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The Big Baddy

With the Brother saved there are only two more things for Garcon to do in order to fulfill the counter-curse and become the Hero of Spielburg! What’s left to do again?

Drive the Curser from the Land?

and

Bring the Child from the Band?

Hrm… Perseii already has an idea on how to find the Baroness but he hasn’t yet run into the Curser, Baba Yaga, yet. Jackson moves to remedy that situation! A good Hero knows that you can’t beat ‘em if you don’t know ‘em. Everyone says Baba’s hut is somewhere on the western end of the valley so he goes looking there:

Yup, that must be it:

Definitely it… Danar thought about going over the fence, like any good thief wood, but:

Looks like whoever lives here thought of that… So, he approaches the gate:

A talking skull? You could do worse, I suppose… Seepgood hits him hard with his questions:

ask about Baba Yaga

That looks like an opening!

ask about deal

yes

ask about hut

ask about rhyme

This guy(his name is Bonehead, btw) sucks at security…

Remember back when we bought all those apples for the Jolly Blue Giant? and he gave us a bright red gem? Me too! If not go ahead and look back. I’ll wait…

Find it? Good!

That seems like the perfect thing to turn into someone’s eyes! Right?

give skull gem

Dealing with Divas…

What was that ryhme again?

hut of brown now sit down

Garcon Perseii Jackson Danar Seepgood! Master of all Chicken-footed huts he surveys!

look spider

Perseii moves slowly into the hut, his eyes peeled for Baba, but she doesn’t seem to be… AGH!

“Oh Goddess! She’s a master of doggerel verse! We’re DOOMED!”

“Oh no! She likes puns too! Kill me now!”

Out of the Pot into the…?

(Yes, I did have to type in Garcon’s name with the three spaces at the end, again. I hope you people appreciate what I put myself through for your entertainment)

You might ask why the most powerful magic user in the valley can’t get the mandrake root herself? Well, class that would violate the contract agreement the Adventurer’s Guild has with the Duplicitious League of Malcontents which stipulates that all Level 5 and higher baddies must offer lower level adventurers a fetch quest before killing them. See? Those Union dues don’t go to waste!

Cooking with Evil

Well, what are we supposed to do in the meantime? It’s not even close to midnight… hrm… We could play knife throw with the head of the thieves guild?

But I suck at that game… We could clean out the stables again?

That only takes a couple hours… We could Play Mage’s Maze with Erasmus?


yes

He then goes on to ask Danar if he also knows Fetch, Flame Dart, and Trigger spells. Which he of course does!

If we win it even comes with a nice prize!

So what are you looking at here? This is the board on which you play Mage’s Maze. The goal is to get your little wisp, not seen, from the upper left corner to the lower right corner, Erasmus’ wisp starts in the right left. You’ll use the open spell to move rocks, the fetch spell to move bridges and ladders, the trigger spell on your wisp to make it grow or shrink as needed (only small ones can go through caves and, only medium ones can climb down the ladders), the flame spell is used to attract your wisp but it doesn’t seem to work very well…
If your wisp wanders its way down to the lower right before Erasmus’ does you win. Again, you can’t directly control the things you just have to open the path ahead of them while blocking the way behind. Oh, and the wisps will kill each other based on their size if they meet…

At this point Seepgood’s wisp (the white thing half way down the right side of the screen is nearly there. I’ve cleared out the way to the end while also blocking Erasmus’ wisp which is that purple thing near the center of the screen…
After a good while of my wisp flailing about and me wasting all my magic trying to get him to go where I wanted him to Garcon finally wins:

Woot! Hopefully that killed enough time?

No?

Dammit… Let’s just grab the damn thing now!

Dammit! Well, I’m sure he gets it right next time! Until then…

Grave Robbing

Danar decides to abuse both the “rest” and “wait” commands in order to get through the rest of the day. Those, and just practicing sneak everywhere…

Eventually though midnight comes around and Jackson makes a dash for the Graveyard; on his way he encounters:

So, that’s a thing… In the graveyard Perseii grabs the mandrake and makes a run for it:

Hrm, Garcon must be missing something?

use undead unguent

That was it! Seepgood looks at his wrist to confirm the time:

and, this time, he enters the graveyard confident that he’ll walk out of it alive and with the mandrake root:

“frolic? Is that what they call it when they kill poor, innocent, livies?”

look ghosts

“gross”

look plant

Next week we return the mandrake root to Baba Yaga, get completely wasted, and more!

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The orange powder stains not only your body... but, your soul as well! *GASP*

Welp, before I turn it over and look at the list of ingredients on the back I’m going to make a guess that it is mostly corn, maybe with some cheese product and then some chemicals derived from oil. Let’s find out!

Enriched means better!

Enriched Corn Meal – Cornmeal is flour ground from dried maize. It is a common staple food, and common in processed foods. Enriched means that it nutrients such as iron and B vitamins have been put back into the product after it has been ground down in order to match the nutritional content of the unrefined product.

Vegetable Oil – Cooking oil derived from plants, as the list on the back of the package states it’s either from American Corn, Soybean or Sunflower. I’m guessing it’s either a blend or is merely determined by the cost of oil at the time of purchase…

Cheese Seasoning – Which is a complicated slurry of natural and unnatural products. I highlighted the interesting ones below

Partially Hydrogenated Soybean OilHydrogenation is a complex chemical process. What it basically does tough is converts liquid vegetable oils in to solid or semi-solid fats. These solid or semi-solid fats are  preferred in baking and cheaper than the animal source equivalent.

Maltodextrin – A food additive. Here in the United States it is usually derived from corn. According to Wikipedia:  Maltodextrin is easily digestible, being absorbed as rapidly as glucose, and might be either moderately sweet or almost flavorless. It is commonly used for the production of sodas and candy. It can also be found as an ingredient in a variety of other processed foods.

Disodium Phosphate – A sodium salt of phosphoric acid, Disodium Phosphate is hygroscopic, which means it attracts and holds water from the environment. It is used as an anti-caking agent in powdered foods and products. It is also used in conjunction with Trisodium phosphate in many steam-boiler applications, the two act to retard calcium scale formation.

Sour Cream – A fat rich dairy product created by fermenting regular cream with lactic bacteria.

Artificial Flavor – This is the top secret stuff and usually not developed by the company itself but instead done by an outside “flavor company” that employs highly skilled and trained chemists who go about constructing the requested flavors. Artificial flavors are define as: flavoring substances not identified in a natural product intended for human consumption, whether or not the product is processed. These are typically produced by fractional distillation and additional chemical manipulation of naturally sourced chemicals, crude oil or coal tar. Yum, coal tar!

Monosodium Glutamate – Good Ol’ MSG! MSG is one of the most abundant, naturally occurring, non-essential amino acids. The MSG you find today is “manufactured” through a process of bacterial fermentation. MSG is a flavor enhancer because it balances, blends and rounds the total perception of other tastes. This is what it most often does in processed foods as well as to preserve food quality

Lactic Acid – Found naturally in many food items. Lactic acid is formed by natural fermentation in products such as cheese, yogurt, meat products and pickled vegetables. In food products it is most often used as either a pH regulator or as a preservative. It is also used as a flavoring agent.

Artificial Color including Yellow 6 -Much like artificial flavors artificial colors are generally derived from petroleum. Yellow 6 also known as Sunset Yellow is useful in fermented foods which must be heat treated. It may be found in orange sodas, marzipan, Swiss rolls, apricot jam, citrus marmalade, lemon curd,sweets, beverage mix and packet soups, margarine, custard powders, packaged lemon gelatin desserts, energy drinks such as Lucozade, breadcrumbs, snack chips such as Doritos, packaged instant noodles, cheese sauce mixes and powdered marinades, bottled yellow and green food colouring, ice creams, pharmaceutical pills and prescription medicines, over-the-counter medicines (especially children’s medicines) cake decorations and icings, squashes, and other products with artificial yellow, orange or red colours.

Salt – Just salt

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He'Brew Dry Hopped Session Ale

from the bottle:

Why is this beer different from all other beers? In the beginning, there was an idea, and it was good: A Gourmet Kosher Microbrew to celebrate the bounty of our own American land of milk and honey. Witness, a renewed Genesis: the evolution of our first creation! A smidgen of Middle East inspiration, a dash of West Coast ingenuity and an East Coast garden of brewing delights… Then we tasted it, and it was very good. After 5000 years of civilization, savor a microbrew with the chutzpah to keep calling itself the Chosen Beer. From the Golden Gate to the City of Gold, may He’Brew join in the blessings of your lives. To life! L’Chaim!

from my notes:

Pours a nice clear strawberry blond color. Nice, thick head with an off-white color that quickly fades. Smells of citrus, herbs and hops. When Genesis first hits your tongue you taste the malt with some citrus notes then the mild hops kick in with some earthy undertones. Not as strong as a Pale Ale just enough to let you know this is a hoppy beer.

The head settled quicker than my ability to take pictures of it (or I got distracted)

Not a bad American Pale Ale but I’ve had better (Red Chair, Inversion) If you like your beer with some mild hop bite to it this is a good place to start.

Rating (out of five):

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Sidenote: Exploring Erasmus’ Magic Fun House

Quite a bit nicer than the Wizard in King’s Quest 3…

Bears?! Everything is Cooler with Bears

The first thing Garcon needed to do was get better at some of his skills, mostly stealth. How do you that? Easy you walk around the forest endlessly channeling some mysterious force from beyond time and space that makes your body endlessly cycle through walking and sneaking.

Seriously, that is how you level up stealth. Perseii also spent time cleaning out stables, cast magic at random objects, picking his nose, and climbing trees and walls. All in a full days work!

Once that was done though he wanted to start counter cursing! So, how did that counter curse go again?

Free the Man from in the Beast

That doesn’t sound good! Problem is, Jackson hasn’t seen any beasts around here! Besides that White stag, but he’s pretty sure that belongs to the Dryad and you, as you’ll learn in these correspondence courses you do not want to mess with a tree lady!
Some more looking around is in order! Into the forest!

Continue Reading »

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If you just want to look like a creative type just buy a damn beret and a v-neck sweater...

  1. You’re not writing right now
  2. You’re too distracted with getting rid of distractions
  3. You’re too busy Lifehacking
  4. You maybe just don’t like writing
  5. You’re only in love with the idea of being a writer; not all the work it would require to be a writer

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