#no thoughts. brain full of thorium | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pooepw · 6 months

Text

72 - sorry for late blog, i am playing d3, the most mid diablo game

Stream

I did it. I did not think it to be a possibility, but I slayed TWO bosses in Death, Masochist, Eternity, Master, getfixedboi mode. And it was all thanks to the Wand of Sparking. For some odd reason, in my game, the Wand of Sparking has been heavily buffed into a hardmode weapon. It does 60-70 damage and will do more when I level up more. Which brings me to the next point. I brought back using the leveled mod. The reason I brought it back was because I found another excellent mod called assorted compatibilities that adds a compatibility between the level mod and Thorium. I really like this since it is reminiscent of the old days that I played tmodloader with the old leveled mod having a separate mod for compatibility with Thorium. I will say that this level mod is FAR more unbalanced though because I do not believe there is a cap on what level you can make your character. It can be configured, but I don't really feeeeel like it.

Getting to the actual bosses I defeated, first came the Eye of Cthulu. Unsurprisingly, the difficulty with this boss came in the end of the fight. For those unaware, with the Masochist mode on, Eye of Cthulu becomes a boss that inflicts a DOT debuff on the character, and its spawns apply the debuff too. However, the Fargo mod goes further by editing the AI of bosses, and the Eye of Cthulu is affected in numerous ways. One new way that I experienced today was when it deflected attacks when transitioning to charging while spawning smaller eyes. Another new thing was that did this multiple times. But the difficult part still laid within the ending (that had not really changed much from my experience), where the eye becomes unruly in its movement. It moves super fast at low health while spawning demon scythes that explode into more demon scythes outward. Obviously, the difficulty becomes trying to hit the Eye of Cthulu. On my first real attempt, I had difficulty since I tried to persist with solely the Wand of Sparking. I succeeded when I switched to using my Calamity mod homing sword during that phase. The leveled mod MAY have been a bit too strong due to me not realizing that leveling now did a full heal on the player even during boss fights. That clutched me to victory.

The other boss I defeated was from Calamity. As an analogous boss to the Brain of Cthulu, the Calamity mod adds a boss called the Hive Mind to the Corruption biome. I defeated this boss off the cuff since it followed me when I was exploring the surface and tried to teleport away from it. It was also a supreme source of experience for the level mod since, in phase two, it constantly gave me experience for simply damaging it. The craziest part of that fight however was phase three when it started spawning Corruption mobs. ANY Corruption mob. Including itself. The fight against 1 Hive Mind quickly became 4. After defeating the first, I decided it was too much of a damage sink and just succumbed to the Hive Minds.

Lastly, today's stream did not pan out the way I had hoped. For some reason, there was a succinct lack of death in the stream. I really thought that I would die a high amount, so I implemented a punishment wheel to the stream. Sadly, I did not spin it too many times. I put on there "Safe," "Pasta," and "Uzumaki," meaning no punishment, watch a scary video, and read from Junji Ito's Uzumaki respectively. I did not even get through Chapter 1 of Uzumaki. Also, I only watched one scary video.

#gaming #imgamer #small streamer #blog #terraria #terraria challenge #modded terraria

0 notes

betweenorbits · 6 years

Text

I’d always imagined it would be uplifting, that I’d be standing with friends and a planet at my back or behind some great captain: watching Intel or Zara or John or Amelie dress down the ignoble while I protected them from the hidden assault. Or that it would just happen naturally, without any serious issues. But they were all so far, well, not all of them. But I was standing there. Amelie had agreed, Invel had agreed, and Jimmy and Term. Brutus, well, I don’t understand what Jimmy (Mayor and Mayor’s Wife to you) and our bubble Term did, but Brutus sent the code. I was informed, not particularly politely, that it wasn’t my problem to get Brutus’ consent, that the two Silicate Generals would take care of it. And they did. Amelie had sent her code to me as a physical as a letter apparently, and Invel had sent a proxy, but I’m not ready to talk about that, I couldn’t let myself think about what it meant. But I had the codes, I would push the button.

The IPC council chamber, deep under the rocks of Luna City (Hubble City officially), was grandiose Brutalist trash, high stands of carved concentric layers, full of lights and chamberlains, councilors, Xorp executives, and elected officials from all across the solar system. The beautiful diversity of the Solar System was incredible, but the balance was sliding back towards mercantilist aggrandizement at a scale that worried the future. And for some reason, a large fraction of them in this room, were conspiring against Mars.

The rallying point of Expansionist policies, Mars, was putting a cramp on the designs of Xorp and autocratic government asset creation. Not every Executive, but any Executive. We had friends in many of the national governments of Terra, but not too many, who were still overly concerned with their own citizens, because of centuries of ecological and economic (they were still taught separately) mismanagement. The Loonies were our friends, but largely fractured and concerned with their Barrio politics. The isolated communities of the O’Neills and Asteroids, and the small Jovian research communities supported us as the same ‘oppressed’ peoples, but they were beholden to the same capital rich Xorps or governments that put up the money for the original settlements. And, many of the Xorps saw benefit to the tapestry of humanity, or some of their top executive felt that way.

It was difficult to piece apart the competing goals of these chambers, in Geneva (where the UN relocated), and here in Luna City; but the statistical nature of our work clearly meant only one thing: a cabal not in our favor. We had known so long ago it could happen, and had fought for balance, had fought for patience, had cajoled, tricked, traded, and made alliances that protected our rights, and in general making sure that life improved for the settlers and citizens of the Red Planet. But what about all peoples? What about our Silicate friends, when would they have a seat at the table? Would humanity always choose the xenophobic path where the game was setup to make a formless and changing ‘us’ the first priority. It had happened so often in our ‘glorious’ history.

Would our governing bodies always be designed for that centrism that Invel and I, in particular, had spent our lives fighting against? Someday we would go further afield, after those probes sent back their data from Centauri’s planets, or when we reached the next system or the next; somewhere we would find others out in the stars, and would humanity greet them as people or as ‘them.’ If the treatment of Silicates was indication, the current trajectory was poor. This is what Jimmy left the limelight for, to ‘hide’ out of sight and make a place of their own. The silicates wanted to be ready, and Jimmy and Term and other bio-metal brains I didn’t know were ready for their voices to be heard. We fought for ‘people’ everywhere, for every shape, every governance, every strand of dna, or line of code, for values that ignored species or race or orientation, the belief that we were an ‘all’ even when we are wildly different.

But still, I sat in a painfully uncomfortable chair—wood if you can believe it, since no expense was spared for the delegates—watching my favorite clock system in the solar system. Up high ticked the atomic counters, the system timing array headquartered here on Luna, but Solar Coordinate time was taken from all the primary standard clocks in the system. Fifteen gorgeous clocks, of three different standards were mixed for uncertainty and then beamed out to the waiting billions. The old standards: ytterbium and strontium optical ran in Paris and Boulder for historical reasons; but the gorgeous new thorium nuclear fountains that graced Mercury, the Solar standards Labs liberating at the Earth-Moon-Sun L5 lab, two Venusian O’Neill’s, and at the Mars Technical University were the primary standards fed here, and mixed for output, were the real clocks of humanity, showing a staggering system wide fractional uncertainty of 10^(-26)! I tried to read the papers that came out, but alas, the freedom of information from Terra on such matters was just as poor as when I left grad school. The council chamber had a direct feed, 90 km or so of cable, which went to the Standards Lab on the Imperial Campus. Kept running on directly was System Standard time, and from it was calculated the official times all around the Solar System, lovingly displayed on brass handed clocks, with bold-type font under each movement; they showed the time in Denver (the North American Union’s new capital), Geneva, Pearl City, Hubble City (all of Luna kept the same time since it was all underground anyway), New Greenwich on Mercury, and Burroughs on Mars (our first city). The second was the same, everywhere, and I watched them tick by, not listening to the debate, waiting for the dramatic moment.

I would start talking before it kicked off, in order to not be interrupted by the beeps and chimes of phones, communicators, across the chamber; but John would just tell me I was being dramatic again—probably true as well. Melody was with the underground at this moment, probably in her office, telling the teams where to go, readying the cry. Jarvis was sitting next to me, a wonderful boy. He is a young thirty-nine, the elder statesman of the mission here; a genius, the star student of the Applied Political department back on Mars—devious, honest to a fault, and ambitious. He was here to watch, as I’d told him it would all kick off here, the reactions in the chamber because I would be too busy not fucking up my lines. He invited the newspeople too, at least the ones that we we thought should definitely be there. I’m sure every consular staff knew that we had asked them to come too, there are no secrets from these people, it is their job. Normally there wouldn’t be stereo reporters, the top political career ones, at a regular meeting of the IPC where the agenda was tariffing amongst the Voyageur—the spacemen, sky jockeys, traders, void-caravaneers, smugglers, whatever you’d like to call them—on multi-legged trips. More and more looks, I’d noticed, or Jarvis told me later, that people kept looking at the two of us, dressed in our finery, knowing something was happening.

The Xorps: Tharis and Vensus Conglom, and the rest, had smug, assured politicians here in the chamber. They were cooking up something terrible, and John’s discovery was surely connected. Invel’s proxy mentioned something about it as well, but the key thing was that the Xorps had convinced the major governments back on Earth that something needed to change to keep the Red Planet in line. The only way to stop it, well, was to change the timeline, to do the thing that I had promised the whole solar system, that we wouldn’t have: a war.

And I’d talked with Mayor, Term, and the whole crew, and I was going to break my promise to Invel: I was going to go too far. I would go too far because, because if we didn’t, it would all disintegrate. I close my eyes, willing this all to be a dream, the choking, gagging feeling climbing up my throat, the feeling and the reality dancing in my chest, my heart sounding too fast; but the mind reminds, with emotions, visions, memories and pain, that this terror and this moment was what I had wanted. I had been ready for 30 years.

I put my hands on the table and thought, two minutes till zebra hour, time to make hay. My feet were rooted in the soft rock, sweating in their thin socks and soft-shell coverings with modern gore-tex stickies to keep me from floating off around corners at 1/6 g. Both hands pressed into the desk, the w-shaped veins and arteries, and dark aged spots on my hands reminding me of my grandfather or perhaps because I wore his ring, my wedding ring, today of all days. And, I pushed myself to my feet, not too hard that I shot out of my seat and ended at the roof, which had happened to high-grav newbie representatives in this chamber. Across the oval, a representative from Venus was speaking, I don’t know about what, but sye stopped in mid-sentence when I stood. The chair, a quiet, ferocious young person from Pearl City, looked over at me and asked, “Do you have something to add to this discussion Ambassador Miller?”

“I do your honor, and I would appreciate it no one would interrupt me for the next two minutes, I trust you will understand why,” I said, and took two deep breaths, and had I been a believer, I would have sent off a prayer to any deity that would hear me. I noticed, Mallory Padwr, the great political analyst slap her camera person, telling him to focus on me carefully, her eyes alight with what she would assume would be something weighty. I’d always liked her, so sharp, I wish she had been from Mars. “I wish to briefly address you: honored delegates, friends, foes, citizens of Sol, organic, bionic, and semi-conductor alike, and especially my friends from Mars. It is a lifetime’s achievement that I stand here before you today. It has been my eternal honor to serve you all, in whatever capacity you will have me. This council was founded with so many hopes, a new way to solve humanity’s oldest problems: rewarding endeavor, legislating anger and fear, legislating the distribution of the power that the creativity and drive of so many individuals to the great mass of our citizens who share the light of this small, yellow star. This has always been difficult, in any scheme humanity has tried, and in some ways this has been a startling success; but in others, we have failed once more. Once more we stand looking at a future where the gulf between those that have and those that do not is widening. Once more, we seek to classify different echelons of humanity, making wealth or genetics or cellular structure the basis for moral or political worth. Once more, the wolves in our hearts have marshalled the might to impress their own will over those of other thinking beings. Once more, the powerful seek to utilize law as justification for the unacceptable oppression of those who dissent.

“I have spent my life dedicated to the belief that war is a state of lawlessness in the human condition, that war is the complete opposite of civilization. Each election, debate, discussion, or side I have taken has been to further and not to diminish civilization; further that it is the role of each individual to expand the thoughts and rights of their fellows, and it is the responsibility and honor of officials such as ourselves to be the custodians of the fraternity of empathy, civilization. Your honors, I find this council lacking.”

Throughout the beginning of the speech, there was a hush, and then a murmuring, the crossing of eyebrows and the shaking of heads. Several key players looked on apparently impassively, but they were the architects of the current fracas, and their surprise was a re-evaluation of the scheme. I smiled to myself as I imagined how their thoughts would change over the next few minutes. By the end of my breather, delegates were talking loudly with their colleagues, with chattering punctuations of ‘crazy’ and ‘what on earth is he talking about?’ and my personal favorite ‘uppity miner.’

“Chair, do we have to listen to this nonsense?!”

The chair agreed, “Dr Miller, while I much appreciate your prosaic style, I must agree that if you only have a few half-hearted injuries to spew at this council, that I will be forced to find you in contempt and ask you to sit down and reconsider wasting our time,” said the delicately worded steel-eyed promises of the chair.

“Please, please, I’ve not lost my marbles colleagues, I’m still the same practical and demanding opponent or comrade as you are used to, so let me give you some facts, and then I will allow you or the press to ask me questions.”

The chair said dryly, “I’m not sure the press should be allowed to ask questions inside a legislative proceeding, it sets a bad precedent; however, we can of course grant you two more minutes for your remarks.”

I bowed briefly, “Thank you Chair.”

I straightened up. “The facts: Mars has been the joint colonial holding of several Terran nations, under the charter of operation of Tharsis Mining, Infinity Xorp, and several others; and under the protection of the IPC. We have been granted delegates to this council due to our population, but never full autonomous control over rules of commerce, emigration, taxation, or the like of our space. Our outstanding commercial success for our corporate masters not-withstanding, the freedom of the peoples of Mars been a subject long-overdue, and much derided for the last thirty years by this council and those like it. The people of Mars, in conjunction with other marginalized peoples of this Solar System thus declare their severance with this council, declare themselves free of political or economic association with any entity that believes it owns or directs choices without the expressed opinion, through election by the people, and declares our debts paid. The people of Mars ask that representatives of the relevant parties make themselves available for discussion about the roles that their organizations would care to play within the Martian sphere of influence in the future, but rest assured that it will not be in the form of governance. All infrastructure vital to the survival and livelihood of the Martian People will be retained by the Martian people as part of the same statement of Independence.

“Any resistance will be viewed as an aggressive act, and these oppressed people shall not be caught defenseless. The nascent Republic of Mars will deport all Peacekeeping Forces of the IPC, except those that wish to join the Republic as citizens, and will defend its right to Independence with every fiber of being at our disposal.

“As of, let’s see, six minutes ago, to protect these rights, an interdict has been placed on travel between the inner planets, including Luna, and the outer planets and stations until a new accord has been ratified by all relevant authorities. Any craft seeking to break this interdict will be viewed as an act of war against the people of Mars, and will be treated as a hostile force, except where sanctioned by the Republic. Does anyone have any questions?”

Suffice to say that many people clamored to be heard at once. I stayed standing, though my legs shook under the strain. The large council doors opened, and in them stood a stone man, several other silicates, and a healthy, exhilarated, but messy Melody and some of her apparent group of revolutionaries. The council could not help but notice that all of the menacing shadows in their door were armed. A hush fell over the chattering children as the image of a silicate holding a gun, the stillness of resolve painted on the faces of the revolutionaries at their door. And then, General Mayor spoke: “The interdict has been enforced on the Port, and our forces are deployed and ready to maintain protection on the craft aiming for the gates.”

“Thank you General, was there any resistance,” I asked quietly, listening to the audaciously silent council chamber, with every eye and lens on the ancient Silicate form, an anger from the crowd turned to chill foreboding at the clinical descriptions from the non-human person.

“Yes, but there seem to be few casualties at this moment. The majority of the capital ships are in orbit, and we have hailed them and will discuss their surrender. We are waiting to hear back from the other system targets. We expect to maintain Republic victory of any engagements with 96% likelihood, though we expect hostile casualties as the chance of immediate surrender seems, unlikely.”

“General, I would appreciate it if you would also answer any questions that the councilors or the press has for you, would you join me?”

“I’d be honored to Mister Miller. Long Live the free republics of Sol!” and with that, my friend Jimmy walked across the hall towards me as tears rolled down my old and tired face.

#miller #the independence of mars #folks: its been a long time #i think this will take some editing for the first time :)#god the formatting is even messed up #sigh #just trying to get the plot points down

4 notes · View notes