All Right Wednesday
Feb. 4th, 2026 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickDad was still having a tough time of it, apparently, but he ate most of his dinner and didn't seem to be in too much pain, so -- that's something? *shrug* And my day went pretty well, all things considered:
Work – A slightly less busy day at work today, though I still had plenty to do –
A) After doing the usual morning reports, I went through some of the roster maintenance stuff in the latest batch of exceptions, marking a few people deceased and returning a deposit slip someone sent in by mistake
B) Then, having not gotten any answer from the credit card people about the issue I e-mailed them about yesterday, I e-mailed as many of the people who’d had their credit card gifts/pledges returned as I could (the ones who forgot expiration dates or had a regular old card failure or straight up didn’t put an amount to charge) to make them aware of the issue
C) Then I got a call from someone requesting a tax letter, so I made up one of those (though I couldn’t put it in the mail because our director needed to sign it, and she left early today as she wasn’t feeling well)
D) Then, after getting a voicemail during lunch that was literally just “aw, shit” (seriously!), I called that guy back and helped him with his stuff (he just needed to know how much he gave last year for tax purposes)
E) Then, I did a bunch of reversals to move some overpayments on last year’s pledges onto this year’s pledges, as per the requests of the donors
F) Then, I spent most of the rest of the day working on a spreadsheet of people who still have balances on last year’s pledges, to see if doing at least one more pledge billing cycle would be worth it
G) And finally, I took one credit card call from a lady who actually had to stop and call me back partway through because an urgent call came in while she was talking to me, which was slightly amusing
*shrug* Not a horrible day – though I have to admit, parking this morning was tricky. Our parking lot is all stained with salt, so it’s hard to see the actual lines for the spaces, and there’s a big old pile of snow stretching out in front of all of the spaces, meaning you can only pull so far forward. So I had to do a lot of inching forward to make sure my car was in the space but not nose-first in the drift! *shakehead* God, I can’t wait for spring...though, given how much freaking snow there is, that pile might still be there even when the weather warms up. I guess we’ll find out, huh?
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier - Part 6 - The House Edge!” The Adventures of Useless Steve continued today, with tonight’s chunklet featuring –
A) Useless Steve attempting to show off another terminal with the Lucky 38 override over in Camp Golf...only to be unable to because it too was locked beyond his ability to hack it (poor guy can’t even get into Easy terminals). He did manage to show off where to find another Lucky 38 VIP card to use to get into House’s secret room, though! One that didn’t involve having to fight your way through Mr. House’s half-brother’s murderous robots and deadly traps!
B) Useless Steve then traveling to New Vegas Steel (a random factory full of crazed robots – Jon was expecting Mr. Gutsys, but the game felt sorry for Useless Steve and only set some Mr. Handys on him) and finally getting to show off the “Lucky 38 Executive Override” on the thankfully-unlocked terminal on there! Followed by Jon explaining how this building (along with H&H Tools from the last chunklet, and the sewers, which also contain a terminal with this override option) only exists because it was designed as part of the quest to bug Mr. House’s network for the Followers (the idea being that you would have to find a terminal to execute the override and make sure the bug actually worked – I presume there’s multiple terminals with this option to accommodate Couriers with varying levels of hacking ability) – after they cut most of the quest, they just left the locations in, presumably because why waste the hard work of designing them? It just livens up the wasteland – especially when crazed Mr. Handys start coming after you (Steve managed to take out most of them with the pulse grenades in his grenade launcher and then fled).
C) Useless Steve then doing a quick tour of the Mojave to find the final three base-game snowglobes that he hadn’t turned in yet – the Nellis Air Force Base one (found in the Boomer’s little museum hut), the Hoover Dam one (found on a desk in the dam itself), and the Strip One (found in Sarah’s room in Vault 21 – this one was the trickiest to get as it wasn’t laying out in the open; Steve had to put his limited pickpocketing skills to work to get her room key before heading downstairs and stealing it from her side table) – and selling them to Jane! Because the minute he killed Mr. House, it was bye-bye Jane, and he wanted to get all the money he could from the snowglobe collection while he could. *nods* Rather smart, Useless Steve!
D) Useless Steve then using one of his Lucky 38 VIP cards to get into House’s back room (tanking quite a few Securitron shots along the way thanks to his combat armor) and pop the horrified House out of his tank (with Jon remarking that, no matter how many times he sees it, he STILL really hates that “penis pump” thing House is wearing on his crotch XD), thus failing all of House’s missions and cementing his choice of “Independent Vegas” ending. Though, interestingly, Steve didn’t actually kill House – instead, he just disconnected House’s cerebral interface (forcing him out of all his various computer terminals) and left House hanging out in front of his own life support pod (Jon openly saying the guy was going to be Useless Steve’s pet XD). House clearly considered this a fate at least equivalent to death, though (and to be fair, it probably was, because his withered old ass is not equipped for the germs outside his life support pod), and his systems obligingly sent out his obituary, titled “A Tragedy Has Befallen All Mankind.” Steve got a copy on his Pip-Boy and spent a moment reading it – it was mostly House praising himself and talking about how, though his half-brother cheated him out of his inheritance, he became a captain of industry and the best man in the world nonetheless. XD God, I love this game and I’ve only been playing it personally for a few hours. :P
E) Useless Steve then visiting the Old Mormon Fort to pick up his second companion of the run – Arcade Gannon! Who is another person who has a unique interaction with a Low Intelligence Courier – while normally he requires the Courier to either be very well-liked by the Followers Of The Apocalypse (of whom he is a member) or to have a high Speech skill to talk him into tagging along, Useless Steve was just able to tell him “This place is really complicated and stuff. You’re smart. Can you help me do...things?” and Arcade was immediately like “ooooh, yeah, you need someone to look after you. All right, I’ll come, but just remember not to help the bad people trying to hurt Freeside.” XD And why did Steve want Arcade?
To do his companion quest, of course! Which involves learning Arcade’s backstory as the son of a former Enclave soldier and rounding up his dad’s old buddies to actually do some good and help repel the Legion at Hoover Dam once the big fight kicks off. Normally the game tries to make sure that you can only do this at a fairly late point, as it has a very powerful reward – some fancy armor that Useless Steve wants very much – but as per Jon, the way the game decides that “okay, you can get Arcade’s companion quest now – if he likes you enough of course,” is checking to see if House is dead and if the Courier has the Platinum Chip. Which means, if you’re doing the NCR route, you will genuinely only unlock Arcade’s backstory fairly late in the game, as they don’t order you to kill House for a while –
But if you’re doing the Yes Man route, you can kill him whenever – including, in Steve’s case, before even recovering the chip. Meaning, so long as Steve could get the necessary “points” with Arcade, he could get the quest! (Presumably you’re just totally locked out of this quest if you’re doing the Legion route, as Arcade loathes the Legion and probably doesn’t stick around long enough to give it to a Courier working with them.)
F) Useless Steve then dragging Arcade with him to The Fort, AKA Legion territory, because he had to go that way anyway to deal with Benny (who’d been captured by them) and finally get the chip back! Arcade was naturally like “what the hell gives??” but Useless Steve assured him that he just wanted to hear what Caesar had to say so they could figure up what he was up to, then they could get out. Which instantly got him a couple of points towards unlocking his companion quest, yay! Useless Steve then proceeded to –
I. Leave Arcade Gannon outside Caesar’s tent (as companions weren’t allowed in) in a certain spot on the cliff overlooking the battle arena in the camp
II. Go talk to Caesar and get all of his cool deeds recounted to him (such as tracking Benny across the Mojave before making him run sniveling out of his own casino and waltzing into the Lucky 38 and murdering Mr. House), before getting the Platinum Chip from him so he could “destroy” all of House’s securitrons in the Weather Station
III. Go talk to the tied-up Benny and, after getting in a giggle at his situation, let him know that he had the Platinum Chip – only for Benny to tell him that he did not want to destroy House’s secret stash of Securitrons under the weather station, but rather that he should do whatever it was House had wanted him to do, then go find Yes Man to take over the Strip. Because, apparently, if he can’t win, someone ought to. Jon was rather touched by this one sincere moment from Benny, feeling like the guy, at the end, gains a grudging respect for the Courier. ...I don’t know if that respect is more or less grudging in this instance, given the Courier is Useless Steve, but still. XD
IV. Go down into the weather station (past the weedy “bunker” doors – Jon still finds the fact that the Legion apparently couldn’t penetrate them very amusing) and clear the place out, killing all the protectrons and turrets trying to kill him and picking up any good loot, before upgrading the Securitrons and sending them to the Strip, getting a load of XP from completing Yes Man’s version of the quest and getting to Level 14! Jon bumped his Science to 15 so he could, you know, actually hack some terminals (with the help of a Programmer’s Digest, anyway), bumped Energy Weapons to 60, and took the Commando perk so Steve would be more accurate in VATS with his beloved Q-35.
V. Return to Caesar to get his reward for “destroying” the Securitrons (because Caesar is an idiot who assumes the rumbling from the station was Steve doing as he asked) and be allowed to choose the fate of Benny – he chose to fight Benny in honorable one to one combat with machetes, which Benny was fine with, and they proceeded into the arena –
Where Arcade Gannon shot Benny to death with his plasma pistol because while he wasn’t allowed to go into the arena, he was allowed to shoot into it. Jon considered this absolutely hilarious. XD Steve took as the spoils Benny’s unique gun Maria and his checkered suit.
VI. Finally grab Arcade and leave The Fort, Jon laughing all the while about how Arcade told Steve “don’t help any bad people and don’t hurt anybody,” only for Steve to immediately take him into the heart of Legion territory, do a mission for Caesar, and then trick him into shooting a man. XD
Fun trip!
G) Useless Steve then wandering the Mojave to get more points towards unlocking Arcade’s companion quest, which worked much like unlocking Veronica’s in that it involved taking Arcade specific places to prompt specific comments out of him. To whit, Steve brought him along to:
I. Camp McCarran and its science division so he could see Steve talk to Dr. Hildern – Arcade noted that Hildern was too fixated on “large scale results” and that he’d lost sight of the common good along the way, and Steve said “good thing there are people like you around” to flatter Arcade’s ego
II. The Silver Rush in Freeside so he could see the tables of energy weapons – Arcade admitted that it brought back “interesting memories” for him, to which Steve replied innocently, “Of the Followers using them?” Causing Arcade to stumble through how the Followers study all sorts of science and technology, so you just kind of get familiar with them, in a way that made it obvious he was hiding something XD
III. And REPCONN HQ just to show him the place – Arcade said he’d read about them, and that he’d heard they’d done some work with the – *cough* pre-War government, not the Enclave, no sir XD
Good to know for when I eventually pick up Arcade – I think he and Victor should get along just fine. :)
H) Useless Steve then taking a minute to install Yes Man in House’s old main console, completing the “Wild Card: Change In Management” quest – and prompting Arcade to finally start his companion quest! Involving him admitting to being the child of a former Enclave soldier, and suggesting they round up his dad’s old companions to help with the Hoover Dam mess. Most of which were easy to find – Judah Kreger was hanging out outside Miguel’s pawn shop in Westside; Orion Moreno was just up the road from the NCR Sharecropper farms; Daisy Whitman was in the motel in Novac; Cannibal Johnson was in a cave somewhere near Vault 34 (though he was very insulted by Useless Steve showing up instead of the Grim Reaper, saying the guy was just mocking him by sending Steve). The one hard one was Dr. Henry at Jacobstown – not because he was hard to find, he was literally just in the main building, but because – unlike the others – he’d properly moved on and gotten a job as a doctor. And refused to go join the others for the reunion until Steve sorted out something for him – namely, the whole thing with Nightkin and their stealth fields. Which mean Steve had to go into the nearby Charleston Cave and brave the invisible Nightstalkers there to get a chewed Stealth Boy for the good doctor to examine –
Which led to him dying repeatedly because, well, Nightstalkers are no joke, given that they’re snake-coyotes with a poisonous bite. Going in guns blazing didn’t work, going in with a Stealth Boy didn’t work – basically, it all kind of came down Steve and Arcade getting lucky and managing to take down the Nightstalkers before getting chomped and injected with venom. Arcade openly seeking out the Nightstalkers to kill them did not help matters! They did eventually get the Stealth Boy, though, along with a level up to 15 for Steve – Speech went up to 60, and Sneak up to 31. :P
Not bad, not bad at all. I left off with Jon complaining about Steve’s limb condition and how he should have asked Dr. Henry to heal him before attempting this while he got the stuff – tomorrow, we should be able to wrap up this episode, and maybe start the next one! We shall see!
2. Continue editing Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – I in fact finished editing Chapter 3 today! Mostly because I only had like a page and a half to go, so I figured I might as well just get it done. :) Said final page-and-a-half included:
A) Barnaby arriving on the scene in the greenhouse (where Kasimir was trying to figure out who Alice and Smiler were, and what their game was) with Victor in tow, cheerfully telling Kasimir how Victor had agreed to help them rob the place, and not even acknowledging Alice or Smiler until a puzzled Alice asked why – and then, of course, he assumed they were staff and asked why they were listening in to his conversation. XD (To be fair, they ARE in staff uniforms...)
B) Smiler explaining they were friends of Victor and confirming that they were robbing the Van Dorts, with Kasimir reluctantly explaining that Barnaby gave away half the Hobbyhorses’ Coin to a “Master Vreen” who said he was setting up a dog track – only for it to turn out Vreen was a conman who just ran off with the cash (he’s actually straight out of the original Blades In The Dark sourcebook, with his fake racetrack being a point of interest in Nightmarket). The heist was their way of recovering the funds. Barnaby was like “I was just making an investment in the gang’s future! ...or, well, my future. And besides, I was bored and wanted to do some lovely crime again.” XD
C) Kasimir again asking why Victor was helping them rob his own family, and Barnaby breezily saying that Victor was mad at his parents for “some reason” (he hadn’t been paying attention). Cue Alice asking Victor what happened, and Victor telling her and Smiler about his conversation with Nell and William just outside the party, and how they’d made it clear that they hadn’t been worried about him in the slightest, just that he’d ruined his engagement to Victoria Everglot, and how they hadn’t believed his story, because what ghost would want to marry him –
Followed by Victor breaking down into tears. :( Smiler and Alice immediately did their best to comfort him, and once Victor had gotten ahold of himself again, he explained how he’d realized how much he didn’t want to do any of this anymore, so when he came across Barnaby and realized that the guy wanted to rob his parents, he decided to help. Both to ensure that Alice and Smiler got their reward, and to get some money for himself because he certainly wasn’t going to be living in the Van Dort mansion anymore.
D) Victor then asking Alice if it was okay if he stayed with her and Elder Gutknecht for a little bit, at least until he found his feet. Cue Alice feeling the smugness radiating off Smiler. XD She did agree, of course, though she warned Victor that it was going to be a bit cramped since Smiler was moving in too, explaining to her startled friend that they wanted the alchemy bench and to keep her company. And that they hadn’t figured out the bed situation. Smiler cheerfully declared they’d just get two cots from their parents, and maybe they could set up a rotation regarding who got the nice bed what days. XD
E) And Kasimir asking if they were done with all the emotional stuff and if Alice and Smiler were joining the team too, as it would be nice to know how many people were involved in the robbery. XD Alice and Smiler confirmed that they would quite enjoy robbing the Van Dorts, and Victor sent Barnaby and Kasimir to wait in the wine cellar while he, Alice, and Smiler went and got his things (with the pair being very happy to do so). Chapter ended with Victor preparing to lead his friends to his room, with Alice encouraging him to hurry before she decided to hunt down Nell and turn her tongue into dinner’s main course – Victor laughed painfully and admitted he probably wouldn’t even stop her.
*nods* Good stuff, if I do say so myself. :) Tomorrow, we get this in the FF.net document manager and start the final editing pass! Hopefully I can get this up, if not this weekend, then at least by Valicertine’s Day. ;)
3. Watch something on FreeTube: No check – summing up the workout video and editing the final bit of Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” just took up too much time. Good thing there wasn’t a list video for me to miss tonight!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – I’d hoped to get this week’s Song Saturday post queued up on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), but I ran out of time to do that too. Though I do know what I want to post – in honor of finishing another “The Van Dort Vacancy” chapter (and, if I’m lucky, posting it this weekend), I want to do “People Like Us” again, as that’s one of my VITD songs. Just gotta find it in the VITD tag so I can reblog it!
*looks at the above* Yeah, I have to find a quicker way to sum up Useless Steve's adventures, this is taking waaaaay too long. I'll see if I can fix that problem tomorrow -- for now, I have to get to bed. Night all!
Work – A slightly less busy day at work today, though I still had plenty to do –
A) After doing the usual morning reports, I went through some of the roster maintenance stuff in the latest batch of exceptions, marking a few people deceased and returning a deposit slip someone sent in by mistake
B) Then, having not gotten any answer from the credit card people about the issue I e-mailed them about yesterday, I e-mailed as many of the people who’d had their credit card gifts/pledges returned as I could (the ones who forgot expiration dates or had a regular old card failure or straight up didn’t put an amount to charge) to make them aware of the issue
C) Then I got a call from someone requesting a tax letter, so I made up one of those (though I couldn’t put it in the mail because our director needed to sign it, and she left early today as she wasn’t feeling well)
D) Then, after getting a voicemail during lunch that was literally just “aw, shit” (seriously!), I called that guy back and helped him with his stuff (he just needed to know how much he gave last year for tax purposes)
E) Then, I did a bunch of reversals to move some overpayments on last year’s pledges onto this year’s pledges, as per the requests of the donors
F) Then, I spent most of the rest of the day working on a spreadsheet of people who still have balances on last year’s pledges, to see if doing at least one more pledge billing cycle would be worth it
G) And finally, I took one credit card call from a lady who actually had to stop and call me back partway through because an urgent call came in while she was talking to me, which was slightly amusing
*shrug* Not a horrible day – though I have to admit, parking this morning was tricky. Our parking lot is all stained with salt, so it’s hard to see the actual lines for the spaces, and there’s a big old pile of snow stretching out in front of all of the spaces, meaning you can only pull so far forward. So I had to do a lot of inching forward to make sure my car was in the space but not nose-first in the drift! *shakehead* God, I can’t wait for spring...though, given how much freaking snow there is, that pile might still be there even when the weather warms up. I guess we’ll find out, huh?
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier - Part 6 - The House Edge!” The Adventures of Useless Steve continued today, with tonight’s chunklet featuring –
A) Useless Steve attempting to show off another terminal with the Lucky 38 override over in Camp Golf...only to be unable to because it too was locked beyond his ability to hack it (poor guy can’t even get into Easy terminals). He did manage to show off where to find another Lucky 38 VIP card to use to get into House’s secret room, though! One that didn’t involve having to fight your way through Mr. House’s half-brother’s murderous robots and deadly traps!
B) Useless Steve then traveling to New Vegas Steel (a random factory full of crazed robots – Jon was expecting Mr. Gutsys, but the game felt sorry for Useless Steve and only set some Mr. Handys on him) and finally getting to show off the “Lucky 38 Executive Override” on the thankfully-unlocked terminal on there! Followed by Jon explaining how this building (along with H&H Tools from the last chunklet, and the sewers, which also contain a terminal with this override option) only exists because it was designed as part of the quest to bug Mr. House’s network for the Followers (the idea being that you would have to find a terminal to execute the override and make sure the bug actually worked – I presume there’s multiple terminals with this option to accommodate Couriers with varying levels of hacking ability) – after they cut most of the quest, they just left the locations in, presumably because why waste the hard work of designing them? It just livens up the wasteland – especially when crazed Mr. Handys start coming after you (Steve managed to take out most of them with the pulse grenades in his grenade launcher and then fled).
C) Useless Steve then doing a quick tour of the Mojave to find the final three base-game snowglobes that he hadn’t turned in yet – the Nellis Air Force Base one (found in the Boomer’s little museum hut), the Hoover Dam one (found on a desk in the dam itself), and the Strip One (found in Sarah’s room in Vault 21 – this one was the trickiest to get as it wasn’t laying out in the open; Steve had to put his limited pickpocketing skills to work to get her room key before heading downstairs and stealing it from her side table) – and selling them to Jane! Because the minute he killed Mr. House, it was bye-bye Jane, and he wanted to get all the money he could from the snowglobe collection while he could. *nods* Rather smart, Useless Steve!
D) Useless Steve then using one of his Lucky 38 VIP cards to get into House’s back room (tanking quite a few Securitron shots along the way thanks to his combat armor) and pop the horrified House out of his tank (with Jon remarking that, no matter how many times he sees it, he STILL really hates that “penis pump” thing House is wearing on his crotch XD), thus failing all of House’s missions and cementing his choice of “Independent Vegas” ending. Though, interestingly, Steve didn’t actually kill House – instead, he just disconnected House’s cerebral interface (forcing him out of all his various computer terminals) and left House hanging out in front of his own life support pod (Jon openly saying the guy was going to be Useless Steve’s pet XD). House clearly considered this a fate at least equivalent to death, though (and to be fair, it probably was, because his withered old ass is not equipped for the germs outside his life support pod), and his systems obligingly sent out his obituary, titled “A Tragedy Has Befallen All Mankind.” Steve got a copy on his Pip-Boy and spent a moment reading it – it was mostly House praising himself and talking about how, though his half-brother cheated him out of his inheritance, he became a captain of industry and the best man in the world nonetheless. XD God, I love this game and I’ve only been playing it personally for a few hours. :P
E) Useless Steve then visiting the Old Mormon Fort to pick up his second companion of the run – Arcade Gannon! Who is another person who has a unique interaction with a Low Intelligence Courier – while normally he requires the Courier to either be very well-liked by the Followers Of The Apocalypse (of whom he is a member) or to have a high Speech skill to talk him into tagging along, Useless Steve was just able to tell him “This place is really complicated and stuff. You’re smart. Can you help me do...things?” and Arcade was immediately like “ooooh, yeah, you need someone to look after you. All right, I’ll come, but just remember not to help the bad people trying to hurt Freeside.” XD And why did Steve want Arcade?
To do his companion quest, of course! Which involves learning Arcade’s backstory as the son of a former Enclave soldier and rounding up his dad’s old buddies to actually do some good and help repel the Legion at Hoover Dam once the big fight kicks off. Normally the game tries to make sure that you can only do this at a fairly late point, as it has a very powerful reward – some fancy armor that Useless Steve wants very much – but as per Jon, the way the game decides that “okay, you can get Arcade’s companion quest now – if he likes you enough of course,” is checking to see if House is dead and if the Courier has the Platinum Chip. Which means, if you’re doing the NCR route, you will genuinely only unlock Arcade’s backstory fairly late in the game, as they don’t order you to kill House for a while –
But if you’re doing the Yes Man route, you can kill him whenever – including, in Steve’s case, before even recovering the chip. Meaning, so long as Steve could get the necessary “points” with Arcade, he could get the quest! (Presumably you’re just totally locked out of this quest if you’re doing the Legion route, as Arcade loathes the Legion and probably doesn’t stick around long enough to give it to a Courier working with them.)
F) Useless Steve then dragging Arcade with him to The Fort, AKA Legion territory, because he had to go that way anyway to deal with Benny (who’d been captured by them) and finally get the chip back! Arcade was naturally like “what the hell gives??” but Useless Steve assured him that he just wanted to hear what Caesar had to say so they could figure up what he was up to, then they could get out. Which instantly got him a couple of points towards unlocking his companion quest, yay! Useless Steve then proceeded to –
I. Leave Arcade Gannon outside Caesar’s tent (as companions weren’t allowed in) in a certain spot on the cliff overlooking the battle arena in the camp
II. Go talk to Caesar and get all of his cool deeds recounted to him (such as tracking Benny across the Mojave before making him run sniveling out of his own casino and waltzing into the Lucky 38 and murdering Mr. House), before getting the Platinum Chip from him so he could “destroy” all of House’s securitrons in the Weather Station
III. Go talk to the tied-up Benny and, after getting in a giggle at his situation, let him know that he had the Platinum Chip – only for Benny to tell him that he did not want to destroy House’s secret stash of Securitrons under the weather station, but rather that he should do whatever it was House had wanted him to do, then go find Yes Man to take over the Strip. Because, apparently, if he can’t win, someone ought to. Jon was rather touched by this one sincere moment from Benny, feeling like the guy, at the end, gains a grudging respect for the Courier. ...I don’t know if that respect is more or less grudging in this instance, given the Courier is Useless Steve, but still. XD
IV. Go down into the weather station (past the weedy “bunker” doors – Jon still finds the fact that the Legion apparently couldn’t penetrate them very amusing) and clear the place out, killing all the protectrons and turrets trying to kill him and picking up any good loot, before upgrading the Securitrons and sending them to the Strip, getting a load of XP from completing Yes Man’s version of the quest and getting to Level 14! Jon bumped his Science to 15 so he could, you know, actually hack some terminals (with the help of a Programmer’s Digest, anyway), bumped Energy Weapons to 60, and took the Commando perk so Steve would be more accurate in VATS with his beloved Q-35.
V. Return to Caesar to get his reward for “destroying” the Securitrons (because Caesar is an idiot who assumes the rumbling from the station was Steve doing as he asked) and be allowed to choose the fate of Benny – he chose to fight Benny in honorable one to one combat with machetes, which Benny was fine with, and they proceeded into the arena –
Where Arcade Gannon shot Benny to death with his plasma pistol because while he wasn’t allowed to go into the arena, he was allowed to shoot into it. Jon considered this absolutely hilarious. XD Steve took as the spoils Benny’s unique gun Maria and his checkered suit.
VI. Finally grab Arcade and leave The Fort, Jon laughing all the while about how Arcade told Steve “don’t help any bad people and don’t hurt anybody,” only for Steve to immediately take him into the heart of Legion territory, do a mission for Caesar, and then trick him into shooting a man. XD
Fun trip!
G) Useless Steve then wandering the Mojave to get more points towards unlocking Arcade’s companion quest, which worked much like unlocking Veronica’s in that it involved taking Arcade specific places to prompt specific comments out of him. To whit, Steve brought him along to:
I. Camp McCarran and its science division so he could see Steve talk to Dr. Hildern – Arcade noted that Hildern was too fixated on “large scale results” and that he’d lost sight of the common good along the way, and Steve said “good thing there are people like you around” to flatter Arcade’s ego
II. The Silver Rush in Freeside so he could see the tables of energy weapons – Arcade admitted that it brought back “interesting memories” for him, to which Steve replied innocently, “Of the Followers using them?” Causing Arcade to stumble through how the Followers study all sorts of science and technology, so you just kind of get familiar with them, in a way that made it obvious he was hiding something XD
III. And REPCONN HQ just to show him the place – Arcade said he’d read about them, and that he’d heard they’d done some work with the – *cough* pre-War government, not the Enclave, no sir XD
Good to know for when I eventually pick up Arcade – I think he and Victor should get along just fine. :)
H) Useless Steve then taking a minute to install Yes Man in House’s old main console, completing the “Wild Card: Change In Management” quest – and prompting Arcade to finally start his companion quest! Involving him admitting to being the child of a former Enclave soldier, and suggesting they round up his dad’s old companions to help with the Hoover Dam mess. Most of which were easy to find – Judah Kreger was hanging out outside Miguel’s pawn shop in Westside; Orion Moreno was just up the road from the NCR Sharecropper farms; Daisy Whitman was in the motel in Novac; Cannibal Johnson was in a cave somewhere near Vault 34 (though he was very insulted by Useless Steve showing up instead of the Grim Reaper, saying the guy was just mocking him by sending Steve). The one hard one was Dr. Henry at Jacobstown – not because he was hard to find, he was literally just in the main building, but because – unlike the others – he’d properly moved on and gotten a job as a doctor. And refused to go join the others for the reunion until Steve sorted out something for him – namely, the whole thing with Nightkin and their stealth fields. Which mean Steve had to go into the nearby Charleston Cave and brave the invisible Nightstalkers there to get a chewed Stealth Boy for the good doctor to examine –
Which led to him dying repeatedly because, well, Nightstalkers are no joke, given that they’re snake-coyotes with a poisonous bite. Going in guns blazing didn’t work, going in with a Stealth Boy didn’t work – basically, it all kind of came down Steve and Arcade getting lucky and managing to take down the Nightstalkers before getting chomped and injected with venom. Arcade openly seeking out the Nightstalkers to kill them did not help matters! They did eventually get the Stealth Boy, though, along with a level up to 15 for Steve – Speech went up to 60, and Sneak up to 31. :P
Not bad, not bad at all. I left off with Jon complaining about Steve’s limb condition and how he should have asked Dr. Henry to heal him before attempting this while he got the stuff – tomorrow, we should be able to wrap up this episode, and maybe start the next one! We shall see!
2. Continue editing Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – I in fact finished editing Chapter 3 today! Mostly because I only had like a page and a half to go, so I figured I might as well just get it done. :) Said final page-and-a-half included:
A) Barnaby arriving on the scene in the greenhouse (where Kasimir was trying to figure out who Alice and Smiler were, and what their game was) with Victor in tow, cheerfully telling Kasimir how Victor had agreed to help them rob the place, and not even acknowledging Alice or Smiler until a puzzled Alice asked why – and then, of course, he assumed they were staff and asked why they were listening in to his conversation. XD (To be fair, they ARE in staff uniforms...)
B) Smiler explaining they were friends of Victor and confirming that they were robbing the Van Dorts, with Kasimir reluctantly explaining that Barnaby gave away half the Hobbyhorses’ Coin to a “Master Vreen” who said he was setting up a dog track – only for it to turn out Vreen was a conman who just ran off with the cash (he’s actually straight out of the original Blades In The Dark sourcebook, with his fake racetrack being a point of interest in Nightmarket). The heist was their way of recovering the funds. Barnaby was like “I was just making an investment in the gang’s future! ...or, well, my future. And besides, I was bored and wanted to do some lovely crime again.” XD
C) Kasimir again asking why Victor was helping them rob his own family, and Barnaby breezily saying that Victor was mad at his parents for “some reason” (he hadn’t been paying attention). Cue Alice asking Victor what happened, and Victor telling her and Smiler about his conversation with Nell and William just outside the party, and how they’d made it clear that they hadn’t been worried about him in the slightest, just that he’d ruined his engagement to Victoria Everglot, and how they hadn’t believed his story, because what ghost would want to marry him –
Followed by Victor breaking down into tears. :( Smiler and Alice immediately did their best to comfort him, and once Victor had gotten ahold of himself again, he explained how he’d realized how much he didn’t want to do any of this anymore, so when he came across Barnaby and realized that the guy wanted to rob his parents, he decided to help. Both to ensure that Alice and Smiler got their reward, and to get some money for himself because he certainly wasn’t going to be living in the Van Dort mansion anymore.
D) Victor then asking Alice if it was okay if he stayed with her and Elder Gutknecht for a little bit, at least until he found his feet. Cue Alice feeling the smugness radiating off Smiler. XD She did agree, of course, though she warned Victor that it was going to be a bit cramped since Smiler was moving in too, explaining to her startled friend that they wanted the alchemy bench and to keep her company. And that they hadn’t figured out the bed situation. Smiler cheerfully declared they’d just get two cots from their parents, and maybe they could set up a rotation regarding who got the nice bed what days. XD
E) And Kasimir asking if they were done with all the emotional stuff and if Alice and Smiler were joining the team too, as it would be nice to know how many people were involved in the robbery. XD Alice and Smiler confirmed that they would quite enjoy robbing the Van Dorts, and Victor sent Barnaby and Kasimir to wait in the wine cellar while he, Alice, and Smiler went and got his things (with the pair being very happy to do so). Chapter ended with Victor preparing to lead his friends to his room, with Alice encouraging him to hurry before she decided to hunt down Nell and turn her tongue into dinner’s main course – Victor laughed painfully and admitted he probably wouldn’t even stop her.
*nods* Good stuff, if I do say so myself. :) Tomorrow, we get this in the FF.net document manager and start the final editing pass! Hopefully I can get this up, if not this weekend, then at least by Valicertine’s Day. ;)
3. Watch something on FreeTube: No check – summing up the workout video and editing the final bit of Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” just took up too much time. Good thing there wasn’t a list video for me to miss tonight!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – I’d hoped to get this week’s Song Saturday post queued up on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), but I ran out of time to do that too. Though I do know what I want to post – in honor of finishing another “The Van Dort Vacancy” chapter (and, if I’m lucky, posting it this weekend), I want to do “People Like Us” again, as that’s one of my VITD songs. Just gotta find it in the VITD tag so I can reblog it!
*looks at the above* Yeah, I have to find a quicker way to sum up Useless Steve's adventures, this is taking waaaaay too long. I'll see if I can fix that problem tomorrow -- for now, I have to get to bed. Night all!
