radio414

Brian dutifully answered his phone when called. “Check, check,” he said. He heard his voice coming from Carmen’s phone, which would have been the most unnerving thing he’d experienced that day if not for, you know, the ghosts. But again, the ghosts weren’t going to keep him from doing his job, and neither was the phone thing. He went over to the box of seals and refreshed his own personal stock of the things, before turning the flashlight on and pointing it at a wall to make sure it worked. It was pretty cheap, just like everything else Shiki seemed to give them, Brian mused, but it shone bright enough to see the spot even with all the lights in the cafeteria on, which was good enough for him. “There’s this guy in my fraternity,” Brian mused as he finished gearing up, “uh, Rho Alpha Delta if you care. His name is Carmichael, and he’s as much a stick in the mud as that sort of name suggests. He was always trying to tell us off for doing admittedly stupid shit, like jumping onto a trampoline from the frat house roof or whatever. Everyone else in turn would call him a coward for, you know, obvious reasons and Carmichael was always like, ‘Cowards live.’ And, you know, fair enough. Carmichael Jones is still alive and with us today, and doing Jackass stunts is a good way to end up dead. But he’s also a nervous wreck with no hobbies working a dead-end job because he’s too fucking scared to quit. “Anyway, the point is, cowards live, sure,” Brian said, “but that’s because they don’t do anything else. Going in now.” He crossed the threshold back into the restroom. The lights were back on, which made having the flashlight on a little embarrassing, but there wasn’t anyone to see it, so the embarrassment quickly faded. “Pretty normal in here,” Brian said. He realized Carmen probably didn’t have a good idea of what a “normal” high school boy’s restroom looked like, but he wasn’t about to elaborate. “Like I said, I’m mostly done, just gotta take care of the one toilet that spooked me the first time around.” He pulled out the seals and aimed the flashlight right at the corner toilet. The lights flickered, but the flashlight was just good enough to keep the ambient light levels above the proper spooky zone. He stuck his phone in the crook of his shoulder and pulled out the seals. “Just gonna keep talking until this is done, Carmen. I promise I won’t cry wolf or anything either, just for you.”

Just Getting Started The Archangel Lailah clearly wasn't sure whether it was a good twist of fate that heroes had shown up when they had or bad in that they both seemed to know each other. Her eyes darted back and forth between both parties and she visibly flinched when Sibyl and Aeon discussed vandalizing the church. Particularly observant capes might also have noticed how her breath quickened and how the two orbs of light flanking her grew significantly more jittery. She recovered a little, though. She waved her hand and whispered, "No, not yet,” and the lights settled back down. “I think, technically, it's six ears,” Lailah said, responding to Thessa's little snark, “but alright.” She folded The Fates’ proposed sermon in half, stood up, and brushed herself off. “Let’s go back downstairs. I suggest this for two reasons: I think it will be easier to make the points I need to make with the stained glass as a backdrop -- one in particular, I think, will do just fine -- and the second is, well, if things continue to escalate as they are now, the naves are a bit more open and certainly more replaceable than the materials contained within this office. I would also prefer the loser, whoever she may be, be allowed to flee this place and lick her wounds.” She looked right at Sibyl as she said that second one. “I do hate that you came all the way up here only to be brought back down, but I suppose it can’t be helped. Please,” she said, and she gestured back down. Lailah managed to catch up with Sibyl as they descended the stairway. “If it were anyone else,” she said, “if it was Kris or the pastor of some other church reading this, I would permit them to do so. It is specifically taking advantage of my position as Archangel that I take umbrage with, though I suppose that’s what your employers were aiming for. Still, keep that in mind.” When everyone arrived back downstairs, the sun was shining through one of the stained glass panels in such a way as to cast its image on the ground. It was warped, yes, stretching all the way down the arm, across the altar, only ending part of the way down the opposite arm of the church’s X shape, but the mixing colors only added to the mystique of it. Lailah seemed pleased, anyway. She marched forward ahead of everyone before turning around and walking backward, ready to present it to all who would listen. The stained glass behind her depicted two figures holding up a central sphere that a dark figure overhead threatened to push everything back down to earth. “So,” she said. “G3 needs to learn more about the end of the world, hm? They need to brace for Nihil’s inevitable return, do they? How may I be of service?” OOC

Chris had hoped that the giant mass of flesh was as slow as it looked, but no, it was normal speed, and “normal speed” plus “massive body” meant “faster than them.” Running was out, then, and fighting still looked pretty unappealing. What did that leave them? Well, if he were being charitable, Chris could have called their remaining options “taking advantage of the party’s own advantages,” but he was a thief and had been raised rich besides. When had he ever been charitable? No, this was just “fighting dirty.” In lieu of some other plan, they kept running, but that didn’t mean Chris wasn’t trying to figure something out. He already had his magic string in hand, maybe something with that? Or they could hack at the thing’s ankles, keep it from going as fast? Maybe it was controlled by the chanting cultists and if they killed all four of those the bloody hulk would go down with them? They’d chanted even through some of Ziun’s illusions, so whatever it was, it did seem important. Their numbers were just about equal too. That had to be worth something. “See if we can’t deal with those cultists,” Chris said. “I’ve got an idea to slow this big thing down.” It was a stupid idea, but it was an idea, and there was not a lot of time to think of something better. He anchored his string in the air and split off, running perpendicular to everyone else as he extended the string out behind him. Eventually, he curved around, making sure the thing’s feet got wrapped up, and then he stopped and braced for the line to go taut. He wanted to trip it. Ideally, it wouldn’t be able to pull itself up after crashing to the ground, but Chris knew better than to hope for something like that. He didn’t even get to get that far, though. He caught the thing’s legs, yes, but although his string was able to anchor itself, he wasn’t able to anchor himself. “Um. Um!” He could feel his boots give way against the floor and he started sliding along. “Okay, it’s slowed down now, but, uh, new plan: help!”

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body -- whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free -- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.” 1 Corinthians 12:12-14 (NIV)Yes, she had been the one to extend the invitation and yes, she was not the one who had done the lion’s share of the cooking that morning, but Melissa still couldn’t help but feel a little self-conscious as everyone sat down to breakfast. Ironically, by asking, she’d done a number of other, smaller things without asking, so for most of breakfast, she just kept her head down and tried to avoid drawing any further attention to herself. It worked out well enough. Their guest -- Melissa was pretty sure she heard her say her name was Penelope? -- was the center of attention and seemed to revel in it, so Melissa just tried to stay out of the way. Still, when Penelope mentioned team names and started engaging with Trevor directly, Melissa couldn’t help but wonder, and that wondering started turning into wondering aloud. “Everyone has these such amazing team names,” Melissa said. “We were with Squad Grandpa yesterday, now Ultimate Strategy… I’m sure Salvo and Natasha have something equally exciting.” She turned to Fen. “And yet, I don't know what we’re supposed to call ourselves. Fen, you're our leader, do you have any ideas?” Fen seemed surprised by the question, to the point of even letting out a little “Eh?” which dampened Melissa’s spirits just a little bit further, but the girl did give it some thought, literally chewing on the question as she looked from person to person then back down at her own food. When she came back up, though, it was with a smile on her face. “How about Manna?” “‘Manna’ like the bread or ‘Mana’ like the- Oh, I get it!” Melissa laughed. “That’s very clever, Fen, I think that’s a wonderful name.“ She wanted to immediately tell Trevor, too, but he was busy apparently implying Squad Unfailing Strategy wasn’t the best squad in all of Prana, which Penelope took offense to. “It is quite the logical fallacy to assume one squad is better than another when you know nothing of said squad,” Penelope said. “But to answer your question, it really depends. So far they tend to be between three and five. The first squad, in fact, has only three.” Melissa quickly jumped in. “You’ll have to forgive him,” she said. “He’s- we’re all still new at this. We don’t even have a team name yet, though Fen just came up with Squad Manna which I kind of like? Do we have to do anything past that like tell Mauvache or get it registered or something?” “You don’t have to. She’ll know,” Penelope said. “But perhaps you should tell her anyway just out of courtesy.” “Oh,” Melissa said. Of course that was the answer. “Um.” Like, it made sense, but it was another step in an already busy day, and she didn’t want to be the reason people were late to an appointment for the second day in a row. She looked at Fen, who she’d already made plans for the day with, and at Trevor, who she hadn’t even thought to ask about yet, back at Penelope, which would have been the silliest decision of all of them, and willed herself to make a decision. “Trevor, someone texted Fen and me with plans already, do you think you could tell Mauvache for us then?” Breakfast continued until everyone was finished. Melissa just had to check on Bartleby, help wash everyone’s plates, and then go to the restroom and wash up before she was heading out. She also saw Penelope out before she left. “I hope you enjoyed the meal, Miss Penelope. We’ll try to keep Trevor out of trouble Will we be seeing you again, do you think?”

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Week Sixty-Three -- The Belly of the Beast The interminable stone halls are but an antechamber. The creature is vast beyond measure and must be battled from within. Step over the threshold, and let the terrible truth worm its way into your mind. The best way to describe this mission is to just show you the provisions screen and let you take it all in from there. I know we haven’t done a lot of Long-length dungeons, so if you don’t remember, those gave you two campfire logs to play with. This scenario, the one “Exhausting”-length dungeon in the entire game, gives you four. Does it deserve such a commendation? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, it is designed to be such a marathon. The map is huge, with fights seen nowhere else in the game, and each one will inflict a massive amount of blight damage that we just have to grind through. That’s why we’re packing so many antivenoms and that’s why we’re bringing Paracelsus along even though she’s still only at resolve level four. Having Battlefield Medicine as an option is worth the extra stress damage she’s going to take. The entire party, actually, is designed around one core quality: We want to be able to hit the back row as hard as possible. Boudica the Hellion naturally follows from this, given her Iron Swan ability, and each of the other three, Damian, Hakima, and the aforementioned Paracelsus each have a similarly hard-hitting move. This is the most beast-heavy of the Darkest Dungeon runs, so Elmer also gets a bonus while attacking them, and Damian can act as a backup healer in a pinch. Now, the four campfire logs do provide another interesting mechanical quirk of the run: they take up space. Like the Hands of Glory from the quest before, this run crimps the space available in your pack. I would have loved to bring some holy water, for example, but settled on the extra food to make sure everyone was healed up between fights. I also experienced a slight consequence of not being able to fight my way all the way to the Viscount on our two attempts -- I had to devote a slot to blood to compensate for Damian’s curse. There is one advantage on our side, though: knowledge. The game wants this run to be a marathon, but if you know what you’re doing, you can turn it into a sprint. Let’s look at the map for a second: Our goal is that curio location in the middle of the map. On the surface, it’s not that hard to navigate the labrinthine map and reach the locus beacon in only five fights. The game isn’t going to make it that easy, but we’ll get to that when we get to that. The first fight is just some hounds, anyway. These showed up in the last dungeon as part of one of the Templar fights. They’re threatening, with a few different annoying attacks, but they were in that fight as fodder, basically, to diversify the different Templar encounters. The same is true here. They can barely pull Paracelsus out of position before they get cut, whipped, and bit down. It certainly helps that, with the excess of campfire logs, we’ve already got our buffs set up. And here is the thing I’ve been alluding to for several posts now. The Mammoth Cyst and White Cell Stalk fights. The Mammoth Cyst is Darkest Dungeon’s version of a Beholder, with a bevy of different attacks, all of them devastating, and two actions per round to spend using them. If it blights you, it’s doing it for eight (8!) a turn. When it’s dealing normal damage, it’s attacking for seventeen, and it’s hitting two heroes as it’s doing so. It’s got 25 PROT, so it ignores a quarter of all damage dealt to it, and it can heal itself. When I say this dungeon is a grind, it’s really this fight that is a grind, and there are several on the map. And saying all this still discounts the real problem of the fight, which is the White Cell Stalk. The White Cell Stalk, in comparison to its Mammoth counterpart, is pretty easy to kill. It only has 25 health, one action a turn, and no PROT. It has a unique move, however, called Teleport, which does exactly what it says it does -- it teleports the party out of the fight, to a random point in the dungeon. Sometimes, it will even teleport you to another fight! This is where the grind sets in, you see? Every round, the likelihood of the White Cell Stalk teleporting you away, negating all progress and probably setting your heroes up for another series of fights and hunger checks, only goes up. It’s easy to kill the White Cell Stalk, but the Mammoth Cyst will just summon another one as soon as it gets another action. The one saving grace of the fight is the White Cell will never cast Teleport on its first turn, so you always have time to deal with it. Still, the fight is daunting. There are a few solutions. The first one is to pray. After all, if you’re teleported to a random point in the dungeon, it’s entirely possible you get teleported to a room closer to your destination. I mean, you don’t have great odds and have to deal with the rest of the dungeon in the meantime, but I’ve seen it done. Better, though, is the same solution we’ve been using for any fight with an enemy with multiple attacks per round -- you just have to DoT them out. This is another benefit of our party composition. Each hero can inflict damage over time. What’s the giant ball the size of a cabin going to do, dodge out of the way? There are three fights left on the optimal route through this dungeon. The first is another filler one. Remember, these fights are meant to wear you down as you make your way back to the Mammoth fights that block the way. Still, we haven’t seen an Antibody yet, nor has a Polyp appeared onscreen, so let’s just show it off real quick. Polyps are annoying for the same reasons Hounds are, while the Antibody at the front plays a support role similar to the White Cell Stalk. This one can’t cast Teleport, though, so it’s a bit safer to take out the other enemies first. The real fights are just ahead, though. Oh, you thought we were done with Templars? We didn’t even bring any of those protective relics, but you thought we were done? I mean, this is a watered-down version of those boss fights. It only has one action per round and it can’t cast that backbreaking Revelation attack, but it can still do all the other attacks we were worried about Templars doing. The most stressful part about this fight to me personally was how Boudica could never seem to land a hit on the thing. She’s wearing an accuracy-boosting Focus Ring. I just thought one accuracy trinket was enough. Still, we fought through enough of these in the last dungeon, a watered-down version isn’t going to scare us too hard. Let’s just move on to the final fight, the thing guarding the Locus Beacon: Ah. No matter what you do, you are going to have to fight at least two Mammoth Cysts and run the risk of being sent away and having to grind back. One thing I didn’t mention before was how the game will give you the decency to remember your progress. You don’t have to fight through all 158 of the Cysts HP every time you come crawling back. Still, you’d like to get it all done in one go. The sprint strategy worked, though. We were in a good enough position after keeping our fights to a minimum to manage these two grinds effectively. Boudica got put on Death’s Door at one point, but it wasn’t ever worrisome. She never got a Deathblow check before Paracelsus healed her back up above zero. That leaves just one more dungeon left to complete the game, and the fourth Darkest Dungeon fight is more one long boss fight than an actual slog like the ones that have come before. That being said, there is a small yet urgent matter that I’d like to take care of first… See you next week for that. -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→

Chris was worried he’d have to look away to avoid seeing Ziun and Robin get torn apart by zombies and was almost relieved when the threshold to the stairs became almost completely solid so he wouldn’t have to even will himself to look away. His choice had been removed. It did mean, however, that when Ziun burst through at the last possible second, he was caught completely unawares and both he and the bard fell down several stairs before coming to a stop. Thank goodness Estellise had healing magic, right? “Where’s Robin?” Chris asked. He already knew the answer, though, and didn’t need to hear it said out loud. He swore instead. Technically, the letter of his oath that he would protect Estellise was intact, as was hers to protect him, but the spirit had been broken. He wasn’t always able to protect those he was dungeoneering with. Chris wanted to mourn. He wanted to at least feel Robin’s absence for at least an amount of time equal to their time spent together, but the dungeon wouldn’t let that happen. They had to move on -- he could feel the dungeon beckoning them onwards. They could mourn later. Like the previous floor, this one had one key feature in the center of the room. Also like the previous floor, there were two different classes of enemies: robed cultists all chanting around the central coffin and a singular, well, Chris wasn’t really sure how to describe the monster in the middle of all of them, but it was large, vaguely looked like a person, and didn’t look happy. It wasn’t moving, at least, so maybe it wasn’t actually a threat. Then, of course, the cultists noticed everyone enter. Chris hadn’t even realized that everyone had stepped into the room. He couldn’t even berate everyone else for not doing the usual thing and hanging out in the doorway where they wouldn’t be noticed -- he’d done it too, and he was at the front of the line. But the cultists weren’t reacting too much; they mostly stood where they were and stared back at the floor’s newest occupants, and the hulking monstrosity with them continued to be inert. It was actually kind of awkward. It was an atmosphere he felt he had to break somehow. “Uh, meow?” All at once, the cultists started chanting again, and this time, the hulking thing started moving, stepping up and over the coffin in the middle of the room as it lumbered towards the four remaining adventurers in the party. Chris recognized his mistake. “Oh, that was stupid,” he said. But he couldn’t yell at himself for too long about that, not when they had precious time remaining to avoid fighting that thing. “Estellise?” Looking back, he saw that she had already conjured up her bow. “Okay, uh, uh,” He pointed left, along the outside wall. “This way!” He started to run.

that nun is making the "ah, eto... bleh" face i know i shouldn't say surprisingly good and go into each of these with an open mind but also that was surprisingly good 8.5/10OP Suggestion: new ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT album has some banger songs and some banger song titles 8/10

“Catching his breath” meant retching a couple times -- the rare occasion where he wanted to throw up and had to leave the restroom to do so -- but Brian managed to keep the Taco Bell inside him as he pulled himself up from his doubled-over crouch. “Fuck,” he said again, wiping his mouth and spitting into a nearby trash can. He leaned back and stretched his back. “Okay.” Carmen was having a worse time of it, it seemed. Even having taken the flashlight into the restroom with her, she was now running around the whole cafeteria. Brian almost wondered what Ms. White was thinking watching all this before remembering that he didn’t actually care. He just had a job to do, so he followed after Carmen, “Carmen. Hey, Carmen. Carmen.” He kept saying her name until she actually calmed down and started listening to him. “Carmen,” he said one more time. “Listen to me. I’m sorry you’re feeling like this and it’s a perfectly reasonable reaction to have, but also I feel like this is part of the job so you're going to have to take some deep breaths and be a big girl, okay?” He was projecting a lot more confidence than he actually had but he wasn't about to look weak in front of Carmen, Ms. White, or whatever was in the restrooms. Carmen had indeed been taking deep breaths. Though they were much less the calming deep breaths that he had suggested and much more a result of her hyperventilating. “A- b- t- there- bath- geh-” In trying to stammer out everything the girl’s tongue tripped on her own words and ended up having a bit of a coughing fit. After a slight wheeze, the girl took another deep breath and exhaled. “Phew, that was close,” she said. Then, after a moment panic returned to her eyes as she pointed to the bathroom shouting, “Ghost!” “So you did see a ghost then?” Brian said. “Not a demon or like a djinn or something else? Because all I saw could be attributed to bad wiring and carbon monoxide and while I've accepted that ghosts exist and all that, I didn’t see any ghosts. Speaking of,” He gestured to her flashlight. “Give me that. Electrical failure or ghost, whichever it is I'm pretty sure it's not gonna turn the lights back on for me and I need to finish up.” “I uh- I’m- maybe a demon? Or maybe it's a toilet Djinn?” Carmen seemed to be thrown off by the first question, trying to figure out the specifics before explaining further. “Big- it was tall and went,” and Carmen lifted her hands, wiggling them in Brian's direction. At his flashlight request, the girl hugged it closer to her saying, “It was dark in there too!” The girl looked dejected, her gaze moving downward as she said, “It's gonna drag me into the toilet isn't it…” “Probably,” Brian said, “although if it was a demon I think it would have done so already. It sounds like a ghost.” He made another grab at the flashlight, an actual physical grab and not just a gesture. “You don't have to go back in right away. You can stay out here while I finish up. Do you have your phone on you? You can even stay on the line so you'll know if something happens, okay?” Carmen’s grip on it was tight but she didn't put up much of a fight as he yanked out of her hand. The girl shook her head and said, “That sounds even scarier. I’ll uh… just…” She sat down at a table and planted her face against it. “Okay, suit yourself,” Brian said. He went back to in front of the restrooms and fiddled with the flashlight, making sure he knew how it worked (and, for that matter, that it even worked at all) as he steeled himself to reenter the haunted bathroom. He’d have to do this himself. He didn’t want to, but he had to. Did he have to? There were always other options. He could be like Carmen and just close himself off until morning or even exit the building and drive back to the park. Each had its own appeal over going into girl’s restrooms and fighting things that went aboogy-woogy-woo or whatever Carmen did with her arms. He looked back at Carmen. She was still there, which, now that he was thinking of other options, was kind of a weird middle-ground. She wasn’t participating, but she hadn’t left. He walked back over and tapped the table with the flashlight to get her attention. “Okay, actually, you’re going to have to tell me why you’re here, then,” he said. “Not like a smarmy reason like, ‘you drove us here in that van, Brian,’ why are you working for Shiki if you’re going to shut down at the first mildly spooky thing you come across?” He was downplaying his own emotions again, but fuck it. “Did Shiki save your life or something like me? Are you paying off some debt? Is that it? “Or maybe you can’t tell me. Or you can’t right now. Whatever. I’ve gotta go seal up one more toilet, ghost or no ghost. But whatever reason it is, you can’t tell me cowering like a schoolgirl is going to align with those reasons at all. Figure it out.” He took out a pen and wrote his number on the back of a seal. “Call me if you change your mind. I’m going in there.”

eirika (sacred stones) edelgard von hrelsburg (three houses) mercedes (three houses) bernadette (three houses) l'arachel (sacred stones) natasha (sacred stones) franz (sacred stones) dozla (sacred stones)

Anchor Roy Biff, face all red and hands clenched tight around the back of the chair he was leaning on, looked to the world like he was about to throw something -- hands, Sarah, the chair, whatever. Still, he managed to take a few deep breaths before responding to Override’s question. “Not an apostle, then?” he said. “That’s fine. But Lailah’s like every other holy leader Scarlet City has had, so I would have assumed you’d have been able to make some extrapolations.” “She is different,” Sarah chimed in. “She’s quieter than most. And -” “Thank you, Sarah,” Roy said. “It’s true that she’s quiet, but she’s quiet in that ‘wisdom’ sort of way, not in the ‘shy’ sort of way. And she’s not a gang leader. She’s not going to bite your head off if you look at her funny. Here, you want an itemized list of instructions? Do: keep Aeon in check because I worry she’s going to take that last as a challenge -- don’t look at me like that Aeon, you know you are.” He gave the hero in question a wry grin. “Do: be on your guard in case this big meeting goes pear-shaped. Lailah’s current church isn’t that far from Goodale Park so we might need you elsewhere to assist. And don’t, under any circumstances -” He paused, and frowned. “Mustard,” he said. “French or Dijon?” Sarah asked. Roy wheeled around to face Sarah and made a wordless gesture that could only mean, “Does it really matter?” to which Sarah just shrugged and exaggeratedly drew a question mark in her notes. When Roy returned his focus to the actual briefing he’d clearly lost his train of thought and had to move on. “You had better get going,” he said, “before the situation gets even worse.” We Live on a Fucking Planet Baby That’s The Sun One of the central tenets of the Zorrastran faith was that no one church was more important than any other. Whether it was smack dab in the middle of Scarlet City or out in the ruins with a wall practically aligning with the Shimmer, they each had unique quirks that made them stand out. To ascribe value to any one such quality of a church would be to diminish the other qualities, that was the teaching. To that end, no one church could house the Archangel for any significant length of time. Lailah lived the life of a nomad, a wanderer going between churches as she saw fit. They were obligated to house her, of course -- though they would have even without the laws of the church dictating as such -- and she presided over the weekend ceremonies, giving a few remarks if asked before moving on a week or two later. The church she’d ended up at for the first week of November was just outside the Short North area called the Church of the Sacred Harp. The lot used to contain a school building, but that had been torn down decades, if not centuries ago to make room for the large X-shaped building, one with an altar in the middle and rows of pews extending outward in each cardinal direction. At the end of each arm of the X was a scene depicted in stained glass telling the story of Zorro and Astra’s battle with Nil. The door under the scene showing the two, victorious, banishing Nil from the city, and yet with Nil’s final machinations looming overhead, was unlocked as Sibyl arrived, though before she could get a chance to take in too much more of the scenery, she was approached by the church’s pastor. “Welcome,” they said. “You’re a bit earlier than we were expecting but the Archangel Lailah is upstairs and should be ready for your appointment.” A pause. “Although, weren’t there supposed to be two of you? It doesn’t matter, I suppose. If you would just follow me.” The upstairs had a few more pews to view any sort of church service, but was mostly an office space, where the church took care of the various administrative tasks required of it. It was an open office, without walls or cubicles separating the two computers, refrigerator, or, yes, the cot where the Archangel Lailah lay, looking up at the ceiling. At the ceiling? No. In fact, Lailah’s eyes followed two globules of light, each no bigger than an apple, as they danced weightlessly around in the air. It took a prod or two from the pastor for her to even notice Sibyl’s entrance, and the woman scrambled up to a sitting position on the cot, brushing down her costume to something expected of her station. The orbs of light shifted their position as well -- they now flanked Lailah on her left and right. Her eyes fell on Sibyl and she smiled warmly. “Ah, my friend,” she said, revealing herself as someone who called everyone her friend whether she knew them or not, “how are you? Welcome. How may I be of service?” To the pastor, she added, “Thank you, you may leave us now.” OOC

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Week Sixty-Two -- Light The Way The thing has no name, for it needs no language. Nevertheless, those who would submit to its wordless will are rewarded, in a fashion. The creature's blessings are as repulsive as they are robust. Twisted, half-human monstrosities stalk the flesh-ridden halls, protecting their gestating god. First thing’s first, a small bit of catch-up from the previous week. Because we have completed a Darkest Dungeon run, we have, to quote our ancestor, “started to see things as they really are.” What this means in practice is every so often when interacting with a portion of the Hamlet, a section of the screen will flicker to reveal eldritch imagery. This is really hard to screencap, but another symptom of temporarily replaces the character portraits of all the heroes and adventurers with a similarly eldritch mood, which only fades when you hover over it, so I managed to grab that. It’s very funny how the Darkest Dungeon subreddit responds to the semi-frequent question of “what is going on here” by basically being as vague as possible, but we’re not on the subreddit, so fight me. I mean, I imagine the subreddit would yell at me for other reasons. In this run, for example, I was suboptimal with one of Joan’s abilities until after I had already gotten through the fight where it would have been most useful, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about the run. The goal is those fights in the corners with the Templar Impalers and Warlords. That’s where the Iron Crowns we need to activate with our Hands of Glory are. The Hands of Glory, of course, are mostly meant to clog up our backpacks in the same way that the requisite trinkets clog up otherwise rather important slots. Let’s take a closer look at those trinkets now. It’s important to note that this trinket actually lies to you. Or rather, it might be coded how it says it is -- I don’t know and I don’t really care to find out -- but the mechanics of the game don’t let this trinket work how it says it does. You can’t reduce stress damage to zero; you’ll always take at least twenty percent of the damage. The damage, part, the thing that will deal twenty-four damage without a sweat, is taken care of at least, though. Anyway, this provisioning is kind of bad because I was still working off of last week’s information and didn’t pack enough Antivenom. I would probably cut the Holy Water, though that could be useful too. I’d cut the Blood if I could, but alas, Thar’s a vampire. In terms of party selection, I went over this a couple weeks ago, but Thar and Joan absolutely have to keep Alhazred from getting attacked by the Templars, Sethera absolutely needs to keep Thar and Joan from going insane, and Alhazred absolutely needs to keep people alive. This dungeon does have a few saving graces. The first is how almost every mandatory fight has a Rapturous Cultist. We’ve been over the stalling rules in the past, but these things heal themselves when given the opportunity, which means two light attacks a turn can last a while, making everyone’s jobs a lot easier. It does mean we have to leave them alive and able to support the multiple Priests and pieces of malevolent architecture in our way, but that’s what the mark synergies of the party are for. When Alhazred doesn’t need to cast a heal spell, he can mark one of the enemies, significantly improving Joan’s damage as he does so. These enemies are tough, but they’re not that tough. They’re also enemies we’ve seen before in the last dungeon, so besides pointing out the increasing body horror in the background, I’d like to just talk about the three main fights of this run, the ones I’ve been hyping up for weeks now. These things get two actions a turn, one of which will be Revelation, so make sure your healer is guarded when you fight them, and the other will be a decently strong attack with some sort of negative effect. It’s pretty obvious jut from the name what it’s going to do to you. Body Slam forces the hero to the back of the line and Stinger Stab does an obnoxious amount of blight damage. They have enough health to make the fights a marathon and yet they’re also built to bully anyone trying to keep up with their tempo. The best way to get around this is the Man-At-Arms. Not only does he have the necessary guard, he also has a riposte effect, which swings the action economy back in your favor. Joan the Seraph has one too, but hers has the requirement of only having a third of her health left, which is hard to stay in when your heals can hit for, uh sometimes. I’m not going to go through the other two fights because I don’t think it would be interesting to go through the same fight but easier this time. Instead, I will leave you with a couple of pro tips for if you try this dungeon for yourself. The first is, camping buffs last for four fights before wearing off, but you can path through this dungeon so that you can spend one log of firewood to carry buffs between two of these Templar fights. The second is the existence of a bug with this level. I don’t know if it’s still there, but it used to be if you left the room with the Iron Crown without using a Hand of Glory to light it, you wouldn’t be able to reenter the room later, and you’d have to fail out of the mission. Supposedly this has been partially fixed, but I wouldn’t even take that chance. Just a head’s-up, I probably won’t be able to make a post next week. I’ll try my best, but my end of April is looking a little chaotic, so don’t get your hopes up. When I do come back, we’ll run through a marathon of a dungeon run, one that introduces a brand new mechanic to make it even longer. Until then, -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→

cool vibes, impressively thick neck on that guitar 7/10OP Suggestion: in honor of the markiplier movie announcement i submit its soundtrack 8.5/10

“Anyone who is hungry should eat something at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment. And when I come I will give further directions.” -1 Corinthians 11:34 (NIV)Fen did most of the cooking work, though Melissa tried her best to be of use helping out where she could. That meant prep work, from cutting vegetables to washing the rice. She also made sure Fen knew how to use any of the other appliances they came across in the process, though it wasn’t like there were that many involved in a stir fry. Mostly, Melissa did that to make up for forgetting Fen had already figured out the rice cooker yesterday. It was a little embarrassing to not remember what she’d had for breakfast just the day before. Melissa was whisking eggs when Fen asked her question. Her first response was an instinctive, “It was a group chat, right? Why wouldn't I have-” before she remembered Fen hadn't experienced the misery of a large, active group chat giving your phone a conniption before. “I did see that message, yes,” she said, recovering a bit. “It’s a little weird, someone having our numbers like that, but it is serendipitous, right? If you're interested, I’d love to go check it out.” “Oh, that’s good to hear,” Fen said. “I’d be happy to go meet this mystery person too. But uh, they said to bring decks. Do you just buy them at any store?” “The game I had back home had a couple of ways to get cards,” Melissa said, now pouring the scrambled egg into the pan. “You could buy packs of random cards and hope to open something cool, or you could buy just the individual cards if you knew you wanted something specific, or yes, you could just buy a prebuilt deck if you wanted. There were smaller games where the makers just sold the sets directly, too, um…” That was probably too much explaining, she realized, and her cheeks flushed. She turned her attention towards making sure the eggs turned out okay. “But yeah, all of that would be found in a game store in like a mall or something.” Fen, bless her heart, seemed to properly mull over all the information Melissa presented her with before nodding. “I see. Well, should we go to the mall after breakfast?” The girl paused again before thinking aloud, “It seems like there really is nothing you can’t find there.” “That mall had room for two arcades,” Melissa joked. “Surely there’s room for a game store tucked away in there.” The eggs had been the last step in the process. They were cooked separately and then stirred in with everything else to make a nice blend of rice, vegetables, and food. Melissa had been hungry already, but now it hurt to even look at the food they had made without immediately digging in. She maintained enough presence of mind to be polite to their guest, even if she was in the middle of what sounded like giving Trevor a rather stern lecture. She poked her head out into the main area. “Miss, Fen and I made some stir fry if you want breakfast. You know, since you came all this way…”

In terms of cafeterias, Brian had seen better. You had to pay to get into college ones, which was annoying, but at least they had half-decent food and a soda machine. This one just had a stall for one or two lunch ladies to slop some food on dozens, maybe hundreds of trays in an hour, and a sad yellow lighting scheme overhead to really keep students in their place. The ambiance intensified as Ms. White the not-Biology teacher slammed the door behind her and he and Carmen were left alone with an entire high school to explore, but even as the doors opened up on their own, Brian’s thoughts lingered on locations that were a bit closer. “I rate it seven out of ten spooks so far,” Brian said. He hefted the box with all the seals in it. “Anyway, Shiki said whatever it is is in the restrooms so give me a hand with the box.” He cocked his head towards the other corner of the cafeteria. “You go seal all the toilets in the women’s restroom and I'll take the men’s, okay?” Carmen nodded along, but she didn’t seem to really grasp the situation until they were actually at the restrooms. “Eh? Y-You mean… by myself?” “I mean, I’m not going into a women’s restroom.” Brian picked up a handful of seals and held them right in front of Carmen’s chest. “Whatever else you might think of me, I'm not a pervert.” Her expression brightened as she said, “Oh, that’s good.” Then, after a few moment’s pause, her expression became more defeated and downcast. “I’m not a pervert either…” she muttered. Which was weird, because Brian never said she was, and he was pretty sure he never implied it either, like, he wasn’t suggesting she go in the men’s restroom, but it didn’t matter. She agreed to the plan and that was enough. The men’s restroom had three toilets and three urinals and was pretty clean for a high-school bathroom especially one so close to the cafeteria. Brian remembered it was janitors who had gone missing, so they were probably done with the room when whatever attacked them… attacked them. The lights were flickering, but that was the sort of problem he expected from a school suddenly down two custodial staff members, so he didn’t pay it much mind and instead got to work putting seals on all the toilets. The urinals were closets so he started with those, just sticking one up right near the handle. Nothing worth noting happened so he started on the toilets, which were a bit more annoying because the doors were in the way, and he had to step into the stall entirely to actually reach the toilet. The first toilet he sealed he forgot to block the door from swinging closed so it made this loud BANG! that nearly got him to drop the seal in the toilet water, which would have been a pain. The second time was much the same, which meant by the time he was pulling at the third toilet door, he was swearing to himself not to make the same mistake three times in a row. Touching the third toilet door, though, felt weird. It felt weird for a few reasons. The first was it was stuck closed, not to the point of being stuck entirely, just, like, it needed a little extra pull. The second was how every time he seemed to touch the door, the lights flickered, and they flickered more violently than they were when he’d just been sealing up the urinals. The third reason was biological: every time he touched the door -- or even got near to the door -- every single hair on his arms stood straight up. He sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy, then. He flung open the door and rushed in, slapping a seal on whatever he could reach. The walls too because why not? When he actually reached the toilet, the lights went out. “Fuck,” Brian said. Then the door slammed shut. BANG! “Fuck!” Brian said again. He dropped the seals and booked it, wheeling around and sprinting out of the bathroom, not even looking behind him until he was safely back in the cafeteria catching his breath. Maybe Carmen was having a better time of it. He’d seen that she’d brought a flashlight. That was smart of her, at least.

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Week Sixty-One -- We Are The Flame Once again, the stars are right and the manor sits at the very epicenter of cosmic unrest. Cultists rally to their twisted idols and great gongs sound in anticipation of the coming sacrifices. Far below, life-laden shadows pulse to the unrelenting rhythm of a beating heart. Just a head’s up, this portion of Darkest Dungeon has got some pretty serious body horror elements. Really, the rest of the game is just going to be that way, Taking last week off definitely helped. I ended up pretty confident going into this run. Sure, three-quarters of the heroes I chose were suffering from a rather annoying case of vampirism, and we’re still down a primary healer going into what is probably the second- or third-hardest challenge of the game, but you know, it could be worse. It could always be worse. We talked about the lineup last week but I do want to make a special note of the provisioning this time. There is almost no loot in the Darkest Dungeon proper and certainly no loot that’s worth going out of your way to collect, so there’s no reason not to pack your bags to the maximum allotted amount. The fights are scripted, so there’s not even a Collector to punish you for doing this. I’m not taking Shovels because there aren’t any blockages in the Dungeon, same with keys and things to unlock. Ladanum is generally useless so that slot is taken up by some extra Blood, just in case. One small mistake I made here is Antivenom is useless for this specific quest -- it’s almost bleed-exclusive. But that’s only a few hundred gold down the drain and though our treasury is dwindling, it’s not dwindling that badly. Anyway, on with the actual dungeon: The blood of the fallen flows ever downward along these titan spires. The creature fattens itself upon your failures. that wiki plug is in the original map image. i didn't put it there. the wiki is indispensible though I kind of hate this fight because it’s such a tease. The Rapturous Cultist enemy is a support unit with no offensive attacks. It’s still a gateway fight because it has a decent dodge stat, but it tricks you into thinking the endgame is going to be easier than it is. They even put two of them there so they can’t accidentally summon some harder enemies to join the fight before you’re good and ready. Another endgame tutorial fight, but this one at least has some chest hair, because the Cultist Priest, a writhing mass of tentacles concealed within a cloak, at least has the tendency to do, uh, this: That particular attack, called “The Finger,” also inflicts a six damage a turn bleed, just for that extra bit of pain. One isn’t hard to deal with, but it’s definitely got to die first every other time we encounter it. There are four other major enemies between us and the boss. Two of them are upgrades on the cultists we’ve already seen so far and aren’t worth discussing as much. The Brawler bleeds more and the Witch inflicts more stress and marks whoever she targets. They don’t do anything new. One fight starts to reveal the nature of what we are fighting on this questline, though. That’s the mansion itself coming alive. Whatever our ancestor discovered beneath these ruins is of the earth, knows we’re here, and certainly isn’t happy about it. We’ll talk more about that as the story goes on, but I did want to plant that seed in your mind. The other enemy is similar, but is part of the boss fight, and I’d rather just go through that. We’ve seen what the Shambler could do, and like I said last week, the Shuffling Horror is a slightly modified version of that. One of its actions is likely to be shuffling the party, and the other is probably going to be a relatively powerful attack that hits two heroes. As we’ve discussed about the Shambler, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem if it didn’t also come with summons. That priest in the back there? The Horror starts with that, and if you kill it, the Horror will just summon something else. The Defensive Growth (the other one was called a “Malignant Growth”) is another one of those primarily support units, which is good for focusing down the Shambler, but it does also feature a party-wide stress attack, and if you’ve been paying attention to our party stress values, one of them is getting pretty up there… Thankfully, at this point in the run, a death isn’t the end of the world. Amani wasn’t going to be able to do any more Darkest Dungeon runs anyway. The action economy of the fight isn’t ruined either . We still have Dismas to bleed through the Horror's pair of actions it gets every turn, and the other two can still deal a decent amount of damage when they're not busy keeping each other alive. While it would have been nice to have a unit who explicitly bypassed the Defensive Growth’s guard, it’s not necessary and Margaret gets a lethal shot off a round or two later. That being said, the tricky thing about the Shambler miniboss and this boss is that killing the main boss doesn’t get rid of the things it summons. Without the main boss, though, the Defensive Growth falls pretty quickly. There’s a lot I cut out here. I cut out LordCowCow refusing healing while on Death’s Door because thank goodness it didn’t matter, for example, even if I did want to mention that now because, like, get it together, my guy. But that’s quest one down with only a small bit of sacrifice. If you want to look at it this way, failing the quest would have doomed one member of the team anyway. One death is just the price of admission for the endgame. It might be more next week, for the game’s second, even bigger challenge. -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→