low_delta

So, you may remember that my entry yesterday initially ended with me reporting that my Dad had finally consented to go to the emergency room regarding his constant pain and trouble eating. He and Mom returned this morning, and the news is, uh, not great. On the plus side, it appears he doesn't have a cracked rib (they mistook an old injury for a recent one on the previous scan); on the minus side, it looked like his fall down a couple of the basement stairs into a bookcase really bruised up his muscles and cartilage and stuff, so they've had to put him on the strong painkillers. And, uh, remember the cancer scare from back in August 2024? Where he had to spend most of my vacation week in the hospital after surgery to remove a blockage in his colon that also removed a tumor? Yeah, that might not be as over with as we'd hoped... Basically, he has to have a lot more tests done and whatnot and -- yeah. It's just a bad time in this house right now. I fucking hate the fucking 2020s, I really do. *heavy sigh*

Anyway -- as you might imagine, that combined with the fact that I spent most of the day finishing yesterday's write-up meant that I didn't get a whole heck of a lot done today. But I did manage to accomplish three things:

Writing: Despite everything, I did get some writing done today – went back to “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 6 and continued my edits on that before heading downstairs for my workout. Today’s chunk got me through:

A) Alice leaving the Chantry after speaking to Strauss about Resonance, remarking that it was nice to get some answers regarding what happened when she fed on Victor earlier that evening, but that it was annoying that her clan’s Disciplines meant that she should be focusing on drinking from people who were sad or chilled out, when it was so much easier for her to get a meal from someone who was horny (and then wondering if she could maybe seek out someone who’d recently suffered a bad break-up and was looking for help forgetting it to get the magic combination of sad and horny and see if they provided Obfuscate-boosting Resonance :P)

B) Alice heading back to Skyeline to find Simon Milligan and get his loose end all wrapped up; after knocking on his door didn’t work (not that she thought it would – Cheshire had already warned her that it wouldn’t be that easy – she just wanted to at least start out doing things the polite way), she discovered that it had a mechanical lock to go with the keycard reader and managed to pick it and get inside (she didn’t even need to Bloodbuff herself)

C) And Alice getting the lay of the land of Simon’s apartment – roughly the same layout as hers, just with loads of bookshelves replacing the aquarium and the TV; the coffee table and couch in a different spot; and some fancy neon signs on the wall by the stairs. Alice noted it was interesting that someone who was on TV didn’t own one himself, then figured maybe he saw enough cable TV slop while at work and didn’t feel the need to watch it at home

*nods* Not too shabby, all things considered. I left off with her calling for Simon to see if she can lure him out of hiding (she can’t) – tomorrow, she continues her search of the apartment to locate her wayward witness to the horrors and hopefully tell him to keep his mouth shut!

Workout: Got back on the bike tonight to pedal my way through the latest from Jon of Many A True Nerd: “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 25 - Bleeding Hearts!” Yes, Jon is now over his cold (or at least over it enough to record), which meant this week we returned to the Mojave and the adventures of everyone’s favorite sneaky drunken melee courier, P. D. Shoot! Who actually ventured out of the Mojave and into Zion in this episode, as Jon started the DLC “Honest Hearts!” An adventure which involved:

A) Jon taking a moment at the beginning before actually starting the DLC to explain why he’d done so much prepwork and why he kept saying everything was going to go bananas the minute P. D. entered Zion – basically, “Honest Hearts” begins with a giant scripted fight where a bunch of White Legs – a hostile tribe in Zion – attack and kill all the NPC members of the caravan P. D.’s joined – Jed, Scarlet, the two unnamed guards, and of course everyone’s favorite little creep, Ricky. There is no way to stop this happening – the game wants those NPCs dead, and thus arms the White Legs with magic never-miss bullets and explosives to ensure they die. The problem was, those never-miss bullets and explosives could target P. D. as well – and because the White Legs spawn up on high cliffs, P. D. wouldn’t be able to kill them to get them to stop shooting at her. Meaning her only hope of survival was drugs (especially Turbo), her good Elite Riot Gear armor, and getting away from the doomed caravan as soon as possible. Hence why Jon did all that drug-shopping beforehand to make sure she had enough Turbo, and made sure to bully Ricky into carrying some of her shit, allowing her to take 100 lbs of stuff into the DLC instead of a mere 75 – it was vitally important she have the room to take the items that would keep her from dying horribly!

B) P. D. heading out to Zion with the caravan, listening to Jed’s story about DLC-important NPC Joshua Graham (an ex-Legion War Chief who was covered in pitch, set alight, and tossed into the Grand Canyon by Caesar for his failure to take Hoover Dam in the first battle against the NCR there, but who managed to survive and make it to Zion, where he became a revered figure for some of the tribes there) on the way – then, the minute the opening cutscene ended and she was allowed to access her Pip-Boy again, taking all the drugs (including TWO doses of Turbo), popping a Stealth Boy, and booking it away from the NPCs as they prepared to walk into the ambush. She managed to successfully make it down onto the nearby ledge running along the side of the canyon in the opposite direction of the ambush; up to the nearby bridge across said canyon (killing the two White Legs who spawned in to try and guard it before they even knew they were in trouble); over the bridge and past the spot where another White Leg usually spawns (except, since she got there before the ambush technically started, he didn’t, so yay); over to where Follows-Chalk tries to greet you (telling him to naff off, she was busy – apparently he’s a terrible companion with a terrible companion perk anyway); and through the arch in the rocks toward the canyon she needed to get to –

But right after she put on her Elite Riot Gear and started heading northeast along the big rocky wall to her right, the Magic Bullets and Explosions of the White Legs reached her. Despite the fact that she was now miles away and around the corner from the actual ambush. Because scripted nonsense was scripted and nonsense. And how much did that scripted nonsense cost her?

64 HP. Meaning she is now down to about half her health – after Jon got rid of the “automatic DLC entry heal” she was gifted at the start, it was revealed she’s at 189 out of 375 hit points. *wince* The DLCs man – they do NOT fuck around. I understand so much more now why he’s so afraid of Dead Money.

C) P. D. swapping back to her beloved Space Suit to speed up her fleeing from the start of the DLC, which saw her:

I. Watch a huge mutated Yao-Guai toss an equally-big green gecko off a cliff – and then murder the Yao-Guai with Embrace Of The Mantis King because she could (Jon made it clear he was NOT going for the achievement where you kill ten of these things)

II. Make her way down a slope covered in rolling dunes and scrubby greenery while Jon explained the other problem with “Honest Hearts” and Zion – namely, that you could never figure out what you were going to face while traversing the map because creatures and people spawned in around the world randomly. Any given location could spawn anything ranging from dogs (good, nice and simple) to green geckos (bad, horrible monsters) to even White Legs (extremely bad, hit like trucks), and P. D. couldn’t properly prepare for any of it

III. Reach the road cutting through the landscape and follow it over to the Zion Valley Welcome Booth, fortunately without having to deal with any monsters or dogs or what-have-you

IV. Descend into the nearby canyon and reach the river and Eastern Virgin, where all she had to do was follow the river to the right and disarm all the bear traps in the gorgeous clear water to reach the Dead Horse tribe camp and Angel Cave, where Joshua Graham waited

Whew! At least she didn’t encounter anything that made her take any more damage – Jon was upset enough about the 64 HP hit!

D) P. D. arriving at the camp and getting greeted by Follows-Chalk (who somehow managed to beat her there), then – after a quick side note from Jon that can be summed up as “yes, I know there’s an easy way to very quickly beat this DLC – kill a named character and trigger the ‘Chaos In Zion’ quest where you just have to grab one item and run for the exit – but we made it a rule in the last F:NV YOLO that I couldn’t essentially ‘skip’ the DLC by doing that, and I’m sticking to said rule in this Remastered YOLO run” – heading into the cave to have her audience with Joshua Graham! Who started speaking to her the moment her Slasher wore off, so he spent the entire conversation blurry and bathed in mysterious blue light, which Jon found rather appropriate given Joshua’s whole deal. XD Anyway, after apologizing that he and his weren’t there to give P. D. and the others a better greeting than the White Legs gave them, and offering his sympathies for the dead caravaners, he tasked P. D. with getting him some Pre-War items than he and his friend Daniel would need for navigational purposes if they ever had to evacuate Zion. P. D. agreed, and thus the conversation ended, restoring color to the world, finishing off the “Arrival At Zion” quest –

And bringing P. D. all the way up to Level 25! Nice~ As she had no skills she had to prioritize in “Honest Hearts,” though (as she was already at the levels she should be for everything in this DLC), she chose to instead just dump all her skill points into Repair, to get that moving in the right direction for future adventures (I suspect it’s going to be very important in “Dead Money”). Gotta be prepared for all the nonsense yet to come!

E) P. D. reviewing the shopping list Graham gave her – find a compass in a wrecked scout bus (not far from the Welcome Booth), a pair of walkie-talkies in the Zion Fishing Lodge, five Li’l Scout Lunchboxes in the Zion General Store, and a medical supply kit in the Zion Ranger Station – then waiting until 9:45 PM so she could go sneaking around all the various locales under the cover of darkness. She quickly hit up Joshua to see if he had anything he could sell her (as he also acts as a trader – he only had guns and ammo and dynamite this time around, though, so nothing for melee-and-unarmed-stuff-only P. D.), then headed out into the blackness to:

I. Travel back to Eastern Virgin and retrace her steps back to the Welcome Booth, then travel along the road along the edge of the canyon, avoiding the wildlife in her way (and killing one gecko) before arriving at the site of the bus crash, down in a narrow little side canyon, rusting away in the water; the wreckage unfortunately had a couple of bighorner calves around it, but fortunately they were unable to detect the ultra-sneaky P. D., and she was able to slip in, find the compass she needed, and quickly repair it to full working order before slipping right back out

II. Follow the river (after killing one of the bighorner calves to get it out of the way) north from the bus, avoiding what sounded like a fight between a White Leg and a Dead Horse, before getting back onto dry land near a bridge; then follow the road from the bridge for a bit, avoiding as much of the varied wildlife as possible (which included a green gecko on a high ledge, a small radscopion, a giant worker ant, and a regular young gecko); then head off onto a side dirt road past a wrecked car and into the hills, killing another bighorner before hiding from a White Leg that spawned in with their dog just past an arch over the path, letting them pass her by so she didn’t have to worry about fighting them; then continue up the trail before getting spooked by another White Leg in her path and running to hide behind some rocks – fortunately the White Leg turned around while she was hiding, and she was able to sneak up and kill them right in front of the lodge she was looking for

III. Reach the Zion Fishing Lodge and enter it to find a young green gecko (one of the more dangerous kinds of gecko) within. Prompting her to do some Turbo and murder it, then murder its friends with her Industrial Hand, before unlocking a cabinet to grab the walkie-talkies she came here for! And some whiskey. Which she drank. Along with another bottle she had on her because it really was a two-whiskey day. XD

And so the episode ended with P. D. getting wasted at the lodge, having marked off half the items on her shopping list! Next time, she ventures westward to the General Store and the Ranger Station to get the remaining stuff, then north to meet up with Daniel and get HIS shopping list. All while PRAYING not to take another hit like the one from the Unavoidable Magic Ambush, because WOW. *grimace* I don’t think that was QUITE the equivalent of Fallout 4 YOLO’s Finn Ally getting a huge chunk of health removed by a painted ghoul smacking her in the rear during an early, ill-advised trip to Nuka-World, but it felt really damn close! I really hope P. D. Shoot survives to the end of her second YOLO – I’m quite enjoying this series and I’m not ready for it to stop.

Tumblr: And, while not managing to get a lick of work done on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) today, I was able to quickly queue up an answer to an anon ask I found on Valice Multiverse tonight: “Beef wellingtons are just corn dogs from a different socioeconomic background.” Beef wellington, in case you’re unfamiliar, is beef wrapped in shortcrust pastry, while corn dogs are hot dogs on sticks dipped in cornmeal batter and deep-fried. Very different executions, but I suppose the core concept of “meat wrapped in something else tasty” is the same! I thus had the Cuddlepile Valicer trio answer, with Alice saying she wanted to refute that statement, but wasn’t sure precisely how – though she did make sure the anon knew that the beef wellington came first; Victor admitting he’d never had a corn dog, so he didn’t know how they’d compare; and Smiler telling him what a corn dog was and saying it was a similar concept to a beef wellington, but a much different execution, as I said above. And easier to truck around a fairground. :P So that’s all sorted, yay.

*shrug* Small victories. And now I have to go to bed, because, despite everything, it IS a work day tomorrow. Hoping it isn't a nightmare - I'm just so fucking DONE with bad news. *shakehead* Night all.