State of Play: USA aligns with Russia?

It's now day 1103 of the Russia's two day special operation in Ukraine. While the battle rages on there it seems Russia is making some gains outside that theater, seemingly with the help of relatively newly re-elected USA president Donald Trump. In just around two months of his second time in office the USA has held "Peace Talks" with Russia without Ukrainian participation and decided to halt aid going to Ukraine after President Trump publicly clashed with Ukrainian president Zelenskyy at the Oval Office.

On top of this his high tariffs on Canada, Mexico (he also renamed their gulf) and China as well as sanctions relief for Russia some speculate he's building "the bridge" to trade primarily with the Russians in the future. This has sparked more than a few interesting comments of "Trump is a Russian agent" and "Congrats to Russia on winning the cold war". I suppose we will see if and how this changes the battle field but one thing's for sure: Putin must be pretty happy right now.

August 2024: Countries clash... in the Olympics!

We're more than half way through the games now but prior to the start Israeli athletes had been threatened a repeat of Munich. Israel's response was to take out some of the leaders of their known enemies and just get on with it. Meanwhile in the USA someone had tried to off Trump who is running for President again, but it was current President Biden who pulled out from running for his second term, finally understanding that he might be too old.

That shooter wasn't Olympics worthy unlike this pair (Kim Yeji and Yusuf Dikec).

Not all is well in the Olympics though with complaints ranging from uncomfortable beds to the Seine river (used for some swimming events) being so dirty its causing athletes to fall sick. Russian troops in Ukraine know all about bad water as they have a shortage of it, resorting to drinking whatever they can find. To be fair they might be dying too quickly to care about it anyway, but are still gaining ground regardless. On the water itself it's still humorous that the Russian navy is getting sunk by a country without one.

Some of this is made possible by drones. These things can do everything it seems, from spying on Olympic soccer training to killing helicopters. The UK has recognized the threat at has made an anti-drone laser system (which probably doesn't work well in fog, snow or rain but neither would flying drones). The crafty Ukranians solution is just to shotgun them from an old Yak-52. On a random tangent, I checked if someone made a laser to kill mosquitos and the answer is yes, but it currently isn't practical. Damn.

Meanwhile more bad news for Ukraine as Hungary is upset Ukraine is blocking their oil (despite them blocking aid to Ukraine for over two years) and NATO has also deemed Ukraine too corrupt to join them. Perhaps Russia's joint venture with China to establish a moon base, possibly in Mare Tranquillitatis Pit if they can claim it first, might take some heat off? With the ISS being retired in a few years that would be a pretty big achievement.

Not sure how China plans to bank roll this given their current financial troubles, but maybe it involves assimilating the Tibetans? They've still got around 10 years to work it out anyway. Not sure the way Thailand is handling their finance would be the answer. They're simply handing out digital money to citizens!

Pathfinder: The Ruins of Raven's Watch II

[Part of the Party Time journal] 

We find Thelsikar in an unholy chamber beyond the magically sealed door next to the large statues. Juris had previously examined (and fondled *snicker*) these but other than knowing they are magical we couldn't work out how they worked, until our conversation with the dying cleric in the cells. Doing a fantasy version of the macarena opens the door, and puts us into battle against Thelsikar himself! As I used all my dice rolling luck earlier I am hopeless in this battle but at least can tank some hits from this dagger wielding madman.

Mom eventually backstabs him to death with her new magic rapier but a large stone gargoyle then comes to life and carries Thelsikar's corpse off, ignoring my attempts at pissing it off by burning an important looking book (indeed, I think I only angered our wizard Juris who was keen on book collection). We give chase but can't catch up, especially as we run into a lone skeletal champion who blocks the way.

My dice rolling continues to suck, and mom's opening strike with her undead slaying weapon misses. The skeleton doesn't miss and mom goes down. Out of spells Juris comes in with his quarterstaff while Rose revives mom with her wand of cure light wounds and mom's next attack on the skelebum is massive, but not enough. The champion downs Juris next and with things looking grim I suggest Rose uses the healing wand on the skeleton (I remembered in Pathfinder: Kingmaker this was a thing so DL allows it, for now at least). It's a touch based attack which is much easier and she tags it on her second attempt, healing for the maximum value and destroying the scum bag with plenty of time to stabilize our wizard and get him back to his feet.

Alas the gargoyle and Thelsikar are long gone so we just loot the dungeon for all its worth, finding a handy bag of holding to help carry it all, and Juris finds proof the Lamashtu cultists were doing something to harden black dragon scale. He couldn't retrieve all the intel though as the pyromaniac warrior (me) was setting many things alight in an attempt to stop their research. Oops.

Pathfinder: The Ruins of Raven's Watch

[Part of the Party Time journal] 

Two weeks after kicking Black Fang out of his lair, the dragon was spotted again flying around the old ruins of Raven's Watch prison so the party is sent to investigate and find the place to be less abandoned than initially hoped. While there's not much on the surface, stairs down lead to a well lit complex guarded by easily defeated goblins and their pet dire rats, and much tougher priests of Lamashtu whose aura of negative energy is annoying to deal with. Rose, our cleric, does a good job keeping everyone upright in those fights (and we need a rest in between)!

These cultists also have a torture chamber full of ghouls who Juris is lucky to dodge while they are being cleared out, and some shambling zombies (who have that annoying -5 damage resistance like skeletons) wandering the jail area. A dying (but super talkative) cleric here says the Lamashtu scum have been experimenting on them and soon he too would be turning into a zombie. He also gives a hint about a magically sealed door near some gigantic statues and then accepts the sword (death) instead of accepting the healing potion I offer him.

The only other prisoner here is Doomhauld Troomph, a large orange ogre (ogre zombie?) with a book full of crimes that he claims are lies in between demanding to be set free to build a wall to make the swamps great again for big wins. We leave DL's comedic relief character locked there and will let the authorities decide what to do with him later. Instead we focus on a large central pit in the prison whose lid I remove. Dropping a torch down indicates a long drop right into a grey ooze. On a ledge half way down is a sparkly magical item, but before I can deploy my rope Juris uses mage hand to simply nab the thing: a +1 rapier of undead slaying which goes to our rogue (mom). We reseal the pit and then move on to try locate the boss of this place... some dude named Thelsikar.

Pathfinder Kingmaker - Cursed Contagion

[Part of the Cursed story line]

The arrival of crazed beasts from portals at a cursed hill has citizens worried so new regent Lander invites delegations for a hunt! This all goes well until one of the attendants suddenly explodes into an owl bear? Upon investigation Jhod and Tristian discover this is due to portal seeds being ingested from the river and Kesten leads the investigation to a cult comprised mainly of stupid goblins intentionally spreading the contagion (because absolutely no one boils water before drinking it in fantasy realms).

Stupid contagion spreading goblins come in many forms.

His inside man goblin Nok-Nok reveals that the seeds come from high in the mountains (not the cursed hill) and are travelling down the river to the capital! They quickly rush to its defense as many citizens explode into horrible creatures that need slaying. One particularly large owlbear crushes Nok-Nok underfoot before order is restored.

While this happens Baron Siegfried leads his team to the source discovering it to be two giant plants, one blooming in a cave and the other blooming the world of fairies. To defeat it they must torch both at the same time so Siegfried, Octavia and Bouquet fight the fairy version while Valerie, Ekun and his wolf take the cave version. Alas Octavia is eaten by the fairy version of the plant but there is no time to save her as the cave team set their version on fire. The baron does the same and burns the horrible flora (and Octavia) to ash. He will never forget her screams.

With the threat ended there is some time to regroup and rebuild, until lady Jamandi Aldori tasks the baron with finding out what has happened to the neighboring land of Varnhold... whose citizens all seem to have gone missing.

Today I Smiled: Quiet Easterling

Hi all! It's going to be quiet here for a few days over the Easter weekend as I'm off on a small holiday! Hope you have a safe and happy one! Since you took the time to stop by, here are some random links for your amusement until I return:

Space X's reusable rockets!
Earth Wind Fire Map.
Jetsun Pema, currently the world's youngest queen.
Trump Criticizes himself (without realizing) on reddit.
Sir Nils Olav. He probably outranks you. He's also a penguin.
Honey Badgers are resistant to machetes, spears and arrows.
"Don't just stand there, come in!" Ants play Stalker too.
Chipmusic from Toni Leys - "Through a cardboard World".