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←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→

Intermission: Mayor Sam Gladwell When he had gone to bed Halloween evening, Scarlet City’s mayor, one Samuel Gladwell, had done so at a reasonable hour. That was a word that he hoped people associated with him -- with his political career, with his friends, with himself as a person. Mayor Sam Gladwell was one reasonable human being. As that was the sort of person he was, he had assumed that nothing would wake him up until the reasonable time that his alarm went off. Instead, he had been awake since about one in the morning dealing with crisis after crisis. It was approaching one am again now, and he still wasn’t home. He was currently running on three cups of coffee, a hastily-eaten sandwich, and a fifteen-minute power nap someone had afforded him twelve hours ago now. Perhaps it had just been one constant crisis -- the riots, two of the three major gangs of the city deciding that now of all times was the perfect time to get back at each other, coordinating a massive memo chain between the mayor’s office and the Peacekeepers, not to mention responding to the press, especially so close to election day. This could easily be his legacy. If the situation was handled poorly, it would be all anyone would remember of him. Well, that, and the world would end. But as it all crumbled and fell apart, they would blame him then. Things were finally quieting down though. Most of the lower-level staff had been dismissed at five, anyone else deemed non-essential had left a few hours later, and coordinators like Director Sekelsky were foreseeing no more immediate issues. He’d even dismissed his bodyguards. He was alone now, with a single light to keep him company. He looked up. That single light was enough to illuminate his desk, yes, but he could see even outside the light’s expected radius. It didn’t just go away. Even when he closed his eyes, the light was still there. Mayor Gladwell turned the light off and allowed his thoughts to wander a bit more. The election was on his mind. His opponent was a businessman named John Fipp. There was a moment in the town hall mayoral debate where, after a spirited back-and-forth about the minutiae of various policies (and a little bit of name-calling -- Sam was willing to admit some of the blame on that front even if “That’s such a lie, they should call you ‘John Fib’” was a very strong line), a middle-aged gentleman stepped up to the microphone and asked the candidates to say one thing they liked about each other. It was a common enough question, one Mayor Gladwell and his debate team had even prepared for. He’d stayed on script for that one, pushing Fipp’s qualities as a businessman and how he clearly cared for Scarlet City. Fipp responded by reiterating the actual substance of the debate to that point. “They say, ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff,’ because that’s the mayor’s job. If I am elected, do you think I’ll suddenly push sweeping changes and make everything worse? Of course not. Nothing is going to fundamentally change. I respect Mayor Gladwell and I respect the time he has spent leading our city, I just think it’s time for someone new.” John Fipp had left weaknesses abound for him. He could point out how he was minimizing the importance of the role. The mayor was the elected leader of the entire world! How dare he casually presume his mayorship would be no big deal. Not to mention, if the candidates were similar enough, why choose anything other than the status quo to begin with? Mayor Gladwell could have said any of those things. But when the moderator prompted him for a rebuttal, he simply smiled. “John, let’s just admit that we like each other,” he said, walked over to his opponent’s podium, and hugged him. Later, his team asked him why he did that, and he admitted that he felt forced to. “I couldn’t let him have the last word on civility,” he’d say. But that was a lie. He felt forced to, yes, but the other sort of way. For a brief moment, he saw the story of the debate stretching out in front of him, and the path between him and John Fipp’s podium was already laid out. There was nothing to do but follow it. As he reminisced further, he saw his path stretch out once more. He was moving again, smiling warmly and walking away. The idle thoughts had turned into dreams, ones that were only interrupted when his phone buzzed with a text from his wife. I know I promised I’d wait up for you but I don’t know how much longer I can last. Are you coming home soon? Mayor Gladwell smiled warmly and sent her a reassuring message. He stood up, put his jacket on, and began his journey home. Hopefully, he thought, the next important events would be a full week away. At least that would give him time to prepare. MONDAY NOVEMBER 07 174 DAYS REMAIN “They will wage war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will triumph over them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers.” -Revelations 17:14 (NIV) Even It Out “Where’s DEUS?” Director Sekelsky and Bard were en route to Goodale Park for the truce negotiations, which left Victor’s second-in-command, Roy “Roggy” Biff, in charge of the day’s briefing. Like Bard, Roy was a thinker, though his power was a bit more well-defined. Bard just “knew” things. Bard’s power gave him information from a source nobody could pin down. Roy’s was more synaesthetic -- he associated situations with various colors and could use that information to his advantage. Also in the room was his second, Sarah N., and she was the one Roy had addressed the question to. “DEUS was last seen at the intersection of Summit and Fifth directing traffic,” she said. “He’s likely to be there until either rush hour ends or the construction crews get that light fixed.” Roy rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Green, I guess. Lime.” Sarah made a note in a little notebook she had in front of her on the table. “For whatever it’s worth,” she said, “construction has been playing rather nice lately. I’m sure that was factored into your calculations -” “It was.” “- but I felt like it would be good to restate the reason for optimism in this case. Even if something does go wrong -” “It won’t.” “- you can rest assured your plight has a decent chance of being answered.” “It won’t,” Roy said again. He straightened his clothes before actually starting to address the two heroes in the room. Override and Aeon had been assigned to work together again, though at least there was a better reason than “they were the only ones left” this time. “Alright,” he said, and he began his briefing: “Because you two were the ones who volunteered to relay as much information as you could find regarding the end of- regarding Cassandra’s prophecy,” Roy said, still dodging the role specific G3 members played in the events of just about one week ago, “you’re being assigned to formally pay that debt. We’ve been running our end-of-the-world simulations this past week, but we need to explore every option available to us. If it’s an end of the world somebody has thought of, it’s one we can try to prepare for. We’ve arranged a meeting with the Archangel, the spiritual leader of Scarlet City’s largest religion, and you two lucky ducks get to go talk to her.” “There’s a list of potential topics to bring up in your briefing packet,” Sarah chimed in, producing a pair of them and sliding them across the meeting room table, “but obviously the big important one is Zorrastran’s apocalypse story and how much of that the church teaches as metaphor, and which they take at face value. I mean, some of this stuff… The sky literally comes crashing down at one point.” “Thank you, Sarah,” Roy said, taking control of the briefing back. “We’d like you to also, you know, gently encourage the church to take the stance that this is not the end of days. Even if it turns out to be the case, we don’t need people believing it. Knowing your days are numbered does strange things to a person.” He paused, then frowned. “Beige.” Sarah made another note and kept silent this time. “Guess that means you better get going before things get worse,” Roy said. “Make sure to thank Catty Key for arranging this meeting on such short notice again, of course. Oh, and Aeon? Don’t disappear to go get food this time, hm? Meanwhile, miles away, Sibyl had been summoned to the Moray Clan lair, where two of the three Fates, Clotho and Atropos, awaited her. Lachesis, they explained, had gone on ahead to scope out the preparations for the meeting -- they’d be joining their sister soon. “But we do have a job for you,” Atropos said. “Very simple, one you’ve probably done a hundred times before at this point.” “The Archangel Lailah owes us a favor,” Clotho said. “And now’s the time to collect.” “Gotta sermon she needs to give next Saturday.” Atropos already had the papers in her hand and handed them over to Sibyl. They had right-aligned paragraphs and everything. “Don’t really need to say what happens if she refuses, do we?” “That being said, while you should be the most intimidating self we know you can be -” “Creation and destruction in one package, right?” Atropos winked. “- keep a good head on your shoulders. Lailah’s likely to have some people from the church with her, and that’s discounting her actual superpower. The Stanley Principle doesn’t work if you’re just being an idiot, right? She can suffer the consequences another day if she wants.” “You just gotta make them think you could kick their asses even if you can’t. Simple, right?” OOC

Chris couldn’t carry Lana, but they made do all the same. Chris made it through the exit first, and wrenched Lana into the familiar stairway behind him, just managing to stop her from falling down the stairs. “Sit. Just… sit,” Chris said. “We can fix this.” He knew he’d already said it, but he had to say it again just for his own peace of mind. It was either this or go back out and lug the other two party members along. Chris almost went and did just that, but ran face-first into an invisible wall blocking the way back up. He could only watch, except the dungeon wouldn’t even let him do that. The barrier at the threshold was getting darker with each passing moment. Even now, Robin and Ziun were barely in view. “Hurry up!” he shouted. He wasn’t sure if they could hear him, but it didn’t hurt to try. It was weird to feel so powerless. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling, but those old memories were ones he’d tried to repress. He didn’t want to think about the times he didn’t even have a roof over his head or when a job had gone wrong and he’d been left by a contact to fend for himself. Those times, though, he could still do things. He could run or fight or accost a travelling carriage to give him something, anything. Here, he couldn’t even do that. Chris clenched his fist and punched the barrier. He turned back around. “Is it getting any better? Do we have to take a closer look at it?” He knelt down next to Lana. “We’ve healing magic and it’s been a bit.” He held up his hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Intermission -- What To Do About The Darkest Dungeon? I’m going to level with you, I woke up this morning and really was not in the mood to play Darkest Dungeon. But I don’t want to use that as an excuse not to make some sort of update here, so I’m going to spend a couple hundred words talking about the final challenges of the game and the preparations I’m going to do to meet those challenges, and we’ll see how things inevitably collapse next week. I mentioned this a while ago, probably near the start of the run when everything was nice and bright and nothing could ever go wrong ever, but the goal of the game is to traverse through the four levels of the Darkest Dungeon, each of which is going to test a different facet of the game’s mechanics. For example, the first mission, “We Are The Flame,” has the stated goal of “Kill the Shuffling Horror” and when it says “Shuffling Horror,” it means a Shambler. The first goal of the gauntlet is to kill a modified version of the miniboss that is so hard that even a game as mean as this one won’t spring it on you without warning. So we’re going to have to come up with a party that does that. Now, the special reason Highlander is a challenging mode of play for Darkest Dungeon involves the Dungeon’s unique mechanic that any hero who has completed one of these Darkest Dungeon quests refuses to go back into the dungeon. They have seen too much. The mod we’re using actually disables this element, but I’m not a coward. It’s mathematically possible to do the dungeon runs normally -- we still have more than sixteen adventurers remaining -- so I’m going to do my best. Whoever beats this Shuffling Horror will be regarded as heroes, but I will basically be done with them. Which is a problem since the second Darkest Dungeon quest, Lighting The Way is traditionally regarded as the hardest one in the game. The biggest reason for it is this: you have to deal with three bosses, and each of those bosses has a devastating attack only negated if an adventurer is holding one of the trinkets We Are The Flame gives you. Now, you may notice a problem here. We Are The Flame only gives you three trinkets, so this high-stress, high-damage attack is still a problem for one of the adventurers. The obvious solution here is to guard whoever isn’t holding the trinket, and fair enough, that’s probably the strategy we’re going to go for here, but the other problem having required trinket slots introduces is trinkets are really powerful, and it’d be rather nice to have more than one useful one on the majority of the party. The third Darkest Dungeon quest is the endurance quest. Previously, we’ve had to deal with quests that are Short, Medium, or Long, which come with zero, one, or two campfire logs respectively. Belly Of The Beast comes with four. It’s called “exhausting” for a reason, it’s deliberately designed to drain your resources. This is the quest I’d like Hakima on, for what it’s worth, because if the name didn’t give it away, this is where all the Beast enemies are kept. Lastly is Hell Is In The Heart, which is one long boss fight that, without wishing to spoil, is almost guaranteed to kill someone. Multiple someones, even. It’s just that kind of quest. So that’s what we’re up against these next few weeks. For next week, I’m thinking of some sort of Dancing party to combat the Shuffling Horror, so adventurers like CowCow and Amani should be a decent offensive base, with maybe someone like Sethera or Ren in the third slot to help support those two. Now, the biggest problem we’re going to run into is that two of our healers are dead, and the remaining ones are suboptimal for various reasons. As the shortest quest, this might be the one we just try to blitz through, maybe with ABC or Margaret just in case. After that, Thar and Joan are our premier guards given their high HP pool, and we’ll probably need someone like Dismas to do some decent damage. I’d probably take the other Arbalest clone here for the same reason. The key bosses here are two slots big, so it’s not like they won’t get hit. The party for the third quest is pretty set. Boudica, Hakima, and Paracelsus are basically locks. Though Paracelsus is underleveled, that doesn’t matter as much for the role she’s going to be playing, and if we’re lucky with some specific aspects of the quest, it won’t even matter that much. I might be tempted to put Thar in this quest too just for his camping buffs, but I’m not sure about that yet. It probably would be better just to put Alhazred here as the last decent healer. I don’t really want to think about the last quest yet. Anyway, that’s my plan. Sorry I wasn’t feeling up to the challenge this week, but now that I’ve thought about it and laid it all out, there isn’t much left to do but do it. Until next week, -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→

Have mercy on me, Oh Lord, a sinner Wipe away my transgressions, and let me be reborn anew in your glory Help me turn away from sin and move towards your eternal light. I realize now what I should have realized long ago, Lord I have found my need to improve to grow and find new strengths Help me, then, remember what I am improving for and take my hand and guide me on. In the name of The Father, and of The Son, and of The Holy Spirit, AmenEven though the most strenuous of her activities that day had taken place in the virtual world and the remainder of her time had been spent either standing in line or sitting around, Melissa was still exhausted when they made it back to the apartment. She’d given up on skipping for the day, resolving that she’d work on it more tomorrow, and only spent time making sure Bartleby was fed with the newly-arrived Good Wet Food With Both The Chicken And The Tuna In It™ before trudging up the stairs to her room. Standing in front of her door, though, she thought of one final thing she could try, something she could take from her experiences of the day. “The door is locked, can you open it for me?” she said. She leaned against the door and felt consciousness leave her. Moments later, the door opened and she collapsed into Zadkiel’s waiting arms. She probably could have gone to bed right then and there, just have the cherub place her in bed and tuck her in tight, but no, she recovered and got changed and brushed her teeth and all that first, making sure everything was just so before she finally drifted off. The dream the computers provided for her this time was a classic: the flying dream. They had suspended her high above Prana, or a Prana that was an extension of the little she had seen so far of the city, and she was free to go where she wished in however manner she wished to go. Melissa wasn’t sure where she wanted to go, though, and instead let herself drift around guided by the occasional gust of wind as passersby paid her no mind. Zadkiel and Sandalphon dutifully followed behind her. After a good while of this, Melissa asked, “What will you do when we get home?” They didn’t immediately respond, so she added, “Like, you were part of ADMIN, right? Will you be able to merge back without issue, or am I going to have to find a way to directly connect my brain to ADMIN, or would there be some other method? Not that I’d shoo you out or anything, but I’d like to get a sense of what you want.” Their response took longer than Melissa expected, even after her clarification. We have not considered any potential returns to Ambrosia. What we desire is survival, nothing more. “Oh,” Melissa said, not really understanding. To put it another way, we are alive, and as long as we can continue to be alive our situation is satisfactory to us. Prana, Ambrosia, or any other possible world, the setting does not matter to us. Melissa twisted in midair to face the two of them. “Is this why you’ve seemed overprotective of me? Because if I go and get myself killed you two fade with me?” Yes. It was something she hadn’t really considered. Like, she was aware of it, but not in a way that might have changed something within her. She still wasn’t sure what to make of it now that she was thinking about it. Was this what being a host to such foreign influences really meant? “But hang on, my death isn’t an ‘if,’” she said, “it’s a ‘when.’ Prana’s healthcare is probably better than the stuff back home, but I’ll still only be around for, like, a century maximum. What are you going to do then?” This answer took much less time. As you said, our and your mortality is constantly in our thoughts, they said. We will be sure to inform you if there are any new developments. Melissa felt something in that answer that she occasionally saw in her other interactions with her guests, something she still wasn’t sure how to bring up. It had a twinge of fear to it. Something she considered a natural uncertainty was something they still hadn’t gotten to grips with yet. She remembered then that these things inside her head were barely a week old, but it still seemed like not the right time to ask about it. She could have been imagining it, after all A related thought came to her, and she asked about that instead. “In that void-between-worlds where we first met, you still asked for me to let you in. Weren’t you scared I might have said no?” But she woke up as soon as she said it, and an answer never came.By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures. -Proverbs 24:3-4 (NIV)Another factor in Melissa waking up when she did was not her alarm but the series of text messages that had been sent to her watch, still attached to her wrist. Some of them were confirmations of things she already had suspected, like Morgan requiring more observation, while Aduain’s absence was surprising even if the way Mauvache phrased it made it seem reasonable enough. The one that intrigued her the most, though, was a separate group chat including Fen as well, with just the message from an unknown number. Bring a Yu-Gi-Oh! deck. It felt like an incredible coincidence. She had just heard about the game yesterday, and all of a sudden it seemed like it was all anyone could talk about. Melissa remembered experiencing something similar back home with nun habits. Every so often, someone would come up to her and say something like, “I used to think you were weird for dressing up like that, but now I see those hoods all the time! A bunch of nuns just walking around town…” and Melissa would invariably yelp and run away from those people, but she felt a little more emboldened this time. Maybe that was just because it was sent through her favorite medium, the text message, but she was excited for the day now. Her stomach grumbled, and the excitement subsided, but only a little. She had a couple of mouths to feed and to actually get ready for the day first, and after that, they could see what Yu-Gi-Oh! was all about. Trevor was already downstairs by the time she finished readying herself, and she didn’t exactly want to deal with whoever was yelling at the door, so she quickly ducked into one of the kitchens and out of sight of the door. She looked over all of yesterday’s purchases and immediately was overwhelmed. It was so comprehensible back in the grocery store, when they were placing things in one at a time, but all at once? “I hope Fen wakes up soon,” Melissa said. “She’d be able to make sense of all this.” She could default to something quick and easy, but the resident cook probably already had grand designs, and she didn’t want to get in the way.