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I'll have a map update up on Friday Night.
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Jul 14, 2016 14:18
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 14:38 |
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What happened to Lucan? He doesn't seem to be on the map. Also, if you guys want to AP you can get some good bonuses by waiting until Aramanthia does her thing.
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Jul 23, 2016 04:11
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Lucan can just pick where he's waiting at then since he readied IC.
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Jul 23, 2016 04:19
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Oh, I'll just take position opposite Walter, so...L15, I suppose.
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Jul 23, 2016 06:55
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I suggest you take position in the H column if you want to be close enough to benefit from Aramanthia's Lead By Example ability for +6 to hit and damage on all your attacks for a turn. You can back up later.
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Jul 23, 2016 15:27
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Did Aramanthia have an opportunity to activate her Skald's Aura before the fight started? If not, she'll have to activate it on her turn. My plan was to have Aramanthia charge Arc and use Dimensional Step to teleport Hope into the air adjacent to Arc, allowing Hope to make an acrobatics check to land on her feet and thus negate the prone, but then I realized that Hope can already do that with her Relentless Stride ability. So I'll probably just do that for Sully instead if Hope doesn't kill Arc first, which she stands a decent chance of doing after Arc also took the 1d8+5 from Rain of Steel at the start of his turn (or is it 1d8+7 since he was bloodied?). Mortify, when Arc was bloodied by Hope Aramanthia's Virtue of Valor kicked in, granting 9 THP to both Hope and Aramanthia, so you should be basically unharmed.
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Jul 25, 2016 20:24
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I strongly suspect I can do 46 damage to his head. Was planning to Relentless to negate prone/immob. Thanks for the THP!
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Jul 25, 2016 20:29
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drat, I should have just delayed. Totally would have if I'd known he'd split into a group.  I hope nobody minds that I took the shackles and boots. My Boots of Eagerness (daily, minor action: take a move action) are now up for grabs.
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Jul 26, 2016 02:43
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Wait a minute, I have an even better idea!
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Jul 26, 2016 03:17
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The new plan is: have Hope kill him before he can make an attack. Also ArkInBlack, if you could roll the damage for Rain of Blows we can see how damaged Arc gets at the start of his turn.Thanatosian posted:drat, I should have just delayed. Totally would have if I'd known he'd split into a group. Don't worry, it's your turn again (along with everyone else). Feel free to light poo poo up once we see what happens to Arc if he hits 0 HP. LightWarden fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Jul 26, 2016 |
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Jul 26, 2016 03:24
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Mortify, I think you can resolve your attacks. First would be the free action attack granted by Aramanthia's Prescient Warning, which does an extra 1d8 damage on a hit, then if he survives that with more than 6 to 15 HP you can use your own immediate action attack at the end of his turn. But if he ends it with 6 or fewer HP then it means you finished him off since Sully's Rain of Steel does a minimum of 6 damage at the start of Arc's turn, and that would mean that he doesn't get to make his attack against us.
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Jul 26, 2016 19:52
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Do you disclose if enemies are minions before they're attacked, Doomykins? I'm ready to action point to blow those body parts the gently caress up, but don't want to burn it, take damage, and burn two encounter powers just to kill five minions.
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Jul 26, 2016 21:51
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I do not.
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Jul 26, 2016 23:09
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Talk poo poo, get crit. Lootwise, the Grace Ring is probably best on someone with Superior Will which would be... everyone except Sully. Of those, I can think of several possibilities: -As a revenant Hope is dazed at 0 HP or below instead of unconscious, so this would improve her odds of snapping out of it -Aramanthia grants a +6 to the saves of everyone within 5 whenever she succeeds on a save -William is probably the guy who has ended his turn without attacking people the most often (like just now). Aramanthia, Lucan and Kardrum all have ranged attacks so it's easier for them to recover from a bad position. The Ring of Calling would be used by people without teleportation powers to help those who do, and the only people with teleportation powers seem to be Hope, Aramanthia and maybe Lucan, but I don't know if any of their powers are affected by this since they're less about teleporting distances and more about teleporting to a thing within a certain range. That leaves the daily power, which is probably best for either a defender or a leader.
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Jul 27, 2016 05:14
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Arc's attack still happened. Hope's killing blow was a reaction to his damage, so that was resolved correctly. I technically already have an item bonus to saves (+2 all saves). If we manage to hit 16, Hope will no longer have the 0 HP daze problem. I'll retrain Disciple of Death (+5 death saves) to Death's Quickening (Take a minor while sub 0 HP due to Unnatural Vit) since my level 16 trait allows me to ignore death saves. Mortify fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Jul 27, 2016 |
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Jul 27, 2016 06:21
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While Hope's attack was a reaction, there were two sources of damage that were forgotten. First one is that Aramanthia is a budget warlord and any ally she can see who spends an AP adds +5 to the damage rolls of their attack if it hits (also gets 5 THP on a miss, but that's not really important right now). Both Sully and Hope spent AP, both hit and thus both added +5 to their damage. First up, Hope did 200 damage normally, +5 from Aramanthia. This bloodied Arc and put him at 95/300. Since Arc was bloodied when Sully attacked, he did his 41 damage normally, +5 from Aramanthia, and and then we get to the second source, +2 to damage vs. bloodied targets from his Ki Focus Expertise, hitting twice for +4 (which ArkInBlack did mention in Sully's post), putting Arc at 45/300. Kardrum does 19 damage, putting Arc at 26/300. Arc's turn starts, and he takes 1d8+5 damage from Sully's Rain of Steel, a minimum of 6 damage, putting him at a maximum of 20/300. Arc attacks, and Aramanthia interrupts it with an attack from Hope that does 21 points of damage (or more if Painful Oath wasn't already included in the attack). This puts Arc at -1 or lower before he gets off his attack and Hope doesn't actually need to use her reaction attack.
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Jul 27, 2016 16:12
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I also realized I forgot to add +2d12 to my first turn attacks from Eager for Blood (+1[w] to all first turn attacks), but either way, I don't see a huge issue resolving that Arc got off an attack given that he's a boss mob and obviously a little zanier than your average mook. He wouldn't even let me consume his soul.
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Jul 27, 2016 19:04
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Yeah, I have no problem spending a surge either if we're taking a short rest- she's got more than the party defender as it is. I was just impressed by the feat of striking. Nice crit-work there. And since the Grace Ring is an item bonus then Aramanthia already has one of her own and is thus out of the running as well.
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Jul 27, 2016 19:11
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So the attack hit, note that for surges/HP if you haven't already.
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Jul 30, 2016 00:26
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I'll get a new map or two up Sunday night.
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Jul 30, 2016 15:05
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Home internet is down for a few days.
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Jul 31, 2016 13:37
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My net is back up, sorry for the delay.
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Aug 6, 2016 01:07
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Flight delayed. Won't be able to update tonight.
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Aug 7, 2016 23:44
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Because I am literally retarded my internet is out again for a bit.
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Aug 13, 2016 01:18
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My connection is back, will update tonight.
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Aug 18, 2016 14:48
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Sorry for the delay, need to do a new map and been feeling on and off sick.
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Aug 24, 2016 02:03
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Work's being super dumb right now and my free time is going to be eaten up by Deus Ex and Legion. Just assume Will's following Sully in an attempt to end Arc's dumb Arcness.
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Aug 25, 2016 14:13
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Considering my intense disdain for posting silence, I'm torn between admiration for admitting it and disappointment that you can't put in 15 minutes before a marathon Legion session to post once every 3 days, which imo is about what it takes to put in an OK PC post or Combat Round and to have a Good Posting Record. Sully hasn't posted in a month. I was half-jokingly considering killing him. Maybe Sully and William can fall down the same surprise pit like a true /follow disaster. But seriously, I think it's undeniable that this game is a little too old and over half the party has checked out, which is pushing me towards the same. If PCs won't post I'm not spending an hour+ of my time to make new maps. I've made dozens of mistakes and I had a pretty terrible posting record in the first half of the year, though I've tightened things up and have run with renewed vigor for about two months with the only hiccups being literal hardware failure. But at this rate we might as well try to wrap it up because actually mapping out the dungeon I planned a year ago clearly won't have anyone exploring it. So, two ideas: 1) Summarized exposition dump and just three back to back finishing fights, the big three I had planned end on. 2) Give me a few ideas of general motivations and desired end goals for your characters. I will roll dice to skip all those messy combat rounds to decide the fate of the world. I guess also 3) We all resume posting together. But again. I've made a ton of mistakes that hurt the game and slowed it down. But if the PCs are actively compounding that by giving up then it's time to wrap it up so we can at least say "hey, that was a campaign that finished."
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Aug 25, 2016 14:42
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It's not that I can't pull myself away, I've still been checking the thread, but Will and Sully have been heading North to the Core for almost a month now and nothing has come of it yet. I think the problem is that slow posting led to slow responses which leads to more slow posting in a feedback loop. Also the first fight against Arc lasted all of A Round and didn't really give much of us a chance to participate which was kind of disappointing.
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Aug 25, 2016 14:58
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quote:I think the problem is that slow posting led to slow responses which leads to more slow posting in a feedback loop. I find this is the crux of all PbP posting problems. But I've been firing on all cylinders for awhile and you say you were "heading North" for a month. OK, but three weeks ago you found something to the North that prompted examining. There was some brief revelations. Then you're offered a branching path with presumably some benefits to examining them(i.e. depowering Arc.) I even suggest "hey, you can keep heading North if you want to say nuts to all this dungeon." William's last post was entering the Northern Chamber on the 9th. Lucan and Kardrum and the NPCs sort of passively agreed to head North to confront Arc directly. Then nobody did anything since the door was locked. That's a direct obstacle that needs to be addressed for several reasons: it's part of the traps Arc is using to fatigue invaders out by delaying and zapping them, it slows your progress if you can't open it which plays up the tension of a recurring attacker, and if you can't open it at all, it prompts taking a different path. The guy who wants to kill you locked his doors. This isn't an unreasonable obstacle. Last week Aramanthia posted that she would open a door to one of the side paths. I also had one of the side doors break to try and prompt some posting. A week later(today) Kardrum decided to check it out. I've heard often that "I don't want to be the bossy party leader" from players but if I have 6 people standing around waiting for one of them to blink first, we get what we have now. Sully hasn't posted in a month but he could've posted two weeks ago that "Yes, we ignore all this poo poo and head North for the Big Fight" and then bull-rushed or grappled the door. This is why I hate player silence, because I can work with almost anything posted. But silence? I ain't got much. The Arckuarot pacing has sucked but if you guys just check out for an extra two weeks every so often, eventually we're both at fault. During times that I'm "on" I still have 1-2 people who just don't post and 2-4 who average once a week or worse. I think any spark is gone and it's not coming back and since it takes the most of my time to update I'm not going to do it if half the party has given up. That's fine. It has been a nice, long campaign with some decent moments. I've learned a lot of pitfalls to avoid to make my next better. There's no bad sentiment here. quote:Also the first fight against Arc lasted all of A Round and didn't really give much of us a chance to participate which was kind of disappointing. Hope happens, which itself is a mistake I've made as DM. But since Arc has promised to return at least once more based on the speed of your approach I thought it would pass briefly, you'd move through the dungeon more quickly and get a chance to fight again.
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Aug 25, 2016 15:21
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Yeah, I kinda stopped having fun with Sully as a fictional character a while ago. Out of combat posts have been a chore and, well, here we are with a month between posts the second combat drops. It says a lot that my response to Sully suddenly dying would be relief of not having to distract myself the vague guilt of not posting when I should because I'm holding up other people's fun but not being able to put anything words up, even a sentence like "and then sully does a thing because he's impulsive like that" because then I'm just walking past stuff that work was put into someone else and what if someone wanted to poke and prod things but whoops now it's a fight. I can't even write sully as something more than an idiot musclehead because I just kinda spin out and go nowhere. I guess what I'm saying is I'm done with Sully and he needs to be retired one way or another and I should step out or make a character who will interact with the world beyond putting it in a chokehold. Sorry it took me this long to say it. E:let's go with 2 and pull this band-aid off in one pull ArkInBlack fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 15:55
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Will hasn't been really ticking it off for me either, mostly because our party comp has shifted and the much larger combat maps make it harder for me to get to where I need to be and enable as a Warpriest. I was thinking about rebuilding him as something else but Will's entire gimmick pretty much relies on being a Warpriest of Oghma and him suddenly turning into a swole as gently caress archer who doesn't actually know all that much about plants and the fae wouldn't make any sense. If you're asking "Why didn't you say anything" I was the only healer at the time and I did have fun with the bit of diplomacy in the Fae city and dealing with the brigands on the road. I really lost the plot somewhere around the Arc Dungeon because there were suddenly tons of NPCs and things going on in six rooms at once and it felt very tangential to our goal of "Getting through the mountain so we can be diplomats". I'm aware that there's probably important information here for us to learn, like the fact that Sekja is apparently a faerie lich, but the posting delay death spiral has hit us hard since we got here. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 16:16
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I'll cop to being lax about posting discipline several times, either for legitimate life reasons or just because I wasn't feeling particularly inspired. I'll also cop to having built a character to win combats. I go through cycles of being very happy with that creation and bored of how limited it is. As a DM, I like those kinds of characters on paper because they challenge me to find the weakness and up the difficulty. For the record, Hope's weakness is longevity; she's all burst and marginal sustain. But I also understand how that can rob the fun from other characters, because of situations like the Arc one where things lined up perfectly. It was never my intention to take the fun out of the game from that perspective. I only rob Doomy of his joy in other ways. I'd like to tick this off as a successful campaign, and my choice is definitely the expo dump and combats, but I've also been playing for months less than Kurieg, Ark, and Wahad and if they're bored of their characters, even those combats are going to be forced and unsatisfying.
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Aug 25, 2016 17:59
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I was thinking of using option #2 at a slower pace, I.e. posting a summary of what happens and asking for very general party reactions to shape the outcome and to make decisions. It was a good campaign and I would like to finish with closure. Sorry for the two newbies coming in so close to the end, my original plan was Arckuarot and then the last dungeon and fights so we were near the end already. I'd also like to post some DM insights as I go. If you have any questions you'd like answered lemme have them as I post through to the end. Doomykins fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Aug 30, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 18:23
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I'm still here and still willing/wanting to continue, but some of my hesitation comes from the fact that while I'm perfectly willing to barrel ahead and poke things, I understand that other people want to get on with it and fear that I might be wasting their time and pushing us further along the death spiral. The other problem is that since this dungeon involves a heavy amount of exploration, it adds another layer of feedback required. Compare something like a fight or a conversation where it's a quick back-and-forth of interaction, exploration scenes also involve traveling to a specific part of the dungeon, inspecting things, learning about them, and then taking action so that something can happen. This is compounded by the problem that all the different skills for exploring and information gathering are on different characters under different players with different schedules (some have the knowledge skills, while others have the sensory skills while others have the mobility/interaction skills, so every time we need a different tool it takes time). We unlocked/opened the door, and but we didn't get any new information out of it other than "it's now open", necessitating that we make posts about how we look through/walk through the door, which is an extra step that can take more time depending on people's individual schedules. I understand part of that may be due to hesitation on your part because you understandably don't want to put more of your time into making maps for a game experiencing some fatigue problems (and also technical problems on your end). Doomykins posted:Last week Aramanthia posted that she would open a door to one of the side paths. I also had one of the side doors break to try and prompt some posting. A week later(today) Kardrum decided to check it out. Aramanthia and Hope made Thievery attempts on the 19th, we got the results on the 23rd, and Kardrum and Aramanthia made attempts to check the room out on the 25th (today, about 30 hours after the post). I understand you had difficulties on your end and are frustrated with the pace like everyone else, but in fairness I think you're over-exaggerating the time gap here and we've technically been on a good pace (a post within every 72 hours) since you got back. (Other problem with locked doors is that we kind of suck at them- our highest Thievery is Lucan at +13 untrained, then Hope at +12 untrained, then Aramanthia at +10 untrained with no Dex stat, so we're not exactly going to ace many of these checks, but then there's always hoping for good luck before resorting to brute force. Though if Aramanthia had the Bard Of All Trades feat I suppose she could be mediocre enough to do almost anything untrained) (Also, I think I tried to open the door to Extraplanar Processing instead of Geothermal Processing since there was a giant in there and we could either talk to it or fight it- either way might get things moving again) I'm not really upset about how the first Arc fight went because it was one of those things where the dice aligned and Hope burned most of her dailies to create a memorable scene (for me, at least), though my only concern about encounters so far is this: your attack bonuses feel very high, with +25 to hit showing up against a party whose highest defenses are 30 on the toughest members of the party. It's something you'd normally find on a monster about six levels above the party's theoretical operating level. I don't know if this is an intentional design to create bloodier fights due to more attacks landing on the PCs than not.
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Aug 25, 2016 18:30
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I dragged my feet on mapmaking for the last three days because I've had a lot of trouble sleeping for the last week and on-and-off stomach problems for the last two days. I was going to power through by Friday but Kurieg's post pushed me in a direction I was considering for a long time. This was all after the hardware problems, heh. I think less than perfect exploration is fine. A two way split is three PCs and NPCs at this point, two PCs alone can cover a majority of skill checks. Something that could be easily handled with OOC thread chat and checking each other's sheets. As things got slower i probably should have had a NPC take charge and give orders but I wanted to avoid too much NPC agency... but again, would've been preferable to a slowdown in hindsight. Also, getting less than perfect checks generally isn't a dead end. I try to avoid absolute dead ends so long as posting occurs(avoid dead ends but keep bad consequences possible, IMO. Classic DM Puzzle issue.) The +25 attack has generally represented Arc or Arc-controlled entities, of which there is usually a cap of one per encounter. The Horrors and Statues and Neogi and Hulks were all significantly lower. Not to mention a six pc party plus helpful npcs. Arc should be insanely dangerous. :P
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Aug 25, 2016 19:03
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Sorry for ripping off the bandage over your gouged out demon eyes I guess. e: also sorry for torturing that metaphor until it isn't useful anymore. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Aug 25, 2016 19:05
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I was not prepared.
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Aug 25, 2016 19:20
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Alright I've been ruminating on this a bit and I'll begin the expedited wrap up Tuesday Afternoon/Night. Sorry for the wait!
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Aug 30, 2016 03:25
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 14:38 |
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Sorry for the huge delay, I've been having more trouble than I expected putting together a summary that feels satisfying. It's also too easy to reach the end of my list of daily errands and decide I can put this one off some more since it's "over." Will have something going forward in the next few days.
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Sep 17, 2016 04:00
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