nearby on a mission to raid the Ruby Hill Mine – a former Jackal gang hideout that had been taken over by lakelurks (freshwater mirelurks, as you might imagine) – before continuing on to the super mutant community of Jacobstown in a nearby blast crater, all on one Stealth Boy if she could manage it! How did that go? Well, things started off fine, with P. D. successfully sneaking into the mountains; activating her Stealth Boy on 9:40 AM on the dot (giving her until 12:20 PM to get all her shit done); sneakily killing a bighorner in her way; slipping into Ruby Hill Mine undetected; sneakily killing a lakelurk that was in her way; making it over to the Jackal gang member corpse she wanted to find to get Pushy, a displacer glove (which, as the name suggests, shoves enemies back a bit when you hit them – though Jon emphasized nobody has any idea how it works, and sometimes it either didn’t do anything at all or sent enemies flying because still a Bethesda game even if a different company designed it) and the worn key that opened some explosive boxes nearby; and managing to creep over to the explosive boxes on a little nearby island to open two of them and grab some stuff to sell –
Aaand then, while she was trying to open the third (and discovering she couldn’t use the key on it and it was beyond her lockpicking abilities), she suddenly went from [HIDDEN] into [CAUTION]. Right around two big lakelurks. One of which was standing right on the bridge she needed to go over to get back to the main mine and back out the door. Poor P. D. ended up kiting around the boxes a bit to avoid the lakelurks as they wandered, then paused, then wandered again, wondering what the fuck had happened and why she kept going in and out of [CAUTION] –
And then she got around the big one blocking her path, went back to the narrow corridor where she’d killed the first lakelurk, and discovered the reason for her woes – another lakelurk had discovered the body and kept alternating between “time to do my patrol route” and “hey, who killed my buddy here?” She managed to slip on Pushy and uppercut the creature to death during one of its “time to do my patrol route” moments, then stealthily book it out of the mine –
But all that nonsense had wasted a lot of valuable time on her Stealth Boy, meaning she suddenly had just under an hour to reach Jacobstown. She decided to try it anyway and headed up the road, keeping a careful eye out for enemies, running when she could, and using a bit of the Turbo she’d picked up to get a little boost of speed near the end of her journey – but, unfortunately, the Stealth Boy ran out both when she was just shy of Jacobstown –
And when she was surrounded by giant mantises. O.O Fortunately, they’d only just noticed her, and with that little bit of time, she was able to whip out Chance’s Knife and huff some more Turbo, using the super-speed it granted her to run behind every mantis threatening her and very quickly knife them to death. Poor Jon was like “well, that was an excellent demonstration of why I wanted the Turbo, but my heart rate is WORRYINGLY high now, so I’m hoping I don’t have to demonstrate it again.” XD
VI. Finally made it to Jacobstown, where she picked up some lovely loot (including a Grognak the Barbarian comic and another snow globe), then agreed to help local leader Marcus (a very well-spoken super mutant indeed) with some NCR mercenaries who kept harassing the town! P. D.’s method of helping consisted of the following:
a. Greeting the leader of the mercenaries and asking him what they wanted to be paid to leave – he said that they were still owed 2,500 caps, telling her that if she didn’t have it on her, she could probably get it from the muties
b. Heading over to Marcus and telling him the mercenaries’ demands – he complained that it would be a major hit to their treasury, but handed over the money so the group would go away
c. Slapping on her Naughty Nightwear, going back to the mercenary leader, and cheerfully threatening him to leave, or else he’d have to fight her – the guy was like “okay, yeah, I’m backing off” (possibly thinking “okay, she’s threatening me in LINGERIE, she MUST be confident in her ability to kick my ass” XD)
d. Heading back to Marcus to get hailed as a hero with the 2,500 caps still in her pocket
Oh P. D. – you are not a very moral person. :P
And that is where Jon chose to end things, with P. D. standing outside Jacobstown in her nightie, a little richer and a little more anxious from all the dangers she’d only JUST snuck past. Next episode, he declared, she’d be selling her loot and getting some new toys, then getting into the weeds of faction reputation!
B) Which of course leads into our second recap of the day – “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 10 - With Friends Like These…” The latest adventures of good old P. D. Shoot (resplendent in her new science suit), which featured –
I. P. D. fast-traveling back to Freeside (crouched so she could immediately hide or sneak-attack just in case any Fiends were around by the Crimson Caravan gate) and hitting Mick & Ralph’s to trade them all of the loot she got from the safehouse (plus about 2,000 caps) to finally get “Embrace Of The Mantis King!”, that unarmed weapon she really wanted! Though Jon emphasized this was not going to be used for sneak-attack criticals – her new displacer glove Pushy was much better for that as it had a higher base damage and DPS. Instead, “Embrace Of The Mantis King!” was for straight-up brawls because of its bonus critical damage (which is the 3rd highest in the game, apparently!) and especially its bonus critical chance (which multiples whatever P. D.’s current critical chance is by 3 – so if she has a base critical chance of 10% from having 5 Luck and the 1st Recon Beret on, her chance of getting a critical hit on an enemy with EOTMK! is 30%). Jon’s plan was to get the weapon, then find ways to boost P. D.’s base chance of getting a crit so that EOTMK! would multiply it further and allow her to get a crit like every other hit in a straight-up fight. Certainly seems like a good way to keep her alive to me! And more than worth giving the boys 2,000 caps along with all those weapons and armor.
II. P. D. then swinging by the Vegas Medical Center to get the Luck-boosting implant from Dr. Usanagi, because – well, she was in the area, she needed to get the implant soon anyway, and she figured she might as well start boosting that base critical chance by taking her Luck up a point now that she had her fancy new weapon! :p Always better to start sooner when it comes to fiddling with these mechanics!
III. P. D. making her way down to Cottonwood Cove and the Legion camp there to rescue Frank Weathers’ family and improve her standing with the Legion – although, rather than going the direct route overland from the ranch she found earlier (and having to deal with Glowing NCR Trooper Ghouls), she instead went back to Nelson, carefully slid and dropped her way down the cliff side nearby, then hopped into the river and swam there, since the water was pretty much safe from monsters (there were supposed to be a few lakelurks hanging out on the shore at one point, ready to bother her, but she got lucky and they never spawned). And before you ask, no, the river wasn’t the slightest bit radioactive either! Lucky sods in the Mojave – every time Victor goes swimming, he takes a bunch of rads unless I remember to take Rad-X first! Ah, it’ll be nice when I can justify picking up the “Aquaboy” perk for him…
IV. P. D. arriving in Cottonwood Cove and starting on her plan to get some fame with Caesar’s Legion – a tricky proposition because, despite being one of the main factions, they don’t have much of a presence in the desert, and they don’t have a lot of missions as much of their content was cut during development (Jon thinks they simply forgot to boost the reputation gain you get from the remaining missions). But they apparently give some of the best “hi friend of the faction” rewards for a melee sneak character, like P. D., so Jon was determined for her to become buddy-buddy with the group SOMEHOW. He was aware of an exploit P. D. could use to get a lot of Legion fame SUPER quickly – which involves talking to Aurelius of Phoenix (the guy in charge of Cottonwood) and confirming with him that he’d pay a small bounty for any NCR dog tags she turned in; then successfully Bartering with him to get the option to instead get food and other supplies from Decanus Severus, the guy in charge of their stores; then going over to Severus, asking for food as your reward, and then turning in five dog tags at a time for simply ludicrous amounts of Legion fame – but as that was clearly the result of an error in some data table somewhere (because giving ten dog tags gives ZERO fame), he didn’t want to use it. Instead, he intended to abuse the fact that the more dog tags you give to Aurelius in one go, the more impressed he is and the more Legion fame he gives you – one dog tag is only worth one point of fame, but 30? That’s worth a whole 60 points. P. D. currently had twelve, which was good but not great in terms of earning Legion fame – so after having her chat with Aurelius, and heading over to Severus to give him the blueprints on how to make Powder Charges (which she picked up in the NCRCF ages ago, probably while it was still under Powder Ganger control) for a quick boost of fame, she began scheming on where she could get more NCR dog tags…
V. P. D. then remembering “oh yeah, I came here to save the Weathers family too” and heading over to their holding pen outside to get them out! She promised Frank she’d rescue them, after all...though, a quick chat with Mrs. Weathers revealed that she was actually GLAD the coward wasn’t in the pen with them, because apparently he was a drunk, abusive asshole as well! Well, Frank just seems like a better and better person, doesn’t he? *sigh* Anyway, P. D. promised to get them out, then found Canyon Runner, the guy in charge of the slaves, and lied right to his face about the daughter having a terrible disease to get him to sell her the whole family for 150 caps. Nice having a high Speech skill sometimes! She then released them, and they ran off into the Wasteland to seek a new home –
And then P. D. went back to Frank and told him straight out his family didn’t want him around anymore and he needed to clean up his damn act. Frank, shamed by her high Speech skill, agreed she was right and said that he’d try to get sober, thanking her for her work in the meantime. *nods* Happy ending! And one that got P. D. a load of experience and a level up to Level 12 to boot. :D Jon got her Unarmed skill up to 70, the Survival skill up to 50, and dropped the last couple of points in Sneak, then spent a bit of time agonizing over his perk choices as there were a LOT of good ones at this level. Ultimately, though, he decided to go for “Piercing Strike,” as it allowed all of her unarmed and melee weapons to straight up negate 15 points of enemy damage threshold (aka armor) – and as almost everybody and everything in the Wasteland only has 15 or less points of DT anyway, that meant she’d be doing full damage to almost every enemy in her path! :D Yeah, definitely a smart move there, Jon – P. D. needs all the help she can get making sure everything she fights dies in a single hit!
VI. P. D., having done her good deed for the day, then going on a big old NCR murder spree to get as many dog tags to turn into Aurelius and get the maximum amount of Legion fame she could manage! Because it’s P. D. Shoot and her morals are EXTREMELY flexible. XD Specifically, she –
a. first made her way over to Camp Golf (past the 188 Trading Post and nearby Gulp & Grub Rest Stop) to kill all the unnamed NCR troopers sleeping there, as all the tents in Camp Golf have doors, and thus the corpses inside them wouldn’t be detected for a good long while. Unfortunately, there were only three unnamed people she could murder (she didn’t want to touch the named characters in case she wanted to come back here to do missions for the NCR later on), so that only got her up to 15 tags –
And then she realized there were a LOAD of isolated guards in watchtowers all over the place. Cue her spending the rest of the night sneaking up on the guards and uppercutting them to death with Punchy, sending their limbs flying and earning her another five dog tags, getting the total up to 20! *nods* Nice.
b. then returned to Nelson to make her way to the dry plain under Camp Forlorn Hope’s rocky outcropping to see if she could very carefully grab the dog tags off any NCR corpses there (because the Legion likes to drop them out there over mines to get NCR troopers to blow themselves up trying to collect their dead) – unfortunately, she only found one, as the other had despawned. Darn it.
c. then realized that Camp Forlorn Hope had not yet been abandoned by the unnamed NPCs despite all the murder she did there previously, and snuck up there to murder the three injured troopers she’d previously helped, plus one final watch guard to get up to 25 (interestingly, they all spawned in two dog tags each when she killed them, but Jon was like “nope, not abusing the bug” and only took one set off each corpse. Very kind of him :P)! Very efficient and well-planned killing spree, I must say. XD
VII. P. D. returning to Cottonwood Cove to hand over all 25 tags to Aurelius, who gave her 250 bottle caps and 48 Legion fame in return, propelling P. D. straight up to “Liked” status with the faction! :D She then headed back to the 188 Trading Post to see if she could spawn in a certain messenger –
And sure enough, a “Disguised Frumentarius” ran up to her not long after to let her know that the Legion appreciated her help, and that as a reward, they would give her the location of a set of drop boxes (which would be refreshed every few days) where she could pick up any items that the Legion didn’t want or couldn’t use after their raids, if she so wished. P. D. did so wish and traveled back to Cottonwood Cove to raid the boxes. The current loot was pretty good – including stuff like ammo, Legion money, and doctor’s bags – but Jon hinted that, if he could get her standing with the Legion even higher, some even better shit would be coming her way…
And so the episode ended with P. D., now officially a friend of the Legion, trying to figure out which of the other factions she wanted to improve her reputation with next! The NCR is an obvious candidate, but Jon seemed to be considering the Khans as a possibility too – we’ll see what he chooses next Sunday!
Whew -- glad to have those out of the way! Back to only having to do one of these a week, yay...
Other: Had another game of beanbags today at 5 PM, despite it being a depressingly gray and cloudy afternoon – and this time, Dad basically creamed Mom and me in every round except the third, where I managed to get ahead of him and snag the win. Poor Mom, meanwhile, alternated between second and third each round – though she did get more seconds than thirds, it must be said! Final scores were me 3-2-W-2-3; Dad W-W-3-W-W; and Mom 2-3-2-3-2. We’ll see if things even out a little more the next time we play!
Aaand, as usual for a Sunday, doing all this means I have stayed up way later than I should have and I very much need to go to bed. Got work tomorrow, after all! Which I am somewhat dreading, since I don't know what I'll be coming back to... We'll see what happens! Night all!
Tumblr: A not-so-busy day on the tumbls today, but some progress was made on various things –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Despite my general tired malaise, I did manage to chuck two things into my queue for tomorrow over here this afternoon:
A) A reblog of my friend Newt’s (aka dont-offend-the-bees) “WIP Monday” post from a week ago, where, after being tagged by his friend dear-monday, he shared a snippet of a Dead Boys Detective Agency fic he’s working on! Featuring an OC named Paul getting goaded into goofily flirting with the Cat King from DBDA by his friends, and having a bit of a mental crisis about it thanks to how gorgeous he finds the King. And said King happily going along with the goofy flirting, because it’s implied he can tell how flustered Paul is and he is loving it. XD It was a very good snippet – though I’m not particularly familiar with the series beyond what Newt reblogs onto his tumblr (which is – admittedly a lot), I feel like he captured the essence of the Cat King, or at least of a man who is really a cat, very well. And there was some truly excellent lines, including “The smile widens; Paul is treated to a sudden vivid vision of his own heart, chewed up and stuck between its teeth.” Like damn Newt, that is excellent stuff. Made sure to say as much in my tags! *nods* Though I didn’t reblog this just to be a good friend – I also reblogged it because Newt tagged me at the end to share a snippet of one of my WIPs in turn! Which led straight into –
B) My own WIP Monday post! :D Which, as you might expect, featured a snippet from “The Van Dort Vacancy,” since that’s what I’ve been working on the most recently. Specifically, it featured the bit where Victor runs into Barnaby “The Butcher” Fortescue III at his mother’s party, so I could show off how I’d described Barnaby from Victor’s perspective. Because, well, I thought it was pretty funny. XD Especially the paragraph about Barnaby being perpetually drunk – I very happily rambled on in my tags about every reference to certain events in the Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark series I stuck into that particular bit. Hopefully those who read my blog will enjoy it! :D I also made sure to tag some of my writer friends to share bits of their WIPs in return – specifically thesatiricaldemon, nebbychan, gaydragonwizards, and ace-of-tales. I don’t expect gaydragonwizards (aka Squid) to do it, as they generally only write cooperatively with other people and don’t usually participate in memes like these – I just wanted them to feel included. But we’ll see if we get any snippets from the other three! Wouldn’t mind another bit of “Beneath A Broken Sky” from Satirical, that’s for sure...
Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had one anon ask to chuck into the queue tonight, featuring the anon saying that, if you hate something, you really need to want to see it destroyed – otherwise what’s the fun in hating it? I had the Valicer In The Dark trio respond, with a puzzled Alice going “well, I agree that wanting the thing you hate destroyed is a big part of actually hating it, but I feel like ‘hatred’ and ‘fun’ should be opposite emotions” – only for Victor to point out that his old bully Gordon Tannen got a LOT of fun out of hating him, and Smiler reminding her that there are some people who just revel in negative emotions (“I don’t understand it either”). I clarified in the tags that Alice was just thinking in terms of how she didn’t have any fun hating Dr. Bumby – she doesn’t know about the more interesting forms of hate we have in the modern world. :P
Fallout 4: Okay, so, thanks to my general tiredness, I didn’t really play any of this game today – but, late this afternoon, while thinking about how long it had been since I’d actually played Fallout 4, I decided, “You know what? I should really at least open up Vortex to make sure I haven’t been logged out – or, if I have, to log back in again. Save me some trouble later on.” So I booted up Steam, and once that was done, booted up Vortex to see what was what. To my mild surprise and relief, I was still logged in, despite the extended absence from the game. “Okay,” I thought, “that’s good, don’t have to worry about that anyway…
“But you know what? Just to make sure that I stay logged in – and to make sure that everything’s still fine with the game – let’s hop into FO4 for just a minute or two. Just to be positive everything is kosher.”
So that’s exactly what I did! And I am pleased to say that yes, everything in Fallout 4 is working fine, and I am still safe from Bethesda’s updates. *nods* As for what I did for those few minutes in the game, I just had Victor wander around the main room of the surgery area, scoring a couple of stimpacks from a locker and a first aid kit respectively, plus some rubber lying next to a flask on a nearby shelving unit, then pop into Cerebral Reconditioning to grab the Buffout and Psycho from the wall-mounted first-aid kit there and a couple of purified water cans from the shelves below. *shrug* Nothing fancy, just getting the good stuff! I left him next to the “Brain Extraction” terminal in CR – next time I play properly, we’ll see what that says and continue poking around this horrible, terrible area! XD Gotta make sure I get all the goodies before going to confront the Mechanist, after all!
Writing: Ended up in a similar situation to my gaming here, in that I didn’t really do any actual writing today – but going and copying the snippet from Chapter Two of “The Van Dort Vacancy” for my “WIP Monday” post on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) led to me reading almost the entire story over again and doing a little bit of light editing here and there. Nothing major – just fixing a few missed words and tweaking a bit of phrasing here and there – but given I’m coming off eight or so days of not writing at all, I will take it! And it’s a good way to prep for spending the rest of the week getting the epilogue done and wrapping up the first draft of this thing. *nods* Hopefully I can get properly back into the groove tomorrow!
Workout: Hopped back on the bike tonight for the first time in over a week, and returned to watching those who you call when there’s something strange and it don’t look good with Ghostbusters: Answer The Call, aka the 2016 all-female-main-cast reboot! Which IS funny and IS a decent entry in the series and I will fight people on that. *shakehead* Anyway, I got through about the first half-hour today, covering Erin, Abby, and Holtz investigating the Aldridge Mansion and encountering the ghost there; the trio then getting kicked out of their respective universities and setting up shop above a Chinese restaurant (because the firehouse was waaaay too expensive in this universe); Patty discovering a ghost on the subway tracks in the station where she works after seeing the main villain go down there; and the main villain, Rowan, monologuing to himself about how he’s been bullied all his life, and now it’s his turn to be the bully as he prepares to spawn ghosts everywhere. I left off with Kevin, the dumb-as-rocks muscle man showing up, and Abby, Erin, and Holtz getting ready to interview him as their receptionist – we’ll see how much farther I get into the movie tomorrow!
FreeTube: As promised, got a double dose of Jon of Many A True Nerd Fallout content for you tonight –
A) First up, here’s the recap of “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 9 - Live Fast, Die Young” that I simply wasn’t able to get myself to complete yesterday due to distraction and tiredness reasons. This episode followed our favorite melee-only courier P. D. Shoot as she –
I. Headed to The Strip’s North Gate in Freeside to hit the heart of New Vegas itself! Well, after being warned by friendly NPC Old Ben not to run past the securitron greeter or else she’d get gunned down by said greeter and his buddies; standing back a moment immediately after said warning to watch some idiot run past the securitron greeter and get gunned down by said greeter and his buddies (WITHOUT being caught in the crossfire – very important that); and submitting to the necessary “credit check” by the greeter, which she easily passed due to her wealth of caps. The niceties must be observed. :P Anyway, she made it inside no problem, where she was greeted by everyone’s favorite cowboy AI Victor (temporarily hijacking one of the guard securitrons, as he does), who informed her that Mr. House, head honcho of New Vegas, was very eager to meet her, and that she should report to the Lucky 38 as soon as possible. And as Jon had indicated at the end of Part 8 he was both eager to meet House and make some money selling all of P. D.’s collectible snow globes (which apparently you do in the Lucky 38, as the NPC who takes them hangs out there), you’d think she would have gotten right on that, correct?
Nope! Because Jon had realized something over the intervening week between parts – namely, that entering and then exiting the Lucky 38 would trigger someone from the NCR to run up to P. D. and go “oh hey, we in the NCR just realized that you’re the protagonist! We’d like to invite you to do protagonist stuff for us, and to facilitate that, we are completely resetting our faction reputation with you! Any crimes you may have committed against us are now automatically forgiven!” Which would have been very handy –
If P. D.’s reputation with the NCR wasn’t currently “Accepted,” meaning they already liked her. Meaning going into the Lucky 38 now wouldn’t actually benefit P. D. in any way. Leading Jon to declare that he wanted to save the Lucky 38, and thus the faction reputation reset, for a while – at least until P. D. had actually committed some crimes against the NCR that could then be forgiven. (Well – crimes that they KNEW about, unlike the slaughter of Camp Forlorn Hope.) Which, fair enough – so instead, it was over to The Tops to confront Benny and get that quest moving in the right direction, right?
Wrong! Because entering and exiting The Tops triggers someone from Caesar’s Legion to run up to you and do the whole “hi protagonist, here’s a free faction reset so you can do stuff for us” speech! And again, P. D.’s reputation with them was currently “Neutral,” meaning there was no benefit from getting a reset at that time. So, basically, House and Benny were both off-limits until P. D. wrecked her reputation with those two factions. Which, uh, Jon indicated she would be doing – just not this very moment. XD
II. Headed to two other places in The Strip to advance her goals of getting loads of goodies, since she couldn’t take advantage of the main quest stuff. Specifically, she hit –
a. Gomorrah, one of the seedier casinos, to see what kind of drugs they were selling at the bar in the back! Since, you know, P. D. can use all drugs without fear and get them to last longer thanks to her special combinations of traits. Specifically, she was looking for Turbo – a drug that causes the protagonist to move in super-speed for a few moments (represented in the game by everything around the player moving in slow motion). As you might imagine (and will see later), that sort of thing would be very useful for her if she got into trouble out in the wilds! Happily, the ghoul bartender had five doses, and P. D. cheerfully snapped up the lot. Yay!
b. Michael Angelo’s, where the eponymous Michael made billboards for various places around the Mojave Wasteland, to get some very easy money and XP off him! Specifically, after greeting him, she first pretended to be a messenger from House asking why the billboards weren’t done yet for a couple rounds of conversation to grab a little “Speech check” XP, then let him know she was just kidding (mostly because she didn’t have QUITE enough Speech to extort 300 caps out of him XD) and switched tactics to pick up his quest, “Classic Inspiration!” For you see, the reason Michael hadn’t finished the billboards was because he’d lost his muse, and the reason he’d lost his muse was because the poor guy has agoraphobia and thus can’t go outside to look at the sights of the Mojave. P. D. was able to use her new Follower’s lab coat, some mentats, and a skill magazine to boost her Medicine skill up enough to diagnose him, then offered to help him get his inspiration back by taking pictures of inspiring signs and items throughout the wasteland for him. Michael happily handed over a camera and some film, and P. D. thus hit the fast travel road, taking pictures of:
1. the Bison Steve sign in Primm (which still looked pretty lawful, fortunately – good job, Primm Slimm)
2. the dinosaur thermometer in Novac (which led to her getting another dose of Turbo off traveling trader Dr. Ada, yay)
3. the Helios One sign at, well, Helios One (which panicked the locals a bit as the camera is TECHNICALLY a gun and they reacted as if she was shooting randomly)
4. the Camp McCarran sign at, well, Camp McCarran (which got P. D. up to level 11 and allowed her to up her Sneak, Speech, Unarmed, and Science skills)
5. and the Sunset Sarsaparilla HQ “Bottle” sign (from across the highway, because the sign itself was in Fiend territory and P. D. was NOT tangling with that group! Fortunately the game is VERY FORGIVING about the quality of the pictures you take and easily accepted that far-away shot).
Pics in hand, she then returned to Michael, who not only gave her a bunch of XP, but 1,250 caps – 750 for the job itself, and 500 as an extra reward for helping him. :D Easiest XP and money in the game, according to Jon! Definitely worth doing if you’re playing this installment!
III. Returned to Freeside and Mick & Ralph’s to pick up the Naughty Nightwear Mick was selling (which boosts Speech +10 and Luck +1 – very useful for P. D.), then decided to make the journey over to the Follower’s safehouse outside of town to loot the place for more goodies to sell so she could afford Mick’s fun toys (like that Mantis arm “unarmed” weapon mentioned last week). Said journey featured –
a. P. D. looping around the edge of Freeside so she could tag the North Gate of the place and thus visit her new buddies the Followers more easily without taking the risk of walking through Freeside itself (since she wasn’t in the mood to get any more light stab wounds from more muggers)
b. P. D. trying to get close enough to the H&H Tool Factory to tag it and get the location discovery XP – only to have to change course and do a big loop around the area to avoid a Fiend who’d spawned there (a particularly nasty type of raider who could be carrying very dangerous laser weaponry)
c. P. D. stopping by the shack of Pauline and Sammy Wins, a wanna-be Bonnie-and-Clyde-style crime pair who had stolen a fancy 9mm submachine gun (Vance’s 9mm submachine gun, to be precise – I don’t know who Vance is) and were planning on using it to rob at least one casino on The Strip. P. D., seeing an opportunity, slapped on her Naughty Nightwear and told Pauline “that sounds like a GREAT plan” –
Causing Pauline to second-guess herself as she went over all the ways that the plan could go wrong, and ask P. D. to take the damn gun off Sammy so it wouldn’t be a temptation. XD Even better, Sammy was also not keen on the plan and immediately gave P. D. the combination to the safe where the gun was stored when she asked, and P. D. cheerfully cleaned it out of not only the gun, but all the other useful stuff she could sell. XD Another very easy way to get some XP and some free stuff!
d. P. D. swinging by Westside and tagging its front gate for later (yay exploration XP)
e. And P. D. very carefully sneaking along the road to the safehouse in the growing dawn light, desperately avoiding the cazadors (horrible murder-bugs) on either side (along with some unseen Viper gang members). She fortunately got through without ever alerting anything to her presence – which was good, as a little while later Jon discovered she’d been wearing the Naughty Nightwear instead of, you know, actual armor the whole time. XD It is pretty hilarious how he keeps forgetting how to change out of his Charisma outfits in dangerous situations!
IV. Found and looted the Follower’s safehouse! She was sadly unable to get some free medicine to sell from the local doctor, Dr. Luria, because she naffed off almost the second P. D. stepped through the door (and was NOT just outside when P. D. checked), but she was able to pick up loads of other goodies lying around the place. Including skill magazines and a skill book (if you’re wondering what the difference is, magazines only temporarily boost a skill – if you want a permanent boost, you need to read a book), a bunch of stuff to sell including explosives, ammo, weapons, and some reinforced combat armor (which had a VERY high value) –
And, most importantly, the All-Purpose Science Suit! A set of light armor which has a DT of 13 for only 2 weight – meaning it’s one of the best light armors in the entire game when it comes to damage-threshold-versus-weight ratios! The only issue with it is that it came with a built-in helmet, so P. D. couldn’t put on a hat or glasses while wearing it (unlike with her space suit, where the helmet was a separate item). Jon considered this to be only a minor flaw, however, and promptly made it P. D.’s new extra-sneaky suit, as you might imagine!
V. Headed up and into the mountains nearby on a mission to raid the Ruby Hill Mine – a former Jackal gang hideout that had been taken over by lakelurks (freshwater mirelurks, as you might imagine) – before continuing on to the super mutant community of Jacobstown in a nearby blast crater, all on one Stealth Boy if she could manage it! How did that go? Well, things started off fine, with P. D. successfully sneaking into the mountains; activating her Stealth Boy on 9:40 AM on the dot (giving her until 12:20 PM to get all her shit done); sneakily killing a bighorner in her way; slipping into Ruby Hill Mine undetected; sneakily killing a lakelurk that was in her way; making it over to the Jackal gang member corpse she wanted to find to get Pushy, a displacer glove (which, as the name suggests, shoves enemies back a bit when you hit them – though Jon emphasized nobody has any idea how it works, and sometimes it either didn’t do anything at all or sent enemies flying because still a Bethesda game even if a different company designed it) and the worn key that opened some explosive boxes nearby; and managing to creep over to the explosive boxes on a little nearby island to open two of them and grab some stuff to sell –
Aaand then, while she was trying to open the third (and discovering she couldn’t use the key on it and it was beyond her lockpicking abilities), she suddenly went from [HIDDEN] into [CAUTION]. Right around two big lakelurks. One of which was standing right on the bridge she needed to go over to get back to the main mine and back out the door. Poor P. D. ended up kiting around the boxes a bit to avoid the lakelurks as they wandered, then paused, then wandered again, wondering what the fuck had happened and why she kept going in and out of [CAUTION] –
And then she got around the big one blocking her path, went back to the narrow corridor where she’d killed the first lakelurk, and discovered the reason for her woes – another lakelurk had discovered the body and kept alternating between “time to do my patrol route” and “hey, who killed my buddy here?” She managed to slip on Pushy and uppercut the creature to death during one of its “time to do my patrol route” moments, then stealthily book it out of the mine –
But all that nonsense had wasted a lot of valuable time on her Stealth Boy, meaning she suddenly had just under an hour to reach Jacobstown. She decided to try it anyway and headed up the road, keeping a careful eye out for enemies, running when she could, and using a bit of the Turbo she’d picked up to get a little boost of speed near the end of her journey – but, unfortunately, the Stealth Boy ran out both when she was just shy of Jacobstown –
And when she was surrounded by giant mantises. O.O Fortunately, they’d only just noticed her, and with that little bit of time, she was able to whip out Chance’s Knife and huff some more Turbo, using the super-speed it granted her to run behind every mantis threatening her and very quickly knife them to death. Poor Jon was like “well, that was an excellent demonstration of why I wanted the Turbo, but my heart rate is WORRYINGLY high now, so I’m hoping I don’t have to demonstrate it again.” XD
VI. Finally made it to Jacobstown, where she picked up some lovely loot (including a Grognak the Barbarian comic and another snow globe), then agreed to help local leader Marcus (a very well-spoken super mutant indeed) with some NCR mercenaries who kept harassing the town! P. D.’s method of helping consisted of the following:
a. Greeting the leader of the mercenaries and asking him what they wanted to be paid to leave – he said that they were still owed 2,500 caps, telling her that if she didn’t have it on her, she could probably get it from the muties
b. Heading over to Marcus and telling him the mercenaries’ demands – he complained that it would be a major hit to their treasury, but handed over the money so the group would go away
c. Slapping on her Naughty Nightwear, going back to the mercenary leader, and cheerfully threatening him to leave, or else he’d have to fight her – the guy was like “okay, yeah, I’m backing off” (possibly thinking “okay, she’s threatening me in LINGERIE, she MUST be confident in her ability to kick my ass” XD)
d. Heading back to Marcus to get hailed as a hero with the 2,500 caps still in her pocket
Oh P. D. – you are not a very moral person. :P
And that is where Jon chose to end things, with P. D. standing outside Jacobstown in her nightie, a little richer and a little more anxious from all the dangers she’d only JUST snuck past. Next episode, he declared, she’d be selling her loot and getting some new toys, then getting into the weeds of faction reputation!
B) Which of course leads into our second recap of the day – “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 10 - With Friends Like These…” The latest adventures of good old P. D. Shoot (resplendent in her new science suit), which featured –
I. P. D. fast-traveling back to Freeside (crouched so she could immediately hide or sneak-attack just in case any Fiends were around by the Crimson Caravan gate) and hitting Mick & Ralph’s to trade them all of the loot she got from the safehouse (plus about 2,000 caps) to finally get “Embrace Of The Mantis King!”, that unarmed weapon she really wanted! Though Jon emphasized this was not going to be used for sneak-attack criticals – her new displacer glove Pushy was much better for that as it had a higher base damage and DPS. Instead, “Embrace Of The Mantis King!” was for straight-up brawls because of its bonus critical damage (which is the 3rd highest in the game, apparently!) and especially its bonus critical chance (which multiples whatever P. D.’s current critical chance is by 3 – so if she has a base critical chance of 10% from having 5 Luck and the 1st Recon Beret on, her chance of getting a critical hit on an enemy with EOTMK! is 30%). Jon’s plan was to get the weapon, then find ways to boost P. D.’s base chance of getting a crit so that EOTMK! would multiply it further and allow her to get a crit like every other hit in a straight-up fight. Certainly seems like a good way to keep her alive to me! And more than worth giving the boys 2,000 caps along with all those weapons and armor.
II. P. D. then swinging by the Vegas Medical Center to get the Luck-boosting implant from Dr. Usanagi, because – well, she was in the area, she needed to get the implant soon anyway, and she figured she might as well start boosting that base critical chance by taking her Luck up a point now that she had her fancy new weapon! :p Always better to start sooner when it comes to fiddling with these mechanics!
III. P. D. making her way down to Cottonwood Cove and the Legion camp there to rescue Frank Weathers’ family and improve her standing with the Legion – although, rather than going the direct route overland from the ranch she found earlier (and having to deal with Glowing NCR Trooper Ghouls), she instead went back to Nelson, carefully slid and dropped her way down the cliff side nearby, then hopped into the river and swam there, since the water was pretty much safe from monsters (there were supposed to be a few lakelurks hanging out on the shore at one point, ready to bother her, but she got lucky and they never spawned). And before you ask, no, the river wasn’t the slightest bit radioactive either! Lucky sods in the Mojave – every time Victor goes swimming, he takes a bunch of rads unless I remember to take Rad-X first! Ah, it’ll be nice when I can justify picking up the “Aquaboy” perk for him…
IV. P. D. arriving in Cottonwood Cove and starting on her plan to get some fame with Caesar’s Legion – a tricky proposition because, despite being one of the main factions, they don’t have much of a presence in the desert, and they don’t have a lot of missions as much of their content was cut during development (Jon thinks they simply forgot to boost the reputation gain you get from the remaining missions). But they apparently give some of the best “hi friend of the faction” rewards for a melee sneak character, like P. D., so Jon was determined for her to become buddy-buddy with the group SOMEHOW. He was aware of an exploit P. D. could use to get a lot of Legion fame SUPER quickly – which involves talking to Aurelius of Phoenix (the guy in charge of Cottonwood) and confirming with him that he’d pay a small bounty for any NCR dog tags she turned in; then successfully Bartering with him to get the option to instead get food and other supplies from Decanus Severus, the guy in charge of their stores; then going over to Severus, asking for food as your reward, and then turning in five dog tags at a time for simply ludicrous amounts of Legion fame – but as that was clearly the result of an error in some data table somewhere (because giving ten dog tags gives ZERO fame), he didn’t want to use it. Instead, he intended to abuse the fact that the more dog tags you give to Aurelius in one go, the more impressed he is and the more Legion fame he gives you – one dog tag is only worth one point of fame, but 30? That’s worth a whole 60 points. P. D. currently had twelve, which was good but not great in terms of earning Legion fame – so after having her chat with Aurelius, and heading over to Severus to give him the blueprints on how to make Powder Charges (which she picked up in the NCRCF ages ago, probably while it was still under Powder Ganger control) for a quick boost of fame, she began scheming on where she could get more NCR dog tags…
V. P. D. then remembering “oh yeah, I came here to save the Weathers family too” and heading over to their holding pen outside to get them out! She promised Frank she’d rescue them, after all...though, a quick chat with Mrs. Weathers revealed that she was actually GLAD the coward wasn’t in the pen with them, because apparently he was a drunk, abusive asshole as well! Well, Frank just seems like a better and better person, doesn’t he? *sigh* Anyway, P. D. promised to get them out, then found Canyon Runner, the guy in charge of the slaves, and lied right to his face about the daughter having a terrible disease to get him to sell her the whole family for 150 caps. Nice having a high Speech skill sometimes! She then released them, and they ran off into the Wasteland to seek a new home –
And then P. D. went back to Frank and told him straight out his family didn’t want him around anymore and he needed to clean up his damn act. Frank, shamed by her high Speech skill, agreed she was right and said that he’d try to get sober, thanking her for her work in the meantime. *nods* Happy ending! And one that got P. D. a load of experience and a level up to Level 12 to boot. :D Jon got her Unarmed skill up to 70, the Survival skill up to 50, and dropped the last couple of points in Sneak, then spent a bit of time agonizing over his perk choices as there were a LOT of good ones at this level. Ultimately, though, he decided to go for “Piercing Strike,” as it allowed all of her unarmed and melee weapons to straight up negate 15 points of enemy damage threshold (aka armor) – and as almost everybody and everything in the Wasteland only has 15 or less points of DT anyway, that meant she’d be doing full damage to almost every enemy in her path! :D Yeah, definitely a smart move there, Jon – P. D. needs all the help she can get making sure everything she fights dies in a single hit!
VI. P. D., having done her good deed for the day, then going on a big old NCR murder spree to get as many dog tags to turn into Aurelius and get the maximum amount of Legion fame she could manage! Because it’s P. D. Shoot and her morals are EXTREMELY flexible. XD Specifically, she –
a. first made her way over to Camp Golf (past the 188 Trading Post and nearby Gulp & Grub Rest Stop) to kill all the unnamed NCR troopers sleeping there, as all the tents in Camp Golf have doors, and thus the corpses inside them wouldn’t be detected for a good long while. Unfortunately, there were only three unnamed people she could murder (she didn’t want to touch the named characters in case she wanted to come back here to do missions for the NCR later on), so that only got her up to 15 tags –
And then she realized there were a LOAD of isolated guards in watchtowers all over the place. Cue her spending the rest of the night sneaking up on the guards and uppercutting them to death with Punchy, sending their limbs flying and earning her another five dog tags, getting the total up to 20! *nods* Nice.
b. then returned to Nelson to make her way to the dry plain under Camp Forlorn Hope’s rocky outcropping to see if she could very carefully grab the dog tags off any NCR corpses there (because the Legion likes to drop them out there over mines to get NCR troopers to blow themselves up trying to collect their dead) – unfortunately, she only found one, as the other had despawned. Darn it.
c. then realized that Camp Forlorn Hope had not yet been abandoned by the unnamed NPCs despite all the murder she did there previously, and snuck up there to murder the three injured troopers she’d previously helped, plus one final watch guard to get up to 25 (interestingly, they all spawned in two dog tags each when she killed them, but Jon was like “nope, not abusing the bug” and only took one set off each corpse. Very kind of him :P)! Very efficient and well-planned killing spree, I must say. XD
VII. P. D. returning to Cottonwood Cove to hand over all 25 tags to Aurelius, who gave her 250 bottle caps and 48 Legion fame in return, propelling P. D. straight up to “Liked” status with the faction! :D She then headed back to the 188 Trading Post to see if she could spawn in a certain messenger –
And sure enough, a “Disguised Frumentarius” ran up to her not long after to let her know that the Legion appreciated her help, and that as a reward, they would give her the location of a set of drop boxes (which would be refreshed every few days) where she could pick up any items that the Legion didn’t want or couldn’t use after their raids, if she so wished. P. D. did so wish and traveled back to Cottonwood Cove to raid the boxes. The current loot was pretty good – including stuff like ammo, Legion money, and doctor’s bags – but Jon hinted that, if he could get her standing with the Legion even higher, some even better shit would be coming her way…
And so the episode ended with P. D., now officially a friend of the Legion, trying to figure out which of the other factions she wanted to improve her reputation with next! The NCR is an obvious candidate, but Jon seemed to be considering the Khans as a possibility too – we’ll see what he chooses next Sunday!
Whew -- glad to have those out of the way! Back to only having to do one of these a week, yay...
Other: Had another game of beanbags today at 5 PM, despite it being a depressingly gray and cloudy afternoon – and this time, Dad basically creamed Mom and me in every round except the third, where I managed to get ahead of him and snag the win. Poor Mom, meanwhile, alternated between second and third each round – though she did get more seconds than thirds, it must be said! Final scores were me 3-2-W-2-3; Dad W-W-3-W-W; and Mom 2-3-2-3-2. We’ll see if things even out a little more the next time we play!
Aaand, as usual for a Sunday, doing all this means I have stayed up way later than I should have and I very much need to go to bed. Got work tomorrow, after all! Which I am somewhat dreading, since I don't know what I'll be coming back to... We'll see what happens! Night all!
