Shockingly Warm Monday
Mar. 9th, 2026 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickMy car said it was 70F when I left work today, and I could believe it -- I cracked the car windows open on my drive home, and one of my room windows when I got back. Fucking NICE to have some warmth, let me tell you -- and we have seen a HUGE reduction in the snow now, yay. :D Granted, it's not supposed to stay this nice -- tomorrow is going to be in the 60s, and then it drops back into the 40s -- but I'll take what we get while it lasts! Given how utterly wretched the world can be today, it's good to have SOMETHING to enjoy.
Anyway -- now that I'm done cheering the lovely weather, here is the daily write-up:
Work – It was actually a pretty quiet first day back at work – which, trust me, I was grateful for, given today’s the second day of my period and thus my brain is still a little foggy:
A) I spent most of the morning working on the GL again, since we had a good chunk of stuff uploaded on Friday
B) I then spent some time before lunch examining some returned mail to see why it was returned – not sure why a couple of pieces were sent back, as the addresses seemed legit, but one lady had straight-up died, which was understandable
C) And after lunch, I sent out a couple of tax letters to people who called looking for them and started working through a fresh set of obituaries
No credit card calls, no complicated issues in my e-mail, no nothing – worse thing that happened was my coworker asking me how to do a particular sort of reversal on my lunch break, and that admittedly only took a couple of minutes. We’ll see how tomorrow plays out!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike and back with “Baldur's Gate 3 Cast play D&D #2 | High Rollers Presents: Shadows of Athkatla!” Tonight’s pedal session featured:
A) Shadowheart and Lae’zel entering The Bhaalspawn Experience – with Shadowheart’s new best friend Bing Bong the imp clinging to her hand like an eager little kid (much to Lae’zel’s disgust). After “gathering their party” in the entrance room, the ladies and Bing Bong stepped through a magic portal into the first room of the experience, featuring clockwork wooden automatons of Jaheira and Minsc (and Boo of course) in cages with explanatory plaques of who they were and how they were connected to The Bhaalspawn, along with various paths to travel. Bing Bong insisted on checking out the automatons first (Lae’zel grumbling over Shadowheart indulging the imp’s curiosity while Mark insisted that he did NOT intend for Bing Bong to be helpful to them in ANY way), but quickly got bored with their repeated phrases, and Shadowheart and Lae’zel headed down the corridor going straight on, through a room with some sort of fake magic generator (complete with illusions of lightning zipping around the room, scaring Bing Bong onto Shadowheart’s shoulder) and deeper into the exhibit –
Where they encountered the smashed-up remains of a couple of other automatons. And a long smear of fresh blood on the ground, as if someone had been dragged away. The ladies instantly agreed that the smart thing to do would be to follow the blood, and tracked the trail through a junction (where they discovered another smashed-up automaton of some sort of monster in a chamber to the right, and where Bing Bong managed to endear himself to Lae’zel a bit by licking the blood off the floor) and into a room which (as per another interlude with our lovely Narrator) mimicked the terrible cloning labs of the late Jon Irenicus, complete with vats and tubes of evil glowy blue-green stuff with various fake monstrosities in them (at least, I hope they were fake!). From there, they could see that the blood trail continued on through a recently-opened secret passage in the wall, and prepared to investigate further…
B) Cut to Astarion and Karlach at The Docks! With the little dwarven thief they’d just rescued politely knocking on the top of the crate Karlach was sitting on. Karlach got up and let her out, and the young lady thanked them for their help – Astarion said it was fine, adding “you owe me” and “introduction” in Thieves’ Cant sign. The girl got the gist immediately and asked if they wanted to meet the Shadowthieves (Astarion, annoyed at her thickness: “YES”)…
Before admitting that she wasn’t actually a member. But she was friends with one, she hastily insisted when Astarion tried to have Karlach close the lid on her – a council member named Imouen, who was training her in Shadowthief ways. Astarion still had Karlach close the lid on her, but just so he could have a private conversation with Karlach, explaining that he was pretty sure this “Imouen” would be useful, but maybe Karlach should be the one to speak to her, as apparently she had history with “his kind” (given I’m pretty sure “Imouen” is supposed to be one of the main characters of the original two Baldur’s Gate games – the main character’s half-sister, in fact – I’m guessing she had trouble with vampires in one of those games). Karlach responded incredulously to the idea that Imouen would respond better to a big red tiefling on fire, and Astarion gave her the point, had her free the thief, and demanded that she take them to her friend now. The thief agreed, and – after procuring her a sort of crutch for her twisted ankle by having Karlach rip off a chunk of the crate lid to use as a walking stick (it was better than the idea of her shoving her hands into eels to use as makeshift oven gloves to carry her!) – led them to The Five Flagons Inn on the big old bridge. The orc bouncer, Hank, gave them a good look-over (and promptly clocked that Astarion was not NEARLY as foppish as he looked), but let them in without more than a “don’t cause trouble” – and, kindly, a beer recommendation for Karlach – and their new acquaintance left them by the bar to wait as she talked to Imouen. Karlach proceeded to THOROUGHLY enjoy a pint on the house, while Astarion kept an eye on things (being much more familiar with places like these) and procured for himself a glass of very deep red, ethically-sourced “wine.” Which he proceeded to lap at like a cat to try and detect if it was drugged (Neil made the mistake of actually doing this at the table and was ROUNDLY teased for it XD). Eventually the thief came back and said her friend would see them –
And so the pair was brought up to Imouen, a young half-elf woman very busy with some mysterious journals, but friendly enough to the newcomers. Astarion explained to her that they’d heard about the kidnappings and suchlike earlier, and told her about their “work colleague” Tav and how they were being effected by old dark magic that seemed to come from here in the city, so they wanted to see what she knew. Imouen informed them in turn that there was something definitely going on with the Cowled Wizards, as a whole bunch of them collapsed about a week ago and haven’t woken up since –
And then told them that she’d had a friend of hers, who she named “Moonraiser,” go missing recently investigating the matter. Which was very much not like him. And that the last she’d heard, he was checking out a lead down in Waukeen’s Promenade, regarding a very “odd” store that he’d seen down there. Karlach asked if any of her people had been kidnapped, and she confirmed that a fellow by the name of Morton – bit of an asshole, but an excellent thief and very loyal – had gone missing, along with some others. She’d tried to get help finding them, but, well… Astarion noted their objectives seemed to align and asked if Imouen might be able to help them find some suppliers so they had a bit more kit, and Imouen was only too happy to point them in the right direction –
Except. Well. She also noted that they were very interesting people, and that their sudden teleport into the city gates area, and subsequent splitting up, had been reported to her. And, actually, as per one of her underlings, they might want to FIRST head down to the Temple of Sune down the road, as one of their friends was about to be busted for doing illegal magic…
C) Cut to Gale still enjoying his absolutely EXCELLENT spa day, sharing drinks and stories and gossip with Sister Althea, the priestess he was talking to earlier, while poor Wyll (who had enjoyed some of the spa’s services, to be fair) was waiting around trying to get him to hurry the hell up. XD A task that became rather more important when the Cowled Wizard with the gold mask showed up with some cronies to seek out Gale for his illegal magic! Unfortunately, while Wyll did spot them coming in, a middling Perception roll meant that he spotted them a little bit late, before he could do any real intercepting –
FORTUNATELY, Gale being in “relax mode” meant that he no longer exactly matched the image that the Golden Cowled Wizard was carrying around with him in his crystal ball, meaning the pair had a few seconds to act. Wyll ran over to Gale and let him know that trouble was afoot (which, admittedly, Gale himself could sense thanks to his Detect Magic spell going off repeatedly – though it did NOT detect any hints of the spell they were looking for on the Golden Cowled Wizard, which was interesting) and that they needed to get out of there now, then left him to get himself put together (and out of his borrowed spa robe) while he went to the Golden Cowled Wizard and caused a distraction by claiming he’d seen Gale running in the opposite direction of where he was. Fortunately for Wyll, he rolled rather well on the Deception check, getting a 17 –
And even better, the Golden Cowled Wizard got a crit 1, meaning he COMPLETELY believed Wyll’s story and immediately directed his men to head in the direction Wyll had indicated. Wyll then hurried back to Gale, who was getting dressed, to plan their escape. Gale asked Sister Althea if this happened often, and she confirmed that the Cowled Wizards came down VERY hard on any use of arcane magic –
But that, fortunately, the churches were protected. And that she could help them escape if they wanted, as she’d taken quite the shine to Gale. Cue the boys agreeing on having her disguise Gale with an enchantment, and her making him look like a handsome tiefling sellsword so they could slip out – though she warned him that she’d only be able to maintain it until he reached the edges of the bridge…
And that’s where I paused for the day! Tomorrow, we’ll get through the next chunk, which will presumably see our party members reunite to see what the hell is going on in this city and try and put a stop to it!
2. Start final edits on Chapter 4 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got the chapter uploaded to FF.net’s Document Manager for the final scan, and made my way though Victor bringing Alice and Smiler to his room to him offering them some of his clothes to be repurposed into clothes for them after having another guilt attack regarding how much STUFF he has (in this case, sixteen suits when he knows neither of them has anywhere near as many clothes). I left off with Alice and Smiler reassuring him again that he doesn’t have to apologize for growing up rich – we’ll see how much I can get through tomorrow! (Given the chapter’s only nine pages – likely a lot. :P)
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – well, no check in the sense of “did I watch something other than chunks of what I watched during my workout so I could do an accurate write-up for you above and/or a quick clip of Victor in preparation for starting final edits on ‘The Van Dort Vacancy?’” *shakehead* One of these days I’m going to force myself to rely on my memory instead of going back to check certain details in my workout videos – it inevitably makes the whole process take longer! Maybe I can get to those CaFae Latte shorts I wanted to watch tomorrow...
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – Monday, only keeping an eye on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), not much going on there, what can you do. I should still have enough in my drafts to get a queue sorted for this week tomorrow!
Yeah, as usual, the workout write-up ate up more of my time than it should have. One of these days I am going to wrestle it back into submission, and then maybe I'll be able to get back to more usual nightly routines. As it stands, I should make an effort to get some decent sleep -- night all!
Anyway -- now that I'm done cheering the lovely weather, here is the daily write-up:
Work – It was actually a pretty quiet first day back at work – which, trust me, I was grateful for, given today’s the second day of my period and thus my brain is still a little foggy:
A) I spent most of the morning working on the GL again, since we had a good chunk of stuff uploaded on Friday
B) I then spent some time before lunch examining some returned mail to see why it was returned – not sure why a couple of pieces were sent back, as the addresses seemed legit, but one lady had straight-up died, which was understandable
C) And after lunch, I sent out a couple of tax letters to people who called looking for them and started working through a fresh set of obituaries
No credit card calls, no complicated issues in my e-mail, no nothing – worse thing that happened was my coworker asking me how to do a particular sort of reversal on my lunch break, and that admittedly only took a couple of minutes. We’ll see how tomorrow plays out!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike and back with “Baldur's Gate 3 Cast play D&D #2 | High Rollers Presents: Shadows of Athkatla!” Tonight’s pedal session featured:
A) Shadowheart and Lae’zel entering The Bhaalspawn Experience – with Shadowheart’s new best friend Bing Bong the imp clinging to her hand like an eager little kid (much to Lae’zel’s disgust). After “gathering their party” in the entrance room, the ladies and Bing Bong stepped through a magic portal into the first room of the experience, featuring clockwork wooden automatons of Jaheira and Minsc (and Boo of course) in cages with explanatory plaques of who they were and how they were connected to The Bhaalspawn, along with various paths to travel. Bing Bong insisted on checking out the automatons first (Lae’zel grumbling over Shadowheart indulging the imp’s curiosity while Mark insisted that he did NOT intend for Bing Bong to be helpful to them in ANY way), but quickly got bored with their repeated phrases, and Shadowheart and Lae’zel headed down the corridor going straight on, through a room with some sort of fake magic generator (complete with illusions of lightning zipping around the room, scaring Bing Bong onto Shadowheart’s shoulder) and deeper into the exhibit –
Where they encountered the smashed-up remains of a couple of other automatons. And a long smear of fresh blood on the ground, as if someone had been dragged away. The ladies instantly agreed that the smart thing to do would be to follow the blood, and tracked the trail through a junction (where they discovered another smashed-up automaton of some sort of monster in a chamber to the right, and where Bing Bong managed to endear himself to Lae’zel a bit by licking the blood off the floor) and into a room which (as per another interlude with our lovely Narrator) mimicked the terrible cloning labs of the late Jon Irenicus, complete with vats and tubes of evil glowy blue-green stuff with various fake monstrosities in them (at least, I hope they were fake!). From there, they could see that the blood trail continued on through a recently-opened secret passage in the wall, and prepared to investigate further…
B) Cut to Astarion and Karlach at The Docks! With the little dwarven thief they’d just rescued politely knocking on the top of the crate Karlach was sitting on. Karlach got up and let her out, and the young lady thanked them for their help – Astarion said it was fine, adding “you owe me” and “introduction” in Thieves’ Cant sign. The girl got the gist immediately and asked if they wanted to meet the Shadowthieves (Astarion, annoyed at her thickness: “YES”)…
Before admitting that she wasn’t actually a member. But she was friends with one, she hastily insisted when Astarion tried to have Karlach close the lid on her – a council member named Imouen, who was training her in Shadowthief ways. Astarion still had Karlach close the lid on her, but just so he could have a private conversation with Karlach, explaining that he was pretty sure this “Imouen” would be useful, but maybe Karlach should be the one to speak to her, as apparently she had history with “his kind” (given I’m pretty sure “Imouen” is supposed to be one of the main characters of the original two Baldur’s Gate games – the main character’s half-sister, in fact – I’m guessing she had trouble with vampires in one of those games). Karlach responded incredulously to the idea that Imouen would respond better to a big red tiefling on fire, and Astarion gave her the point, had her free the thief, and demanded that she take them to her friend now. The thief agreed, and – after procuring her a sort of crutch for her twisted ankle by having Karlach rip off a chunk of the crate lid to use as a walking stick (it was better than the idea of her shoving her hands into eels to use as makeshift oven gloves to carry her!) – led them to The Five Flagons Inn on the big old bridge. The orc bouncer, Hank, gave them a good look-over (and promptly clocked that Astarion was not NEARLY as foppish as he looked), but let them in without more than a “don’t cause trouble” – and, kindly, a beer recommendation for Karlach – and their new acquaintance left them by the bar to wait as she talked to Imouen. Karlach proceeded to THOROUGHLY enjoy a pint on the house, while Astarion kept an eye on things (being much more familiar with places like these) and procured for himself a glass of very deep red, ethically-sourced “wine.” Which he proceeded to lap at like a cat to try and detect if it was drugged (Neil made the mistake of actually doing this at the table and was ROUNDLY teased for it XD). Eventually the thief came back and said her friend would see them –
And so the pair was brought up to Imouen, a young half-elf woman very busy with some mysterious journals, but friendly enough to the newcomers. Astarion explained to her that they’d heard about the kidnappings and suchlike earlier, and told her about their “work colleague” Tav and how they were being effected by old dark magic that seemed to come from here in the city, so they wanted to see what she knew. Imouen informed them in turn that there was something definitely going on with the Cowled Wizards, as a whole bunch of them collapsed about a week ago and haven’t woken up since –
And then told them that she’d had a friend of hers, who she named “Moonraiser,” go missing recently investigating the matter. Which was very much not like him. And that the last she’d heard, he was checking out a lead down in Waukeen’s Promenade, regarding a very “odd” store that he’d seen down there. Karlach asked if any of her people had been kidnapped, and she confirmed that a fellow by the name of Morton – bit of an asshole, but an excellent thief and very loyal – had gone missing, along with some others. She’d tried to get help finding them, but, well… Astarion noted their objectives seemed to align and asked if Imouen might be able to help them find some suppliers so they had a bit more kit, and Imouen was only too happy to point them in the right direction –
Except. Well. She also noted that they were very interesting people, and that their sudden teleport into the city gates area, and subsequent splitting up, had been reported to her. And, actually, as per one of her underlings, they might want to FIRST head down to the Temple of Sune down the road, as one of their friends was about to be busted for doing illegal magic…
C) Cut to Gale still enjoying his absolutely EXCELLENT spa day, sharing drinks and stories and gossip with Sister Althea, the priestess he was talking to earlier, while poor Wyll (who had enjoyed some of the spa’s services, to be fair) was waiting around trying to get him to hurry the hell up. XD A task that became rather more important when the Cowled Wizard with the gold mask showed up with some cronies to seek out Gale for his illegal magic! Unfortunately, while Wyll did spot them coming in, a middling Perception roll meant that he spotted them a little bit late, before he could do any real intercepting –
FORTUNATELY, Gale being in “relax mode” meant that he no longer exactly matched the image that the Golden Cowled Wizard was carrying around with him in his crystal ball, meaning the pair had a few seconds to act. Wyll ran over to Gale and let him know that trouble was afoot (which, admittedly, Gale himself could sense thanks to his Detect Magic spell going off repeatedly – though it did NOT detect any hints of the spell they were looking for on the Golden Cowled Wizard, which was interesting) and that they needed to get out of there now, then left him to get himself put together (and out of his borrowed spa robe) while he went to the Golden Cowled Wizard and caused a distraction by claiming he’d seen Gale running in the opposite direction of where he was. Fortunately for Wyll, he rolled rather well on the Deception check, getting a 17 –
And even better, the Golden Cowled Wizard got a crit 1, meaning he COMPLETELY believed Wyll’s story and immediately directed his men to head in the direction Wyll had indicated. Wyll then hurried back to Gale, who was getting dressed, to plan their escape. Gale asked Sister Althea if this happened often, and she confirmed that the Cowled Wizards came down VERY hard on any use of arcane magic –
But that, fortunately, the churches were protected. And that she could help them escape if they wanted, as she’d taken quite the shine to Gale. Cue the boys agreeing on having her disguise Gale with an enchantment, and her making him look like a handsome tiefling sellsword so they could slip out – though she warned him that she’d only be able to maintain it until he reached the edges of the bridge…
And that’s where I paused for the day! Tomorrow, we’ll get through the next chunk, which will presumably see our party members reunite to see what the hell is going on in this city and try and put a stop to it!
2. Start final edits on Chapter 4 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got the chapter uploaded to FF.net’s Document Manager for the final scan, and made my way though Victor bringing Alice and Smiler to his room to him offering them some of his clothes to be repurposed into clothes for them after having another guilt attack regarding how much STUFF he has (in this case, sixteen suits when he knows neither of them has anywhere near as many clothes). I left off with Alice and Smiler reassuring him again that he doesn’t have to apologize for growing up rich – we’ll see how much I can get through tomorrow! (Given the chapter’s only nine pages – likely a lot. :P)
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – well, no check in the sense of “did I watch something other than chunks of what I watched during my workout so I could do an accurate write-up for you above and/or a quick clip of Victor in preparation for starting final edits on ‘The Van Dort Vacancy?’” *shakehead* One of these days I’m going to force myself to rely on my memory instead of going back to check certain details in my workout videos – it inevitably makes the whole process take longer! Maybe I can get to those CaFae Latte shorts I wanted to watch tomorrow...
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – Monday, only keeping an eye on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), not much going on there, what can you do. I should still have enough in my drafts to get a queue sorted for this week tomorrow!
Yeah, as usual, the workout write-up ate up more of my time than it should have. One of these days I am going to wrestle it back into submission, and then maybe I'll be able to get back to more usual nightly routines. As it stands, I should make an effort to get some decent sleep -- night all!
