Lexin

It is my birthday. I’m 63.

I would have liked to go to Eastercon, which is in Belfast, but I couldn’t afford it. Spit.

My plan for today, therefore, is to play Baldur’s Gate 3 on my PlayStation.

I’ve reached the Grymforge. In the Grymforge I have discovered an automaton called Grym. And, boy, does he live down to his name.

He only takes damage when he’s been standing in lava, and takes more bludgeoning damage than any other kind. In particular, magic attacks do not appear to have much success unless they are cold based. Which, of course, means that the heat from the lava is reduced that much quicker. I spent all yesterday evening on Grym and got nowhere.

My cunning plan, which I came up with overnight, is to load a previous save and go back to the Emerald Grove. There is a reliable vendor there and I will buy a bludgeoning weapon for my whole party. With those, we might make some progress.

On the Wiki for the game there’s a method of killing Grym with one blow but it involves more hand/eye coordination than I’m capable of.

Cats

I took Smokey (my black cat) to the vet for her annual check up. She’s in good condition, but had lost 800g, meaning she’s a bit skinny, and she has a small hernia. Nobody in their right mind would give a general anaesthetic to a 19 year old cat. So we keep a careful eye on her.

The same week, I had to take Opal (the tabby) to the vet because she was walking funny. You may recall that she came to me with a broken pelvis. Her walk was reminiscent of then. She was prescribed Gabapentin and Loxicom. She does seem much better when on the medication. Which is good, because the vet said that if the problem continued we might have to x-ray her, and perhaps refer her to a specialist vet in either Liverpool or Chester.

Opal hates being in her carrier and both Liverpool and Chester are a long way from here. Carrying her in her basket on a train would suck like a vacuum cleaner.

Well, the New Year is here.

Our dinner is in the oven, and I am playing Baldur’s Gate III. aunty_marion is helping with suggestions.

Sometimes, I am a nit. The brains of a gnat.

Not long ago, the area where I live had a power cut, it lasted for four hours and I had gone to bed long before the power came back on.

I didn’t realise that the power cut had caused my heating to turn off, and had been wondering for the last ten days why I was so cold. I got the impression that the cats were also wondering why they were cold. Opal had been cuddling up to me when I put my electric throw on and Smokey has been protesting when I went to bed.

It only occurred to me today that my heating was off – I put my hand on the downstairs radiator when I’d put a ‘boost’ on my heating, and it was freezing cold. So I opened the door in the kitchen to where my combi-boiler is hiding and checked it out – it was off. That explains everything. I turned it back on again and finally I’m getting warm. That’ll teach me.

In gaming news

My friend who’s running our Sunday game seems to have taken leave of his senses. In our game today, one of our party managed to summon a Golf GTI, which then ran over some of the undead and killed them all.

We’re still fighting as a thing with antlers has turned up, and we’re being attacked by that. It could be anything, but reminds me of the thingy with antlers that appeared in the Robin Hood series done in the 80s (or was it the 90s?) by one of the independent TV companies here in the UK.

The party is moving slowly up river, doing good deeds as we go.

Last time we rescued two small children from some small cyclops. We wouldn’t have managed full grown cyclops. We also rescued a sheep, and though the parents of the children offered us gold, we said we’d take the sheep. Latest shenanigans is to buy barding (armour) for the sheep.

Good news – we went up another level and are now third.

Enjoying the fact that for the moment, and I don't know how long this will last, I'm not running any games and only participating. It's a pleasure not to have the endless preparation.

Looking forward to seeing how these games turn out.

In my game today (Sunday) the characters managed to beat one of the Big Bads by basically sending it to bed without supper. Good times!

We are at last achieving something – we’ve got ourselves locked in to the suspicious building and found a room with a weirdy altar in the middle. We have found a weird door, and are going to go through it. Thankfully, it didn’t lead to some weird alternative earth, which has happened to us before.

However, we have reached a point where we are at last taking SAN hits for the things we’ve seen. But they are just so far creepy paintings. What will happen when we find something scaly with tentacles, I don’t know.

Party are murder-hoboing their way through the lost city of Omu, and have just encountered a vault containing four ghasts. We've left their taking the ghasts on for next week.

We’re still wandering around waiting for something to happen in the Order of the Silver Twilight. We had a talk about the expanding universe, astonishing stuff for 1925. Which was then followed by drinks – alcoholic drinks, which was again astonishing (illegal) for 1925. But nothing which would give us the impression that the Order are in any way odd.

Party are still working their way through the hidden city of Omu, encountering giant wasps (they were harder than expected), su-monsters (kind of monkeys on steroids), and deinonychus (super-charged velociraptors). Party also decided to take out a big tyrannosaurus rex creature called the King of Feathers before it could attack them when they were low on spells and hit points. Turned out to be a good move.