Update Sections: April 23, 24, 26

April 23
Why do I love being me? Because I often can't stick with one thing for too long. I listen to a few songs, fall in love with one or two, and then six months later find two more I love even more. It's a never-ending quest of finding greater and greater songs and stuffs!

Of course all of this stuff, which is so useful for me when I write, is copyrighted material. I need myself a personal musician lol.

What sparked this? Skyrim. The game's not too bad, but not worth ALL the hype- it has its goofs at times. (Especially how finicky the hitboxes can be at times. I've swung a war hammer and it passed straight through someone. If anything, the 'sideways power attacks hit all enemies in front' should be a given, because that's just how life works. But it's not that bad I suppose, seeing as I can just buff my damage to the point where I can smoke a dragon in four hits at level five while it tries and fails to deep fry me. If all else fails, there's always making the difficulty hit rock bottom if I'm that pissed off.)

Anyways, 'Dovakiin' is a pretty damn good song, with several good remixes. The file I found is sort of quiet, but that's no bother- I've always been able to concentrate and block virtually everything out so I 'hear' louder.

Even though I'm not a fan of dub, the 'T-PROXIMUS' dubstep remix of Dovakiin is pretty good, and works almost perfectly with my AED-20 Hypersonic Assault Bomber. Lots of moments that infer slow-mo, and rapidly changing camera angles.



Anywho, onto some random updates.

Since I borrowed Skyrim from a friend, I've actually come up with a character I may stick with. And I'm almost positive she will be a keeper, seeing as she came of her own volition the first time I heard Dovakiin. No better omen than that!

Kotoha Sheroko. Kotoha come from 'Yozakura Quartet', while Sheroko comes from a friend of mine on Steam. Seemed like a decent mix.

Of course I proceeded to turn her entirely into one of my own. As is so typical of me, she's somewhat darkish. Dammit. But I turned that around and made the best of it by making her a tsundere of sorts, although a serious and psychotic soldier with a carefree and vulnerable dash is a weird combo, especially when you figure that odds are she's going to lapse into her carefree self while covered in blood at least once. And what that exactly will entail will be left to Time to tell.

So, with the addition of Kotoha, I've found myself a fourth type of BioAndroid: the True Prime Generation. Originally there were:

BioAndroid: The real deal, artificially born yet truly living war machines. This is what virtually any character with a name entirely comprised of consonants is. Built, born and bread by the Imperial BioAndronian Empire inside massive complexes on BioAndronia. Generation Two through Twelve are the mainstay for the purposes of Project One Man War (One Man War to Love and the Endless War) and the Third Great Defensive War, while there are rumors of off-planet sites that escaped the purges of Remembrance Fleet in the Fourth Great Defensive War (Or rather, the First War of Reformation)


'Bastardized' BioAndroid: Where a BioAndroid is seen as a bastardization of life, there is a bastardization of the BioAndroid. This is what Legion General Third Class Ocean Seven would be, although he is not a true BBA, because he was given the powers and abilities of a BioAndroid by Snpr through both conscious decision and proximity due to their early days of spirit harmonization. (In the wee days of Project One Man War (the section) where Snpr was actually linked to Ocean Seven because he had no real body. Ocean Seven's natural talents as a Pure Planet 14-born human allowed him to quickly enable Snpr to appear as a phantom, and such was his natural spiritual strengths that this phantom rapidly went from a traditional phantom to a physical phantom. (As a side note this isn't a spoiler, this is really backstory. The short writing that covers this part occurs in two places before Project One Man War, and really requires the whole thing to be written out to make sense as a book itself. That being that, I think it's fine if we go ahead and say that, because the time frame of it is so short (weeks) that it would be hard to write in the form of the rest of the story without making a book of filler!)


Prime Generation: A failed attempt to merge human life with a lifeless BioAndroid shell, thereby creating a new cadre of soldiers taken from the prime of the human race. Unused BA husks or sub-par ones could be merged with elite human soldiers, giving them greatly enhanced combat abilities without interrupting the production of BAs. (Virtually all resources are used in the production of BAs, so the human-based armies of the IBAE are large, self-equipped militias by comparison. Planets or systems make their own weapons on their own time, with their own resources. The Navies, however, are up to par with the BioAndronian Navy, as virtually all ACVs are shared between IBAE Naval units and the BA Navy, with the notable exception of the Juggernaut-Class, which is BA-specific, and the WMD-Class, which is even further restricted to the Four Quarters BioAndronian Defence Fleet, and the shadowy Fifth Quarter. Several Battlemaster-Class ACVs (Much more human-friendly then the Juggernauts) are also BA Navy-only, but these restrictions are more for considerations of well-being of the crew- Battlemaster-Class ACVs are, roughly, small Juggernaut-Class ACVs. Despite their smoother ride, they are still often delegated to the same combat roles as the Juggernauts- the near-suicidal duties of an ACV fighting in the middle of the enemy formation. Human reaction times and processing abilities- which are nothing compared to a BA, even with the best enhancements- are almost always not up for this task, and even in those that are, there are scant few with the resolve and unwavering morale to step up and accept a duty that is sure to grant them only death. The Battlemaster-Class ACVs also lack the amazing shield technology of the Juggernaut-Class, and thus rely on their incredibly dense armour over their shields- the constant sound of direct hits is enough to break most men in moments, and a Battlemaster crewdog's entire life is an endless, twisted opera of these sounds. These crewdogs must be able to ignore these sounds for hours at a time and instead focus on doing their job, something that greatly limits the available crew stock of an already tiny cadre. Human crewmen serving on a Battlemaster-Class ACV, while usually thought of as stupid fools, are nonetheless always treated with respect on par with any BA. To survive an entire deployment as a Battlemaster-Class ACV crewdog- with Navy deployments being virtually lifelong, and the enhanced bodies of a Battlemaster-Class ACV crewdog granting a vastly slower aging process, this is no easy feat- is one of the greatest honours a human of the IBAE can have, for they have lived anywhere from one to three hundred years on a field of battle the Universe over. The icy grip of space has extended its hand to all of these veterans- and they have rejected it each and every time, fighting for their lives after being blasted from the confines of their ACV into the extremes of hard space. Not one of these veterans has served his or her time without experiencing either the deep freeze or the intense heat of hard space, and most of them have gone through both.)

The Prime Generation project was a failure because the human mind, although endlessly adaptable, was unable to adapt to the strange new body they were in- the speed at which their world changed, and the extent at which it changed was too much for them. These humans wholly rejected their new bodies, and most of them died in the process. The small percentage that survived were irreversibly altered, the bulk of them physically and mentally scarred; never again were their brains to be capable of perceiving stability. Of these, only a handful were able to return to a semblance of regular life, and all of them eventually fell apart. Only one, Commander Scott Recono 'Tank' Mimasaka, recovered from his shattering. He was the luckiest of all the living failures, having only suffered horrendous facial distortion. His deep depression was never confirmed to have been caused by the test itself, or a natural reaction to his situation, because he crashed in the middle of a test to determine just that. He was able to survive his crash because he was transferred to an out-of-the-way planet where he stumbled upon the wayward Rckt, who was running from an IBAE kill team. In Rckt he saw another destroyed life, even if it was of artificial origins- that may have actually helped him connect. Rckt timely appearance saved Tank from finally giving up, as all the other Prime Generation subjects eventually did after crashing. The IBAE promised to not kill Rckt, but they expected Tank to die within days. When Tank had survived three weeks past the longest living crash subject, the IBAE was forced to actually cancel their hit on Rckt, although they did gain some control over the walking Armageddon trigger through Tank and Rckt's friendship. Tank was a living Prime Generation subject, Rckt was stable, and was able to be used if need be. Better then two more corpses.


And now we have Kotoha, who could be compared to an enhanced human. However, her enhancements are not simply mechanical, but also extend to her whole being. Rather than having a nanomachine hub, Kotoha has physically faster natural repair capabilities, and her muscles and bones have been altered through bio-mechanical means as well as physical means to be much more durable and flexible, to ensure that her movements while under the effects of the Gravitic Generator don't end up snapping her in two. Remove the enhancements from a human and they become human again, with a few small exceptions such as surgery for eyes. However, with Kotoha, even if you removed the mechanical enhancements, you would still end up with a very powerful human, with a durable skeleton and a very compact and powerful muscle frame, among other things. This is because Ocean Seven, though proximity, emulation and eventual life as a BioAndroid, has finally understood where Project Prime Generation failed. It failed in all regards, as it was nothing more then a disturbing welding of two alien bodies. Ocean Seven's trial-by-fire run on Kotoha was to apply the BioAndronian ehnancements at the genetic level- a BioAndroid being, after all, a life just the same as any other, not just a slab of living material and metal. Kotoha's DNA is now like none other of the human race, and has embedded within it the code that has her body form much of the physical enhancements on its own. After all, form is a product of function, and the real limiters on function is what is useful for survival (remember all life at its base form operates on the survive and reproduce instinct, so they are not born in a manner geared for taking bullets in the chest) and energy constraints on the surrounding area. Mountain humans are born with large lungs to compensate for the reduced oxygen saturation in the thinner air. Humans born to families who lived in rocky areas (possibly beside a mountain) might have very strong muscles or naturally increased agility to move or otherwise get across rocks.

So, in effect, Ocean Seven reprogrammed Kotoha's DNA to rebuild her into a human designed for fighting as a lifestyle. Not like other animals built for fighting over territory or whatnot, which often have sturdy bodies and horns for ramming, but a body built for fighting like a human. A body built to maximize the body's ability to use its own weapons (hands, feet, head, whole body) while at the same time creating an agile body, for evading danger. The mechanical enhancements simply push the body's ability past what is easily programmed or physically capable of.

For example, to program the DNA to make a body capable of detecting, analyzing and evading bullets would take a lifetime and then some, because it would require muscle reconfiguration for sideways movement- the body is built for going forwards, and the profile-view of a human is thin enough to act as a natural defense against being hit by a bullet- as well as adjusting for the kinds of instant movement required to move out of the way of a tiny object moving at Mach 3. That would tear apart normal human muscles in short order. Next on the list is a slew of optical adjustments to reconfigure the eyes to detect small, fast-moving object (which could hamper everything else; also note that there are two dead zones on your eyes, where your optic nerve physically is. You never see them because the brain is capable of overlapping images (telescopic vision) and can fill in the tiny blanks on its own. (This is why even when you cover one eye, you can still see depth for a short time, because your brain already knows the distance to nearby objects. However, as data transfer from eyes to brain is constant and in realtime, the average brain would quickly 'forget' these distances as it is fed unknowns, so it switches to now knowing what the distance is, and you start walking into walls until your train yourself.) Throw in the required alterations to the optic nerve itself to speed up data transfer, and cranial alterations to kick analysis of this information into overdrive, and you have one drawn-out and probably painful reconstruction effort that is going to leave you useless while it's underway and things aren't complete as they were before, nor are they finished as they should be. You alter what you can do in short order, and fill in the blanks are desired with machines. If you cannot attain a certain ability, you cannot attain it. There is a physical limit to what you can do, as all life has one other limiter- energy. Humans are nearly endlessly adaptable because we can eat virtually anything, so we have plenty of energy to spare for growth and adaptations. However, on the grand scale, evolution is slow because most of that energy is directed to keeping the energy supply constant, and little is used to adapt, none if there is no need to do so. And the brain likes its stability, so it is virtually incapable of spontaneous alterations, not to mention the brain itself cannot really alter its own genetic profile. It can only pack the intent of alteration into its reproductive system and hope its offspring continue to do so. The above alteration to dodge bullets naturally would require an incredible amount of energy- remember puberty? How you were always hungry? Well, imagine that for your entire life. A hunger that will not go away because you are continually altering to fit the finished product. Given that you will probably need most of your life to do that, you might even turn into a creature that sleeps in bursts, directing energy forever into changing, rather than slowing down at night.

Anyways, technical jibberjabber aside, I've made a keeper, and widened the Project One Man War Saga Universe yet more.

Will Kotoha continue where Ocean Seven leaves, or will the two of them die as partners one day, bringing the crusade to an end then and there? I have no idea, honestly. As much of Project OMW Saga exists only in my head, it is endlessly malleable. Before Kotoha the intention was an eventual end- writing this is fun and all, but everything must end someday, and having a planned end at least gives me a finite time frame to keep adding to. But now? Everything as it is may continue past this placeholder ending to the second placeholder ending, or even further if I can't help myself.

Not a spoiler, but I actually considered the second ending to not be an ending... This is how little writing ability I really have- the small parts that I write on my own and not with the flow I often end up changing entirely somewhere down the line. Project One Man War Saga is not a written work. It is a story already there that I faithfully write out as I discover it, filling in here and there for assorted blanks, and as things change- it isn't even a fully complete discovery, but rather a process discovery. I write with the flow one day and write with the flow another day, and the second flow contradicts some of the first! It's a challenge, and one that may never bear any fruit, but it's a challenge that I love. This is why I love being me. I chase after things any sane person would give up on for being fruitless. I don't live life like a goddamn investor. I spot my target and chase it down until I get it, or die trying. Even when I can no longer physically catch it, I will still chase it. The thrill of this challenge is what I wake up for now. All else is just distractions in the way of my chase, inconvenient hurdles to leap over or walk around or barrel through. Sounds harsh, talking as if every other person on this rock is an annoyance, but this is just the base feeling. I have a heart, I have a soul, I have a head, there are other things I care for, but when you strip away the reason I do that- to help keep other things out of my way, to go with the flow of life, you get an unrequited love for this work. (That isn't to say I love people just to keep others away, it means that in the course of acting to minimize distractions I do find myself actually liking some of the other things in life. But this reaction cannot exist without the action of keeping other things away, so if you took my desire to keep other things away from my work, you would have no honest like of others, just my love of what I do. I can tell at least one person would haze that, saying I'm a hollow bastard, but clearly that person has never thought about what they love to do, and why, and what else they may do that is really to help this love. And clearly they've never read an undercover cop novel in their lives, because if they had they would easily see this is like the cop who serves the drug dealer seeing who the dealer is as a person, and not from the point of view of a cop. Seeing that this is really just another guy, with his own regular wife and his own regular kids. He just happens to be doing something against the law. I'm that cop- I do my work just as he does. His world of lies to keep him from danger is my efforts to minimize danger to my work. His realization that his target is just a John Smith with a lot of drugs is my realization that I do like some of the things I do to protect my work. He comes to like the guy as a person as I come to like friends as people, not just as a means of carrying out my work.)



Goddammit. I need to stop thinking so much. I get weird, as you just saw. Some who know me would accuse me of being a hypocrite because I tend to ditch the dramatics, but when it comes down to it, I understand that in some cases, dramatics are a means of attempting to convey the power or conviction of a thought or idea that cannot be described in words. (All other times, however, it is shameless advertising and/or shameless boasting of false deeds, or blowing your own ego up.)

Also I attest that it ends up looking like dramatics when it really isn't. Half the time it's just me trying to come up with an all-encompassing comparison. Throw in my autopilot writing and abuse of brackets and you get something that looks like dramatics. (But in reality it is only dramatically failing to properly convey the message or comparison. I don't know why, but it irks me when I can't get someone to understand exactly what this or that means, especially when it's something similar to an existing concept, and easily misinterpreted. I can safely cay it ISN'T OCD, because there are lots of things I can live with a sense of general but fuzzy understanding, and I feel that it is rather a desire to leave little unsaid or unknown. Which, when compared to other writers, is rather funny because they write to conceal plotlines, while I write in an effort to tell people exactly what something is, because they likely have never seen it or something remotely related to it. Misconceptions are terrible things. They must be quashed, and quashed very well.)

Also I think I should stop writing Journals while listening to dramatic music. That could solve all my problems, because I won't be in an energized mood at the time.


Finally, let it be known of what happens below:

Playing: "Ransack ALL The Houses on Skyrim"

Rather, Ransack ALL The Houses Of Skyrim- Legally. Or, better yet, make friends with the people and rob them blind in front of them. (Oh hey Jarl, I killed a dragon for you? What? I can take some stuff? Okey then... *takes everything not nailed down or labeled 'Steal', leaving an empty castle.* *Says 'fuck it' and steals everything else he can get his hands on and then dumps it all in front of the Jarl for the lulz)

Eating: "600 god-forsaken Carrots on Skyrim"

GOOD GOD SO MUCH FOOD. I go ransack one or two Dungeons and come out with another twenty pounds of food I can't sell. Food I don't sell: Cabbages, Leeks, Potatoes, Tomatoes, usually any kind of non-wedge cheese, and anything with a Value of 1 (which nets no gold anyways). Carrots are the worst because I rarely have items to cook with them like I do the others. (I've taken to selling all my Stamina Potions because they weigh as much as Vegetable Soup, but Vege Soup will regen my Stamina for 12 minutes, and eight or nine gives me enough regen to sprint forever. Twenty or so and I regen so fast I can endlessly Shield Bash/Power Attack even if I'm being hit with a bit of Frost. (Although one or two will make it so that you never have zero Stamina. You'll just have to deal with having a perpetually near empty bar in combat, so you can't sprint away when that Giant tries to club you.) I'll also have the odd Venison Stew or whatever (Heals 15 Stamina and is otherwise identical to Vege Soup) if I have the items. Also, Salt Pile items often... pile... up (bad pun) and right now I have 120 of them on one of my characters. I should stock up on Red Apples and make a heap of apple stew or whatever it is at the top of the Cooking list.

Drinking: "Sixty pounds of assorted Potions"

When I don't have a shop to sell shit, my Follower's spine is starting to telescope, and there's six corpses with items holding a very high Gold-Weight ratio, I will chug potions to shed some weight if need be. (First day of playing I walked all the way to town with every single bloody item from the beginning. Now I rarely hold items with the express purpose to sell them if they offer a Value of 50 or lower, unless I have a ton of weight to go around. Axes and Maces are especially bad, and I rarely sell Shields unless they're Banded (Value of 100, while Iron or Steel is like 60- looks good, but it weighs twelve fucking pounds. 5:1 ratio is good, but I would rather lug around a heap of armour, thanks.)


Also, a tip for those that haven't caught on to this: If there is so much junk in the cave that you'll be Over Encumbered, take it all. Chug one or two Vege Soups, equip a dagger or sword in your right hand, set your marker to the nearest place with shops, and Power Attack your way across Skyrim. And I mean take it ALL. If you're Over Encumbered, you might as well take everything, because you're no slower two pounds overweight than you are twelve hundred. (Also, instead of waiting for the shops to open in Whiterun, download your fav. movie or anime on your iPod or PSP, and watch it while you also chop wood by Belathor's Shop. I watched an episode of K-ON! and came out with twelve hundred pounds of wood. Sold all my shit to Belathor, hobbled (Power Attacked with a dagger) across the street (shanking Nazeem in the process; luckily I save before or after selling shit 'cos I hate a power-out hitting and having to do all this shit over again- and because something like Power Shanking Nazeem is bound to happen at least once.) and sold all the wood at full Value to the Bannered Mare- then I robbed them blind and went back and sold it all to Belathor (including the Iron Dagger I kept to hobble my way around while I did that)

And if you're gonna do that, take all the crap you foisted on your Follower too. Might as well hold it all rather then hit the shop and have to turn around to take it all after you remember your Follower is maxed out- this is especially bad when you get accosted by a dragon in the middle of nowhere, conviently at the furthest point from any town, and you're suddenly fifty pounds overweight because the goddamn dragons are all fat and big-boned. (You perv.)

However, if you have Stolen goods that you don't actually use, ditch them. Unless you can sell them with the perk, you may find you sold twelve thousand pounds of gear just to stay Over Encumbered because you had two hundred pounds of Stolen shit, you criminal you. And yes, when you Over Encumbered you go the same speed if you're one feather Over Encumbered or if you're hauling along a friggin' graveyard, a supersized dump truck (because you don't know how to start a car, it being the Middle Ages and whatnot) and twelve thousand pieces of wood. When badly Over Encumbered you're like 'oh hey I go no slower!' but when you realize you're two pounds overweight you go 'oh shit I go no faster!'
___

April 24
April 24 Minor Updates: Fixed some typos across recent Deviations. Wow, how did I miss those?!

Random updates!

Got me the SNEERUM Marine, Necron and Imperial Guard codexes for a bit, and holy crap I had fun making whack SNEERUM Marine army choices. (Not a coherent list, but rather a standard set of units so I don't have to calculate the same wargear costs over and over again.) Necron is going to be a complete troll if I do this right. Imperial Guard is already broken as is, even though 5th Edition is worse then the OP 4th Edition. (Holy crap I can has the Last Chancers?! Up to 20 convicts that can ALL be given Special Weapons or be- holy crap- Psykers?! Twenty fucking Psykers that can DEEP STRIKE?! (via Doctrine Points) My mind is blown. Also, Creed was even more OP. Who needs one outflanking choice when I can automatically pick the game type and table side I want!?! Capture points, three on our side. By the way, it's three Guardsmen and one Tau vs Marines and Orks. Tau rapes all the SNEERUM Marines, while we Guardsmen mop up anyone left as we laugh while the Orks die where they stand. Even in a 500 point game, we will win. All we need to do is leave the heavy stuff to the Tau player, and all three of us take nothing but packed Guardsmen squads. Combined squads, and we can rape anything with 30 24'' shots, or 60 12'' shots. Throw in 'First rank FIRE! Second rank FIRE!' Order and you can spam triple-shot Lasguns. With a dense cluster of us and Creed standing in the middle to issue four of his unique orders to anyone if we get rushed, we Guardsmen now get two attacks each with decent hitrates in close combat- one by nature, one for Assaulting, and a third from Creed's order, which bestows us with Furious Charge. So I heard Orks are good in close combat. Too bad there's more of us, we outrange you, and before you can get quite close enough we can easily do one of the following: Mass spam Lasguns. Say hello to Orders, granting us, what, 90 shots for a 30-man squad?! A few less if we pick up some Special Weapons. We can therefore: Burn you as you hobble close, or Snipe you eight times, or fling eight Frag Grenade launchers at you, or be a troll and use Plasma Guns (bye-bye armour saves for any infantry, ever) or meltaguns. Nothing better then melting an Ork in the face with an antitank gun.)

Or, all we need is one Punisher Leman Russ. Twenty attacks, plus we've got Lumbering Behemoth. So you get to play with the Punisher Cannon, my Storm Bolter, and any three additional weapons I pick. (Probably a heavy Bolter and twin Lascannons. Meltagun to the face is nice, but why do that when you can asplode an Ork from two boards away?) Got your own tank? Hunker-Killer to the face. (Or constant Orbital Bombardments from my two Master Of Ordinances)

The SNEERUM Marines? Whoever gets past the Tau (Small squad on small squad, requires a bit of luck to score a lot of kills) gets the chance to take ninety potential armour saves. Or maybe just die then and there- with eight snipers per Guardsman army, we've got 24 chances to murder your expensive Marines. Throw in Lascannons on a Leman Russ, and I don't give two shits if you have Terminators. (Which, by the way, can also eat Tau guns and ninety Lasguns. Funny how the one Terminator Chapter Master rolls 2D6 for AP. He can roll AP6. This means he can charge at a Guardsman- who wears cardboard for armour- and that little runt can SAVE against a chainfist. A huge fist with chainsaws on it. And then that little dude can shank the shit out of that hulking brute with a little combat knife. This is why 40,000 is better than Fantasy imo, because you can pull off awesome things like this. There are more then just named hero characters- in every war there is always a few nameless guys who do amazing shit out of dumb luck. That, and Terminators can go to hell with their +2 save and +5 invul save. Fuck lore, you fail at fighting Genestealers, period.)



But enough of Warhammer 40,000.


Back to Skyrim.


Torchbugs and butterflies and moths, oh my!
They can all brutally die.
Flying not-so-high in the sky!
They can all brutally die.

Poetic.

Whenever I harvest these things, I can't help but imagine my character gently grasping a fragile moth... and then ripping its wings off. Torchbugs are worse, because you take their thorax. (Which I stupidly thought was their throat at first because I was really tired. Brutal.)

The age-old act of having an enemy hit one of his own is reborn! Last night I successfully had three Whiterun Guards killed by their own men, and nearly managed to have one Giant destroy another. (Sadly, Sven kept having his face mashed in so I gave up on that. Bugger will not listen to me when I tell him to wait the fuck right over there! He's like our ghoulish friend on Fallout: Blue Fegas who I equipped with power armour and a minigun. We stumble upon a Deathclaw. What does he do? Spray it with his three thousand rounds? No. That would be too smart. Douche yanks his Thermic Lance out and charges it. Gets one tap on and dies. Yes the Thermic Lance tears apart Deathclaws, but the idiot was in Power Armour and the Deathclaw was at max range. He could have at least softened it up for me before he went to get his face eaten... (Y'see, he's fairly fragile, and how he's in heavy armour, so he's slow as hell. I guess he has a good melee ability, but I just had him holding that Lance because I was starting to get really fat and couldn't hold it anymore. I had twelve thousand bloody surplus 5mm rounds that I needed used, and Companions never damage weapons. Dammit...)

I found Pinerush (?) house. The place with the huge hidden chamber, some female bandit named Riga Strong-Arm or something. Holy hell I needed to take four shop runs to carry all the shit in there out. Why is the main house labaled as 'steal'? It's goddamn Bandit items. The guards will eat my face if I steal from a Bandit?! It's like having the whole Boomers community make your face asplode because you stole a fucking bent fucking tin fucking can. In the future, random acts of kindness get your face blown off. Common sense is also in short supply. Don't like the future? Too bad in the past, guards will not hesitate to stick a sword down your gullet for stealing from a Bandit. Even though they don't give two shits if you look like you're trying to pick a lock. And how most civilians will just mutter loudly if you steal something in plain sight. (Some will try to steal it back, others may just stand there and whine. I managed to yoink five things from Belathor before he actually did something about it.)

What else? Well...

Giants are still annoying as fuck.

Lydia will still not equip anything short of upgraded Dwarven Armour I give her (EQUIP. THE. FUCKING. ELVEN. SHIELD. NOW.)

Lydia will still not fucking equip my Elven Shield, despite not using her own shield when I give her a one-handed sword.

Lydia is going to take a paralysis-tipped Ancient Nord Greatsword to the face one of these days. (Why can't I poison my fists?!)

Sven is still being a derp.

Farrengar is still being an asshole, same as all of these sodding Dragonsreach children. I am going to port the Kill Children mod to my 360 and get my murder on. I. DO. NOT. CARE. IF. YOU. LIKE. YOUR. MEAT. RARE. I. AM. NOT. COOKING. ANYTHING. EXCEPT. A. KNUCKLE. SANDWITCH.

There is a small, half-hearted investigation around the death of a well-clothed black (is he a black Imperial or a very dark Redguard?) and every now and then my subtitles to haywire as people stumble upon his corpse. His name is Nazeem. He will not be missed. (If you think I'm racist, tell that to Bethesda. THEY coded him to be a complete douchebag. I'm the fucking Thane of Whiterun, and he still is a sodding asshole. I get to the Cloud District more then you do, and I come out of there with heaps of Gold. Plus, you're dead.)

The Battle-Borns are still being douches, and the Gray-Manes are still whining over their loss. Until someone hands me an invisiblity potion and something to utterly silence my footsteps (and a random Battle-Born stops goddamn insta-spawning in front of me the INSTANT I pick the lock) nobody is getting any evidence.

Helgen is still a burnt wreck. It's just got a few more bodies then it did at the beginning of the game.

The Shrine of Talos in Whiterun still offers no actual bonus to Shouts. It's just handy as a way to dispel diseases without having to go into the Temple and face two loading screens and a Priestess who will not shut up about Nettlebane. (I accept the quest, take two steps and she asks if I have it yet. What the hell...)

Aside from all that- actually, including all that- everything is SNAFU. (Right now I'm paused, nine hundred pounds overweight, only barely outrunning a Mammoth that lacks the sense to attack Lydia, who is trying but failing to hit it because it keeps moving.)
_______________

April 26
Updates: MOAR SKYRIM!


Holyshit Skyrim. I can't tell if having Thane powers is better then being able to wait three days and go back to any area in Fallout: Blue Fegas (F:NV) where people were trying to kill you. (I.e. you murdered Doc Mitchell out of sheer stupidity (only doctor for a long time) and now Goodsprings is trying to kill YOU. Leave town, wait three or four days, walk back in, nobody is trying anymore.)

Because this time around I can murder a guard in front of another guard and get away scott free because I'm Thane. Well, it only works once so often, and your bounty stays where it is, but hey- I get away with MURDER. And even if I don't the corpse in the Dragonsreach Dungeon is packed full of emergency gear and lockpicks- and by emergency gear I mean low quality stuff that I don't care if it vanishes, which by that I mean an Exquisite Orcish Warhammer, sixty lockpicks, an assload of Carrots, weak health potions, and an Ancient Nord Bow.

Now I just want a way to pay off my fine without having to break out of jail, because they'll just arrest me all over again for breaking out. (And lockpicking in there is balls, because every lock is coded thinking you only have on lockpick, so it insta-quits the moment a pick snaps. Hard to pick the locked boxes in the middle of heavy combat like that, although having your Follower still attached to you is nice, as they will run in the basement- I nearly murdered Sven the first time he did that thinking he was a guard! (He had guard armour on, because apparently a Steel Horned Helmet is too lame for him when compared. I had Lydia trade out her THIRTY AP HELMET IN FOR A STUPID STORMCLOAK HELMET. Are all my Followers embarrassed to let people know who they are because I'm a criminal, or what?)

I went through one of the dungeons in the mountains last night. Got some of the weirdest armour from the weirdest enemies- they start with an 'F' but I can't remember the name. Look like a cross between the 'zombies' on I Am Legend (for stance) and really, really tall goblins/gremlins. Oh thanks guys, a Heavy Armor helmet that I technically can't see through, that gives me less AP than some of the early game Light Armour hats. OH THANKS, A 21 POUND WAR AXE THAT DOES AS MUCH DAMAGE AS A SWORD. WHAT THE HELL?! A BADASS BOW COUPLED WITH ARROWS SHITTIER THEN IRON ARROWS? (They do seven damage, while Iron does eight. What the fuck?)

Oh well, at least I don't have to use my Dwarven or Elven arrows against the next dragon that- SON OF BITCH THERE IT IS! Eat fifty-seven Falmer- I remembered it!- Arrows! Not dead yet? Screw it *drinks Fortify Two-Handed and Potion of the Berzerker* EAT ANCIENT NORD GREATSWORD OF FUCKIN' FIRE AND AWESOMENESS (mine does more damage than a Superior Orcish Greatsword) *Dragon dies in three hits* Fuck yeaw, eat the anger of a pissed-off, over-encumbered Heavy Combat Magi.

Heavy Combat Magi? Wuzzat? I have a lot of spells- I don't learn a few, like the weak versions of Turn Undead, Raise Dead, Oakflesh and Ward- but I tend to use status effect ones on myself, followed by slapping one enemy with Magelight for the lulz, with a grand finale of FIRERY GREATSWORD TO THE FACE. Or, more recently, TORCH TO THE FACE, and DWARVEN DAGGER IN THE 'NADS. Lydia *might* get in an EXQUISITE ELVEN MACE TO THE FACE now and then, but most often not. Especially against big opponents, where she has this nasty habit of submitting on me. So now I have to watch my swing and not hit her or I gotta reload my last save- thanks Bethesda, for INTEGRATING Hardcore mode into every difficulty mode without offering some way of doing no killing blow to an ally in Submission. (Maybe if you merc them straight from standing that's okay, I like to kill my Followers when I get bored and go on no-save rampages...)

Now for some random facts about my main character on my main Xbox account:

Name: Creed
Race: Imperial
Appearance: Grizzly. Some scars, strange war paint, lots of hair. Yet no dirt or age lines. (Someone has blue balls...)
Affinity: Heavy Armour, Two-Handed Weapons (Specifically Greatswords), Trolling Magik, and an evil Torch/Dagger combo.

Current Loadout:
Exquisite Steel Armour (With shoulders)
Exquisite Dwarven Gauntlets w/ +21% Two-Handed
Exquisite Dwarven Boots
Exquisite Steel Helmet
Superior Falmer Shield* w/ +18% Block (OH GOD WAS THIS ONCE ALIVE?!)

Amulet Of Talos/Ar'kay
Golden Ring w/ +18% Two-Handed

Exquisite Ancient Nord Greatsword w/ Deal 17 Points of Fire
Superior Falmer Bow w/ If Target Dies Within 1 Second, Fills a Soul Gem (Because a bow likes to insta-kill animals to fill gems I use for recharging. Even on swords I tend to use 1 or 2 seconds, as I do so much damage shit dies easily. Plus, if I hit it turns on, so the longer time just lets me reap Follower-made kills, which are rare.)
Exquisite Dwarven Dagger

And I've got a shit-ton of stuff in Breezehome, like all my Orcish and Elven stuff, which I keep one set of even if I never intend to use it, just so I have it. Most of my Book items are in there, regardless of weight. The Falmer Shield is in there right now to free up the space for a few more dungeon runs (I've been trying to get to the Greybeards for the last week, but I always clear anything I come across, which usually maxes me out.)