This Charade Packs a Wallop!

Enough digging around in human waste. As long as we're in Darktown it's time to talk to a man about a gem.

It'd be cool if he only said this if you do another quest once you read the note, but somehow I doubt this is actually the case because Bioware.

Valerie lays on the scorn. How dare this peon disrespect her pressing duty to dig around in human shit for tiny rocks?

"I'm not stupid!" *proceeds to threaten the Champion of Kirkwall, a woman with a bodycount approaching the thousands*

"I want the gem this note that I don't know how to read talks about!"

You really wanna do this, don't you?

This encounter comes to its foregone conclusion, with everybody not in Valerie's party stabbed into hairless mannequin parts.

Let's check out the note on mekel's corpse. fortunately it's still legible, even with the bloodstains saturating it.

"This Gem of Keroshek thing the note talks about?" *note does not mention a Gem of Keroshek.* Also, what the fuck is wallop?

That doesn't answer Valerie's question at all, Gamlen.

So I click on the mallet and a new objective appears in my journal.

I have no idea how you're supposed to figure this out without reading the journal, because nobody makes any statements about the origins of the wallop mallet in-game at all.

So we head to the elven alienage and inspect their most sacred of trees, which they apparently also allow people to cut chunks out of to make hammers for the biannual dog lord and apostate stomping.

Hopefully this dipshit isn't going to try to fight us too, I'm really not in the mood for a trash mob right now.

Damn, still slagging on Isabela even after all these years.

Ha ha ha. Racism. *hammers the "ban" button*

Actually Merrill, it's more like an incredibly shitty fetch quest!

Is there anything Fenris won't whine about?

Here's the crate Valerie was supposed to check. Despite having the number of the shipment she wanted, she saved it for last after she had looted every other crate in the warehouse.

Well hopefully it's the gem, because then this quest is over.

*sigh* of course it is.

So Valerie opens the box full of poison gas anyway and a bunch of mercenaries bust in. Why someone felt the need to waste the money on hiring dozens of mercenaries to take down fucking Gamlen is completely beyond me.

Probably should have spent a bit more to get someone who could survive having all the blood ripped out of their body by a lovable dalish blood mage, though.

Valerie finds a note on one of mercenaries' eviscerated corpses. Again, it's somehow still legible despite presumably being soaked in blood.

I want your trash mobs and I want your fetch quests, David Gaider writes a bad romance.

Haha, get ready for a sweet payoff for this line!

So we head to the cave where they first met. How Valerie knows which specific cave the note is referring to is never explained, but it probably has something to do with there only being 2 cave maps in the entire game.

And naturally it's full of fucking zombies.

And finally we meet the mysterious mastermind pulling the strings.

It's an uglier version of Bethany.

i can haz cuzzin?

Probably because I avoided talking with him as much as humanly possible.

He's here for the obligatory combat sequence, obviously!

"You'll have to be more specific. I kill a lot of people."

NOTHING IN THIS GAME MAKES SENSE

Haha get it?

And her name is Charade! Classic. Bravo, Bioware. Bra-fucking-vo.

You know what dude? Let's do it. You want the man dance, it's time to tango.

Will Valerie and her companions survive this heated battle? SPOILER: yes.

Cure Yourself By Rubbing Feces Into The Wounds

Working with Antivans always leaves a bad taste in Valerie's mouth. So sleazy, so disrespectful of her as a beautiful independent woman who don't need no man. Time to check in on someone who really knows how to treat a lady.

Unfortunately, the Arishok left the city 3 years ago, so we've got to settle for Anders.

Anders, Anders, stop being so Puritan. Everyone experiments when they're younger, no need to beat yourself up about it.

Me Fenris me hate magic

Beheading the victim is so much easier though.

I dont give a shit either way unless there's loot involved.

Oh cool I love losing half of a party member's unique skillset.

I notice they're still acting like anything in this game poses a challenge.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for this game.

That doesn't even make sense.

lol

I'm gonna need some ammonium nitrate fertilizer and some fuel oil.

Actually it really kind of doesn't, but thanks for the foreshadowing.

Oh those Tevinters, always sacrificing to the dark gods!

Hey, even if there is that's what we've got Merrill around for.

Alright, sela petrae seems to be nearby, let's head over and get that-

Oh. Guess that was where the other Templars were. Welp, that's another sidequest done with.

It's a well known fact that fecal matter is rich in magical mineral deposits.

 

Oh look. A trash mob. Because no quest would be complete without one.

Damn, between sela petrae and lyrium the Kirkwall sewers could probably be a more profitable mine than the Bone Pit!

Well, at least it's in a mildly clean location.

Ugh, of course one wouldn't be good enough for you.

Okay I don't even know why they're bothering to smuggle lyrium, because given the number of criminals in the sewers it's obvious that jenkem's where the real money's at in Kirkwall.

Ugh, I am digging for minerals directly beneath an outhouse. You know what? Fuck you, Anders. Find the drakestone yourself.

RE: New Vegas LP

Well, since I've been banned from something awful and probated for a month as well to prevent anyone from reregistering my account I figure this is probably the best place to clear the air with regards to what has happened from my perspective:

The concept behind "Mojave Ist Krieg! TRVE KVLT New Vegas" was an idea that had been gestating in my head even longer than the Dragon Age 2 Let's Play. I chose to undertake Dragon Age 2 first because, let's face it, it was a way funnier, more accessible idea, while an LP based around Black Metal esoterica clearly had a very specialized audience at best.

Ultimately, my motivation behind creating the thread was a thought experiment: what would happen if I created a thread that was the antithesis of the Dragon Age 2 LP, one that took the game seriously, displayed clear amounts of effort, and lacked the irreverent, rule-baiting attitude that had made the first thread such a target for mod ire? How would the Let's Play purists go after me then? What excuses would the moderators make to punish me?

I want to be clear: I had no anticipation of completing that thread. I fully expected the moderators to ban me Because I Was Shadow Isaac. What I was interested in seeing was what justification they could hope to provide.

Needless to say, they had none. Ozma could not link to an offending post to ban me because there was no offending post. I made every effort to obey the rules and was nothing but courteous in encouraging the readers to keep the thread on track following my probation. In fact, aside from Zorak's little tempest in a teacup over the word "negro" where he claimed it was a "racial epithet" there was no content in updates that could be considered banworthy by anything but the most dextrous mental gymnastics. I was banned because the games moderation staff, especially Zorak, had targeted me as their scapegoat for "rule-breaking" everywhere, and for that reason Ozma Was Sick Of Me.

I don't know what's going to happen to Zorak's "zany" plans to send the thread to FYAD instead of gassing it, and quite honestly I don't care. (Frankly, I do hope it happens, poor Ceciltron will be so disappointed otherwise. He begged Zorak to unlock the thread and send it to FYAD once I locked it the first time. And as Zorak has stated, gassing threads is his fetish.)

Will the New Vegas LP continue? I don't know. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I can tell you one thing for certain however: it won't continue on Something Awful. It's been made thoroughly clear that My Presence Is Not Welcome. The only reason I can imagine that I haven't been permabanned at this point is because the administration hopes to somehow extract more money from the people who bought me avatars and unbans, because lord knows I haven't spent a cent on that forum myself.