The Thessaliad Redux

Leaving predominantly aside the current 7th Sea debacle (except to mention that apparently, I'm expected to run my own damn session of 7th Sea to kill Alison if I want such to happen, which I personally feel is totally fucking nuts), it's not been a bad day so far.

I did roast pork Sunday lunch, and it turned out really well. weaselbitch enjoyed the crackling very much, and had many giggles over the sheer loudness of the crunching. My next big culinary thing is going to be a marinaded roast of beef; I might even try roast potatoes if I can figure out how the fuckers work with beef -- last time I did that, it was with chicken and I had instructions. Well, there's the internet.

Affils discussions continue apace. There's nothing quite like sitting in a pub on a Saturday evening with a notepad, a glass of wine, a cigarette, a collaborator and a project worth working on. Now all I have to do is write those notes up with the appropriate expansions, and we're away. So far we've got an idea what we want the site to look like, an expansion on the Signature [whatever] idea and a couple of sidebars for the core book. This is working out quite nicely, all told.

But please, people -- fic-stuff in by 1 September! If you don't think you can do it, let me know so I can do the filler stuff myself, please?

And amusement on the Sims 2 front -- Mod the Sims 2 people came up with a really interesting hacked cauldron cheat thing and something with which I had great fun earlier today -- Buyable Fire. Seriously -- you place this invisible item on various squares in Buy Mode, and when you return to Live Mode, those squares catch fire. I set up a family in Pleasantville, locked them in a room, and burned the mother down. However, one teen Sim survived the inferno, so I redesigned the small house into a grotty little squat. She lived in it as a teen on her own relatively happily, managing to hold down an after-school job and keep her grades high. Hacks are a godsend. Unfortunately, the cauldron seems to disallow you to use a mobile phone, go to Uni lessons or do assignments. So I'm going to have to go back to the modder and ask what the fuck. Small price to pay. This is so amusing.

Well, tonight's session was rather interesting, all things considered. After a few attempts at espionage, we wound up with our only option being the stupid one -- haring off into danger at high speed, following some imposter in the ranks of the most elite branch of the Musketeers so that he couldn't harm a princess of the blood and a well-known Vaticene cardinal. And to compound stupidity with sheer idiocy, our two primary combat bunnies were badly injured, one through his own stupidity (Pietro got himself into a duel with three people because he wouldn't apologise for pouring water on Elsa's head -- long story, ending with Pietro so badly wounded that he had to be tied to Axel's horse). And we'd handed over our handguns, so the only fully able-bodied armed combattant was Alison (read: me). So I sped off after the runaway coach containing princess and cardinal, jumped on top of it, threw a knife at the imposter and, when he brought out a sword and started doing me damage with it, I decided "fuck a bunch of this -- I'm going to tackle him off the moving coach". Axel was, at least, on top of the coach-horses, trying to slow us down, so neither Alison nor the imposter were killed. Unfortunately, imposter kept his sword, so managed to drop Alison before she could punch him down. Saving grace -- Elsa, still mounted, rode her horse over the imposter, leaving him barely alive and badly wounded. I got to be the big hero but Theus did I pay for it -- I haven't had that many wounds since I had her poking the wrong flagstone, triggering a booby-trap and getting three spears through the arm in a Syrneth temple.

After that, Pietro proposed (properly this time) and Alison and Pietro wound up getting married in an impromptu ceremony by someone who's only a level below Heirophant just so that knowledge of Pietro's first wife wouldn't come to the priest's attention until it was too late. It was kind of pagan and very romantic -- elite Musketeers marking the boundaries of the ceremony grounds and everything. And that's how I managed to follow in the footsteps of my fellow gamers both in heroic stupidity (which Francine pointed out time and again) and in getting hitched; that's the fifth party wedding we've had in the last year or so, real time. It's kind of like a soap opera, except that the wedding night was spent discussing Bonnie and Clyde scenarios because Alison's wedding present to Pietro was to give up Jennying for good and they're going to need money sometime. Not for awhile, though, because we were asked to join the princess's retinue and got paid a great deal (by our standards) for the privilege. Oh, and the best part? Alison, with the cardinal's approval (or at least acceptance), not only replacing "obey" with "cherish" in the vows, but altering one particular bit to state, "...through sickness, health and stupidity".

Right. Work in the morning, so shower and bed soon.

I've got a lot on my mind, but after last night's missed sleep, I hope (oh dear deities great and small I hope) I won't have any trouble getting to sleep tonight.

[Edit: 3 a.m. and the deities mock me. Insomnia fucking blows. I have taken my own advice and done the lavender aromatherapy oil bit. I just hope it works.]

Basic bits of news are sort of sad, really. Another 7th Sea PC died this session -- this time Idunn, the Vendel sharpshooter and "it girl", in childbirth. Since my character was the only one not close to the deceased and gifted with the necessary empathy, I wound up playing group Mum to the mourners. And Bjarne, the Vesten rune mage, is apparently mad and walking the earth as an oracle or something. This has been a very hard chronicle from the PC point of view.

[Edit: to clear up any confusion -- Idunn Laars is one of Simson's 7th Sea characters, not the player. I think Simson was cutting out some characters because he felt he was running too many or something. Between me killing off Aidan and him killing off Idunn and basically putting Bjarne (another of his characters) out of the picture, we lost three characters in the space of one chronicle.]

More news on the gaming group front includes our resident Ecstatics -- because Kat and Mark really need a free Sunday every now and then, they have decided to drop Mage. While it's sad to see E and Chloe go, that's not the part that sucks. The part that sucks, in my opinion, is having less face-time with two of my friends. But whatever they feel is necessary to make their lives easier is cool with me. I'm pretty sure I can still run, even after Simson leaves the party for the summer. A three-player party's not so bad; not like I haven't played it before. There are a couple of items that were in Chloe's possession that need doling out so they can stay in game, but that's easily managed. And corone might be able to play a few sessions in the near future. Last but not least, we might get fresh meat in if nadriel can think of anyone who might be interested. Sometimes it doesn't work as a dynamic, but my introduction into a very well-established group worked okay.

Good news at the moment, though, is that negotiations have freed up Sunday 6th March for a BESM one-off run by yours truly! I have a few last tweaks to make before I send the restrictions to the group, though ... and of course, I'm not 100% sure how large the group's going to be and who's going to be participating -- sometimes it makes a difference. So far I'm looking at a prospective group of nadriel, weaselbitch, dodgyhoodoo, Kat, Mark and Simson -- standard Mage session fodder, in other words. If corone is actually free on that weekend, woo-hoo! I'm hoping to make it an episodic sort of game where we can step away for awhile and come back to it as and when necessary, so despite the apparent one-offyness, I'm letting them roll up their own characters. I hope corone can manage without his BESM corebook because I'm sure not going to be able to manage without one. Maybe I can get hold of one before the day...

And in real-world news, my "I'm thinking of inviting the Sourcebook Central denizens over for dinner" thing turned into "Hey, want to come over for dinner Saturday after next?" -- "Cool". So I have dinner guests in two weeks. Yay!

Weeeeeeell, that was sort of a cop-out. Yes, Aidan did get to be a hero, and there were tears and last words and even his old Sidhe lover coming out of the woodwork. Everything you could wish for in a finale. Except for the fact that he didn't really die, exactly.

Okay, so there was this temple. There were warped and twisted Sidhe possessing people and Aidan wasn't exactly the first to go but he was a bit of a moron for going in there on his own in the first place but what the hell. Anyway, the warped Sidhe used to be bound in this old man trapped in a pillar of light singing a typical Vesten saga (one of my current character's ancestors actually pushed him into that shaft of light in the first place, which is how we worked out what was going on -- more on that later). The problem was that the old man, who wasn't old at all a few generations ago, was aged to capacity, even if very slowly, and was actually dying, which meant he couldn't sing anymore and all the spirits got released. So after all the faffing and killing of random possessed people and bloody McCormack showing off, Aidan got thrown into this shaft of light, ousting the old party and attracting all these 'shades' into himself, essentially becoming the guardian. Since whoever's in that light pillar obviously ages very slowly anyway, and since Aidan has Slow Aging and Immunity to Disease, he's going to be very bloody good at it for a very, very long time. He got to say his last words to Viola (suitably romantic, and Kat was such a bitch), and he gave her his sword. That's a big deal because, since anything it does comes back to him somehow, he had to put it in the hands of someone he could trust to do right by it, even if he's going to be trapped in that stupid light pillar until he dies. It was amusing when corone turned to Kat and said, "If Fiora was a different sort of person, she'd have said, 'Would it have hurt you to shag him just the once?'" And Alejandro waited until Aidan could make no further reply before saying something about how he wouldn't tamper with the machinery in the hotel cellar too much.

My favourite touch was the one corone added. As we were sailing back, a Sidhe lady -- the Queen of the Sea, we figure -- approached the ship and asked to speak to the passengers. She then asked where the man who bore her token had gone. Eventually we managed to explain, and no one knew what she was thinking or feeling. Viola was crying at this point, and the Sidhe lady looked at her, asked her to approach, touched one of her tears, studied it for a moment, and then cried briefly herself -- obviously just because it was what she was supposed to do, but all the same, a nice gesture.

Still ... he's not dead. It's a very, very weird feeling.

It's her first session, so it's still too early to tell how Bera's going to get on yet. She's incredibly useful in some respects, as she has Velstand, which allows her to get help in just about any given situation from ancestral memory. This forces the GM to cough up information he wouldn't have ordinarily; it's a better version of Alison's scry-bowl ability. Plus Villskap, which basically allows me to cast lightning bolts. Fine, not very painful lightning bolts, and they don't go far yet, but it can still be useful. Plus, heavy weapons do obscene amounts of damage. I beheaded someone in a single swing! Can I just say impressive? Of course, one of the things I am forgetting at this stage is that, when you're in combat, you get wounded. And if your parry's not very high (and mine isn't), your passive defence isn't either and you get wounded a lot. I'm already bloody crippled. Good thing is that her Resolve is high -- had she been Alison, she'd have been unconscious by now. However, the thing with Alison is that most of her attacks are ranged so she doesn't have to engage.

Anyway, that was fun. As per usual, friends with Kat's character. Mark's character didn't notice me until I mentioned I was pretty, then got interested. Fiora thinks I'm a savage. Life is good. I need sleep. Work tomorrow, so maybe life isn't so good.

The mother hen tendencies continue apace. Remembering dodgyhoodoo's recent post on his insomnia, I pulled my Herbal Remedies Handbook and looked up the problem, seeing if I could find anything helpful. German chamomile, which he hates but was trying at last check, was listed as a fairly weak remedy for the problem. Lavender was next on the list, so I'm going to bring my spare bottle of lavender oil along to lunch tomorrow. A couple of drops of oil on the pillow at night may help matters (and at least it smells better than the eucalyptus, poor weaselbitch...). Additionally, something called schisandra is supposed to have sedative effects, and he knows about the valerian already. I haven't got either of those, but having the names should be useful.

Still bored, but have managed not to do the handbag cleaning. There's a fine line between boredom and OCD, after all, and I don't mean to cross it. I suppose I could do some of the necessary Restart site revamps (I found a picture that approximates Emily Swift, scarf and all), but I'm really not in the mood for dozens of tags. I'll give it another hour and if I'm still bored, I'll get on with that. Somewhere in there, I should produce a proper character sheet for the new 7th Sea character I'm introducing tomorrow, but that's a simple job and won't take long; I'll probably do that before I leave the house tomorrow. Given that I tend to wake up earlier than I need to on weekends (as opposed to weekdays, when I get up about 20 minutes after the alarm's gone off and run around like a headless chicken to catch the appropriate train), I need something to do with the time.

Hate the boredom. Hate it hate it hate it!

Our cat. Jumped out. The window.

No, I mean really. We're three stories up. We're pulling into a parking space in the car park behind the block of flats (and the Budgens) and there's a very familiar overcute grey furball sitting at the top of the space. Our moron of a kitten got out the window and managed not to hurt herself. Fine, it's only one story down to a flat roof, from there onto a glass overhang and from there only a couple of feet to a high wall, so she could have taken it in stages but...

OUR CAT JUMPED OUT THE GODDAMN WINDOW!

We the proud pet owners are a little confused. Between the escapology, the yowling, the 'territory marking' and the complete inability to deal with being in the house for more than three seconds running, Yuki's acting for all the world like she's on heat. But that can't be right because ... well, neutered. Well, we assume neutered. We did take her to the vet to get neutered, and she came back with stitches and everything. We're starting to wonder whether the vet made a mistake ... or screwed us over. In the meantime, we're taking countermeasures. The windows in rooms she has access to are remaining closed. We'll have to take her for walks or something but sweet Jesus, the whole point of owning a cat is not having to deal with this kind of maintenance. I feel like a very bad pet owner. I know the flat is small, but I've had cats in flats that size before. They never got like this. It all just bites.

Finally managed to get to sleep at 1:30 in the morning. Am now monumentally tired. Game was worth it, though. Big amusements of the event were:

Simson's character: Sir Oswald is a Knight of Elaine. Sidhe-blooded, obviously has some glamour ... and is deeply, deeply stupid. Quintessential hero, he will go to the rescue of a damsel in distress despite the fact that people are pointing guns at him and will shoot him if he moves -- good thing he has the glamour, because in today's case it meant that he could get away with it. (Of course, not very useful when he's with another person who will also get shot if he moves, but the glamour thankfully distracted them enough so that I could pull guns of my own when they'd fired theirs empty.) Other bizarre thing about Sir Oswald is that he refuses to accept that my character's a Jenny. It came up in conversation a couple of times and when I finally owned up to it (it's kind of nice, being referred to as Lady Alison), the following conversation took place:

Oswald: Oh, that's a little harsh, Lady Alison. I mean, a free-spirited lady, you may have gone a bit astray...
Alison: Actually, fully-paid-up member of the Guild.
Oswald: Ah, so you're a patron. I'm sure it's a laudable investment...

I gave up. This guy's not going to believe I'm anything but a Lady until he actually sees me shag some guy for money.

Toos' character: Pietro. Oh, Pietro got it in the neck. We were talking about the best way to cause a distraction and get the people barricaded in the house we were keeping watch on out in the open, and the idea of setting light to it and driving the people out came up. There was some resistance to this idea because people might get caught inside -- we didn't care if the guys we were after burned but you know, servants and things. Pietro basically said, "Who cares? They're only peasants." In earshot of our Ussuran peasant who already doesn't like him. Said peasant hit him -- laid him out, broke his nose. My character hadn't heard this so did the solicitous 'girlfriend' bit until she asked him (when he finally came to) why Pyotyr had hit him. He told her the truth. She's also not exactly nobility and took it very much amiss; kicked him in the nuts. Eventually, her extreme rancour made him apologise. Just for the spectators who haven't been playing this for months -- this is an event. Pietro Villanova does not apologise. He sure as hell doesn't instigate apologies; he'll grumble if he's forced to apologise but he does have to be forced. For the word 'sorry' to come out of his mouth without someone directly ordering him to say it is ... miraculous.

Additionally, he admitted he was jealous of the eye-making between Alison and Sir Oswald. Apparently, if you get him drunk enough he will use the L-word. Again, something you do not get Pietro Villanova doing. Nice for Alison; not so nice for Pietro, mostly because his Strega wife, Strega daughter and Strega former flame are guests at this dinner party thing we're all having to go to. Don't know so much about the former flame (Fiora might at least pretend not to be bothered because she does profess to hate Pietro with an almighty passion) but the wife is going to take one look at the Cups strand between her husband and this Jenny and... Well, actually, this might not be so nice for Alison either.

Mark's character: "Banana fish upstairs." I think that's all I need to say.

Suddenly occurs to me. I'm going to have to redo this Who's Who icon. The 'Markswoman' is now a Knight, cholten99 seems set to retire his 'Sorceress' for a soldier, the 'Priest' is now ... well, decidely not and the 'Swordswoman' may also be retiring at the end of this Vodacce nightmare in favour of yet another Avalonian man. Oh well, it'll serve for now -- it's about half-right anyway.

Howdy-do.

It's quarter past ten. I have a lap full of kitten, a buttload of charm cards to print out and a noggin full of plot ideas -- well, at least as far as gaming goes. I think I distracted Thren beyond all reason. Must get to work on TLAS 6:04 at some stage just so I can get the finished 6:05 out. (I'd change the order, but I can't; it's basically a two-parter.) Gah.

Anyway, Land O' Plot goes as follows:

7th Sea: Alison's of the Necare School -- no swords, but lots of knifework and knowledge of poisons. We're in Vodacce, which is where the good poisons come from. My plan is to get Pietro to use the money Alison loaned him to buy Woundwort (potent, loses its strength quickly, takes over a day to kill someone) and the antidote to same, then go pull that Morgan git who torched the chandler's shop. I will poison him (quite easily, in fact -- I'm allowed one poison to which I'm immune and I hadn't picked it yet. Now I have. Ha), and then I'm going to boink him, and after that, when he's feeling the effects of the poison, I'll simply explain that I have an antidote but he's not getting it -- or even what poison I hit him with -- until he tells me who he's working for and where I can find him. Meanwhile, somebody will be making with the sneaky outside so, in case he decides, "fuckit", knifes me and leaves, he can be followed to his employer's place.

Mage: I have my plot there pretty well worked out, all things considered. Need to borrow some books off Andy O (though some of them are going to have to be red herrings on the basis that, well, if I have to borrow books from him on a regular basis he's going to be well updated on the plots before I even start them, which would suck).

Exalted: There are no plots for Exalted. We're playing episodic-like, so there's not really any long-term gain to be had from plotting. Besides, I'm a combat bunny. I don't have to think ahead. Most I've got plotwise is printing out these stupid charm cards and deciding which of the ones out of the Zenith Castebook I want to buy next.

Real Life: Need to drop by Andy P & Claire's place to pick up that stuff Andy P wants scanned. It won't take me too far out of my way, provided I stick to buses. Means I have to be out of here in just over an hour, though. But at least my printouts are done. Also need to remember to borrow Dogwitch and Spider Jerusalem from Andy O with the rest of the stuff I wanted to (Christ, I'm going to have half Andy O's library if this keeps up; I should at least return those Tradition supplements to him while I'm about it...)

...And of course, need to get some writing done at some point. I mean, seriously -- there's just never any chance anymore. I'd love to, but I'm always too tired or headachy or musejacked. I really need a holiday. There was someplace advertising writer's retreats which I'd look into if all available cash flow in the near future wasn't going to directly involve San Francisco and points south. I'd say I could turn that into my writer's retreat, but between nightskywarlock and happypickle and maybe hentaijess who I haven't met yet but would love to ... well, I'm not saying that I'm going to complain about hanging with friends I haven't seen in years (because, excuse me, hell no! I miss my friends) but there has just been no writing. Well, there's always going to be some time, right? And that lot always inspire me.

I've been trying not to talk about SF. At least not until tickets are booked. I've been saying that I want to get away to SF for a couple of years now, but between work hassles and money stuff, it's just never happened. So maybe it's safer if I don't say anything until I have plane tickets in my grubby little mitt. Still, it's exciting and mood-lifting to think about my holiday, and I sometimes wonder if the reason it hasn't taken so much priority the other times I've considered is is because there's just been so little enthusiasm from other quarters. That's got me to shut up about it, which has meant putting it out of my mind, which in turn has lowered its priority. Mea culpa, but still...

But to hell with that. I'll generate my own damn enthusiasm and let other people get swept up in it. Worked with Mage, didn't it?

Anywho, I now have an hour or so to get dressed, throw together a sandwich and get my butt in gear for Finchley. And to get Yuki the hell off my printer...

( Gaming thoughts, cut to spare you the agony. )

Too damn tired. Every night this week I've been stupid and gone to sleep too late. Part of that's been do to with gaming, late dinner and arguments with cholten99 over my Mageverse and the correct way to ask questions or give opinions regarding it. I'm not going to go into details because I'm sick enough of having the thing in the comfort of my own home, but suffice it to say that things should improve by the time we start actually playing. That way he'll get his answers the same way everyone else does and he can frankly take the "Sleeping With The StoryTeller" advantage and stick it.

Sorry. Sleep deprivation always leaves me in a bad mood. And I forgot to pack lunch. Again.

It was supposed to be such a nice thing, a long weekend. Didn't entirely work out that way, though I suppose it wasn't bad per se.

Saturday: Learned tweakage of the Sims variety (skins etc) and did the whole "Interior Design in Simville" deal while cholten99 slept. He was obviously extremely tired and conked out until half-six. In the evening. Kind of dull, but a necessary wind-down.

Sunday: My God, I was such a girl! First of all, cholten99 found this Hamtaro toy for £2, which he thought he'd buy to freak Toos out. Toos was not freaked; in a rare moment of girliedom, she actually thought it was cute. So did everyone apart from cholten99, so he was the only one distressed by the big eye/small mouth cutesiness.

Then there was the game itself. Masqueraded as a courtesan (which I'm going to do for as long as we're in Vodacce -- no one's going to ask too many questions about the courtesan of Prince Villanova's cousin), got questioned by Vodacce bounty hunters at knifepoint in the middle of the night. Best way of sending questioners away without getting hurt or giving anything away? Particularly when they're Vodacce? Act stupid and girlie. A few days later, we get shipped off to this island to retrieve a few Syrneth artefacts before the Caligari get their hands on them. We split up, I find journals, notes and a glowing globe-thing, then get fumigated by a destroyed chemical store, pass out and wake up tied to a chair with Caligari men throwing water at me and threatening to cut off my fingers if I don't talk. Missed all the combat rounds, and was only alerted to the presence of my compatriots near the room in which I was held by the sound of Pietro pulling a Legolas. (Oh, and that was stupid -- Pietro slides down the stairs on his shield, notices someone as he passes a corridor, fires off a shot ... and just before the shield comes to a crashing halt, throwing him in the midst of five Caligari bruisers, he realises the person he just shot at -- and dealt a dramatic wound to -- was Viola. This should teach us to split up ... but won't.) Basically, I was the damsel in distress for most of it. Arse.

Monday: Three-hour walk through London, ceiling-staring, appetite loss and mild to moderate anhedonia. Was not helped by the accusation, "See, this is what you get for reading books about depressed people" (referring to my copy of "Prozac Nation", which was a leftover book from last week).

Today, there isn't much going on. I should do some writing, presuming I remembered to bring that floppy with me (which I doubt). I was trying not to be annoyed about something, but I can't be arsed -- I'll be annoyed if I damn well please.

Okay; cholten99's hard disc died the other day. Since the Frankenbox is the only working computer in the house, he's using mine to check e-mail and so forth. Which isn't a problem -- it's annoying having to reset and relogin every time I come back to the Frankenbox, but I can live with it. What really, really hacks me off is the editing of my buddylist on Trillian. Why do I want Shaun and Amy on my buddylist? Why the bloody fuck do I want his father or sister on there? Half of these people I'm not even sure I know! And it's a simple operation to log me off Trillian and log himself on, so why? Why add all manner of people who I don't necessarily want to talk to onto my buddy list? If you're going to use someone else's computer, at least have the common courtesy not to monkey around too much with other people's settings without asking them first. And if you lack the manners to do that, then at least tell the person what you've done.

I was very, very tempted to just delete all the names that were added to my buddylist this morning. I didn't. I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing, but I'm going to let okay, not let it go, precisely, but I'm going to at least fume in the privacy of my own head after this. I wouldn't be this mad if he hadn't done this without asking, but maybe he was going to tell me. He was on the Frankenbox incredibly late last night, and I was asleep. I just don't understand why he didn't log on as himself instead of doing it this way. Can anyone think of any reason why adding names onto the buddylist of another person is in any way easier than just logging them off and logging yourself on?