#and Smiler was immediately like 'what do you mean ANY SALT'

[victorluvsalice]

The "Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur's Gate III" Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection

(Don't worry too much about spoilers -- most of this is early-game stuff, with just a couple of things relating to stuff in Act II)

--

Alice: [having just met Lae'zel on the Nautiloid and been informed of the situation with the parasites] And who are you, exactly?

Lae'zel: Who am I? Your only chance of survival.

[later, after the imps have been fought, and everyone's met back up and freed Shadowheart:]

Victor: [introducing himself as they get back on the move] I'm Victor.

Alice: I'm Alice. [pointing to Lae'zel] And this is Only.

Lae'zel: ?

Alice: Well, you've given me nothing else to call you.

--

Shadowheart: [after being informed the trio live in a world without a sun and that's why they're being so weird about the sky being blue] I -- are you Shar's Chosen? Is this some sort of test? Am I not supposed to believe you when you say you like sunlight? I can totally not believe you if that's the case!

Alice: ...I feel like we've missed something.

Smiler: [lying down and sunbathing] Yeah, it's in the sky above us.

--

Withers: What is the worth of a single mortal's life?

Victor: I -- I would say priceless. You can't put a value on life itself.

Alice: I say it's worth whatever you're willing to pay to defend it. Only the owner of said life can set the value.

Smiler: I'm pretty sure the standard rate of assassins in Duskwall is four Coin minimum -- not sure how that translates to your money.

Victor & Alice: [look at Smiler]

Smiler: What? It's a legitimate answer!

--

Withers: I shall be here, in thy camp, for whenever thou has need of my services.

Alice: Oh? What kind of services do you offer?

Withers: A mending of the threads between life and death. Should thou or any of thy compatriots perish, I will cleave soul to body once more.

Victor: Cleave soul to -- wait a minute, isn't that how you get vampires?

Astarion: [rearranging his tent, pauses and gives them a really weird look]

--

Alice: [during one of the meetings with Raphael] You do seem like a very powerful devil.

Raphael: [preening] I consider myself no slouch, yes.

Smiler: [cheerfully] I bet your blood could power an entire city block for a month!

Raphael: [blink blink] ...thank...you?

--

Strange Ox: Ah, you're addressing me. A humble ox. How...quaint.

Smiler: [tilting their head] What are you?

Strange Ox: As I said, a humble ox. I don't know why you're --

Smiler: No, I mean, what's an ox?

Strange Ox: ...

--

Smiler: [standing behind a table lined with eight samples of the same Potion Of Glorious Vaulting, with Victor, Alice, and the companions all gathered around the front of it] Thank you all for coming to this blind taste test, where we will be disproving the idiotic notion that you only need one specific ingredient per potion to create something that does what you want it to. In front of you are eight individual Potions of Glorious Vaulting, each made with a different type of Ashes -- I would like you each to drink one, test the effects, then rate it based on how strong the effects were, how long they lasted, and how tasty it was.

Wyll: You care about the taste?

Smiler: Of course! If we're going to be making potions, the least we could do is make them pleasant to consume! We're working toward maximum happiness here! Now everybody pick one and let's get jumping!

--

Gale: [realizing the trio isn't with them as they move through the mind flayer colony under Moonrise] Hold -- where's Victor, Alice, and Smiler?

Karlach: I think I saw them looking at a cage in the last room.

Lae'zel: Chk -- they should know by now that we cannot pause and look at every little thing that --

Smiler: [rejoining the group carrying a certain intellect devourer, beaming, as Victor and Alice come up behind them] Hey everyone!

Lae'zel: [stares at the brain] ...

Astarion: Why are you carrying an intellect --

Lae'zel: THAT. THING. SURVIVED?!

Us: Hello Angry Friend!

Lae'zel: I'M NOT YOUR FRIEND

--

Aylin: [after everyone's agreed to meet up with her and Isobel again later at the camp] Now -- you will leave us. We must take succour in one another's bodies and words.

Isobel: Aylin. We'll see you later.

Victor: [hiding a smile] Of course.

Alice: [biting back a chuckle] Later.

Smiler: [big beaming grin and a double thumbs up] Enjoy the hot lesbian sex!

Victor: Smiler!

Aylin: I intend to.

Isobel: AYLIN.

[ridingthatbike]

Those Poor Kids

A soggy March week on the Olympic Peninsula

Back in the fall, I individually asked some friends if they wanted to go adventuring over the winter. Becca said “well, I’m pretty busy till the end of February, but we could do a pretty inexpensive trip if you want to come out here…” And so my spring plan was hatched: an extended Pacific Northwest Friend Tour, through Seattle, Portland, and Moscow ID, centered around a chance to backpack on the western coast of the Olympic Peninsula. Because we all fell into the Trance of the Outdoor Gear Store, it wasn’t quiiiiiite as inexpensive as planned, but we also impulse-bought year-long backcountry camping permits so I guess I’ll just have to come back! One of my goals for this trip was to get a little more comfortable with the ocean, which I find to be moderately terrifying. At the park office, a ranger gave us a tide chart, confirmed that we had the right maps, and warned us of mud slides and reminded us that it's mandatory to store food in a bear can. My heart jumped a little at all of this: I’ve never needed to camp with a bear can before (always either strung food up, or took a gamble if risk was low, and once or twice I’ve had access to a bearproof box too). I wasn’t actually worried, but it was a good reminder of the whole safety checklist: I’d only really been focusing on the ocean!

The maps have tide markings in them, identifying how low the tide needs to be, in order to round the headlands on the beach. If the tide is above that level, you can either wait (not always possible, because in some places, the beach is completely underwater at high tide, sweeping against the cliffs), or you can climb up the cliffs to an overland trail and descend back to the beach on the other side of the danger spot – possible but not always wise! Map study and tide chart study is important, as is being able to accurately estimate your pace - extra tricky on sand and in mud. We had initially planned a 4 night trek down the coast, but it rained so much that some of the streams would be impossible to ford safely (though I did read a trip report describing a waist-deep creek crossing in January as “no big deal”). Since base weather conditions already presented some risk of hypothermia, we shifted our plans to do two nights at Third Beach, and two nights at Shi Shi Beach to skip some fording.

The drive to the coast was wet but beautiful, and there was a bit of snow in the trees above Soap Body Lake aka Lake Crescent, increasing its majesty and allure by at least 200%. We were astounded to find fresh hail pebbles covering the trail! The hike down though the forested section was as lovely and mossy and green and drippy and rainforesty as I remembered it from 7 years ago. We slowly picked our way through the jumble of driftwood trees and onto the beach into the bluest, clearest, sunniest day! The rain had stopped! We had absolutely no right to such glorious weather in the first week of March and relished it with an appropriate degree of wonder and joy.

We dropped our packs and wandered down the beach to choose a campsite, a cozy spot up against the cliff. We knew the weather couldn’t possibly last, so we set up the tent and rainfly, with an extra rainfly on top (a hammock rainfly I picked up after the demoralizing experience of cooking dinner in the rain, and had thus far only used for wind protection - we put it through its paces on this trip!). Dan brought a hatchet and managed to back out a few nails from a board (why was there a board with nails?) and knock em into a huge driftwood tree for perfect tarp guyline placement. Extremely satisfying!

Dan gathered wood and built a fire (How? It had rained nonstop for two weeks! Well done, sir!) while Becca and I filtered water from a nearby stream with a really nice gravity filter that I covet, and cooked an extra impressive dinner -- my standard peanut noodles, but with fresh yuzu from Becca and Dan’s garden instead of gas station lemon juice packets.

I swear this was actually a lovely place to get water, but Becca looks like she's a hobbit, hiding in the brush!

Some good fire-makin' skills on display here! We had toasted exactly one marshmallow on the glorious fire when it started to rain and we darted back to the tent. But it sounded funny. It wasn't rain at all! We had a full scale hail storm! I cackled as I scooped handfuls of perfect hail pebbles off of the tarp as it started to sag under the weight. The coast is full of surprises! We had felt so proud of our tent setup, but the hail turned to rain and the wind changed direction, and eventually Dan got pretty damp and miserable, so we resolved to improve the setup the next day. In a brief pause in the rain, we all got up for an evening pee and were absolutely stunned to see brilliant stars through a few breaks in the clouds. So bright, so clear, so unexpected!

In the morning rain, we re-strung the tarps - three layers instead of two, with a protected cooking area in a brand new back room behind the tent. Hell yes! Dan and I lowered the floor by scooping out sand so we could all stand up underneath the tarps, too. We were all very pleased with ourselves!

Dan looks utterly miserable but was a Very Good Sport.

Probably not the first structural use of a washed-up buoy, right?

Pretty good second attempt! It poured rain all day. All day. By that, I mean, it never stopped raining even for a minute in all of the daylight hours. We hiked down the beach a ways, then climbed up some ropes and ladders to the top for the first overland (I failed to take photos of this for some reason, but trust that it’s dramatic and exciting), and while on top, we kept hearing a long low foghorn sound that mystified us. It sounded so regular that we thought it was a machine at first, or an alarm (please let that not be a tsunami siren!) but we paused and listened hard for a while and realized it was a bird call! We looked it up later, and I’m almost positive it was a Great Horned Owl! We couldn’t hear it down on the beach because the surf is so loud, and identifying the direction of a sound was impossible for me because the sounds were bouncing off of the cliffs around us in these rounded coves. We started to head up the second overland, but realized it was a slow but definitively active mudslide. Becca found the rope and gave it a shot, but immediately sunk nearly to her knee into the mud. Dan and I stood still, contemplating the slow mud rivulets, and realized how recently fallen the huge piles of earth were, and how precarious several cliff top trees were. There are a lot of ways I’d be willing to die, but I’m not aiming for drowning in a mudslide. We retreated and ate lunch in a little cave-like rock formation to get out of the rain, marveling over the rate of change on the coast. It’s easy to get down about the human impact on the planet, but the ocean is and has always been eating away at the land. This is the origin of the driftwood we all appreciate so much. Everything is always changing. Third Beach will never again be just like how we experienced it on this day. It certainly doesn't give me any more comfort with the ocean (or humanity), but getting to contextualize my point of view is valuable.

Becca goes for it.

Becca says "this is really not smart." In the cold wet weather, we didn’t expect to see another soul, but we encountered a group of 7 backpackers, fully suited up in rain gear and pack covers. One was smiling, and the rest looked joyless. We chatted with the smiler for a few minutes, and learned that it was a wilderness therapy group, that they circle the peninsula for 8 to 12 weeks, and that the campers were not permitted salt for their oatmeal. Every time we used salt, and every time the wind bit us, we all found ourselves thinking “those poor kids!” It became a way to express our gratitude for our lives, for food, for dry socks, for all the privileges and love and luck we have experienced. The thought of 8 weeks of rainy camping is enough to test me to my very central fiber, and I am a person who chooses to camp in the rain for fun! Tough buncha kids. They are really gonna stick in my memory. Back at camp, we made rehydrated pouch dinners, selected primarily because we thought it was funny, but it turns out that in cold weather, holding a hot bag like a lil baby under our coats for 20 minutes is a real treat! The food tasted pretty decent too. We were pretty punchy by the evening, and burst out laughing at every turn over things like Extreme Foaming Toothpaste Tablets that took Becca by surprise and made her look rabid. The wind picked up and became ferocious, and the sky was dark and heavy and foreboding, and it was the loudest night I have ever experienced. Hard to express what it felt like, and the contrast of the drama of the setting and our inability to stop laughing made for a surreal evening. While we were careful about the bear can, I definitely got a little lax the second night since it was stormy, and damn if I didn’t hear a scrabbly critter sound outside the tent. I hollered into the darkness and didn't see anything when I went out to investigate. But in the light of day, the results of my laziness were obvious: my spatula was nibbled all the way around. File under: girl, you know better. Onward. Make better choices next time. We jubilantly and gratefully added salt to our morning oatmeal, and carefully dodged the surf as we picked our way around driftwood in a just-barely-low-enough-to-pass tide to get back to the trail head. I watched the surf easily tossing a log around and realized that my ocean fears are entirely founded. It’s so wild and vast and powerful and you can’t turn your back on it even for a second.

Dumb.

Protected camp kitchen!

Pot of oatmeal, and illicit salt.

Creepin' in the driftwood and keeping our feet out of the surf We decided we were wet enough and it was cold enough that we should dry out in a room on the Quileute reservation, where we had stayed in a memorably wonderful cabin last time. We hung up and spread out all our stuff, then took a short walk around the beach and jetty, and contemplated the tide maneuverings and necessary pace for walking out to James Island, and didn't attempt it. We visited the general store to get fixins for dinner, and settled in, played Trivial Pursuit, half-assed a wolf puzzle, took hot showers, ate JiffyPop, planned our next move, and kept thinking about those kids as the wind rattled the windows of our warm, dry, snug room.

a lovely thing for three soggy pals to see!

Who's gonna let a little rain and fog get her down? Not this guy! Photo by Dan. The next morning, we first visited Cape Flattery, the northwesternmost point of the contiguous US, where we read an incredibly dramatic sign about the Siege of the Sea, warning us of the power of the ocean and noting that the caves in the cove were formed by erosion and thus the ground we were standing on will eventually drop into the sea. I think my overall level of comfort with the ocean has decreased significantly by this point. But it was an unbelievable spot: We stood in the drizzle for a solid twenty minutes, watching a pair of bald eagles and a pair of sea otters, feeling like the luckiest people on earth. Sea otters! We watched them roll and float around, then climb awkwardly and gracelessly onto a rock and groom each other, slide back into the water and start diving.

"soon, this place will be underwater." Terrifying but beautiful Cape Flattery.

I asked Becca and Dan to look as miserable as possible. I failed to look even vaguely discontented.

Probably I should put circles on the eagles and otters, but it doesn't matter at all -- this place is gorgeous whether you can see the critters or not! From there, we hustled up to the Makah reservation to get the permit and mud bog our way to the coast at Shi Shi, the wildest beach I’ve ever seen. It is a strange and unsettling rocky moonscape, a very flat beach backed up to a steep wooded hillside, where the high tide line is at the base of the hill: there is no beach at high tide. You can be completely trapped. But we’d studied all the distances, tide charts, and tide-dependent crossings, and knew exactly how much time we had to make it down to Point of the Arches as the tide went out, check out the tide pools, and hike back out before it got totally dark and the tide turned. We brought headlamps just in case, but nobody is especially eager to sink shin-deep into mud in the dark.

Triumphantly arriving on the beach at Shi Shi.

The beach is so flat that tide comes all the way in to the trees.

In low tide, these rows of shark-teeth rocks appear in the sand. Photo by Dan. Becca and Dan taught me what to look for and where - like that starfish don’t usually just sit flat on the bottom, as I’d imagined, they hug the undersides and edges of rocks - and how to recognize anemone when it's open (easy) and when it's closed (hard at first, then your brain clicks and it becomes easy). The temperature dropped a lot while we were on the rocks, and a freezing wind picked up, occasionally rippling the water so much that it became opaque. There was a shallow but very fast creek crossing on the beach, for which I de-booted the first time, which was a lot nicer but also slower than expected to re-boot due to sand (somehow I hadn’t considered that, having only de-and-re-booted for water crossings on dry or muddy land!).

Becca examining the route closer to the woods, Dan examining the route closer to the ocean. Ultimately, like Goldilocks, we went right across in the middle. For the second crossing, I just ran for it and managed not to have the water come up over my boots. Have I mentioned what a gaiter fan I am now? We got back to the trailhead exactly as scheduled, having tromped about ten heavy water-logged miles, feeling tired and good in our bodies, and pleased that we'd managed to make the logistics work.

Those are some cold creek-crossin' feet!

Teaching me what's in these pools. Also, so much rain gear. SO MUCH.

It's real! That limb is growing back!

Open anemone

I don't know the real name of this variety, but we called it "noodle arm."

In the late afternoon, the mist and rain and fog are beginning to obscure the headland. For somebody else, rain and wind and changed plans and bad sleep and hail and snow and sleet and critters might make for a bad trip. But me? I had a big delighted smile on my face the whole time! I am always so happy to have the opportunity for adventure, grateful that I have the skills and experience to enjoy the opportunity, and thrilled to have a chance to spend time with two old pals who are great sports and totally willing to be soggy with me.

Lake Crescent gave me one last gift on our way back to Seattle, just to drive home the point that the Olympic Peninsula is full of treasure and all it takes to find it is a willingness to be a little uncomfortable.