Interludes

Still Living

Oh, hello.

With The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim coming just around the corner (okay, it’s half a year away, but it’ll be here before you know it), I’ve decided I should, you know, maybe bring some closure to this little blog that has been dribbling along intermittently since 2007 (!!!).

Sorry for all the delays, once again, and thanks to anyone who is still hanging in there.

Last night, I reinstalled Oblivion, and restored all my Nondrick saved games and mods (I’d uninstalled everything a while back to try out some sort of full-conversion mod thing that I wound up never playing). It crashed regularly for about a half-hour, but thanks to some inspired tweaking and the incredibly useful Oblivion Mod Manager (Thanks, OMM, you’re a damn miracle), I finally got everything running, loaded up my last save, and once again peered into the ugly face of Nondrick P. Cairk’tir.

He’s still there, waiting patiently. Beaker, too. They’re both fine and ready to continue, and so am I.

Here’s a picture from last night.

So. The blog will ride on again, picking up wherever it left off. Not sure when the next real post will be, but maybe in a week or so. I will guide this experiment to some sort of ending, and I will make an effort to do so before the release of Skyrim in November. That is my goal.

Thanks again for sticking around (if anyone has indeed stuck around), and I hope to continue the non-adventure shortly. Meanwhile, my wife and I are doing some pop-culture blogging over at my new(ish) site, Screen Cuisine.

Interludes

Nondrone P. Carrikter

Just for fun, and so people would stop asking me about it, I created a distant future version of Nondrick in Fallout 3 today.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make him nearly as goofy looking as Nondrick. There’s simply no “Trout” setting on the face creation tool. But, I did my best.

As I mentioned on my 1Fort blog, this does not mean I am doing, or planning to do, a Fallout 3 blog. Not in the slightest. Even though it appears fate would like me to, because check out what I found on a dead Feral Ghoul.

Even in the distant post-apcalyptic future, you can make a silverware set from the leavings of dead monsters. Some things never change.

Interludes

Oh Hai

Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry.

Been caught up in Spore and other things lately — this weekend I shall fire Oblivion back up and continue Nondrick’s quest adventure aimless walking around.

Interludes

Interlude with a Vampire

This is your character.

This is your character on porphyric hemophilia.

Any questions?

My main character in Oblivion (who you can see in the first link above) was named Murderin’ Jim. I created a custom class for him called “Murderer”. He was, as you might imagine, not the nicest guy. I put him through the Thieves Guild missions and the Assassins Guild missions, and by the time he was finished he was not only not nice, but was extremely powerful. He was also a vampire for a while.

It’s fun being a vampire in the game, and I encourage everyone to try it, even for just a few levels. At first, it seems like a hassle: you take sun damage, you have to be extremely careful about fast-traveling, and if you don’t feed for a few days you really start looking ghoulish (see the second link above), which makes people refuse to talk to you or even attack you. It makes it hard to do business or get new quests.

It does come with a number of perks, though, in the form of increased strength, invisibility, night-vision and life-detect, charm spells, etc.

I was thinking it might be interesting for Nondrick to become a vampire. There are some pretty big hurdles, though. First off, there are only a couple ways to become a vampire. First, if you play the assassin’s guild missions, you are offered the opportunity, but there’s no way Nondrick will be sneaking around killing people. Or even sneaking around being nice to people. It’s not really his thing.

You can also become a vampire though combat — if a vampire attacks you, there’s a small chance you’ll contract the disease. You can cure it easily enough at the outset — getting blessed at an altar will cure all your ills — but if you don’t, in a few days you’ll become a vampire.

Curing the disease after you’ve become a vampire is a huge headache due to the quest attached to it, and Nondrick doesn’t do quests. Not that it matters, since there’s relatively little chance that Nondrick will ever come in contact with vampires anyway, because he doesn’t do caverns and forts, either.

So, just for kicks, I thought I’d save a new game and enter in the cheat codes to give him vampirism, just to see how he’d look as the disease progressed.

And here is the result. Not a good look for a guy who is already not a good-looker.