May 2022: Ukraine Wins (Eurovision)

While their conflict continues into Day 95 against Russia (who continue to do some odd things like accuse Israel of supporting Neo-Nazis while at the same time sounding like Nazis themselves on State TV with corn stealing plans), Ukraine has emerged victorious in this years Eurovision song contest proving the massive worldwide support they are currently receiving as their entry - which was 200 points in the lead from the second place - was far from the best performance around.

The rest of the field contained some vegans, instructional cleaning, mandatory eye candy, a nice but worryingly murder-suicide song, the third return of Moldova's Zdob si Zdub, and the Rasmus. The UK also finally got up to second place with a worthy entry after years of languishing down the bottom with no votes, and Azerbaijan's Fade to Black was impressively simple but artsy.

I do think they need to establish some better rules though because one of my pet peeves is when someone is "playing" an instrument, then stops but that instrument can still be heard. Lots of the entries do this, but they've taken it a step further with masks, and I'm not talking about ones that people remove during the performance... checkout the hilarious "Give that wolf a banana" by Subwoolfer. Everyone is fully masked up - guess that saves them having to lip sync? That also means they really can just go hard on choreo if you don't need to be seen singing / playing an instrument in the first place!

Gotta hand it to the Ukranian winners though, they managed to make this crazy contest another revenue stream for purchasing weapons of war.

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Batwoman and DC's Legends of Tomorrow

Two more Arrowverse shows have come to an end.

Batwoman

This heavily LGBTQ+ three season show features the titular Batwoman as the ladies that take the mantle try to juggle fighting randomly assorted villains while maintaining a drama filled personal life filled with occasionally stupid friends and acquaintances who combined have around two inches worth of depth. The villain Alice (Rachel Skarsten) is the stand out, but that is no where near close enough to gain a recommendation from me. It's ridiculous how so many shows keep tip toeing around Batman too. If you want a Batman inspired show, just make a Batman series?

Both are silly but only one is good.

DC's Legends of Tomorrow

After a floundering first season of finding their feet, the remaining six seasons really hit the right note for me with absurd humor and a pretty regular rotating door of characters, aboard a time ship of all things, mainly led by the wonderful Sara Lance (Caity Loitz) and contains surprisingly great fight choreography and occasional moments of heavy feels. Obviously the humor will be the main hit or miss factor for each viewer, and while this had become my favorite Arrowverse show others might find it totally stupid as it is the least serious of the Arrowverse catalogue. Test out the waters if you like, all I know is I'll definitely miss this one.

TYOV: Plague Bearer

[Excerpts from Thousand Year Old Vampire]

Something is wrong with this blood. Is this another trick by the people after me? No, its not them. It's me, and I soon learn I’m the one spreading the disease. I don’t even have to touch the humans, just walking through a crowd soon makes them gag, cough up blood, and get violently ill. This is a perfect time to visit the Iscariot Divisions local headquarters.

Yep, I'm a Hellsing fan.

With my pursuers dealt with I can take the time to enjoy feasting on some villagers during a storm. One of them catches onto me and organizes a posse to chase me down, forcing me to hide in the mud at the bottom of a river. During their victory celebration I sneak back in and steal this hero's sword and his wife.

It is only later that I realize the entire episode with the village was just my imagination. While the village itself was real, none of the inhabitants survived my disease. Nor my hunger.

Finally realizing that I can only truly be free of the rot if I return to being mortal, I spend the next few years searching for a cure and find one offered by a wandering gypsy, suspiciously immune to my illness, in the form of a magic potion. Will this actually work or will it instead destroy me entirely? There is only one way to find out. I uncork the bottle and drink.

And that's the end of Gabriel Sol's story.

TYOV: Sylvie Cote

[Excerpts from Thousand Year Old Vampire]

With the fur trade booming, it is easy to shadow and prey on foolish hunters that either wronged me or have the misfortune of being vulnerable when I’m hungry. In doing so I inadvertently made young Sylvie Cote an orphan and decide to raise her myself, teaching her defenses against creatures like me. When she comes of age, I give her an old Aztec axe for her own protection – even if she one day must use it on me.

After so many years I am surprised when an elderly Cantor Infierni arrives in town on some church business. With all my hate resurfacing, I can’t help but drown the old man in the river. When the murder investigators begin asking questions, Sylvie works it out and after a brief battle forces me to admit my guilt. I am arrested and sentenced to hang, but before I can see if that actually can kill me a simple bribe is enough to get me out of gaol.

Feeding on woodland animals is barely enough to satiate me anymore and in my weakened state I am set upon by a cloaked hunter who must have had a terrible teacher. The thirst gets the better of me as I fly into a deathy frenzy and when I come too, I find the hunter to be a familiar woman that lies bleeding out in my arms. For some reason I feel that she is precious to me but I cannot remember why. Unable to let her die, I turn her into a vampire.

When I saved Mariana from the thugs I didn’t know she was Cantor Infierni’s grand niece, nor did I realize she was a member of the Iscariot Division. She knew what I was. Who I was. I decided to flee once more – this time across the sea to England.

Despite giving them the slip numerous times, the Iscariot Division led by Mariana Inferni was onto me. She taunts me by saying they destroyed my “daughter” Sylvie. I don't know who that is.

TYOV: Gabriel Sol

[Excerpts from Thousand Year Old Vampire]

We were hunting for the creature that destroyed the village, but it found my squad first. I managed to only wound it before it used its incredible speed to crush my chest with a simple punch. As I crumbled before it, I remember looking up at its terrible visage as blood from its wound dripped onto my face.

After learning about the incident from Cortes, Catalina sailed across the sea to try save my soul. She didn’t accept what I had become, kept wishing for her old husband back, kept calling me a monster. It was too much, so just for her I became the monster she saw me as.

No way I'm getting anything historically accurate. :P

Now I set forth alone to track down the beast again, abandoning Cortes and the rest of the conquistadors in hopes that succeeding in this quest would absolve me of my trespasses in the eyes of God. The duel was more  more even this time until the beast broke my blade and fled the battle, leaving me equally broken. The only thing I gained in this fight is that I now can more easily blend into the shadows. A new gift from my sire.

I use it to defeat Ohtli, an Aztec warrior who was as equally cursed as I - taking his axe and eating his heart in victory. As my humanity continues to fade the church sends Cantor Infierni of the Iscariot Division to investigate. It is too dangerous to stay so I slip away far to the North and join a New French colony called Canada (now known as Quebec).

Thousand Year Old Vampire

Prepare to forget.

Now here is a very different take of a single player game (though there are options to multiplayer it) where your main activity will be... writing! The book (or handy PDF file currently free on itch.io) also recommends writing on a word processor / laptop / computer over a diary for good reason. There will be a lot of strike-throughs and erasing. Ideally you also need a D6 and a D10 but you can just google "roll a D6 and D10" if you don't have the physical dice.

As the title suggests, you create a vampire and then simply follow prompts through the book to write about what happens to you. These are stored in almost single line sentences called "experiences" and you can put three similar experiences together to form a memory. Which you can only have FIVE of. Once you need more, its time to begin forgetting... which is great. And crazy. I love that the entire tone is set by the player. It can be as hilarious or dark as you want.  

Another excellent quirk is that prompts tell you to gain or lose skills, resources, and characters which you define yourself. Gain a skill and a resource might mean the vampire is now "incredibly handsome after falling on his face (skill) and has an umbrella (resource)". Create a character means just that. You then can write these things into your experiences - but beware, almost everything and everyone is lost in the passage of time.

Prompts can and will just as easily say lose a skill. Lose a resource. Kill a character. If you run out of skills or resources, you basically die / game over too. Definitely a strange one, but if you like creative writing you should definitely give this a try.

I'm putting up some excerpts from my vampires to give you an idea of what it might look like (though I think I'm actually too wordy):

Excerpt 1 - Gabriel Sol
Excerpt 2 - Sylvie Cote
Excerpt 3 - Plague Bearer

Neverwinter Online: Draconic Rage (and Siege lock)

Using the least amount of effort to keep players in game.

If Draconic Rage isn't the least inspired content Neverwinter Online has offered so far, it certainly is the laziest (or thriftiest) development wise. "A World First" is an odd title to this first chapter which has zero story. While similar in format to Echoes of Prophecy where you are trying to fill a progress bar to unlock loot before time runs out, Cryptic has taken the approach of not adding any extra filler in this time. No extra quest boards or NPCs in town to visit. All you have to do is run skirmishes and dungeons.

This is great it you already do that anyway to get your daily astral diamonds as it means your usual grind already counts as participation! For those of us who don't do those however, bleh! The time investment to run those dungeons is annoying, and I'm not sure the prizes are worth dragging myself into skirmishes to clear it. I'm wondering if Cryptic is regretting their decision to kill some of their content because even me - who doesn't play these much at all - finds the handful of skirmishes quite repetitive. I wish they had a bigger pool of variety to choose from, then I remember that they DID.

Just to hammer home the point that they want you to login and stay in for metrics, the latest Dragon Siege event has a notable difference: the "daily" defeat 2 dragons and beat 3 heroic encounters now fails if you log off mid way and forces you to start again where as before I could happily jump between my two characters to finish those gradually as I saw fit. I don't know who keeps making the decisions there, but they are doing a great job in making their MMO steadily inferior to everything else.