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crossover_chickYeah, it was chilly and miserable weather-wise around here -- to the point where Mom ended up making hot chocolate for me and Dad late in the afternoon. You know that winter has officially hit when the first cup of THAT comes out! Fortunately I had nowhere to go today, so I could just stay wrapped up in my big purple blanket and get through all my usual Sunday stuff:
Tumblr: Had a reasonably productive day on the old tumblrs, I’m happy to say –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Before lunch, I went through my tracked tags again and added the following to my drafts for later queuing:
A) A post by makarovtm, showcasing this line of Malkavian!Fledgling dialogue when they encounter Beckett in the museum: “Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Beckett! Why am I clapping?” (“because Beckett is best vampire Malk” “I would have thought that was obvious :P” I wrote in my tags XD)
B) A post by phoenixthefurb, showing off some fanart she did for doctorkilljoysblog of their Smiler cosplay, featuring a mysterious figure with a glowing swirly-eyed Smiler face mask, a yellow-and-black shirt under a black jacket, black gloves, and a syringe, all outlined in bright glitchy colors on a blue-and-teal-dotted background (it just looked very cool :D – and yes, Dr. Killjoy liked it)
C) A post by unknownjesterr, showing off his fanart designs for humanoid Smiler (with loads of mechanical arms coming out of him for each element on the Marmaliser), Oblivion (with a creepy blank-eyed stare), and Toxicator (with green splashes on the bottom of the labcoat – I naturally thought all of them looked awesome and said so)
D) A post by jmppromise, showing off her fanart of Alice from A:MR, with one looking at the viewer side-on with a slight head tilt from above, and one strolling along with her skirt swooshing and her Hobbyhorse in hand (they just looked very nice, and I liked the swooshy skirt and the detail on the Hobbyhorse)
E) And a post by threepio, showcasing her gifset of a few shots from Corpse Bride (Emily approaching Victor on the bridge, the skeletons swapping heads during “Remains of the Day,” Emily dissolving into butterflies, and Bonejangles kicking off “Remains Of The Day”), all with a filter on them to make them look darker and spookier (I mentioned in the tags that I quite liked the effect, especially on the first two gifs)
So that was nice! Even if I had to go farther afield for the Corpse Bride gifset than I did for any of the other items...it’s just hard to find good stuff in that tag these days, honestly.
Valice Multiverse – And then, after Portal (below) and before my workout, I took a moment to just straight-up answer the two asks sitting in my inbox (I didn’t want to queue them because I felt a bit bad about not getting to the first for two days):
A) The first was from an anon going on about how, if you don’t believe in fairies, they cannot hurt you – BUT you have to truly believe that fairies are not real for this protection to work. If you allow even the slightest sliver of possibility that fairies are actually real, even if you say you personally don’t believe in them, then you are not protected from their powers. Meaning that, hilariously, anyone who believes the anon’s warnings to be the rantings of a madman are the people best protected from fairies. I naturally had Londerland Bloodlines!Alice answer this, noting the irony inherent in those not believing the anon’s warning being the ones best protected from the thing he’s warning about and allowing that a fairy’s powers only working on those who believe in fairies makes a twisted sort of sense...before admitting that, given her own condition and some of the shit she’s been through, she has to allow for the possibility of fairies being real. So if the anon could give some advice on how to protect yourself from fairies that does not rely on not thinking they’re real… (I then went meta in the tags and told her that I’m much more familiar with the New WoD/Chronicles of Darkness Changeling: The Lost line, rather than the Old WoD Changeling: The Dreaming line (which would be the one relevant to her universe), but that anything iron SHOULD work, since it’s a classic weakness. Hopefully no fairies attack her before she can get some!)
B) And the second was from another anon, who had an interesting question: “Is a frown turned upside down really a smile or a frown pretending to be a smile?” I decided my Valicer In The Dark Smiler should tackle this question, and they said that – while it was a conundrum Dr. Gladwell and the other Advocates would probably be willing to ponder – their personal opinion was it depended on the situation. Namely, if the person you were trying to cheer up was genuinely cheered, or just faking it to make you go away. Alice added “Or if you've physically picked them up and turned them upside-down,” but Smiler said the Advocates had already decided years ago that that was just a frown the wrong way up. XD
Fun times! Glad I managed to get to these before the end of the day – I didn’t want to keep the first anon waiting any further!
Portal: Got in my weekly dose of Aperture Science shenanigans today, and I’m pleased to say I made it further into the bowels of the facility and – with the help of my guide, admittedly – found two more radios, bringing my total up to 25. :D Here’s how that all went:
A) I started off outside the big room with the five “pistons” going up and down, with a stairwell leading up to a dead-end hallway on one side and a Ratt Den (accessible by riding the middle piston and jumping off halfway up to get into the gap) on the other. I remembered my guide saying there was a radio here somewhere, but after poking around the area once again, looking in every nook and cranny, I couldn’t find it. I thus went back to my guide to read ahead a little further and see what I was missing –
And discovered that I had to portal into the fenced-off area beside the stairwell going up, because it was lurking in a vent there. I thus shot a portal through the fence onto the wall, shot a portal onto the wall where the stairs turned, then popped through and found the vent I needed right near the locked door into this bit of hallway. One crouch-walk later, I found myself in another Ratt Den (Doug got AROUND this facility), containing another cardboard “bed,” more cans of beans, and the radio I so desired! I grabbed it and brought it with me back into the big five-piston room, where – after determining the transmission point wasn’t anywhere in there – I discovered that not all of the pistons smashed you against the ceiling, like I’d originally thought. The middle piston and the two pistons on the far side of the room from the entrance instead only went up partway – and that middle piston gave you an excellent view of the portal-able walls and floor of the exit hallway at the top of the room (which was SUPPOSED to be accessible by a bunch of rungs in the wall, but as you might imagine, those all fell out). I thus popped a portal in the far wall, put another in the side wall of the room, then took my radio with me into the exit hall, where – after making sure the transmission point wasn’t up there either – I walked along a few steps before dropping down into another room with two pistons smashing themselves against a ledge sticking out forming a low ceiling over half the room, and two more pistons moving side-to-side above and to the left, just under a bit of portal-able wall. I quickly worked out that you were supposed to ride one of the lower pistons through a portal on the ceiling and into a portal on the wall that would allow you to drop out onto the two side-to-side pistons so you could walk across them as they moved and make it to the upper side of the ledge, but it took a couple of tries to actually do that – the first two times I tried it, I got rather crushed. On the third try, fortunately, I figured out that you had to JUMP while going through the portal to make sure you went through it correctly and got reoriented to drop onto the side-to-side pistons. *nods* Very important, that! I thus hopped across the side-to-side pistons and onto the ledge –
And got the transmission point for the radio! :D Turned out to be right above where the pistons were smacking against the underside of the ledge. I THOUGHT I heard static the second time I tried taking it through the portal! Just had to get here without dying…
B) Having turned another radio light from red to green, I was thus free to leave it behind and continue my piston-based escape! Another portal took me onto a big piston going back-and-forth at the top of the room that I could ride – and then, at the right moment, jump off of to fling myself onto the catwalk at the highest portion of the room and continue on. From there, I used portals to get past a bunch of fast-moving pistons in the middle of the next room (while GlaDOS tried to convince me to go back to the testing track already, since this wasn’t safe – yeah, like your testing tracks are any safer), then past another set of bigger, slower-moving pistons just beyond them. This put me in a giant room full of various pistons going back and forth, clanging against the walls and each other, all above my head. I quickly realized that I was going to have to climb them –
And this time, it took me four tries to get to where I was going without being knocked off a piston and crushed by the ones around it. ^^; Look, it took me a moment to find the right path, and then another moment to figure out exactly where I could stand and where I could put my portals! But eventually I figured out that I had to go from the floor up onto a pair of pistons that met each other in the middle; go across from one piston to the other to get a better view of the portal-able wall above another pair of pistons going side-to-side across the room; put a portal there and a portal at the end of the piston I was currently on and step through at JUST the right time so I didn’t fall off the pistons or get dragged over to another set of pistons and crushed; then put a portal on the floor of the surrounding room just beyond the fence at the top of the piston room and dart back through my other portal to pop out there. ...I hope I explained that correctly – it’s a little hard to describe some of these puzzles! But yeah, it was all about getting as high as possible and getting your timing JUST right. Which I’m not great at, so it’s not surprising I was crushed four times. XD
Anyway – once I was safely in the other room, I checked the area for a radio (making sure to look behind all the various little pillars on either side, then followed Doug’s arrows to drop down onto another one of those pneumatic tubes they use to truck stuff around Aperture. Rather than going inside it this time, though, I just crept along the top of it until it crossed over another, lower tube over some deadly water. I dropped onto the lower tube, then followed that to a piston crossing over the tube and smashing into the wall opposite –
A piston that, after carefully creeping under it for a look at the other side, I realized I was going to have to somehow ride if I wanted to continue on, as it was directly below the ledge I needed to get to. I thus put a portal directly over the spot where it hit the wall, then crept back under it over to where the pipe passed kinda close to a bit of portal-able wall and put a portal low near the water line before saving. To my surprise, I ended up making the jump after only two tries – and hell, on the first try, I made it through the portal fine, I just mistimed where the piston was and fell into the water under it. The second time, I watched the piston’s movement a little more carefully, and made it through just fine. Hooray – I was expecting that to be a LOT fucking harder! :D I thus rode the piston over to the ledge, walked around the corner, and – after checking my guide to make sure I had not missed the next radio – dropped down a little pit lined with metal cubes into the next area as per Doug’s message on the wall. This led to a room with a vent leading to another little Ratt Denn (complete with bean cans, water jugs, and a couple of computer towers), and – past a big piston that pops up the moment you go over it to cut you off from the rest of the level – a second room with a “floor” that was a bunch of pistons pushed together. I thus attempted to cross said pistons –
C) Only for them to open beneath me, dropping me into the room below – a room with a few barrels and cinderblocks tucked in one corner, and doors on three sides. Doors that opened – and revealed familiar laser sights. Fortunately, I had already expected shenanigans and crouched down behind the barrels in the corner the moment the door nearest me open and revealed a turret laser –
But, unfortunately, while two of the turrets (the one next to the barrel corner and the one on the left wall) couldn’t immediately see me, the one behind the door on the far wall could. And, of course, it immediately opened fire. And while the barrel I was hiding behind provided a decent amount of cover, the fact that the turret wouldn’t stop shooting meant I couldn’t poke my head out to see how to knock it over. Meaning that, eventually, I died. Fortunately, while trying and failing not to die, I did get enough of a look at the “turret cubbies” to figure out that I could probably portal the barrels and cinderblocks through the wall next to the turret to try and knock it over –
Unfortunately, I completely screwed the pooch upon respawn, as it turned out the game had autosaved the moment I dropped into the room and I did NOT get behind the barrels in time to hide from the gunfire of the far side turret. And my panicked attempts to throw a barrel at it via portals did not bear fruit. *shakehead* Fortunately, the third try proved to be the charm – yes, I still did get very shot, and yes, I did end up panic-portaling again when my first attempt to hit the problem turret went awry, but I managed to knock it over and render it useless before Chell succumbed to her wounds. And that’s all that matters! *nods* After that, taking out the second and third turrets proved to be a lot easier, as I could get them without getting into their line of sights – though I slightly screwed up the placement of the portal to get the third turret, the one closest to me, meaning I had to wait for it to be taken out by a very slow-rolling barrel. XD Hey, whatever works, works! I then started looking for ways out of the room, checking out each turret cubby in turn –
D) And while the claws that had placed the turrets in the first two cubbys extended down out of a mysterious blank whiteness, the claw in the THIRD cubby (for the turret that had given me so much trouble before) extended down out of an actual room, beyond which I could see stuff like portal-able walls – and more, importantly, hear the tune of a radio! :D I thus managed to place a portal on the one bit of wall I could see, then portaled my way out of the death room and into another room that was divided into two with a fence – on the side I’d come out of, there was a big pneumatic tube moving cubes about; on the other was a table and a handful of broken turrets, along with the radio I needed. I thus portaled my way over to that side, grabbed the radio (knocking over the one turret I was worried about in the process – fortunately it too was inactive), then – after making sure the transmission point was nowhere nearby – returned to the tube side. Some portals got me atop the tube, allowing me to jump to the upper catwalk area above the broken turret side of the room, and from there I was able to go to another small gap where I could drop down into a little cubby –
Right behind a turret. Well, that wouldn’t do! I thus dropped the radio on it to kill it before it could cause problems, then hopped into the cubby and waited. The door opened a moment later, allowing me and the radio to enter a room full of big bits of machinery. I hopped down and tested the radio near the machinery, all to no avail –
But as I crossed the room to read Doug’s latest note, I started hearing static. Moments later, I picked up the radio transmission point right at the entrance to a vent leading to ANOTHER Ratt Den – this one much darker than the others, showing off how the computer towers had a pulsing orange glow. Neat! :) Though I was much happier to get the transmission point, of course. :P
E) With the transmission point got, I left the radio in the Ratt Den and began puzzling out what Doug’s wall note meant – “OVER HERE,” with an arrow pointing up. After looking around for a while, I realized he meant I had to get up onto the broken catwalk going around the upper half of the room – but I couldn’t see any way to do that, as the portal-able bits of the wall didn’t go up far enough for a fling. Like, there was a tilted bit of wall just above the turret cubby that would have done the job perfectly, but I wasn’t sure how to use it effectively –
And then I stopped and thought. And then I put a portal on that bit of tilted wall and one on the floor, and dropped through the floor one to come out the top one. I missed the floor one on my first drop down, but that proved my theory was sound, and a second try got me the momentum to fling myself onto the catwalk. Yay! :D That led me into another backstage office area, where I ignored GLaDOS yelling about how mad she was at me and how she was going to kill me and how all the cake was gone to poke my head in a side room (nothing much in there but some computer equipment and another clipboard about the chicken test subject). There was also an emancipation field on the left wall, right in front of another door into another part of the office – after making sure there was nowhere else to go, I thus passed through it and opened the door –
To find myself in a little viewing area, with a big red stand button and a mysterious dome in the center of the testing chamber beyond. “Oh – is this where they teach you about the rocket turrets and how to use them to your advantage?” I wondered. “Let’s save and find out!” I thus saved and hit the button –
And sure enough, a big round core-turret emerged from the floor, scanned the room, and got a lock on me. I quickly moved out of the way as it fired a rocket, shattering the glass in the viewing window, then skittered back and forth for a while to stop it getting a bead on me before dashing into the turret room itself and dancing in front of the window looking into another viewing area. Another rocket smashed that one too, and I quickly fled through the office and out a nearby door before getting blown up. Whew! At least now I know how best to deal with the ones GLaDOS will be using against me… After that was just a hallway, with a door at the end leading out –
But that is where I looked at the time and went “yeah, I should probably stop here.” So I saved and quit right in front of that door. *nods* Next week – well. We have one more radio to find to finally pop the achievement I’ve been aiming for this week, and after that, a GLaDOS to kill! Don’t know if both will happen in the same play session, but we will find out! Looking forward to it. :)
Workout: I hopped back on the bike this evening to start another week’s worth of workouts – and as hinted at on Friday, I did indeed start watching the old 1994 Jim Carrey film The Mask! This used to be one of my favorite movies, but I hadn’t watched it in ages, so I decided to see if it still held up in my estimation. And I am pleased to report that, so far, it has. :D Got through a little over the first half-hour today, with:
A) The introduction of the titular magical mask (freed by a diver who is then crushed by a pipe coming down from above); Stanley, a doormat nice guy; and his somewhat sleazier friend Charlie
B) The introduction of Tina, a bombshell singer and girlfriend of mobster Dorian, who comes into the bank Stanley and Charlie work at and flirts with Stanley so she can film the vault behind him for Dorian, who is planning a back robbery behind mob kingpin Niko’s back
C) Stanley getting screwed over by the auto repair guys working on his car; showing up to the Coco Bongo, a hot club Charlie wanted to take him to, in the world’s worst loaner car; getting left behind by Charlie and his two lady friends when he wasn’t quick enough to cross the velvet rope when Charlie bribed the bouncer to get in; getting thrown out into the street when he tried to cross the rope himself; getting soaked by a car passing through a puddle – and then discovering the person in the car was Tina and making a bit of a fool of himself in front of her (though she seemed rather charmed by it); and finally having his car completely quit and then fall apart in the middle of a bridge
D) Stanley seeing what looks like a person in the river and wading into save them, only to find it’s a bunch of trash...and a strange mask, which he ends up taking home with him
E) Stanley settling in for the night with his dog Milo, and – after some cartoons, and a bit of a show about “the masks we wear” – trying on the mask...only for it to physically transform him into a green-headed living cartoon, who spooks the hell out of his nasty landlady, blows all the glass out of the car of a driver honking at him with his own cartoon horn, does a carnival show for a gang threatening him and makes balloon animals for them...and then a balloon tommy gun, and finally goes to the auto place and jams some mufflers up the rears of the guys working there
F) Stanley waking up the next morning and thinking the events of the previous night were all a dream...and then meeting Detective Lieutenant Kellaway, who confirms for him they weren’t by telling him about the disturbance last night and his landlady shooting at an intruder
G) Stanley going into work as the police investigate the damage done to the auto shop, and meeting reporter Peggy Brandt, who found his name in the records of the auto shop’s clients and is trying to get her big break in journalism writing an article about it – they end up having a bit of a moment after Stanley reveals he wrote to her “Ask Peggy” column, and she tells him loads of women are looking for a guy like him, and gives him her personal number (under the guise of him calling her about the auto shop story)
H) Dorian getting dragged into Niko’s office and being forced to serve as the guy’s golf tee as Niko informs him that he’s fed up with his small-time scheming and is giving him a week to get out of town
I) And Stanley having a dream about Tina derailed by Milo licking his ear, before seeing the Mask and – after an initial “no way” – slapping it on so he can go see her sing at the Coco Bongo as his unrepressed self...but first, he needs to get some cash…
And that’s where I left it! Fun times, all of it. :D Tomorrow, we pick up with the big bank robbery, and see how far we get from there!
FreeTube/Invidious: Welp, today was Sunday, so you know what that means – a trip over to Jon of Many A True Nerd’s channel to watch his latest Fallout: New Vegas video: “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 20 - Beg, Borrow Or Steel!” The continuing adventures of Drunken Melee Courier P. D. Shoot as she –
A) Decided it was time to visit the Brotherhood of Steel bunker tucked away in Hidden Valley! Reason? Well, Jon figured out the order in which he wants to do the DLC – briefly hit “Lonesome Road” again to do some looting and pick up some good gear, then do “Honest Hearts” and complete that, then do “Dead Money” once P. D. hits Level 30 before wrapping things up with “Lonesome Road” – but he said he doesn’t want to attempt any more of “Lonesome Road” before hitting Level 24 (P. D.’s currently Level 22), because then a powerful perk will open up for P. D. that will make things easier. So he figured that P. D. could go and do some work for the Brotherhood to get lots of XP and continue prepping herself for all these DLC adventures. First, though, she had to get into their bunker and earn their trust – a mission that involved the following:
I. Heading over to Nellis Air Force Base and scouring the area just outside to find a dead BOS Paladin in one of the mortar holes to get her mission holotape off her so P. D. could hand it over later in the questline (Jon mentioned that he liked this particular mission note because it foreshadowed how the Brotherhood has fallen behind the other factions without realizing with its comments on how they didn’t think the Boomers, who have fucking HOWITZERS, would have anything that could threaten a BOS soldier in full power armor)
II. Traveling to Hidden Valley and doing a couple doses of Turbo to murder all the bark scorpions in the area so they wouldn’t be a problem for her later (which both got her to 15 out of 20 uses of the drug and thus that much closer to earning the achievement perk related to it, AND allowed Jon to show just how ridiculously long it lasts now that she’d taken the Chemist perk. Like, he can ramble on for AGES before it wears off!)
III. Entering the secret bunker the Brotherhood of Steel is holed up in, letting the BOS guards who came out to meet her take all her stuff, then allowing herself to be taken to Elder McNamara to explain how she even found the place; she explained that she’d seen patrols coming from the area previously (which Jon very much did NOT the last time he visited, but he was willing to allow that his character was likely to be more perceptive than him XD), and McNamara explained that, while he usually deals harshly with trespassers, he could actually use a trustworthy outsider to do jobs for them, and set her the task of proving herself by getting rid of an NCR Ranger trying to set up in one of the other bunkers nearby...while wearing an explosive collar to make sure she didn’t try to just run off (aaand we officially have more reasons for me to dislike the Brotherhood of Steel)
IV. Leaving the secret bunker (after getting all her stuff back and putting her clothes back on and whatnot) and heading to the nearby hills to meet Dobson, the Ranger setting up in the bunker, currently keeping an eye on the NCR Correctional Facility – after gaining his respect by telling him not to point his gun at her or she’ll shove it up his ass, she got him to explain that he was trying to set up a safehouse in the bunker as it seemed a good, remote location (though he couldn’t get his radio to work). P. D. then easily lied to him with her high Speech skill that Powder Gangers often used the bunkers as hideouts, and he decided that he really did not fancy getting jumped by them in the middle of the night and said he’d go set up an ambush point to take care of stragglers from that gang elsewhere, thanking her for potentially saving his life (as one of the other ways to complete the mission IS to straight-up kill him, he was not wrong there!)
V. Heading back to the Elder to let him know that the problem was taken care of – and for him to reveal they’d heard her scaring the guy off through a microphone in the collar; fortunately, he was impressed with her smart thinking, and named her a trusted friend, taking the collar off and letting her come and go as she pleased.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy – though damn, it’s amazing how the Brotherhood always finds new ways to piss me the hell off. >( At least I have the pleasure of knowing this particular cell is stagnating and dying!
B) Looted the hell out of all the footlockers in all the barracks and bought some broc flowers and stimpacks (for crafting purposes, not healing) from the local doctor (though the local weapons dealer, Knight Torres, wouldn’t deal with her yet), then checked in with the Elder to see what needed doing next! He explained that the bunker was under a strict lockdown, with only certain people allowed in and out – but three of the patrols they’d let out to investigate sites of interest and gather necessary materials had gone missing. And, in order to keep to the letter of the lockdown and not cause undue panic among the men, he needed someone to go figure out what had happened to them. P. D., however, had already done that (whole reason she went to Nellis at the beginning was to make sure she’d found all three), and thus was able to tell the guy that they were all dead. He said that was unfortunate, but not unexpected, and told P. D. that instead she could check in with the three scouts that he’d sent out around the same time to get their latest reports, telling her to say that she was his official representative and ask “are the bears still hunting” to get them to talk (as they were specifically spying on sites of interest to the NCR to see how strong the faction was – seems like they had control of HELIOS ONE before the NCR took it away from them, so they were keen to see if they were still a threat!). PD was willing to do this, and prepared to set out (after stealing a super-sledge from one of the back rooms, because why not, that’s what she does) –
Only to be stopped by one Head Paladin Hardin, who informed her that the chapter was doing poorly and the Elder was to blame, and that he hoped that she’d be willing to help him make a change around here. Unfortunately for him, though, while helping him depose the Elder and take over the chapter would make becoming friends with the BOS easier for P. D., she actually wanted to go and visit all the places that Elder McNamara was sending her for reasons of her own. So she declined his offer to, essentially, help him stage a coup. Shame – I was kind of curious as to what it entailed! Guess if I ever get the game I could find out for myself…
C) Headed out into the wilds to find all the BOS scouts and get their reports, in order of how hard it was to actually reach them:
I. The first was literally just up the road, keeping a watch on the NCR Correctional Facility – once P. D. provided the correct passphrase, he let her know about how he’d seen the Powder Ganger prisoners rise up and take the place over to use as a base, conducting raids that cause some serious damage to the local trade routes before the NCR managed to retake the place
II. The second was in the hills between Camp Forlorn Hope and Nelson – P. D. naturally approached from Nelson, and once assured she was a duly authorized representative of the Elder, he reported that he’d watched how, when confronted with the Legion at Nelson, instead of just crushing the “barbarians,” the NCR instead ended up in a long stalemate with them, which apparently ended with the Legion rising up and slaughtering Camp Forlorn Hope to a man (Jon, who had P. D. kill a few key people there before buggering off, was like “are you sure about that”) – which made him really wonder about the might of the NCR, if the Legion with their primitive weapons could take them on
III. And the third was in the hills outside of Nipton, and was an absolute pain to get to – P. D. attempted to climb up to the guy through the hills by Wolfhorn Ranch, but after being stymied by multiple invisible walls and coming dangerously close to a bunch of Viper gunslingers, changed tactics and approached him from Nipton itself, following the train tracks and threading through the local wildlife. One passphrase later, he was willing to tell her of the cruelties he’d seen at Nipton, and how he found it interesting that the NCR – which had an outpost scant miles away – had not responded to the violence, which showed to him either an unwillingness or an inability to defend their borders
Whew! Seems like the NCR is having a hard time of it in Vegas...but then again, P. D. has kind of been undermining them throughout most of her playthrough, and she is the most important person in the world, so… :p
D) Took a break from doing Brotherhood business to hit Westside and get a bunch of Banana Yucca fruit (both stolen from their garden and bought legitimately from their shops) along with as much purified water as they could sell her, before transporting herself back to the Big MT of “Old World Blues!” Reason? Well, it seemed Jon had seen in the comments those telling him that Dr. Borous wasn’t glitching out, you just had to wait at least one in-game day before he’d start handing over cazador poison glands, and wanted to see if that was true. So P. D. headed into the Think Tank to chat with the guy –
And sure enough, a new dialogue option to ask if he’d “blindly cut up any more poor animals” was available, which resulted in him giving her three poison glands (along with three vials of Nightstalker blood)! A thrilled P. D. thus chucked all her supplies to her personal hot plate in the sink, and made herself a few more doses of Turbo, along with some more Slasher (that’s what she needed the banana yucca fruit and stimpacks for) and some more Party Time Mentats. Because P. D. needs to keep her drug supplies high, damn it!
E) Returned to Hidden Valley after her little side adventure and handed the scout reports to Elder McNamara so he’d like her more and give her the next quest in their line! McNamara was pleased to learn that the NCR’s grip on the region was more fragile than he’d thought, and decided P. D. was trustworthy enough to help with a very important task – fixing the failing air filtration system. Basically, they needed three parts from three different vaults to fix it up – one of them P. D. had already picked up during her brief visit to Vault 3 while drug-running for Jack and Diane, but the others required her to go to Vault 11 and Vault 22. And P. D. was willing to do this –
But, before she did, she headed out to 188 Trading Post. Reason? She wanted to speak with Veronica, a Brotherhood of Steel scavenger who can also be the Courier’s companion. And while companions are disallowed during YOLO runs because they can kill people for the player character and thus make things too easy, Jon was fine with doing companion quests so long as they could be completed without the companion actually helping out too much. And Veronica’s was a good one that would provide lots of XP – and, ironically, lead P. D. straight to Vault 22. So, in the interest of double-dipping her XP gain, P. D. –
I. Sought out Veronica at the trading post (where she was pretending to be just your run-of-the-mill scavenger living in a bunker, looking for ways to feed her family) and had a nice chat with her, where – after convincing her that she had no ill-will toward the BOS (saying they were “harmless unless you use advanced technology near them”) – she agreed to travel with Veronica a bit and show her around some of the places she’d normally consider too dangerous to approach on her own...aka, show Veronica how some of the other factions were doing as compared to the BOS
II. Brought Veronica to Camp McCarran to show her all the NCR troops there (Veronica remarked “no wonder we couldn’t hold HELIOS ONE”), then over to the nearby science camp to show her the latest NCR research (an annoyed Veronica noted they were leaving her people in the dust). As a bonus, this allowed her to meet Dr. Hildern –
Who asked if she was there about Vault 22. P. D. cheerfully lied and said she was, and Hildern explained how he was pretty sure the residents of that vault had figured out the secrets of explosive vegetative mutation, as there’s plants spilling from it that grow and multiply without anyone watering them or anything. And he promised a hefty reward for anyone who could venture in the vault and discover the reason. And then his assistant, Angela Williams, caught P. D. as she prepared to leave and warned her that Hildern had sent multiple mercs and a fellow scientist, Keely, to that vault...and none had come back. Giving P. D. an EXTRA reason to visit Vault 22 and maybe save poor Keely before something happened to her over there! Triple-dipping XP, yay!
III. Brought Veronica to the Silver Rush to see all the energy weapons there, causing Veronica to realize that the BOS had really dropped the ball on keeping them out of the hands of the plebes and to finally tell P. D. who she truly was. She admitted that she’d known her chapter was in trouble for a while now, but this really brought it home...but it also made her realize a solution, if she could only get her fellow BOS members to listen…
IV. Brought Veronica to the Hidden Valley bunker at her request, where she argued with McNamara about how the Brotherhood was falling behind all the other factions and how they had to start using the technology up above; unfortunately, McNamara was unwilling to hear her argument, saying they’d “outlasted the end of the world” and they could “outlast these upstarts above” and proving he was just fine “hiding in a hole waiting for everyone else to die,” as Veronica put it
V. Talked to Veronica about how they had to bring proof of superior technology in the outside world to McNamara to make him realize that what Veronica was telling him was right, causing Veronica to reveal that she’d been entrusted with the locations of some advanced tech their previous elder, Father Elijah, had found, and if P. D. could bring her to the comm where his notes were stored, they could track some of it down and wave it in McNamara’s face
VI. Listened to the other BOS slag off Veronica (apparently she’s not popular with some of the other members) and grabbed a ballistic fist off Knight Torres now that she was trusted enough to gain access to the shop (it’s apparently a MONSTER if you can get the condition up), then brought Veronica over to the little shack near Gibson Scrapyard to access the research notes
VII. Listened to Veronica list their options after going over the notes – getting a pulse gun from Vault 34 (which P. D. was NOT doing, because one, it was a gun, and she’s not allowed to use those unless it’s ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, and two, Vault 34 is a NIGHTMARE and she’s not stepping foot inside); finding a rangefinder out in the world (P. D. didn’t even consider this option); or figuring out the secret behind the miracle farming tech the NCR had discovered – which was, of course, whatever the hell was in Vault 22. Veronica knew the BOS would never actively pursue it because it wasn’t a WEAPON, but said that they would be interested because self-sufficiency was important to them. Yeah, we’d prefer you assholes not interact with anyone else either.
And so the episode ended with P. D. dismissing Veronica to the Lucky 38 because she couldn’t have her actually helping her in combat (instead of just tagging along as she fast-traveled all over the place), before traveling to the Follower’s Safehouse, the nearest safe location to her target destination. Next time, P. D. braves the horrors of Vault 22 to get loads of XP and goodies! I am very curious as to what she’ll find in there.
Aaand, as usual, I've stayed up too late, and now have to rush off to bed to get some sleep before work. *shakehead* One day I will learn better time management again...in the meantime, night all!
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