Well…
The trouble here is that I never know where this log fits into my day. Let’s see if I can get in the habit.
A/V: I took a break from Oblivion a couple weeks ago to have a look at Fallout 3. First impressions: FO3 is a game I want to play, but not right now. It seems more like a winter game, while Oblivion is definitely a summer game.
I also borrowed Bioshock from Alan on Tuesday and have been playing that this week– I like to cozy up in the dark around 10pm-1am, after my housemates have gone to bed, plug in my headphones to our stereo receiver and crank up the sound. Definitely the good way to enjoy (and get mercilessly creeped-out) by a survival-horror game.
I’ve just finished the first level and survived my first tussle with Big Daddy– afterward, you have to choose whether to “harvest” his Little Sister for ADAM, or rescue her. I’ve decided I going to rescue them. 1) I like playing heroes, generally; and 2) that Russian splicer (her name escapes me… Anatolia?) said she’d make it “worth my while”. I’m interested to see what that’s about.
Mogo: I played in two tourneys earlier this week. AltPDC on Monday, & XPDC on Wednesday. I went 2-2 in each, which I’m… okay with, I guess. My goal in Mogo lately has been to try and get my record back up to 50%, and breaking-even in a tourney at least keeps me from drifting further off the mark.
Excited for SPDC tonight. I’ve got a green-splash Blightning deck that tore it up in a few practice games w/ Hunter. I think it’ll be fun.
Text: I’m about 200 pages in to A Feast for Crows, the fourth volume of George Martin’s fantasy epic. Love the characters, especially the odd new viewpoint characters like Hotah the bodyguard and Damphair the prophet. Still unclear as to where the overall plot is going, which is why I probably set it down around this point last time I picked it up… (where the heck is Daenerys, for instance? etc)
A/V: Oblivion, days 7-12
I’m going to summarize as much as possible here. It occurs to me that I’m updating this thing more than my actual blog, and that’s weirding me out.
7: Left Bruma for Chorrol. Stumbled onto a bandit hideout. Cleared them out. When I came out, I saw another armed figure snooping around near my horse in the distance. I look a hail-mary shot at him with my bow… good news: it connected, bad news: it was an Imperial officer. He promptly arrested me. :/
8: While in the Bruma jail, I was locked up with a shady thief named Jormundr. I get embroiled in a scheme to uncover some gold he’d stashed.
9: I head off towards Chorrol again, and this time I encounter an Oblivion Gate spewing out daedra scouts near a small farm in the mountains. I skulk into Oblivion, find the sigil stone & close the gate.
10: I reach Chorrol. I recover an ancient book called The Fingers of the Mountain from a ruin called Cloud Top, and return it to the mage’s guildmaster, earning his recommendation.
11: I ride on toward Imperial City. Along the rode I encounter a third Oblivion Gate. I seal it.
12: I arrive in the Imperial City and speak with Baurus of the Blades. He asks me to investigate a cult called the Mythic Dawn by finding all four volumes of a rare book. The book contains a hidden message which, once decoded, will lead me to the cult.
A/V: Oblivion, days 3-6
On day 3, I ride out towards Kvatch. I arrive to find the city in flames. The previous night, portals to the hellish plane of Oblivion appeared throughout the city, and demonic creatures called daedra flooded into the city. I learn from the captain of Kvatch’s city guard that Martin is still trapped inside the walls with some other surivors, barricaded within the Chapel of Akatosh. In other to reach them, I most first cross over into the plane of Oblivion and close the gates from within. (WOOT)
In Oblivion, I meet other survivors from the Kvatch guard, who help me assault a tower of black iron and steal the Sigil Stone from the uppermost room, which seals the gate and throws me back into Cyrodiil.
Day 4: I join the Kvatch guards in a street-by-street running battle to retake the city from the daedra. I rescue Martin and convince him to return with me to Weynon Priory.
Day 5: I lead Martin to Weynon Priory, but find it under attack by the red-robed assassins. We fight them off, and Jauffre reveals to Martin that he is the heir to the kingdom, and that the forces of Oblivion– lead by the daedric Prince of Suffering, Lord Dagon (how’s that for a job title?)– will stop at nothing to kill him. He also reveals that the assassins have stolen the Amulet of Kings. In order to stop the daedric invasion, the Amulet must be used to relight the Dragonfires in the Imperial City, and only the Emperor (ie Martin) may wield it.
Jauffre, Martin & I ride onward to a mountain fortress called Cloud Ruler Temple. Martin must remain there under the protection of his bodyguards– the Blades– while I venture on to recover the Amulet.
By this point I have a nice set of chainmail armor given to me by the Kvatch guard, and a bitchin’ katana and heavy shield that Jauffre bestowed upon me as a sworn-brother of the Blades.
Day 6: I decide to stop in the nearby town of Bruma. I figure: in order to fend off the invasion & recover the Amulet, I will need to recruit the help of some powerful allies. Each town has it’s own Mage’s Guild, and in order to gain access to the Arcane University in the Imperial City, I need to gain a recommendation from each town guildmaster. In Bruma, the guildmaster– an inexperienced young lady-wizard– wanted me to locate a missing Khajit mage named J’skar.
After some investigating and other shenanigans, I discovered that the mage was within the Guildhall all along, but had made himself invisible as part of a practical joke. I convinced him to come clean and, in return, got my seal of recommendation from Bruma.
There are still a half-dozen guildhalls to go, but it’s a start.
A/V: Oblivion, days 1 & 2
So, I’ve started into Oblivion.
(explication: Oblivion is a single-player RPG for the Xbox 360, in which you take on the role of a fantasy hero and explore a fully-realized three-dimensional faerie world called Cyrodiil. For more info, click the link. I’m going to assume that anyone reading this is probably well-familiar with RPG video games.)
I thought it’d be fun to keep a game log. Writing about it makes the whole thing seem (slightly) less frivolous & self-contained. Anyway:
The story begins with your character locked in a dank dungeon cell. You get to choose everything about your character, including how your character got there in the first place, so I decided that my character would be named Mkuti the Wayfinder. Mkuti is a Khajit (imagine a “lion-man”, essentially). He makes his way in the world as a wilderness guide and herb-gatherer, but ran afoul of the Imperial authorities when a nobleman had a violent allergic reaction to a poultice that Mkuti had concocted.
In the first section of the game, the plot is kind of on rails. Here it is in a nutshell: The Emperor of the realm, Uriel Septim, is attacked by assassins. He attempts to flee the palace via a secret passage which– by happenstance– leads through your cell. The guards allow you to follow to help protect the Emperor, but ultimately the assassins catch up with you in the sewers and murder the liege. Before he dies, he gives you his necklace– the Amulet of Kings– and tells you to deliver it to his heir, via an ex-guard named Jauffre (now an abbot in a monastery called Weynon Priory).
On the first day, I escaped the sewers and arrived blinking in the bright light of day just beyond the walls of the city. (From this point onward, the game is open-ended. The world is spread before you and you can go & do essentially anything you want… but I decide to follow the storyline and head toward Weynon Priory, which my map says is on the outskirts of a far-away town called Chorral.)
It’s near sunset, so I decide to camp for the night in some nearby ruins… but the ruins are already inhabited by a pair of brigands, who ambush me! I fight them to the death and scavenge through their gear & loot for weapons and armor. At the end of the day, I’m rudely equipped with a serviceable steel sword, a bow, iron-tipped arrows, a wooden shield, and some raggedy fur-lined leather armor.
On day 2, I make it to the Priory and meet Jauffre. He tells me that I must seek out a man named Martin, a bastard son of Uriel Septim who is now– unbeknownst to him– the rightful heir to the throne. He gives me some supplies and his old paint horse and tells to ride toward another distant town called Kvatchl, and locate Martin… before the mysterious assassins find him first.
