#though it spawned from such a silly moment in game xD

[safrona-shadowsun]

Send me a '★' and I will tell you how my character feels about yours (openly and secretly)

Send me a '★' and I will tell you how my character feels about yours (openly and secretly)

Openly: "Gracious, naturally charming and beautiful, and with a heart of gold. A rare vintage of a woman, the Lady Lioness is dear to many."

Even when the Courier keeps her words mostly to public exposition of what is a popular opinion, it is very clear Safrona is in full agreeance with the majority when it comes to Naralinthe. It is obvious in the Courier's list of clientele she favors, and the genuine laughs Nara pulls from her in her company. Safrona feels this woman is the sun to her shadow, a natural and comforting warmth to bask in.

Secretly: "I will always, be thankful, Nara."

This seemingly simple line of gratitude runs deep, deeper than it does for Safrona regarding most people. Where Nara may have been little more than a delightful contact and opportunity in business when the first batch of champagne was ordered, the fateful night when the Lioness saved her soul in the Challaine Vineyards was an altering moment for the Warlock. She remembers Naralinthe's panic, the tears, and the dear woman pleading for her to return to her Light (though very drunkenly). It was a traumatic moment surely, but it was the first time Safrona had witnessed someone so fiercely and sincerely grieve her, and call her back with the sheer power of their own grace. She had felt very loved in a very pure, unforgettable way in that moment, and she loves Naralinthe in her own quiet way for it. Safrona is not certain she knows how to truly repay that sort of selfless love, but she considers practically being at Naralinthe's beck and call to be a good start.

{ @themadamelioness }

[elvenbeard]

Today's modding shenanigans!

Today I wanted to test out ACM a bit :D I think I'd most enjoy using it as an additional tool for making custom outfits and seeing how different item appearances work together, less as my primary tool to creating custom outfits as such (also, it is a bit buggy for me and I can't seem to export appearances reliably for some reason).

Since you can alter custom appearances with it too, though, you could definitely mod one "base outfit" and then change the colors spontaneously for a different vibe (for example, I could make an apperance for Kerry wearing one t-shirt and then change the shirt decal or color on the fly in game without cluttering his .app file with a dozen different appearances that are virtually the same just different colors!). Wondering though if there exists a resource that lists every item's appearance names (cause some are super specific and hard to guess, like... instead of "black" or "smiley-face" you have appearances like "6th street" or "black_capsules") for this purpose... and if not, I'll probably make one just because I would find it useful to have xD

Also, ACM is really neat for taking off Kerry's jewelry on the fly for certain pics XD Or changing nail colors and things like that! In all these regards this is a super useful resource as is already, but I'm excited where the mod makers will take it :D (also... random sidenote, but can we talk about Dante for a moment? I'm a little bit in love, and I need his shirt not only for Kerry but also for Vince XD).

Then some silly behind the scenes stuff xDD @netcess said that Reed really needs a party outfit with a cool hat, so I put something quick and simple together for her and... I wanted to take a pic and as I went into Photomode, Vince spawned straight across from Reed and looked so disappointed at him partying without him when so many pressing issues are at hand XD Just really fun little moment I wanted to capture, intensified by facepalm XD

Honestly he rocks it XD Might make a recolor to fit his suit when the mood strikes xD

And finally: who wore it better? XD

(giggling and kicking my feet at how his hair and beard match now :3)

No but I actually tried my hand at editing this hair mesh for Kerry, cause it was clipping a bit here and there! This is done super quick and dirty like... In theory I know I could export his headmesh and then fit it exactly to that, but for now this aint so bad already actually! :D No more clipping into the side of his head and the hairline in the front looks better. I left out Johnny's hair cap and all that because I wanted to go for a really really short, very freshly shaved look for this like...

Something he would've done at the end of his tour right before coming back to Night City. Keeping the long hair consistent for all concerts. And as I said, I 100% get why he has that look, like... It has old, seasoned rocker vibes, it's so much less clean and more himself than his 2077-appearance like... natural hair color, not styled at all, embracing himself again with the whole "I'm gonna name my next album "Kerry Eurodyne" and go back to my roots thing, he looks like he just came off stage, sweaty and tousled, so... yes!! I do love it for all those reasons, but idk... I feel like, it's also at the same time something low maintenance that he doesn't have to pay a lot of mind to, escaping into his music and career after apparently losing V. And I think with the tour over and with getting V back so unexpectedly, he'd change things up a bit again. It's a concert/tour look for me. And this style is also low maintenance, while still Kerry, still rebellious, but a little more cleaned-up, in control of his life, if that makes sense?

@pinkyjulien sorry for stealing your tags from my other post, but you put it into words so well, on point!!

Especially your last point, cutting/shaving your hair to mark a new beginning is 100% such a thing he'd do!! So yeah, I think I'll stick with this for his two-years-plus-four-months-later look xD

[rondoel]

For ramble friday, here's a funny story:

A friend and I occasionally play HK Randomizer races. We've messed with various settings and curses via other mods, and over time, we've bumped up the difficulty of what skips might be necessary to get vital pickups. The important part for this story is that in addition to using the same randomizer settings and seed, we play using the multiplayer mod so that we can see each other if we're in the same room. Usually, we won't see each other once we get out of the starting area (which is also randomized). But it's fun to pass each other in a hallway or to accidentally both start fighting Grimm around the same time or whatever.

Well, we've done a few sessions of our current run (hard to win the game in a single session with as challenging as we've made it), and last night's session had some very silly moments.

We've had the same few abilities for hours at this point (downslash, left dash, monarch wings, and isma's tear) and we've almost run out of places we could think to check that were accessible. We even resorted to going through most of the dark rooms! Eventually, between dark rooms and unsuccessful enemy pogoing, we both independently set our sights on the right side of City. We couldn't use the big elevators, we didn't have claw to climb up Ogrim's way, and we couldn't do the spike tunnel towards the Isma's Grove because we didn't have right Crystal heart or right dash.

Between double jump and tenacity, he managed to find the tiniest of ledges along the gated right side of the fountain room, giving his wings a refresh to make it to the second story ledge.

Meanwhile, I completely fumbled an enemy pogo in the waterways, died, and then realized that that my shade would cooperate better than a flukefey. So I pogoed that, fought Dung Defender, and climbed up into the City from there.

So, you would think that my experience would keep the option of shade skips fresh in my mind, right? So that I would remember it and use it in another situation where I needed to get up higher than wings would allow, right?

Wrong!!!

Thus, sometime later, I hear my friend exclaim in triumph that he found Tram Pass and now finally had new places to explore.

So I'm like, oh damn, there's no way he's gonna hint at where that is. That's a huge advantage that will help him get ahead.

And then he enters the room I'm standing in.

Out of all the places I could've been in Hallownest, I happened to be one room over from his discovery.

So, I know it's in the first room of Crossroads, and the only unchecked item is the one up the well that you would usually need wall jump to reach. Or, if the Crossroads are infected, you could use the furious vengefly that spawns to the left. My crossroads were uninfected, and I was boggled at how to get it. Meanwhile, he's saying shit like, "it's the most obvious thing! it's so easy!" before eventually he tells me to use my shade.

Smh.

Takeaway of the story is to never forget that sometimes the embodiment of your regrets can be smacked with a nail to help you attain new heights.

The second takeaway is that I continue to be so fucking lucky in these races, and my friend hates me for that hahaha (though I do think he'll win this race, but he'll have to work hard to stay in the lead!)

Oh I have just the biggest grin on my face! The sheer comedic timing of some of these moments haha! The hivemind moments!

And yep, I like those takeaways, truly a wisdom for the soul. I'm gonna go smack my shadow now xD

This is absolutely delightful and sounds so fun (HK randomizer races pog??), thank you for the story!

[the-haunted-office]

I'm so silly. You guys ever have a moment where you put an idea together and executed it and wrote it and didn't exactly think about how everything lined up, but then it all sort of did on accident?

I've just realized that happened. Like, over a year later. xD

The Haunted Office was alive before it became Dorian - it had a different soul, and was one of the first of its kind. When the Dampening mist attacked and was sealed inside the building, it took the Office as a host too, only nobody knew it. Nobody ever knew the Office had been taken as a host, and when the Office eventually died nobody knew it had ever lived.

The silly moment for me here is that there were quirky things I had going on in the Office that are totally explained by this and I didn't even think about it until just now.

The control room acted as a sort of "brain" for the rest of the Office. It was very peculiar. The Narrator's desk had a single monitor sitting on it, along with a microphone. Neither of these devices were plugged in or hooked up to any sort of power source, and yet they worked. The monitor would follow around Stanley, or whoever was the Protagonist at the time, and the microphone would project the voices of the Narrators down into the Office below without any visible means of being able to do so. This is because they were being powered by the Dampening mist's energy. The mist had consumed the souls of all the employees who worked in the building and was burning them as a source of energy. It was that energy that was powering anything in the building. Part of the reason the mist was trapped there and the whole plan the Nightcrawlers put into place, was to force the mist to burn through its food source faster, thus starving it to death faster (The rest of that is a story I'll have to get into another time).

How did it know who was the Protagonist, though? If it wasn't Stanley, because Stanley died at one point, then how could the mist - a creature without the same kind of sentience as a human or a Nightcrawler - have any kind of understanding of who the Protagonist was supposed to be and therefore know who to direct the monitor at? Because it had taken the Office host along with the Narrators. It was reading their memories and they were all tied in together.

That's part of what the mist did - it had access to their memories, that's how the Narrators were able to spawn in objects at the time they were infected. The mist spawned in the objects for them based on their memories of said objects. If it could do that, then it would be able to tell who the Protagonist would be, and then that would tell who the monitor should be following.

It doesn't end there, though! Two other parts of the Office were directly connected to the Narrators too - the Museum and the Zending room (also known to the Narrators as the Starry Dome).

The Museum was where the Curator (Aurora) spent a lot of her time, and it acted as an actual, visible representation of the Narrators' memories. At first it was very sparse because the mist was blocking their memories from the point of infection backwards. It was just memories pertaining to things that had happened at the Office. But later, when the mist started dying and their memories started coming back, the Museum started to grow and more memories started to appear.

The Zending Room was connected to the Narrators' emotions. The little colorful orbs of light you see floating around in the game are representations of the Narrators' feelings in the moment. It would vary depending on which Narrator was narrating for the Protagonist at the time but the room could become quite lively. Stanley actually really enjoyed that room after a while.

There might be more than I'm just not thinking of at the moment, but all this to say that I'm a bloody genius and I thought ahead of myself without realizing it and it worked out in the best way possible hehe. x3