Chilly Wednesday
Mar. 18th, 2026 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, despite the fact that the official start of spring is on the horizon, it was quite chilly today -- temps in the 30s at max. Fortunate the heat is still on at work and Mom's been keeping the house a bit warmer than usual for Dad! And it is supposed to warm up again as we head toward the weekend...it's just also supposed to get rainier again. *sigh* If this is another year where pretty much every day off is miserable weather-wise, I am not going to be happy. Not that I really go anywhere these days, but still. It's the principle of the matter! *shakes fist*
Anyway -- here's what I got up to today:
Work – Today was Exceptions Day at work – my supervisor picked up a big bundle of them when she came in this morning, and I ended up taking most of them (my coworker taking all the ones that had gifts attached) and going through them to see what was what. Accordingly, most of my day was spent:
A) Blacking out the credit card information on returned failed credit card gifts, making copies of them, then shredding the originals
B) Scanning in those gifts that had failed due to errors on our credit card company’s end, along with the attached screenshots of the issues our processors had run into, and sending them to the credit card people – they got back to me saying we shouldn’t be having those errors anymore and to retry the gifts, so...we’ll see what happens when I retry them!
C) Scanning in a bunch of returned pledge cards with notes saying “so and so is deceased, stop mailing to them,” so I could add them to the records later
D) And e-mailing those people who had failed credit card payments so they’d know what had happened and could fix things – though so far my only reply has been from a woman who replied in Spanish saying she’d send cash when she could
*shrug* Certainly made the day go by! Along with taking a few credit card gifts and helping my coworker look up some potential duplicate gifts. I expect I’ll be spending most of Thursday working on these exceptions as well – we’ll see what happens!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “D&D But... Everyone Has Amnesia Again | Oxventure | D&D with Scratch Card Character Sheets!” This penultimate chunk of The Amnesiac Adventures Of Ms. Blue the dwarf (Jane), Mr. White the Goliath (Mike), and Mr. Brown the human (Andy) featured:
A) The barely-hanging-onto-life Brown recalling an uneasy night spent in an armchair with his coded book of accounts, musing about how his younger self would have been stunned by these figures...but how the more he gets, the more he needs, as he always seems to have another dangerous friend to pay or a wealthy acquaintance to bribe (as per Andy: “The one thing I’ll never have...is enough”), before deciding to sod it all and go see his fiancee Emily to relax for a bit –
And Blue recalling that memory along with him, as it turned out the mystery spell she’d decided to cast on him was Detect Thoughts! Well, at least it wasn’t anything that needed to be counterspelled. Luke also ruled that Blue picked up a stray “ow, that sword to the shoulder really hurt, I think it nicked an artery” so she could actually properly stabilize Brown and keep him from dying (Andy was like “I don’t know how you could have missed that,” to which Jane replied “I have a -1 in Medicine!” XD). Blue thus bound up Brown’s shoulder properly, and Brown was able to stagger to his feet with a minuscule 4 HP (“a regular Robin Oatcake,” Luke joked – referencing one of Andy’s dual characters in Wyrdwood, if you’ve forgotten). Yay!
B) White interrogating the aarakocra assassin he’d grabbed at the end of the last chunk, sitting on her (as it was revealed to be a she under the mask) so she wouldn’t be able to go anywhere. She was initially quite hostile, responding to White’s threats that she’d better talk or he’d cast something completely random on her with “I’m already dead, thanks to failing my mission twice in a row now” –
But when White tried to clarify what exactly the mission was – assassinate Brown? Blue? Him? – she realized that he didn’t remember what had gone down – or, really, anything else at all. And mused that something had sort of worked, and that that information could save her life. White commented that that meant she could tell them who sent her, and she ended up revealing that she’d been hired by one Skinner Rabbit – then, after being reminded the gang no longer knew who that was or where he resided, informed them that he lived in a hotel called the Mason Jar on the other side of town. White promptly began looking around for that urchin again. XD He then demanded to know exactly what the aarakocra’s mission had been – she retorted by asking how he was going to help her, given she was in a lot of trouble with Mr. Rabbit –
And he said “by NOT scratching off the next thing on my character sheet! Which might not make a lot of sense to you, but up here, it makes perfect sense.” XD The aarakocra was still unwilling to cooperate, however, stating that him not knowing who he was was not the advantage he seemed to think it was, and that she was ready to die with dignity (she’d served in the Duke’s army before he got overthrown, after all – which made me go “?!” as I suddenly considered the idea that this adventure was a sequel to the previous “D&D But Amnesia” adventure, as aarakocra guards were definitely a thing in that one). So White indeed prepared to fire off a mystery spell (while Blue and Brown very quickly got as far away as possible) –
And ended up hitting the aarakocra with Suggestion! Which everyone found briefly anticlimactic before realizing “No, wait, that’s actually useful.” XD White thus told the aarakocra to join their mission and protect them, and on a failed Wisdom save, she became fully Charmed and much more willing to answer questions. Such as telling Brown – aka Mr. Harfoot (I am reasonably certain that’s what Luke said) – that the image on his ring was his family sigil –
And that Skinner Rabbit happened to have a failsafe plan in place, just in case she failed her mission. Involving the fact that Brown was supposed to be at the Church Of All Martyrs at five o’clock...and all his friends and family would be there too. So if he wanted to protect his loved ones, he’d had better get over there –
Aaand then she was hit in the neck by a poison dart fired by her colleague (who quickly skedaddled) and died. XD Can’t have the NPCs being TOO helpful, after all!
C) The group, finding a clock and seeing it was far too close to five o’clock for their tastes, rushing out of the ruined tavern and calling for their little urchin “friend” to help guide them to the church – this time with Brown assuring him he’d have a position in his organization as an enforcer if he did, and White offering him 56 gold. The amazed kid accepted the gold, weighed his options –
And promptly tried to run away. I mean, we did previously establish this kid isn’t the brightest. XD An annoyed White decided to once again cast a mystery spell to keep the kid from getting away, and this time let loose with –
Summon Undead! Cue a big old skeleton bursting out of the ground and grabbing the startled and quite frightened child by the ankles while cackling. Brown walked up and reclaimed their money with a friendly arm around the shoulders and a calm “it didn’t have to be this way” – the sobbing child, probably hoping for clemency, proceeded to point him in the right direction, saying the bells would be tolling any minute now –
And Brown just turned around and let the kid get dragged off to Hell by the skeleton. XD Or, well, probably not, because White decided he wanted to keep the skeleton around and added it to their party, naming it Bonesly and giving it a bow tie (and a purple buttonhole, as Luke realized that they’d never found the “token of everlasting love” in the letter and decided to just give that to them). Because the skeleton had to be dressed properly for the upcoming nuptials, after all! XD So hopefully the kid just got away and proceeded to rethink his life choices. :p
D) The group thus rushing to the church – Blue atop her spectral steed, White atop his skeleton, and Brown on foot – with Blue and White remembering a few things along the way:
I. Blue recalling sitting in the pub with a very charismatic criminal, noting that she really shouldn’t be listening to him and his plan...but also noting that she was quite disillusioned, and the gold he was offering would be more than enough to pay her father’s debts and give her a new life…
II. And White recalling wandering a street at night, feeling a deep sense of shame over being an oathbreaker despite his attempts to soothe his conscience by reminding himself there was no honor among thieves and his boss was going to leave him behind anyway...and ending up in front of a certain pub, watching Brown hit Blue and Blue take it like a champ, just as planned. And then seeing a mysterious figure come in under the light of the moon, opening a strange box as they did, and realizing that it was his last chance to choose a side…
Fascinating! So it seems that, whatever was going on, Brown and Blue were part of the same scheme, but White had betrayed him to whoever the person with the box was (the memory-sucking box from the first adventure?)...but was already having second thoughts about what he’d done. Perhaps Brown being thrown through the window of the pub was the result of White having a last-second change of heart and trying to get him out of the way? I guess we’ll find out later…
E) The group then arriving at the church to find a huge and excited crowd outside; a bunch of formally-dressed people with purple buttonholes near the front of the church; and an important-looking official standing out a wooden platform outside of it –
Next to a noose. Because, as was quickly made apparently by the official’s speech, this was not the wedding of Bron Harfoot, aka Mr. Brown – it was the hanging of same. As he’d finally gotten himself caught on tax evasion. I was wondering if the “wedding” was going to turn out to be something else entirely! Anyway, the official went on about how Bron would be arriving shortly in the company of their best battle mage, having enjoyed a final night of debauchery as his last request, then allowed a distraught-looking Emily – who was indeed Bron’s fiancee, at least – to step forward and read a poem remembering the soon-to-be-deceased –
Only for a rough-looking man to appear behind her before she could say more than a line, putting a knife to her knife and calling out in a croaky voice for Bron. Brown, realizing that was him, immediately stepped up as the crowd fled in terror – first from seeing poor Emily get menaced, then from seeing the twelve-foot Home Depot skeleton behind them (White whispered to Bonesly that he should probably take off the bow tie while Blue complained that she’d been looking forward to a wedding) – and – once he could be heard, demanded that his foe “leave her alone...you!” His companions pointed out that his enemy was probably Skinner Rabbit, to which Bron (as we shall call him from now one) agreed –
And a puzzled Skinner was like “It’s probably me?” A bit of questioning on his part (specifically, “where were we the first time you stabbed me?”) revealed that yes, Bron and the others had lost their memories. Skinner was amused by this, commenting that Bron was no longer the man he’d known, but he’d already embarked on this course of action, so...
And cue two battle mages emerging onto the field, ready and willing to fight! Bron insisted that Skinner let Emily go, as she had nothing to do with this, but Skinner ignored him…
So Bron cast Stinking Cloud on him (and poor Emily) to obscure his vision of the battlefield and keep him occupied with some nauseated wretching. XD And hopefully give Emily a chance to escape. He then followed that up with another cast of Aid to bolster everyone’s hitpoints (including his own, so he wasn’t just seconds away from death), and the gang rolled initiative, leading to –
F) The group fighting the two battle mages that Skinner had hired to kill Bron! And unlike their last couple of fights, this one went MUCH better for them:
I. White got to go first thanks to a nat 20 on the initiative roll, and let loose with another mystery spell on the battle mage coming in from the left – it proved to be Cause Fear, and resulted (after a failed Wisdom save) in the mage being horrified by the sight of Bonesly’s chattering jaw coming at him fast and deciding to run like hell on his turn
II. Bron went next and targeted the battle mage coming in from the right with his own mystery spell – this one proved to be Slow, and resulted in the mage finding himself trapped in a cube of slowed time
III. The Right-Hand Battle Mage got his turn after that, and decided that, even if he was Slowed, he was going to go big – cue him casting the never-misses Magic Missile from a quite-high spell slot in his cube, and a set of seven magical darts appearing, slowwwwly moving toward Bron to deprive him of his remaining hit points –
IV. Then cue Blue using her long-stored Counterspell to dismiss them. XD FINALLY that spell gets some actual use! She then turned her attention to the Left-Hand Battle Mage and hit him with her OWN mystery spell, because that seemed to be the thing to do –
And ended up using Hold Person on him. Which was kind of darkly hilarious, because now the poor guy was frozen in place when all he wanted to do was flee. Luke noted that this was very psychologically upsetting for the poor man. XD
V. The Left-Hand Battle Mage got his turn next, but only used it to struggle ineffectually against what he thought was Bonesly himself keeping him from running and preparing to drag him down to Hell – again, very psychologically upsetting!
VI. Bonesly got to go next (having been added to the turn order late) – White ordered him to go save Emily, because, as a skeleton, he didn’t have a nose and thus couldn’t smell the horrors of the Stinking Cloud. Bonesly thus strode into the cloud –
VII. Bringing the turn order back around to White! Who decided to continue tormenting the Left-Hand Battle Mage and revealed his last spell – everyone’s favorite, Agonizing Blast! :D Jane in particular was very pleased by this warlock reveal. Cue White inflicting some very painful force damage on the poor mage, who really just wanted the horrors to STOP now please. XD
And I left off with Brown preparing to take his go – tomorrow, we wrap this up and see how the final battle ends, and if our leads will be getting their memories back! I assume so, but it’s not a guarantee, I suppose...
2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – finally finished off Alice’s adventures in the museum today, with:
A) Alice and Beckett exchanging their goodbyes as Alice prepared to tell LaCroix about the sarcophagus and Beckett prepared to continue his search for the truth about vampires (Beckett telling Alice he hoped she survived being the bearer of bad news, as he would miss their little chats) – though not before Alice asked Beckett how he got down to the basement, as she hadn’t seen him anywhere on her trip. Cue Beckett informing her that the guards did not often check the vents for mysterious mists that moved on their own, and Alice complaining that she thought super-speed would be the vampire power she most coveted (even if Beckett confessed to needing fifty years to fully master mist form)
B) Beckett telling Alice where she could sneak out safely – an exit door down the hall that led into more employee parking – before dissolving back into the vents, and Alice heading for said exit door while complaining that, once again, she really wished she’d been “inducted” to any clan but Malkavian. Causing Leader to ask “Even Nosferatu?” and Alice to say that seeing the Queen of Hearts as a fleshy mess on the regular meant that she wouldn’t have been too shocked to see such a thing in the mirror. The Queen naturally complained about this, pointing out that she hadn’t asked to look like she did – Alice replied that she hadn’t actually accepted any attempt to go back to what she looked like before the fire, and the Queen admitted that her current tentacled form had its advantages while using one of said tentacles to fetch a cup of steaming tea. Or blood – Alice couldn’t tell. XD Cheshire then reminded Alice that she could only work with the clan she had, and Carpenter reminded her that being a Malkavian had its benefits too – for example, being able to use Obfuscate to hide from LaCroix’s wrath if she had to. (Alice: “Oh, I only wish I could disappear from his view forever…”)
C) And Alice exiting out into the rear parking garage and climbing the ramps back up to ground level, where she spotted a mysterious black van with two figures waiting nearby...and then, just as she was preparing to hide from them, the trademark red hair of Van the Toreador, one of the Camarilla agents she’s kind of friendly with. She thus greeted him and his friend Terrence the Ventrue, and they called to Mercurio to get out of the van and get ready to help them lift (Mercurio grumbling “not like you could do it without me, afraid you’ll break a nail” and Terrence pointing out that even with super-strength they could throw their backs out) –
And I ended with Alice telling the trio that, uh, there’d been a bit of a change of plans… Tomorrow, we go past the scene break and end up back at LaCroix’s office! With nobody wanting to go in and tell him the bad news. XD Should be fun!
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – didn’t have the time, and didn’t actually have anything to watch. So yeah. We’ll see if that situation changes tomorrow!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – only had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about, and I got my Song Saturday post sorted tonight – a reblog of “Used To Be Young” by Miley Cyrus! Because it’s a song I hadn’t reblogged yet, and it felt appropriate to bring back after posting the timeline post. Even if “Used To Be Young” is the song I associate with the last (or second-to-last, depending) story in the VITD verse and the timeline post talked about all the BEGINNING stories in the verse. XD
Aaand I'm up too late again, so I will be heading out now -- night all!
Anyway -- here's what I got up to today:
Work – Today was Exceptions Day at work – my supervisor picked up a big bundle of them when she came in this morning, and I ended up taking most of them (my coworker taking all the ones that had gifts attached) and going through them to see what was what. Accordingly, most of my day was spent:
A) Blacking out the credit card information on returned failed credit card gifts, making copies of them, then shredding the originals
B) Scanning in those gifts that had failed due to errors on our credit card company’s end, along with the attached screenshots of the issues our processors had run into, and sending them to the credit card people – they got back to me saying we shouldn’t be having those errors anymore and to retry the gifts, so...we’ll see what happens when I retry them!
C) Scanning in a bunch of returned pledge cards with notes saying “so and so is deceased, stop mailing to them,” so I could add them to the records later
D) And e-mailing those people who had failed credit card payments so they’d know what had happened and could fix things – though so far my only reply has been from a woman who replied in Spanish saying she’d send cash when she could
*shrug* Certainly made the day go by! Along with taking a few credit card gifts and helping my coworker look up some potential duplicate gifts. I expect I’ll be spending most of Thursday working on these exceptions as well – we’ll see what happens!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “D&D But... Everyone Has Amnesia Again | Oxventure | D&D with Scratch Card Character Sheets!” This penultimate chunk of The Amnesiac Adventures Of Ms. Blue the dwarf (Jane), Mr. White the Goliath (Mike), and Mr. Brown the human (Andy) featured:
A) The barely-hanging-onto-life Brown recalling an uneasy night spent in an armchair with his coded book of accounts, musing about how his younger self would have been stunned by these figures...but how the more he gets, the more he needs, as he always seems to have another dangerous friend to pay or a wealthy acquaintance to bribe (as per Andy: “The one thing I’ll never have...is enough”), before deciding to sod it all and go see his fiancee Emily to relax for a bit –
And Blue recalling that memory along with him, as it turned out the mystery spell she’d decided to cast on him was Detect Thoughts! Well, at least it wasn’t anything that needed to be counterspelled. Luke also ruled that Blue picked up a stray “ow, that sword to the shoulder really hurt, I think it nicked an artery” so she could actually properly stabilize Brown and keep him from dying (Andy was like “I don’t know how you could have missed that,” to which Jane replied “I have a -1 in Medicine!” XD). Blue thus bound up Brown’s shoulder properly, and Brown was able to stagger to his feet with a minuscule 4 HP (“a regular Robin Oatcake,” Luke joked – referencing one of Andy’s dual characters in Wyrdwood, if you’ve forgotten). Yay!
B) White interrogating the aarakocra assassin he’d grabbed at the end of the last chunk, sitting on her (as it was revealed to be a she under the mask) so she wouldn’t be able to go anywhere. She was initially quite hostile, responding to White’s threats that she’d better talk or he’d cast something completely random on her with “I’m already dead, thanks to failing my mission twice in a row now” –
But when White tried to clarify what exactly the mission was – assassinate Brown? Blue? Him? – she realized that he didn’t remember what had gone down – or, really, anything else at all. And mused that something had sort of worked, and that that information could save her life. White commented that that meant she could tell them who sent her, and she ended up revealing that she’d been hired by one Skinner Rabbit – then, after being reminded the gang no longer knew who that was or where he resided, informed them that he lived in a hotel called the Mason Jar on the other side of town. White promptly began looking around for that urchin again. XD He then demanded to know exactly what the aarakocra’s mission had been – she retorted by asking how he was going to help her, given she was in a lot of trouble with Mr. Rabbit –
And he said “by NOT scratching off the next thing on my character sheet! Which might not make a lot of sense to you, but up here, it makes perfect sense.” XD The aarakocra was still unwilling to cooperate, however, stating that him not knowing who he was was not the advantage he seemed to think it was, and that she was ready to die with dignity (she’d served in the Duke’s army before he got overthrown, after all – which made me go “?!” as I suddenly considered the idea that this adventure was a sequel to the previous “D&D But Amnesia” adventure, as aarakocra guards were definitely a thing in that one). So White indeed prepared to fire off a mystery spell (while Blue and Brown very quickly got as far away as possible) –
And ended up hitting the aarakocra with Suggestion! Which everyone found briefly anticlimactic before realizing “No, wait, that’s actually useful.” XD White thus told the aarakocra to join their mission and protect them, and on a failed Wisdom save, she became fully Charmed and much more willing to answer questions. Such as telling Brown – aka Mr. Harfoot (I am reasonably certain that’s what Luke said) – that the image on his ring was his family sigil –
And that Skinner Rabbit happened to have a failsafe plan in place, just in case she failed her mission. Involving the fact that Brown was supposed to be at the Church Of All Martyrs at five o’clock...and all his friends and family would be there too. So if he wanted to protect his loved ones, he’d had better get over there –
Aaand then she was hit in the neck by a poison dart fired by her colleague (who quickly skedaddled) and died. XD Can’t have the NPCs being TOO helpful, after all!
C) The group, finding a clock and seeing it was far too close to five o’clock for their tastes, rushing out of the ruined tavern and calling for their little urchin “friend” to help guide them to the church – this time with Brown assuring him he’d have a position in his organization as an enforcer if he did, and White offering him 56 gold. The amazed kid accepted the gold, weighed his options –
And promptly tried to run away. I mean, we did previously establish this kid isn’t the brightest. XD An annoyed White decided to once again cast a mystery spell to keep the kid from getting away, and this time let loose with –
Summon Undead! Cue a big old skeleton bursting out of the ground and grabbing the startled and quite frightened child by the ankles while cackling. Brown walked up and reclaimed their money with a friendly arm around the shoulders and a calm “it didn’t have to be this way” – the sobbing child, probably hoping for clemency, proceeded to point him in the right direction, saying the bells would be tolling any minute now –
And Brown just turned around and let the kid get dragged off to Hell by the skeleton. XD Or, well, probably not, because White decided he wanted to keep the skeleton around and added it to their party, naming it Bonesly and giving it a bow tie (and a purple buttonhole, as Luke realized that they’d never found the “token of everlasting love” in the letter and decided to just give that to them). Because the skeleton had to be dressed properly for the upcoming nuptials, after all! XD So hopefully the kid just got away and proceeded to rethink his life choices. :p
D) The group thus rushing to the church – Blue atop her spectral steed, White atop his skeleton, and Brown on foot – with Blue and White remembering a few things along the way:
I. Blue recalling sitting in the pub with a very charismatic criminal, noting that she really shouldn’t be listening to him and his plan...but also noting that she was quite disillusioned, and the gold he was offering would be more than enough to pay her father’s debts and give her a new life…
II. And White recalling wandering a street at night, feeling a deep sense of shame over being an oathbreaker despite his attempts to soothe his conscience by reminding himself there was no honor among thieves and his boss was going to leave him behind anyway...and ending up in front of a certain pub, watching Brown hit Blue and Blue take it like a champ, just as planned. And then seeing a mysterious figure come in under the light of the moon, opening a strange box as they did, and realizing that it was his last chance to choose a side…
Fascinating! So it seems that, whatever was going on, Brown and Blue were part of the same scheme, but White had betrayed him to whoever the person with the box was (the memory-sucking box from the first adventure?)...but was already having second thoughts about what he’d done. Perhaps Brown being thrown through the window of the pub was the result of White having a last-second change of heart and trying to get him out of the way? I guess we’ll find out later…
E) The group then arriving at the church to find a huge and excited crowd outside; a bunch of formally-dressed people with purple buttonholes near the front of the church; and an important-looking official standing out a wooden platform outside of it –
Next to a noose. Because, as was quickly made apparently by the official’s speech, this was not the wedding of Bron Harfoot, aka Mr. Brown – it was the hanging of same. As he’d finally gotten himself caught on tax evasion. I was wondering if the “wedding” was going to turn out to be something else entirely! Anyway, the official went on about how Bron would be arriving shortly in the company of their best battle mage, having enjoyed a final night of debauchery as his last request, then allowed a distraught-looking Emily – who was indeed Bron’s fiancee, at least – to step forward and read a poem remembering the soon-to-be-deceased –
Only for a rough-looking man to appear behind her before she could say more than a line, putting a knife to her knife and calling out in a croaky voice for Bron. Brown, realizing that was him, immediately stepped up as the crowd fled in terror – first from seeing poor Emily get menaced, then from seeing the twelve-foot Home Depot skeleton behind them (White whispered to Bonesly that he should probably take off the bow tie while Blue complained that she’d been looking forward to a wedding) – and – once he could be heard, demanded that his foe “leave her alone...you!” His companions pointed out that his enemy was probably Skinner Rabbit, to which Bron (as we shall call him from now one) agreed –
And a puzzled Skinner was like “It’s probably me?” A bit of questioning on his part (specifically, “where were we the first time you stabbed me?”) revealed that yes, Bron and the others had lost their memories. Skinner was amused by this, commenting that Bron was no longer the man he’d known, but he’d already embarked on this course of action, so...
And cue two battle mages emerging onto the field, ready and willing to fight! Bron insisted that Skinner let Emily go, as she had nothing to do with this, but Skinner ignored him…
So Bron cast Stinking Cloud on him (and poor Emily) to obscure his vision of the battlefield and keep him occupied with some nauseated wretching. XD And hopefully give Emily a chance to escape. He then followed that up with another cast of Aid to bolster everyone’s hitpoints (including his own, so he wasn’t just seconds away from death), and the gang rolled initiative, leading to –
F) The group fighting the two battle mages that Skinner had hired to kill Bron! And unlike their last couple of fights, this one went MUCH better for them:
I. White got to go first thanks to a nat 20 on the initiative roll, and let loose with another mystery spell on the battle mage coming in from the left – it proved to be Cause Fear, and resulted (after a failed Wisdom save) in the mage being horrified by the sight of Bonesly’s chattering jaw coming at him fast and deciding to run like hell on his turn
II. Bron went next and targeted the battle mage coming in from the right with his own mystery spell – this one proved to be Slow, and resulted in the mage finding himself trapped in a cube of slowed time
III. The Right-Hand Battle Mage got his turn after that, and decided that, even if he was Slowed, he was going to go big – cue him casting the never-misses Magic Missile from a quite-high spell slot in his cube, and a set of seven magical darts appearing, slowwwwly moving toward Bron to deprive him of his remaining hit points –
IV. Then cue Blue using her long-stored Counterspell to dismiss them. XD FINALLY that spell gets some actual use! She then turned her attention to the Left-Hand Battle Mage and hit him with her OWN mystery spell, because that seemed to be the thing to do –
And ended up using Hold Person on him. Which was kind of darkly hilarious, because now the poor guy was frozen in place when all he wanted to do was flee. Luke noted that this was very psychologically upsetting for the poor man. XD
V. The Left-Hand Battle Mage got his turn next, but only used it to struggle ineffectually against what he thought was Bonesly himself keeping him from running and preparing to drag him down to Hell – again, very psychologically upsetting!
VI. Bonesly got to go next (having been added to the turn order late) – White ordered him to go save Emily, because, as a skeleton, he didn’t have a nose and thus couldn’t smell the horrors of the Stinking Cloud. Bonesly thus strode into the cloud –
VII. Bringing the turn order back around to White! Who decided to continue tormenting the Left-Hand Battle Mage and revealed his last spell – everyone’s favorite, Agonizing Blast! :D Jane in particular was very pleased by this warlock reveal. Cue White inflicting some very painful force damage on the poor mage, who really just wanted the horrors to STOP now please. XD
And I left off with Brown preparing to take his go – tomorrow, we wrap this up and see how the final battle ends, and if our leads will be getting their memories back! I assume so, but it’s not a guarantee, I suppose...
2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – finally finished off Alice’s adventures in the museum today, with:
A) Alice and Beckett exchanging their goodbyes as Alice prepared to tell LaCroix about the sarcophagus and Beckett prepared to continue his search for the truth about vampires (Beckett telling Alice he hoped she survived being the bearer of bad news, as he would miss their little chats) – though not before Alice asked Beckett how he got down to the basement, as she hadn’t seen him anywhere on her trip. Cue Beckett informing her that the guards did not often check the vents for mysterious mists that moved on their own, and Alice complaining that she thought super-speed would be the vampire power she most coveted (even if Beckett confessed to needing fifty years to fully master mist form)
B) Beckett telling Alice where she could sneak out safely – an exit door down the hall that led into more employee parking – before dissolving back into the vents, and Alice heading for said exit door while complaining that, once again, she really wished she’d been “inducted” to any clan but Malkavian. Causing Leader to ask “Even Nosferatu?” and Alice to say that seeing the Queen of Hearts as a fleshy mess on the regular meant that she wouldn’t have been too shocked to see such a thing in the mirror. The Queen naturally complained about this, pointing out that she hadn’t asked to look like she did – Alice replied that she hadn’t actually accepted any attempt to go back to what she looked like before the fire, and the Queen admitted that her current tentacled form had its advantages while using one of said tentacles to fetch a cup of steaming tea. Or blood – Alice couldn’t tell. XD Cheshire then reminded Alice that she could only work with the clan she had, and Carpenter reminded her that being a Malkavian had its benefits too – for example, being able to use Obfuscate to hide from LaCroix’s wrath if she had to. (Alice: “Oh, I only wish I could disappear from his view forever…”)
C) And Alice exiting out into the rear parking garage and climbing the ramps back up to ground level, where she spotted a mysterious black van with two figures waiting nearby...and then, just as she was preparing to hide from them, the trademark red hair of Van the Toreador, one of the Camarilla agents she’s kind of friendly with. She thus greeted him and his friend Terrence the Ventrue, and they called to Mercurio to get out of the van and get ready to help them lift (Mercurio grumbling “not like you could do it without me, afraid you’ll break a nail” and Terrence pointing out that even with super-strength they could throw their backs out) –
And I ended with Alice telling the trio that, uh, there’d been a bit of a change of plans… Tomorrow, we go past the scene break and end up back at LaCroix’s office! With nobody wanting to go in and tell him the bad news. XD Should be fun!
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – didn’t have the time, and didn’t actually have anything to watch. So yeah. We’ll see if that situation changes tomorrow!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – only had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about, and I got my Song Saturday post sorted tonight – a reblog of “Used To Be Young” by Miley Cyrus! Because it’s a song I hadn’t reblogged yet, and it felt appropriate to bring back after posting the timeline post. Even if “Used To Be Young” is the song I associate with the last (or second-to-last, depending) story in the VITD verse and the timeline post talked about all the BEGINNING stories in the verse. XD
Aaand I'm up too late again, so I will be heading out now -- night all!
