#its damn near impossible to get gold for my major so i /should/ be happy with this but u know.....sometimes u just.........

[hannie-dul-set]

proof of writing!!! i have been dying but not enough to stop me from self indulging!!!

[high-fructose-lesbianism]

A Subjective Ranking of all 18 Books in the Vampire Chronicles Extended Universe

18. Blood Canticle (2003)

It took me the longest to read Blood Canticle of any of the books because I couldn’t read more than about 25 pages at a time before the urge to throw the book out the nearest window got too strong. The story is bad, the characters are the worst they’ve ever been and the writing style is full-on terrible. Blood Canticle is one of the worst books I’ve read full stop.

17. Taltos (1994)

I hated the Mayfair Witches trilogy. While Taltos was at least the shortest of the three, it was a terrible conclusion to the trilogy. The Taltos are one of Anne Rice’s worst ideas. Each of the books delves more into their mythology and it gets worst the more it’s explored.

16. Blackwood Farm (2002)

A major issue I have with Anne Rice is she insists on telling these extremely lengthy backstories of characters we’ve just met who I almost never give a shit about. That’s the entirety of Blackwood Farm. It’s the backstory of a character I just met and don’t care about whatsoever. Blackwood Farm evokes the classic Anne Rice style of bad where it switches between just being insane and being fucking boring at the drop of a hat. I skimmed most of the book because it was so boring. But then I’d tune in to some insanely weird shit about intersex vampires or ghost twins giving handjobs or whatever was happening and yeah, my attention would of course be held by such insanity. But invariably, the book would drift back into describing wildly uninteresting events with too much detail and I’d tune out again.

15. The Witching Hour (1990)

The Witching Hour has a three paragraph summary on Wikipedia. It is an accurate summation of the events of the book. So then why is this fucking book 968 pages? That’s my main grievance with The Witching Hour; it’s way too fucking long. It’s the least insane of the Mayfair Witches trilogy but also by far the least interesting.

14. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016)

These fucking bird aliens who inhabited Atlantis are just the Taltos 2.0. There’s a lot of insanity and also boring backstory in this one. I skimmed the backstory of the Atlantean bird aliens and don’t feel like I missed anything. What saves this book from ranking lower is I’m a slut for the main VC characters interacting and this one did have such a thing, plus some good Louis/Lestat moments which is my other big priority with the series. Simultaneous highlight and lowlight of this book is when that one dude looses a hand but it gains sentience, breast feeds off him or something and then becomes his perfect clone. Fucking insanity.

13. Lasher (1993)

Lasher is the best of the Mayfair trilogy because there are genuine moments of horror in this horror novel. On the downside, the Taltos are as always, insane. Also, another signature of Anne Rice’s is sexy and sexualized teenage characters which there is a lot of in this book in the form of 13 year old Mona Mayfair, her affair with Michael Curry and the many scenes where this is excused, justified or even somewhat celebrated. That disturbed me and not in the way I want a horror novel to disturb me.

12. Memnoch the Devil (1995)

In terms of writing style, Memnoch is a lot better than many of the books that will rank higher than it. But this is a subjective ranking and I didn’t give a shit about Anne Rice working through her weird, religious baggage in a series that I’m reading to hear about the exploits of sexy, bisexual vampires. The majority of this book is again, a long backstory from a character we just met and I don’t care about. In this case it’s literally Satan which is a good start but Anne Rice sure has a way of taking too long describing everything which leaves me extremely bored by the narrative.

11. Blood Paradise (2018)

Blood Paradise should be lower in this list. It’s objectively extremely poor. Blood Paradise is basically the inverse of Memnoch; I really liked the story but hated the writing style. This one only ranks so high because it is a story that focuses on the lead vampire characters who are my priority. And yeah, I liked the outline for the story. It’s character-based, no major new characters interrupt the narrative and no insane additions to canon are added. Too bad the writing style feels extremely half-assed. Where usually I’m critical of Anne Rice taking way too long to say anything and focusing on unimportant details, this one is the opposite. It feels extremely rushed. A lot of major, emotional scenes that occur between characters are only a few sentences or paragraphs long. But still, at least this one gave me story content that I could just expand upon in my head instead of insane additions to canon that I’d prefer to ignore.

10. Merrick (2000)

Merrick actually might have my favourite ending to any of the VC novels. I loved Lestat resurrecting Louis from his suicide attempt and then that descends into Lestat, Louis, David and Merrick living in what seems to be perfectly happy polyamory. I totally dug that. But of course, the majority of the book is a backstory of Merrick, a character I just met and don’t care about. Also, we get a bit of David backstory which I seem to remember being him mostly creeping on some young boy who was in expedition with him. Not ideal. 

9. Vittorio, the Vampire (1999)

Vittorio is a fairly effective historical horror. Anne Rice did a lot of research and it shows. That’s not exactly my interest but she did well with it. There’s also some really horrific moment where Vittorio meets a clan of vampires in an old castle who do keep humans like cattle and eat babies and stuff. The major downsides is just that this is a character who we’ve never met before and never see again. Also the fact that Vittorio is 16 and is absolutely sexualized. I’ve really grown tired of Anne Rice’s constant belief that’s in almost all of her writing that teenagers are sexy and it’s totally fine to fuck them. It makes me uncomfortable to say the least.

8. Pandora (1998)

This one’s just pretty good. I’ve no major complaints but no specific bits of it I want to champion either. Again, a lot of historical research is done which is not interesting to me but well done. Also nice to have at least one book with a female vampire protagonist.

7. Prince Lestat (2014)

Prince Lestat is not objectively better than the last two books. I rank it this high mostly out of relief. For ages, Blood Canticle was the last book in The Vampire Chronicles. So, when Prince Lestat was released, it was impossible to see this as anything other than a huge upgrade. And of course, I liked that this book returned to focusing on the lead characters of Lestat, Louis, Marius, Daniel etc. It’s still a baffling idea to have Lestat be the vampire head of state or whatever though. But oh man, that Louis/Lestat moment near the end of the book made me feel a whole lotta feelings.

6. Blood and Gold (2001)

This one is another excuse for Anne Rice to do a lot of historical research. And you know what? Better she spends her energies doing that instead of creating weird, tall supernatural beings with specific quirks that are impossible to take seriously. I like the framing of this one because it’s sort of the inverse of usual. Thorne, a new character is introduced but instead of him telling Marius his story, it’s established character Marius who tells Thorne his story. And he does this the first day they met after Thorne’s awakened after several hundred years and they’ve taken a bath together. That’s just good story structure right there. The most memorable part of this story for me is keeping a vague tally of all the people Marius fell in love with throughout the course of the story. In one 100-page stretch, Marius falls in love five separate times. This grew tiresome but I also just thought it was funny.

5. The Vampire Armand (1998)

I’m the most morally against The Vampire Armand. It’s basically the peak of Anne Rice’s love of sexualizing teens. That’s sort of the whole book. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that around the time of its publication, Anne Rice got back into religion. I think she looked over what she wrote and was like yeah okay, maybe I do need Jesus. But I dunno, I remember really liking it. It was well-written and Armand is one of my favourite characters. I think Anne Rice did actually hit the right mixture of the story being sexy, horrific and rather tragic. Also, that bit at the end where Armand eats a drug dealer’s face and heart in front of some new, human friends is one of my favourite scenes.

4. The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)

There’s a lot of good and a lot of bad in Tale of the Body Thief. I love the body swap aspect and this one has some of the best interactions between characters. On the downside, there absolutely is a 2-page description of Lestat taking a piss, he absolutely commits a rape and him turning David into a vampire was #problematic. But even there, the Lestat and David scene is really well-written and works because Lestat is an absolute piece of shit. Tale of the Body Thief is for better and worse, Lestat at his most Lestat. Still didn’t need to hear about him taking a piss in that much detail, though.

3. Queen of the Damned (1988)

Akasha is the only good villain in any of the Vampire Chronicles books. Plus, Queen of the Damned brought all the characters we’d met in the previous two books together and I was absolutely all about that. At this point in the series, I actually did care about the majority of main characters and their interactions were absolutely spectacular. Only downside is again, we get a lengthy backstory of Akasha that I absolutely skimmed.

2. Interview with the Vampire (1976)

Yeah, it’s only number 2. Because while this book is better written and the start of this whole damn phenomenon, Louis is far from my favourite narrator. Dude’s too morose and shit. Still, the writing style is exquisite and it introduced great characters. As the series went on, Anne Rice clearly ran out of ideas but because this one is the first book, that’s not the case. There’s a lot of ideas here and they aren’t even fucking insane. 

1. The Vampire Lestat (1985)

I’m really only into this series because of how much I love Lestat as a character. I read Interview and thought I was done with the series. Interview was fine but I didn’t think I cared about the sequels. However, six months later when I decided to read The Vampire Lestat, I knew within the first two pages that this was going to be a problem for me. This is exactly my brand of bullshit. It’s just Lestat being a sexy and shitty person who makes out with everyone and overreacts to everything. I love him. And in the third act when it’s revealed he’s been in love with Louis all along and then Louis shows up in the present day and they reunite???? Oh my god. 16 year-old me nearly exploded. The Vampire Lestat is really the sole reason The Vampire Chronicles happened to me as hard as it did. I love this book and its ridiculous narrator/protagonist.

[ciathyzareposts]

Treasures of the Savage Frontier: Confederacy of Dunces

This should have been clearer a lot sooner.

             Treasures consisted of three major phases. The first was the introductory section in Llorkh, Loudwater, and Secomber. The second was the foiling of the evil plots in the various Lords’ Alliance cities: Waterdeep, Daggerford, the Way Inn, Leilon, Triboar, Yartar, Longsaddle, Port Llast, Mintarn, Orlumbor, and Neverwinter. (Of these, Port Llast is odd in that it seemed to be completely optional.) This also involved trips to Luskan and Ruathym. The section culminates at a council meeting in Mirabar, where you present your evidence on the Hosttower/Zhentarim/Kraken scheme and thus forestall war in the area. Part three has you explore a few villages and a cave in the frozen north to recover a magic gem from a dragon named Freezefire. I’ll cover the third phase in my final entry.

Part two manages to be satisfyingly non-linear. Amanitas gives you the next-easiest city every time you contact him, but you can do the towns in any order. More important, visiting cities “out of order” does not trigger events prematurely or otherwise break the plotline. You can go to Mirabar early in the game, for instance, but it’s just a regular town with various shops and services until events elsewhere trigger the council meeting and the Zhentarim presence.          

Good descriptions replace banal graphics as we arrive in Longsaddle.

         In my case, I went from my last entry to Longsaddle, a somewhat goofy “frontier” town in which honest, plain-spoken folk run farms and ranches and use words like “reckon.” Members of the Kraken Society had been invading farmsteads and tying up the residents, but I kicked in front doors and liberated the places one-by-one. The ruler of the town, Malchor Harpell, wasn’t around–his doorman said he was at the Tower of Twilight to the west–but after I defeated all the enemies in the town, his apparition showed up to congratulate me.             

Residents of Longsaddle are mostly caricatures.

           Amanitas suggested I hit Mintarn next, but that’s an island and I wasn’t sure which port town would take me there. Thus, I decided to complete the loop of road I was already on, which took me prematurely to Mirabar. I was happy to find a couple of stores selling magic items. One sold +1 magic weapons, including magic arrows, which are the traditional “money sink” of the Gold Box series. Here, they screwed it up a bit because they made 10 of them cost only 30 platinum pieces, not the several thousand per batch that you find in other games.            

This shop took a small percentage of my money.

           These magic shops showed up in a couple of other towns, too, some of them selling some +2 items. I did my best with them. I bought anyone not wearing a cloak a Cloak of Protection even though I don’t think they stack with leather armor. I bought everyone Belts +2 even though they also don’t seem to do anything with armor. I upgraded my two clerics to staff slings +1. I bought hundreds of arrows +1 for anyone with a bow. I bought my wizard Wands of Ice Storm and Lightning Bolt for occasions when he can’t cast, and I also bought him every mage scroll I could find to increase the spells in his book. I bought Potions of Giant Strength for everyone and would have bought dozens of them to use in front of every battle but they don’t stack and I was already having issues with inventory space. Despite all these purchases, I never exhausted my supply of gems, let alone having to sell the more valuable jewelry. In fact, at one point I actually lost my entire pile of gems by accidentally having an NPC pick them up (you can’t trade items or wealth from an NPC), and yet I still made up enough in the subsequent hours that I never had to appraise a piece of jewelry.            

This shop would have taken a lot more of my money if scrolls and potions stacked.

           Mirabar is divided into north and south sections, the south run by humans and the north populated by dwarves. The dwarves work a mine, and even though I was visiting the city prematurely, there were some mine-related encounters that had nothing to do with the Zhent plot. After I fought some giants and purple worms, the dwarves rewarded me with a two-handed sword +3.                   

One of the few battles available in Mirabar this early in the game.

        I took a break between Mirabar and continuing on, which turned out to be lucky. When I reloaded the game, the copy protection question asked me for a word after the heading “Tower of Twilight.” This reminded me that the Tower is a real place and not just a throw-away reference in Longsaddle. So I backtracked a bit to find it, which wasn’t hard.             

The Tower of Twilight, directly west of Longsaddle.

          It was a small, weird experience. After I entered the tower, a voice said we’d have to overcome some beasts before he’d help us. These turned out to be a bunch of electric spiders and (in a separate encounter) an iron golem. The electric spiders were annoying, firing lightning bolts with every attack, but I managed to take them out with swords, “Hold Monster,” and “Charm Monster.” The iron golem fell to physical attacks from anyone with a +3 weapon or higher, slowed with a “Lightning Bolt.”

When these creatures were dead, Malchor Harpell agreed to tutor my mage, Monitor. She went away for a little while and then came back “very satisfied” with a new Black Crystal Ring. The game said she got experience, but it wasn’t enough to rise a level. She didn’t get any extra spell slots from the ring or otherwise, and the ring never seemed to do anything. I’m not sure what the entire purpose of the side-journey was.         

Are you sure you’ve been studying magic, Monitor?

          My first visit to Luskan was a bust. All the high captains wanted tribute, but none were available to just attack. Trying to bash my way into the Hosttower of the Arcane just triggered an impossible battle against a bazillion mages who all went first, blasting us to smithereens with “Ice Storm” or paralyzing us all with “Hold Monster.” I want to see how this battle plays out with my Pools of Darkness party later.              

Attacking the Hosttower is a good way to get hit with 50 “Ice Storms” in a row.

             Port Llast was similarly uneventful. There were a few random battles. I had thought to find the ship to Mintarn here, but the only thing I could do in the city was take a sea tour, which led to an episode in which pirates attacked the boat, which led to us firing a cannon (through text menus) at the pirates and sinking them, which gained us some experience.

That finally brought us to Neverwinter. I had only explored a little of the city when I visited Lord Nasher and he had us arrested, apparently still believing that we had kidnapped the ambassadors. There was no opportunity for us to show evidence or plead our case, so we were treated to another scripted sequence in which Nasher declined to execute us because of our heroism in Ascore. Instead, he had us exiled to Farr Windward.             

So maybe listen to our pleas of innocence now? Are we even pleading?

           Farr Windward turned out to be on the same island as Orlumbor–the two cities are connected by a series of caverns. It was easily the most bizarre sequence of the game. Our boat crashed as we neared the city, which turned out to be a good thing, because we had to crawl ashore. If we’d entered through customs, they would have branded us with a mark that basically made us permanent outcasts. Everyone in Farr Windward had this brand, and their exile had either driven them insane or that’s why they were exiled in the first place. As we arrived, the town was having a parade for one of its members who had died. Everyone we talked to was slightly goofy. Unfortunately, the city seems to have been invented for the game and is not otherwise discussed in Forgotten Realms lore.             

A shop selling “Certificates of Normalcy” was par for the course in Farr Windward.

           A weird fighter/cleric named Ougo joined the party. Or, I guess, he was just acting weird. As we explored the town and defeated a series of Kraken spies, it turned out he had a plan to free the people of Farr Windward. It involved recovering the brand used on the exiles in the first place, then using it on Tulgar Wrighttson, leader of Orlumbor, so that he’d have to either go into exile himself or annul the entire branding system and thus free Farr Windward. At the same time, the party was trying to convince Wrighttson that the ships blockading his harbor were not from Waterdeep, despite their false flags, but rather the Luskan pirates.

It all worked out, but the plot started to annoy me a bit. It seems far too easy for the evil forces to convince the members of the Lords’ Alliance that they’re being betrayed. Has this part of the world never heard of false flags and stolen uniforms before? If my party hadn’t come around, would they have even bothered to contact each other and straighten things out? And here’s a tip for time travelers: When you go back to 1930s Germany, just kill Hitler. Don’t try to stop the Holocaust by slipping a Star of David armband on him at night. There are ways for the wealthy and powerful to get around such things. This is the second game I can think of that uses this trope, the other being Dishonored, and it didn’t make any more sense there.                

“Guards, take him away!” “Sorry, sir, we have to arrest you now, even though if you had acquired that brand through any legitimate process, we almost certainly would have heard about it.”

          A store in Farr Windward sold indecipherable equipment called “Farrberjiks.” But because I had more money than I knew what to do with, I bought everyone “Farrberjik Lined Boots,” and damned if they didn’t subtract a point from armor class.           

I have no idea.

          The caves in between the two cities had some interesting encounters with enemies I’ve never heard of before: giant kampfults, great vilstraks, and rock reptiles. Kampfults seem like giant collections of vines; vilstraks look like earth elementals; and rock reptiles are, like their name suggests, giant lizards made out of stone. None was terribly hard, but kampfults seem to have some kind of “smothering” attack, much like shambling mounds, that keep a character immobile until the beast is killed.            

Both responded satisfyingly to “Fireball.”

         As we prepared to sail away from Orlumbor, Siulajia got kidnapped by some sailors who hauled her off in a burlap sack. The captain of the transport ship refused to follow the kidnappers, and I had options to stay or take the ship to its original destination. Since the game didn’t give me enough information to determine which option would get me closer to Siulajia, I decided to stay with the ship and head for Mintarn. Broadside was sad.

The problem in Mintarn was the same as in Orlumbor: Luskan pirates pretending to be the Waterdeep navy, blockading the port. About half of the city’s available squares were water, and it didn’t take long to clear out the rest of the buildings and warehouses of the various groups of giants, Hosttower mages, Kraken spies, and Zhentil lords that were gathered there. One battle introduced an efreet.           

The “Lucky Paper” outlines the group’s plan for Orlumbor. But do the Luskan pirates and the Waterdeep navy really use the same ships? Is the flag itself really the only way to tell?

           We were joined for a time by Princess Jagaerda of Gundarlun, also a companion from the first game, who as a powerful fighter was a nice replacement for Siulajia. I found her late in my explorations of the city, though, and she departed when we returned to the mainland.

Eventually, we found the necessary enemy papers to prove that they were using fake Waterdeep uniforms and flags, and we presented these to the leader of Mintarn, ominously named The Tyrant, who gave us a +3 trident as a reward. My ranger used it for the rest of the game.              

My party really is just the most pathetic group of do-gooders.

         We returned to Neverwinter. During our absence, Lord Nasher apparently discovered the truth about things, as he was extremely apologetic for disbelieving us and exiling us in the first place. He asked us to hunt around the city for the missing ambassadors, and we found them both in secret areas after defeating their captors in battle.            

This has never gotten old and never will get old.

            We went back to Luskan at this point but still couldn’t find anything new to do in the city, with one exception. We ran into Princess Jagaerda again just as she defeated a band of evil forces, and she recommended that we take a ship for Ruathym, where the leader, Captain Redleg, had either been captured or turned by the conspiracy. It was another map of clearing buildings before convincing the leader of our cause and getting his support.             

Now I want to rewatch The Outlaw Josey Wales.

          Redleg joined the party for a while and helped us clear out the rest of the town. He departed just as we ran into Jagaerda again, and she joined us for the second time.                   

Jagaerda tempts a blogger to devolve into crudity.

            My party had gained a couple levels, and I wanted to try the Luskan Hosttower again. Unfortunately, upon return to the Hosttower, it was just locked. I couldn’t trigger the same battle again. Fortunately, the game now let us assault the homes of the pirate captains and otherwise have our vengeance on the city. In some building, we came across a bunch of guards holding Siulajia. She and Broadside were joyously reunited–just as Ougo decided to return home. Jagaerda also left us when we left Luskan.                 

The male NPCs have a strange way of bowing out every time female NPCs appear.

                 Some documents suggested that the conspirators had kidnapped Siulajia because of her family, which confused her because she said they were just normal people living in the High Forest. As we’ll discuss next time, I’m pretty sure the developers were establishing High Forest as the setting for the sequel.          

For the record, that’s not very far from where we started the game.

            At last, it came time to visit the council in Mirabar. On our second visit to the city, we ran into numerous encounters with enemy forces not present the first time. They culminated with our visit to the Council Chambers, where the representatives were talking of war–until we presented the various “lucky papers” along with our report on the conspirators’ activities.             

The game is being kind here. I didn’t save all 10 lucky papers.

           The leaders were in the middle of thanking us for our work when the doors burst open and a very large group of Hosttower sorceresses, Kraken agents, and Zhentarim lords. They were the same types of enemies I had faced in countless previous battles, but they were very hard in this one.              

The final battle starts you with groups to the north, west, and east of the party. More appear after the first round.

                The key problem–as a couple of commenters have pointed out–is that if enemy spellcasters get the drop on you, the battle swiftly becomes unwinnable. This one featured at least 12 mages in the opening round, and maybe another 8 joined in subsequent rounds. (By the way, I came to hate that particular addition to the game mechanics.) They started in three groups in different locations, so they couldn’t all be targeted with one “Fireball” even if my mage had a chance to act. Almost all the spellcasters started with “Hold” spells, and each spell was capable of targeting three or four characters. On my first two attempts at battle, I ended up with all or most of my party held and slaughtered by the end of the first round.                

Properly prepared this time.

               It was only after a few reloads (informed, now, with buffing spells) that I got a handle on the battle, using hastened fighters to charge and occupy the mages and hastened clerics to charge and “Hold” them long enough for my mage to get a chance to damage them en masse. But I made the mistake of wasting all my best spells in the first couple of rounds, thus having nothing left to deal with groups of mages gating in during the third and fourth rounds. Altogether, it took me five attempts to win the battle. Both this battle and some of the others late in the game require you to carefully note the location and status of each spellcaster, and in particular whether you’ve already damaged him or he’s already cast a spell that round. You have to be willing to pull characters out of melee combat (giving enemies a few free swipes) and switch them to ranged weapons so they can target undamaged spellcasters who haven’t acted yet. Since the original Pool of Radiance, only the final battles in Pools of Darkness required this much attention to detail.

Miscellaneous notes:           

Gateway and Treasures have seven locations in common. Of them, Llorkh, Yartar, Luskan, and Neverwinter use the same maps between the two games. (And as a bonus, Neverwinter’s is the same as used in 1991’s Neverwinter Nights.) There are only a couple of minor changes, such as doors where there were once arches. Neverwinter’s map in Treasures adds a couple of docks. The map of Secomber in Gateway is half of the map of the city in Treasures. Loudwater is unrecognizable between the two games, as is Port Llast, although in the latter case I think the maps are showing two different areas of the city.

One consequence of having two characters in love: when either gets knocked unconscious or killed in combat, the other “frenzies” and is taken out of my control.

“Quick” combat is pretty good about transitioning between melee weapons and missile weapons as necessary, with one exception: It does not recognize staff slings. Characters who possess them and cannot get to enemies in melee range just dither around doing nothing. It otherwise works well enough that I don’t know why the developers couldn’t give me a command to toggle between missile and melee weapons rather than forcing me to go into the inventory screen.

For a series that does a great job overloading you with so much money that you never have to worry about it, there are an awful lot of times where you’re asked, “Who will pay?,” and you have to try several options because you don’t remember exactly how much each character is carrying, and then sometimes you have to leave and go find a shop to sell a gem because you can’t pay in gems or jewelry even though they’re worth a lot more that what you’re being asked for. Why does the party have individual wealth at all?

            I have a theory that the events described above, culminating with the battle in Mirabar, were originally supposed to end the game. The battle was about as difficult as an endgame battle should be, and we clearly resolved the main plot. The only reason I can see for phase three, which feels completely superfluous, was that someone decided that the game wasn’t long enough. See if you agree when we wrap up the game in a few days.

Time so far: 23 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/treasures-of-the-savage-frontier-confederacy-of-dunces/