Welcome To 2026!
Jan. 1st, 2026 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickToday started with a minor snow squall (we only got like an inch of snow, fortunately) and then changed over into having high winds most of the day! And also Dad still wasn't feeling great (though better than he was last night, admittedly)! Yeah, not exactly an auspicious start to the new year, I gotta say...but despite all that, I still got some stuff done, and I am ready and willing to share that with you:
Dreamwidth: Spent most of the morning updating yesterday’s mini-entry to let you know what the heck I did the REST of the final day of 2025! Spoilers: It was mostly sit around watching OXBox videos. If you want the full deets, follow the link!
Writing: Welp, it’s official – Chapter Two of “The Van Dort Vacancy” is up! Ended up spending a pretty good-sized chunk of the day on this, thanks to:
A) Needing to finish off the final edits on the last bit of the chapter (from Victor overhearing the “what ghost would marry our Victor?” line from Nell to Victor telling Barnaby he could get him into the vault), since I couldn’t do it yesterday (just straight-up didn’t have the time – I really wanted to watch those OXBox videos!)
B) Needing to then copy the finished chapter from FF.net’s Document Manager to AO3’s actual chapter posting page (if you’re like “???” – I find FF.net’s Document Manager easier to work in when it comes to making the final edits. PLUS, if I copy the completed text from there into AO3’s chapter posting page (when the latter is set to “Rich Text” mode), it saves all my formatting WITHOUT any extra weirdness, like what often happens if I try to copy the text straight from my Writer doc into the page)
C) Needing to do all the chapter endnotes, which ranged from explaining what “Suran” is (one of the months of the Duskwall year, roughly analogous to May and June – and because it’s 60 days instead of 30, all three of my mains have a birthday in it) to covering all the references to various incidents and lines in the Barnaby-related episodes of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark (and there were a lot of them – I almost ran out of room in the text box!)
D) And needing to come up with a good title for the chapter (I ended up doing a play on one of Barnaby’s lines late in the fic: “I’ve told so many people that all you need to do to make your life better is to stop being poor, and this is proof positive!” (Itself a reference to a similar line he said in an OX:BITD episode.) As the whole point of the chapter is Victor realizing that he’d be much happier living in Elder Gutknecht’s wrecked house with Alice and Smiler over living in the gilded prison of the Van Dort mansion with his parents, the title thus became: “Actually, Barnaby, Victor Thinks His Life Would Be Better If He STARTED Being Poor” XD)
Yeah, that – that all took a while. Especially the endnotes, damn...but I got it up around mid-afternoon, and I’m happy about that. I really did want to ring in the new year with this latest chapter if I could!
Tumblr: Still nothing happening on Valice Multiverse, so, as usual, I concentrated on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – and while I didn’t get any drafting done (consequence of updating yesterday’s DW post with my activities for the day, then going straight into posting Chapter 2 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”), I did:
A) Post a link to Chapter 2 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” on my blog once the chapter was up and everything was sorted, because the masses must be told. I don’t believe most of the masses give a shit, but they must be told regardless.
B) Answer a question from Satirical Demon: “ao3 wrapped, option 20, to ring in the new year” – aka a request that I answer question 20, “Which work of yours have you reread the most?” from that AO3 Wrapped ask meme I posted. My initial thought was “I am genuinely not sure” –
And then I looked at the story I’d just spent hours working on and was like “actually, you know what, given how often I get sucked into reading the rest of “The Van Dort Vacancy” while working on edits…” XD So yeah, I answered that it was probably “The Van Dort Vacancy” because of that. With runners up being “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded” (because I did the same thing on that story – I mentioned I also tend to read ahead on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” while editing in the tags; I just don’t read ahead as much because those chapters be fucking long) and that snippet I wrote with Modern!AU Smiler hypnotizing Victor in person for the first time. Because fuck it, I like it.
C) And answer the messages waiting for me, because one was from Ace on New Year’s Eve and I didn’t want to leave them hanging (just didn’t get to it the other day)
So that was good, at least! We’ll see what gets accomplished tomorrow...
Little Corners: Okay – my plan for today was to go back to that guide I found about installing Wabbajack and the “Viva New Vegas” modlist, so I could try starting up Fallout: New Vegas and maybe get through character creation or something...but then I took ages to post Chapter 2 of “The Van Dort Vacancy,” so I very much did not have time for that. But I really wanted to play something, so I busted out this game again and started a new corner! Specifically, the “Adventurer’s Tavern” corner, because that looked like a fun one. So far on my journey to set up a proper tavern, I have:
A) Set an appropriate background for the corner, combining the “Rug” background image and the “Desktop” background image to make it look like it’s sitting on a rug on the floor – felt right for a tavern “build”
B) Unlocked all three “hidden stickers” – the “Happy Dog” by giving the “sleeping dog” sticker one of the “big old hunks of meat” stickers (unlocking a cheerful awake dog with a bone in its mouth); the “Dragon Trophy” by hitting the “dragon picture” sticker with the “thrown axe stuck in something” sticker (unlocking a stuffed dragon head to mount on the wall); and the “Quest Board” by stabbing the “dagger stabbed in something” sticker into the larger “treasure map” sticker (unlocking a corkboard covered in papers advertising quests). I’ve managed to use “Happy Dog” and “Dragon Trophy” in my “build,” but the quest board unfortunately doesn’t fit in the space the way I’ve set it up. Shame. (Oh, and interesting side note – under 10% of people have unlocked the “Quest Board” and “Dragon Trophy” stickers, apparently! I am part of a rare breed. :P)
C) Found to my sadness that all the stickers of shelves of bottles or kegs behind the bar are meant to be used with a specific “bar” sticker that has a wooden frame on it and goes on one of the walls – there’s a “window” in between the bar top and the frame around it, and you put the sticker with the bottle or kegs in that window to suggest a room behind the bar stocked with all that stuff. However, my walls are taken up with a window, a door, a recessed booth area, and the fireplace, so I have to use the “freestanding” bar. And the stickers for that “window” in the “hole in the wall bar” sticker don’t fit properly on the back of the “freestanding bar” sticker, like I’d hoped. Meeeh. I’m hoping I can fit a barrel or something in SOMEWHERE!
D) Found to my happiness that this particular corner has at least some more colorful stickers – red and green rugs to throw on the floor, brightly patterned pennants to hang on the fireplace, colorful bottles to scatter around the place, stuff like that. It’s still a little more brown than I might like, but it feels a bit more cheerful than the Alchemist’s Tower!
E) Got a basic floor plan set up – the front door is on the left wall, near the back corner, with a window next to it (with some crossed swords mounted above said window for decoration); then the booth is on the right wall next to the back corner, near the door, and the fireplace is next to that; there’s two big round tables on the main floor – one closer to the fireplace, one closer to the window; and then the bar is all the way in the front (on the corner where the floor cuts off), with three bar stools in front of it. *shrug* All felt like the most logical positioning!
F) Did things like set up the booth as the “fancier” part of the pub, with a proper candelabra (the other two tables got tall drippy candles just plonked straight down on them) and nicer tankards on the table (I also put the map with a dagger in it in there, along with a plate with a slice of pie, to suggest two adventurers talking about finding treasure over lunch); put both the sleeping dog and the happy dog on a rug in front of the fire, along with a dish with a bone balanced on top (gotta keep the doggos happy!); put the axe in the dragon picture on the wall next to the fireplace (I just liked the look of it); and put a couple of cups and a card castle on the table nearer the window (because how could I resist the card castle? There’s also a backpack and a freestanding axe in the corner nearby).
*nods* Not bad, I think – it’s slowly but surely coming together! And I have to admit, I feel like I’m getting better at properly layering all the stickers. *nods* As usual, here is an in-progress shot of what the tavern looks like right now:
I think that’s a pretty decent start! Definitely need to clutter up the place more, but it’ll do for now. I’ll keep poking at it the next time I play and see if I can make it more lively!
Workout: Another night on the bike, another night with “Blades in the Dark RETURNS! 🎁 | Oxventure Holiday Special - The Effugium Contract” by Oxventure! The adventures of the Crawford Quartet and Barnaby continued this eve, and featured:
A) Luke rolling to see which way Oswin left after finishing his check-in with the engineer and getting a 3 as the highest result, which was going to lead to Oswin heading straight for the group...until Andy argued that a 3 meant that Oswin failed to discover them and they succeeded in staying hidden. XD Jane briefly tried to point out that it was supposed to be like a “coin flip” roll, then wondered why she was talking – fortunately, Luke loved the gumption and sent Oswin off in the other direction. Whew!
B) Winnie peeking her head out, seeing Oswin leave with his security detail, and realizing there was just a single (very-relieved-looking) engineer left behind in front of a big vault door in the wall – prompting her to use “The Devil’s Footsteps” to parkour beautifully and silently over to the man, leaping from wall to wall before dropping on him and choking him out. Unfortunately, thanks to getting a “success with a complication” on that roll, he did manage to get his elbow into her innards and leave her with Level 1 Harm, “Winded.” Ouch.
C) The group taking stock of the big vault door, which looked like it just – opened? Gabe was all for using his demolition tools on the hinges, but Troy insisted on giving it an experimental push first –
Causing nothing to happen, and Luke to reveal that the door pulled open. References to a certain famous Gary Larson cartoon of a supposedly-gifted kid were made. XD Poor Troy...
D) The group then PULLING the door open, revealing a set of stairs on the other side – leading down to another door, this one with two guards in front of it. Cue Troy attempting to lure one guard up by pretending to be the engineer they just knocked out, needing help carrying something; the guard asking him if he was a – Mr. A, let’s say, I don’t recall exactly what name Luke said; Troy confirming he was; the guard going, “I knew it, Mr. A isn’t on today;” and Troy somehow managing to pull it back by claiming it was a test and the guard had passed, luring him up with the promise of recommending him for a promotion. And then, once the guard came up the stairs, Gabe bonked him over the head with his lead mandolin and – on a “success with a complication” – killed him. XD Everyone was very nervous for a second, waiting for the big old bell, until they remembered that “oh yeah, the Spirit Wardens and ghosts aren’t really a thing anymore.” Cue Troy trying to cover up the sound by claiming they’d dropped the thing and calling to the other guard that they needed him too; the guard asking him if he was “Louvier” (or something like that; I’m bad with names in this episode!); Troy saying yes –
Aaand the guard being like “knew it, Louvier isn’t working this shift.” XD And he wasn’t impressed with Troy’s attempts to cover, going instead for the big alarm lever by the door. Gabriel headed down with his mandolin to bonk the guy, but failed his roll, leading to the guard pulling the lever and then trying to get him with the sword – Gabe pulled off the parry, but it was another “success with a complication,” so the guard’s sword got stuck in his mandolin. Which, on the plus side, was also a complication for the guard, and allowed Troy to run down and quickly switch off the alarm –
And Winnie to come in with a tiny knife dipped in the poison Eliza got and successfully nick the guy behind the ear. Cue Andy suggesting the guy’s jaw fell off as Luke described what happened, and Luke running with it and saying that the guy’s brain then fell out the open hole, then his eyeballs. Everyone was appropriately squicked. XD
E) Some other guards running toward the sound of the alarm, determined to see what had happened – the Crawford Quartet hastily dragged all the bodies, unconscious and dead, down the stairs, and closed the door enough so that it LOOKED shut without actually BEING shut, while Barnaby (who’d hung back during all the violence) intercepted the guards and claimed that he’d wandered down here looking for more clarified butter (as what HE had planned in the Bacchanalatorium required more than they had on hand; cue Johnny muttering, “round and round like a Catherine wheel…”) and had set off the alarm by accident. A 6 on his Sway roll meant the guards believed him and made an exception for him trespassing down there, leading him away so he could get to the kitchen for his butter.
F) Barnaby ending up on the upper exterior deck, and finding a load of people up there admiring the view and waving at the city being left behind...and pointing out what looked like an odd flying creature coming up on them in the distance; Barnaby wasn’t sure what it was, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t a bird (it certainly wasn’t flying like a bird), so he went back down to look for Oswin Fry under the pretext of warning him…
G) The Crawfords taking on the lock on the second vault door, and Winnie managing to bust it open with her tinkering tools (though she suffered another injury to her wrist in the process) – only for something to SLAM into the airship and send the door flying wide and everyone into the wall; cue everyone being like “what was THAT?!” but deciding to take a look at the engine room first because they’d spent all this time trying to get in there (Barnaby, meanwhile, was spending all his time trying to keep his drink level :P).
H) The Crawfords taking a look in the engine room – and finding not engines, but a series of big metal bars, all being gripped by glowing blue hands. Troy’s attempt to hit one hand with the flat of one of the guards’ swords resulted it in it going straight through, while Winnie’s prowl deeper into the room led her to discover a set of cruel-looking cubicles in the middle, with viewing windows in the side –
Windows that revealed a bunch of seemingly-ordinary people sitting on seats and concentrating as hard as they could. Basically, if I understand this correctly, they’re using a bunch of people who got the Mage Hand cantrip when magic returned to the world to basically hold the airship aloft. Winnie returned to her siblings and reported on her findings, stating that she was pretty sure the people were “ecological anarchists” and they’d basically been enslaved to create these spectral hands and hold up the ship. Troy noted that they couldn’t free them, at least not yet, or everyone would die, but they all agreed they had to tell Barnaby –
Aaand then the room shook again (causing a few hands to disappear as their creators’ concentration was broken), reminding them that it might just be a good idea to get out of there generally. Winnie tried to let the captives know that they weren’t abandoning them, but failed to get the message to go through (bad roll), and the group headed back the way they came –
With Eliza asking Gabriel if he was okay, and Gabe replying “well, I can’t do that.” Cue Gabriel revealing his magical powers to his younger siblings (Winnie revealing she’d had her suspicions after what Barnaby had said earlier, while Troy had been totally oblivious) – via giving poor Troy a spicy nose. XD I left off about there – tomorrow, we should wrap this adventure up and see what happens to our heroes and the airship! Which, uh, I am pretty damn sure is being attacked by a DRAGON, so...yeah. Should be an exciting finale.
FreeTube: Having completed all my writing goals earlier in the day, I had enough time this evening to watch the latest from OXBox – “shrek.wmv!” The annual only-lightly-edited New Year’s video, where the gang plays a terrible and/or baffling party game together, potentially tearing apart lifelong friendships. :P This year’s game, as indicated by the title, was Shrek Super Party – a terrible and confusing Mario Party rip-off where everyone played as a character from the original Shrek, wandering through various “realms” based on movie landmarks (including Farquaad’s castle, the keep Fiona was imprisoned in, Shrek’s swamp, the farm Shrek and Donkey walked through once on their way to save Fiona, and the windmill they camped in near the end of the movie) via the method of dropping a ball onto a big old tray with various divots in it to see how far they moved per turn. Their goal? Land on good squares, complete various challenges, and swap bugs with other players afterward to earn drops of bug juice to, as per the opening cinematic, pour into a magic well in the middle of the central “Town Square” area to earn a wish. Whoever filled their vial up first won and got their wish! You got it? No?
Well, good, that means you’re in the same boat as the OXBoxers themselves, who found the whole thing very irritating and confusing. XD Highlights of the video included:
A) Everyone reacting to the weird “big bobblehead” character design with various exclamations of horror and confusion (though it was agreed Donkey looked kinda cute, at least)
B) Mike insisting during character selection that someone had to be Shrek, and Andy agreeing to bite the “green bullet” – only for it to look like JANE had picked Shrek by accident! Turned out she was looking at the wrong portion of the screen. In the end, Andy was Shrek, Mike Lord Farquaad, Jane Princess Fiona, and Ellen Donkey, so everyone was playing a main character instead of Discount Robin Hood or The Executioner
C) The discovery that, even though the game has a mini-game where one player can challenge another to a “Daring Duel,” the other two players are still allowed to complete in the resulting mini-game and earn points, which confused everyone (Mike was like “do they not know what DUEL means?”)
D) Everyone trying to figure out the “bug economy” and how to get the most “precious drops” in the post-game swaps (the character in third was allowed to swap one bug with another player; the character in second two, and the character in first three) – they managed to miss the explanation that you wanted to have as many bugs of a certain kind as possible to get multipliers for having a set, and it took them until about midway through the video to figure it out
E) Andy dominating the early mini-games, with Mike doing absolutely awful...but thanks to everyone accidentally giving him bugs that would get him multipliers, rapidly rising to second place in the rankings thanks to all his precious drops, much to his own confusion
F) Mike’s luck turning with the “Glider Pilots” mini-game, where the characters had to pilot a glider and shoot down loads of balloons, mostly because the controls to go up and down were already inverted, just the way he liked them – he still came second, but at least he placed! This is also the point where they finally figured out the bug economy
G) Mike absolutely dominating the rest of the game by winning most of the mini-games, with a few exceptions – Jane won “Squirt-A-Snake” (where you had to squirt water into a fake snake’s mouth to raise the water level in its tail) because apparently she loves that sort of thing, while Ellen won both “Petal Plucker” (where you were a stinkbug and, basically, had to fart on bees landing on a sunflower’s petals) and “Spilt Milk (where you have to throw milk bottles at the other players to stun them) – Ellen was exceptionally good at the latter thanks to just walking up to people and deploying milk at point-blank range; the others joked that she was the milk assassin
H) Everyone agreeing that the “Bowl Me Over” mini-game, where you had to go and collect various gems growing in between pillars on a floor full of them, and could also fling a ball (that looked like a discount Hadouken) at other players to stun them, was actually fun, compared to the rest of the games
I) Both Jane and Ellen enjoying brief stints in second place thanks to the game basically just giving them drops for completing their respective “realms” – Andy was rather furious, not in the least because Shrek kept getting sent to “The Evil Bog” through no fault of his own XD
J) Jane only realizing that the “precious drops” were the bug juice they needed to collect forty-two minutes into the fifty-five minute video – she was promptly teased mercilessly for the rest of the run time, as was only fair and proper
K) And – at least partially thanks to Jane accidentally giving Mike a “full house” of bugs (two of one kind, three of another) in the final bug swap – Mike winning the game with 505 points, meaning Farquaad got his wish to be king (even if he needed a minion’s help to put on the crown thanks to his giant head)
Absolutely fucking ridiculous. XD These videos are so much fun – I’m glad they make sure to do them at least once a year!
Not too shabby, I suppose! Would have preferred it if it had taken less time to post that chapter, but what can you do. *nods* And now I have to get to bed -- tomorrow, plans include working on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; either playing Baldur's Gate III or getting Fallout: New Vegas off the ground; either writing Moose's birthday gift fic or just something fun for myself; and getting in a workout and finishing off "The Effugium Contract!" Hopefully all obtainable goals -- we shall see. Night all!
Dreamwidth: Spent most of the morning updating yesterday’s mini-entry to let you know what the heck I did the REST of the final day of 2025! Spoilers: It was mostly sit around watching OXBox videos. If you want the full deets, follow the link!
Writing: Welp, it’s official – Chapter Two of “The Van Dort Vacancy” is up! Ended up spending a pretty good-sized chunk of the day on this, thanks to:
A) Needing to finish off the final edits on the last bit of the chapter (from Victor overhearing the “what ghost would marry our Victor?” line from Nell to Victor telling Barnaby he could get him into the vault), since I couldn’t do it yesterday (just straight-up didn’t have the time – I really wanted to watch those OXBox videos!)
B) Needing to then copy the finished chapter from FF.net’s Document Manager to AO3’s actual chapter posting page (if you’re like “???” – I find FF.net’s Document Manager easier to work in when it comes to making the final edits. PLUS, if I copy the completed text from there into AO3’s chapter posting page (when the latter is set to “Rich Text” mode), it saves all my formatting WITHOUT any extra weirdness, like what often happens if I try to copy the text straight from my Writer doc into the page)
C) Needing to do all the chapter endnotes, which ranged from explaining what “Suran” is (one of the months of the Duskwall year, roughly analogous to May and June – and because it’s 60 days instead of 30, all three of my mains have a birthday in it) to covering all the references to various incidents and lines in the Barnaby-related episodes of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark (and there were a lot of them – I almost ran out of room in the text box!)
D) And needing to come up with a good title for the chapter (I ended up doing a play on one of Barnaby’s lines late in the fic: “I’ve told so many people that all you need to do to make your life better is to stop being poor, and this is proof positive!” (Itself a reference to a similar line he said in an OX:BITD episode.) As the whole point of the chapter is Victor realizing that he’d be much happier living in Elder Gutknecht’s wrecked house with Alice and Smiler over living in the gilded prison of the Van Dort mansion with his parents, the title thus became: “Actually, Barnaby, Victor Thinks His Life Would Be Better If He STARTED Being Poor” XD)
Yeah, that – that all took a while. Especially the endnotes, damn...but I got it up around mid-afternoon, and I’m happy about that. I really did want to ring in the new year with this latest chapter if I could!
Tumblr: Still nothing happening on Valice Multiverse, so, as usual, I concentrated on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – and while I didn’t get any drafting done (consequence of updating yesterday’s DW post with my activities for the day, then going straight into posting Chapter 2 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”), I did:
A) Post a link to Chapter 2 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” on my blog once the chapter was up and everything was sorted, because the masses must be told. I don’t believe most of the masses give a shit, but they must be told regardless.
B) Answer a question from Satirical Demon: “ao3 wrapped, option 20, to ring in the new year” – aka a request that I answer question 20, “Which work of yours have you reread the most?” from that AO3 Wrapped ask meme I posted. My initial thought was “I am genuinely not sure” –
And then I looked at the story I’d just spent hours working on and was like “actually, you know what, given how often I get sucked into reading the rest of “The Van Dort Vacancy” while working on edits…” XD So yeah, I answered that it was probably “The Van Dort Vacancy” because of that. With runners up being “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded” (because I did the same thing on that story – I mentioned I also tend to read ahead on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” while editing in the tags; I just don’t read ahead as much because those chapters be fucking long) and that snippet I wrote with Modern!AU Smiler hypnotizing Victor in person for the first time. Because fuck it, I like it.
C) And answer the messages waiting for me, because one was from Ace on New Year’s Eve and I didn’t want to leave them hanging (just didn’t get to it the other day)
So that was good, at least! We’ll see what gets accomplished tomorrow...
Little Corners: Okay – my plan for today was to go back to that guide I found about installing Wabbajack and the “Viva New Vegas” modlist, so I could try starting up Fallout: New Vegas and maybe get through character creation or something...but then I took ages to post Chapter 2 of “The Van Dort Vacancy,” so I very much did not have time for that. But I really wanted to play something, so I busted out this game again and started a new corner! Specifically, the “Adventurer’s Tavern” corner, because that looked like a fun one. So far on my journey to set up a proper tavern, I have:
A) Set an appropriate background for the corner, combining the “Rug” background image and the “Desktop” background image to make it look like it’s sitting on a rug on the floor – felt right for a tavern “build”
B) Unlocked all three “hidden stickers” – the “Happy Dog” by giving the “sleeping dog” sticker one of the “big old hunks of meat” stickers (unlocking a cheerful awake dog with a bone in its mouth); the “Dragon Trophy” by hitting the “dragon picture” sticker with the “thrown axe stuck in something” sticker (unlocking a stuffed dragon head to mount on the wall); and the “Quest Board” by stabbing the “dagger stabbed in something” sticker into the larger “treasure map” sticker (unlocking a corkboard covered in papers advertising quests). I’ve managed to use “Happy Dog” and “Dragon Trophy” in my “build,” but the quest board unfortunately doesn’t fit in the space the way I’ve set it up. Shame. (Oh, and interesting side note – under 10% of people have unlocked the “Quest Board” and “Dragon Trophy” stickers, apparently! I am part of a rare breed. :P)
C) Found to my sadness that all the stickers of shelves of bottles or kegs behind the bar are meant to be used with a specific “bar” sticker that has a wooden frame on it and goes on one of the walls – there’s a “window” in between the bar top and the frame around it, and you put the sticker with the bottle or kegs in that window to suggest a room behind the bar stocked with all that stuff. However, my walls are taken up with a window, a door, a recessed booth area, and the fireplace, so I have to use the “freestanding” bar. And the stickers for that “window” in the “hole in the wall bar” sticker don’t fit properly on the back of the “freestanding bar” sticker, like I’d hoped. Meeeh. I’m hoping I can fit a barrel or something in SOMEWHERE!
D) Found to my happiness that this particular corner has at least some more colorful stickers – red and green rugs to throw on the floor, brightly patterned pennants to hang on the fireplace, colorful bottles to scatter around the place, stuff like that. It’s still a little more brown than I might like, but it feels a bit more cheerful than the Alchemist’s Tower!
E) Got a basic floor plan set up – the front door is on the left wall, near the back corner, with a window next to it (with some crossed swords mounted above said window for decoration); then the booth is on the right wall next to the back corner, near the door, and the fireplace is next to that; there’s two big round tables on the main floor – one closer to the fireplace, one closer to the window; and then the bar is all the way in the front (on the corner where the floor cuts off), with three bar stools in front of it. *shrug* All felt like the most logical positioning!
F) Did things like set up the booth as the “fancier” part of the pub, with a proper candelabra (the other two tables got tall drippy candles just plonked straight down on them) and nicer tankards on the table (I also put the map with a dagger in it in there, along with a plate with a slice of pie, to suggest two adventurers talking about finding treasure over lunch); put both the sleeping dog and the happy dog on a rug in front of the fire, along with a dish with a bone balanced on top (gotta keep the doggos happy!); put the axe in the dragon picture on the wall next to the fireplace (I just liked the look of it); and put a couple of cups and a card castle on the table nearer the window (because how could I resist the card castle? There’s also a backpack and a freestanding axe in the corner nearby).
*nods* Not bad, I think – it’s slowly but surely coming together! And I have to admit, I feel like I’m getting better at properly layering all the stickers. *nods* As usual, here is an in-progress shot of what the tavern looks like right now:
I think that’s a pretty decent start! Definitely need to clutter up the place more, but it’ll do for now. I’ll keep poking at it the next time I play and see if I can make it more lively!
Workout: Another night on the bike, another night with “Blades in the Dark RETURNS! 🎁 | Oxventure Holiday Special - The Effugium Contract” by Oxventure! The adventures of the Crawford Quartet and Barnaby continued this eve, and featured:
A) Luke rolling to see which way Oswin left after finishing his check-in with the engineer and getting a 3 as the highest result, which was going to lead to Oswin heading straight for the group...until Andy argued that a 3 meant that Oswin failed to discover them and they succeeded in staying hidden. XD Jane briefly tried to point out that it was supposed to be like a “coin flip” roll, then wondered why she was talking – fortunately, Luke loved the gumption and sent Oswin off in the other direction. Whew!
B) Winnie peeking her head out, seeing Oswin leave with his security detail, and realizing there was just a single (very-relieved-looking) engineer left behind in front of a big vault door in the wall – prompting her to use “The Devil’s Footsteps” to parkour beautifully and silently over to the man, leaping from wall to wall before dropping on him and choking him out. Unfortunately, thanks to getting a “success with a complication” on that roll, he did manage to get his elbow into her innards and leave her with Level 1 Harm, “Winded.” Ouch.
C) The group taking stock of the big vault door, which looked like it just – opened? Gabe was all for using his demolition tools on the hinges, but Troy insisted on giving it an experimental push first –
Causing nothing to happen, and Luke to reveal that the door pulled open. References to a certain famous Gary Larson cartoon of a supposedly-gifted kid were made. XD Poor Troy...
D) The group then PULLING the door open, revealing a set of stairs on the other side – leading down to another door, this one with two guards in front of it. Cue Troy attempting to lure one guard up by pretending to be the engineer they just knocked out, needing help carrying something; the guard asking him if he was a – Mr. A, let’s say, I don’t recall exactly what name Luke said; Troy confirming he was; the guard going, “I knew it, Mr. A isn’t on today;” and Troy somehow managing to pull it back by claiming it was a test and the guard had passed, luring him up with the promise of recommending him for a promotion. And then, once the guard came up the stairs, Gabe bonked him over the head with his lead mandolin and – on a “success with a complication” – killed him. XD Everyone was very nervous for a second, waiting for the big old bell, until they remembered that “oh yeah, the Spirit Wardens and ghosts aren’t really a thing anymore.” Cue Troy trying to cover up the sound by claiming they’d dropped the thing and calling to the other guard that they needed him too; the guard asking him if he was “Louvier” (or something like that; I’m bad with names in this episode!); Troy saying yes –
Aaand the guard being like “knew it, Louvier isn’t working this shift.” XD And he wasn’t impressed with Troy’s attempts to cover, going instead for the big alarm lever by the door. Gabriel headed down with his mandolin to bonk the guy, but failed his roll, leading to the guard pulling the lever and then trying to get him with the sword – Gabe pulled off the parry, but it was another “success with a complication,” so the guard’s sword got stuck in his mandolin. Which, on the plus side, was also a complication for the guard, and allowed Troy to run down and quickly switch off the alarm –
And Winnie to come in with a tiny knife dipped in the poison Eliza got and successfully nick the guy behind the ear. Cue Andy suggesting the guy’s jaw fell off as Luke described what happened, and Luke running with it and saying that the guy’s brain then fell out the open hole, then his eyeballs. Everyone was appropriately squicked. XD
E) Some other guards running toward the sound of the alarm, determined to see what had happened – the Crawford Quartet hastily dragged all the bodies, unconscious and dead, down the stairs, and closed the door enough so that it LOOKED shut without actually BEING shut, while Barnaby (who’d hung back during all the violence) intercepted the guards and claimed that he’d wandered down here looking for more clarified butter (as what HE had planned in the Bacchanalatorium required more than they had on hand; cue Johnny muttering, “round and round like a Catherine wheel…”) and had set off the alarm by accident. A 6 on his Sway roll meant the guards believed him and made an exception for him trespassing down there, leading him away so he could get to the kitchen for his butter.
F) Barnaby ending up on the upper exterior deck, and finding a load of people up there admiring the view and waving at the city being left behind...and pointing out what looked like an odd flying creature coming up on them in the distance; Barnaby wasn’t sure what it was, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t a bird (it certainly wasn’t flying like a bird), so he went back down to look for Oswin Fry under the pretext of warning him…
G) The Crawfords taking on the lock on the second vault door, and Winnie managing to bust it open with her tinkering tools (though she suffered another injury to her wrist in the process) – only for something to SLAM into the airship and send the door flying wide and everyone into the wall; cue everyone being like “what was THAT?!” but deciding to take a look at the engine room first because they’d spent all this time trying to get in there (Barnaby, meanwhile, was spending all his time trying to keep his drink level :P).
H) The Crawfords taking a look in the engine room – and finding not engines, but a series of big metal bars, all being gripped by glowing blue hands. Troy’s attempt to hit one hand with the flat of one of the guards’ swords resulted it in it going straight through, while Winnie’s prowl deeper into the room led her to discover a set of cruel-looking cubicles in the middle, with viewing windows in the side –
Windows that revealed a bunch of seemingly-ordinary people sitting on seats and concentrating as hard as they could. Basically, if I understand this correctly, they’re using a bunch of people who got the Mage Hand cantrip when magic returned to the world to basically hold the airship aloft. Winnie returned to her siblings and reported on her findings, stating that she was pretty sure the people were “ecological anarchists” and they’d basically been enslaved to create these spectral hands and hold up the ship. Troy noted that they couldn’t free them, at least not yet, or everyone would die, but they all agreed they had to tell Barnaby –
Aaand then the room shook again (causing a few hands to disappear as their creators’ concentration was broken), reminding them that it might just be a good idea to get out of there generally. Winnie tried to let the captives know that they weren’t abandoning them, but failed to get the message to go through (bad roll), and the group headed back the way they came –
With Eliza asking Gabriel if he was okay, and Gabe replying “well, I can’t do that.” Cue Gabriel revealing his magical powers to his younger siblings (Winnie revealing she’d had her suspicions after what Barnaby had said earlier, while Troy had been totally oblivious) – via giving poor Troy a spicy nose. XD I left off about there – tomorrow, we should wrap this adventure up and see what happens to our heroes and the airship! Which, uh, I am pretty damn sure is being attacked by a DRAGON, so...yeah. Should be an exciting finale.
FreeTube: Having completed all my writing goals earlier in the day, I had enough time this evening to watch the latest from OXBox – “shrek.wmv!” The annual only-lightly-edited New Year’s video, where the gang plays a terrible and/or baffling party game together, potentially tearing apart lifelong friendships. :P This year’s game, as indicated by the title, was Shrek Super Party – a terrible and confusing Mario Party rip-off where everyone played as a character from the original Shrek, wandering through various “realms” based on movie landmarks (including Farquaad’s castle, the keep Fiona was imprisoned in, Shrek’s swamp, the farm Shrek and Donkey walked through once on their way to save Fiona, and the windmill they camped in near the end of the movie) via the method of dropping a ball onto a big old tray with various divots in it to see how far they moved per turn. Their goal? Land on good squares, complete various challenges, and swap bugs with other players afterward to earn drops of bug juice to, as per the opening cinematic, pour into a magic well in the middle of the central “Town Square” area to earn a wish. Whoever filled their vial up first won and got their wish! You got it? No?
Well, good, that means you’re in the same boat as the OXBoxers themselves, who found the whole thing very irritating and confusing. XD Highlights of the video included:
A) Everyone reacting to the weird “big bobblehead” character design with various exclamations of horror and confusion (though it was agreed Donkey looked kinda cute, at least)
B) Mike insisting during character selection that someone had to be Shrek, and Andy agreeing to bite the “green bullet” – only for it to look like JANE had picked Shrek by accident! Turned out she was looking at the wrong portion of the screen. In the end, Andy was Shrek, Mike Lord Farquaad, Jane Princess Fiona, and Ellen Donkey, so everyone was playing a main character instead of Discount Robin Hood or The Executioner
C) The discovery that, even though the game has a mini-game where one player can challenge another to a “Daring Duel,” the other two players are still allowed to complete in the resulting mini-game and earn points, which confused everyone (Mike was like “do they not know what DUEL means?”)
D) Everyone trying to figure out the “bug economy” and how to get the most “precious drops” in the post-game swaps (the character in third was allowed to swap one bug with another player; the character in second two, and the character in first three) – they managed to miss the explanation that you wanted to have as many bugs of a certain kind as possible to get multipliers for having a set, and it took them until about midway through the video to figure it out
E) Andy dominating the early mini-games, with Mike doing absolutely awful...but thanks to everyone accidentally giving him bugs that would get him multipliers, rapidly rising to second place in the rankings thanks to all his precious drops, much to his own confusion
F) Mike’s luck turning with the “Glider Pilots” mini-game, where the characters had to pilot a glider and shoot down loads of balloons, mostly because the controls to go up and down were already inverted, just the way he liked them – he still came second, but at least he placed! This is also the point where they finally figured out the bug economy
G) Mike absolutely dominating the rest of the game by winning most of the mini-games, with a few exceptions – Jane won “Squirt-A-Snake” (where you had to squirt water into a fake snake’s mouth to raise the water level in its tail) because apparently she loves that sort of thing, while Ellen won both “Petal Plucker” (where you were a stinkbug and, basically, had to fart on bees landing on a sunflower’s petals) and “Spilt Milk (where you have to throw milk bottles at the other players to stun them) – Ellen was exceptionally good at the latter thanks to just walking up to people and deploying milk at point-blank range; the others joked that she was the milk assassin
H) Everyone agreeing that the “Bowl Me Over” mini-game, where you had to go and collect various gems growing in between pillars on a floor full of them, and could also fling a ball (that looked like a discount Hadouken) at other players to stun them, was actually fun, compared to the rest of the games
I) Both Jane and Ellen enjoying brief stints in second place thanks to the game basically just giving them drops for completing their respective “realms” – Andy was rather furious, not in the least because Shrek kept getting sent to “The Evil Bog” through no fault of his own XD
J) Jane only realizing that the “precious drops” were the bug juice they needed to collect forty-two minutes into the fifty-five minute video – she was promptly teased mercilessly for the rest of the run time, as was only fair and proper
K) And – at least partially thanks to Jane accidentally giving Mike a “full house” of bugs (two of one kind, three of another) in the final bug swap – Mike winning the game with 505 points, meaning Farquaad got his wish to be king (even if he needed a minion’s help to put on the crown thanks to his giant head)
Absolutely fucking ridiculous. XD These videos are so much fun – I’m glad they make sure to do them at least once a year!
Not too shabby, I suppose! Would have preferred it if it had taken less time to post that chapter, but what can you do. *nods* And now I have to get to bed -- tomorrow, plans include working on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; either playing Baldur's Gate III or getting Fallout: New Vegas off the ground; either writing Moose's birthday gift fic or just something fun for myself; and getting in a workout and finishing off "The Effugium Contract!" Hopefully all obtainable goals -- we shall see. Night all!
