00:48 <Crion> The night before Halloween. Mischief Night. Devil's Night. Devil's Eve. ...Cabbage Night? Most call it nothing at all, but it's a Wednesday this year, and that means Stewart's probably streaming, if only because he's probably cancelled his Thursday stream due to a social event over at The Sidereal. Lauren will IM him near the end of his usual schedule, however: <hey, wanna game with the prince 00:48 <Crion> after midnight> 00:48 <Crion> <also im coming over> 00:55 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart assumes that one day their relationship will settle down to the point where thr prospect of her coming over doesn't put a big goofy smile on his face. He hopes it isn't soon, though. <hell yesx2> 00:56 <Crion> <what do you want for dinner> She knows he doesn't eat on stream. 00:58 <VoxPVoxD> People eating on stream is one of Stewart's biggest pet peeves. He gets the necessity, sometimes. <idk. nothing too heavy. wonton soup?> 00:59 <Crion> <ok> 00:59 <Crion> <ill get crab rangoon. you can eat UP TO THREE when you decide its too tempting> 00:59 <VoxPVoxD> <fair and just> 01:01 <Crion> She arrives in just under forty minutes in sweatpants, a gaming tee, and a hoodie. Starting to actually get cold at night. She got a double order of the crab rangoon to go with the soup, and will spend no longer than fifteen seconds kissing him at the door before putting the food down at the counter. 01:01 <VoxPVoxD> He gives the apartment a pass to tidy it up, and... can't find anything to do to it. He's been cleaning a lot, lately. 01:01 <VoxPVoxD> Mmm. 01:02 <Crion> One assumes Stewart doesn't eat at the rig? 01:02 <Crion> Streaming or not. 01:02 <VoxPVoxD> Oh god no. Think of the crumbs! He's got a little table in a corner of the kitchen. Only two chairs. 01:03 <Crion> How's the ventilation in this building? How's the heat? Does he get rattling pipes, because they're turning the radiators back on for the winter now. 01:05 <Crion> If the temperature in here is over 73 degrees, Lauren's going to want to crack a window. 01:06 <VoxPVoxD> The building's reasonably old, at least as Stewart, a child, reckons the age of things. The radiators are steam, so the pipes rattle from time to time. There's a nice through-breeze most days when windows at both ends of the apartment are open, though true ventilation requires opening the windows in the office, which is a no-go during work hours. He doesn't even have an AC in there because 01:06 <VoxPVoxD> of the noise. 01:06 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart'll let her crack a window. He's wearing a sweatshirt already. 01:07 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "How's work?" 01:07 <Crion> She will do so, then curl up into her chair with one of the two packets of "fried cream cheese wontons." 01:07 <Crion> "It sucks! I hate it. It's fine." 01:07 <Crion> "I had to go down into the vault both yesterday and today." 01:09 <VoxPVoxD> "For the Street? What happened?" 01:10 <Crion> She rolls her eyes while chomping on a rangoon. When she's finished her bite: "He keeps melting his CAT5s." 01:11 <Crion> "So, Swordhome -- they call that place Swordhome -- has everything running through metal walls. A whole metal environment. If you want to cable something, unless you insulate it, it'll be touching metal. And even if you DO insulate it, sometimes it'll get too hot." 01:11 <Crion> "It's INTOLERABLY hot down there, when the Street gets angry." 01:12 <VoxPVoxD> "How often does the Street get angry?" 01:12 <Crion> She chomps down on a second. "60 times an hour." 01:12 <Crion> "24 hours a day." 01:13 <Crion> "So. The network is new. The server room is fucking sealed off and plugged. 01:13 <Crion> "BUT!" 01:13 <VoxPVoxD> Swordhome is a sick name for a hideout, Stewart thinks. Sounds like something out of an old Ultima game. 01:14 <Crion> "It has to be wired, at least out to a router, because of the requirements of the walls. And even then the way the place is built plays havoc on wireless signal." 01:14 <Crion> "You know they ripped it out of the Hedge and brought it back, right?" 01:14 <Crion> "Turned an overpass into a portal. 01:14 <Crion> " 01:15 <Crion> "Buried it beneath an empty lot and built a club over it." 01:15 <Crion> She shakes her head. "That's one way to protest losing your Hollow." 01:15 <VoxPVoxD> "What'd he lose it to?" 01:16 <Crion> "The Killer, The Crown, and The Case. Three hobs that aren't around anymore," she says. 01:17 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart nods, mouth full of the first third of his crab rangoon quota. Could be worse. 01:17 <Crion> "Anyway you're not supposed to be able to yank two storey buildings out of the hedge, much less encased in a bank vault." 01:17 <VoxPVoxD> After finishing the bite. "Did they use, like, trucks, or did they just full-on Superman it?" 01:17 <Crion> "And you can't Hedgespin anything on THIS side, of course, so everything has to be done by hand." 01:18 <Crion> Lauren: "A combination of the two, I think. Kingsley or Marcus knows for sure, but it was before my time. I get the feeling they spent a LONG time planning and preparing." 01:20 <VoxPVoxD> "Have they ever given any thought to like, a water cooling system? Treat the whole building like a giant PC case." 01:21 <Crion> Lauren: "Power costs are already absurd for the network room, which is water-cooled. The problem is that Summer guys tend to heat shit up, especially the Street. So the best thing is to keep that room locked down, cooled, and reflective. 01:22 <Crion> "The cables coming out of it, though, were melting. So first we tried some gasket insulation, because the melting always seemed to be at the point of contact with the wall." 01:23 <Crion> "That worked for a little bit. Enough for me to go home. But today I got called back in because of OTHER failures later down the chain." 01:23 <Crion> "And it was always going TOWARDS the Street's office. Not away." 01:24 <Crion> She sighs. "So what I ended up doing was putting his PC in a different room from his desk and making it a hotspot his phone auto-connects to." 01:24 <Crion> "If he fucks up his phone, not on me." 01:24 <VoxPVoxD> "That's really smart." 01:25 <Crion> Lauren rolls her eyes again, but they flash with pleasure. "If I was smart I would have done that in the first place instead of wasting a day padding pass-throughs." 01:26 <VoxPVoxD> "See that's like a, a PvE idea of intelligence." 01:26 <VoxPVoxD> "You gotta look at the leaderboards. The next-smartest person figures that out in a week. Stuff like that." 01:27 <Crion> She snorts, but appreciatively. Then eats another rangoon. 01:27 <Crion> "Sooooooooo. The Prince...doesn't want to play Destiny 2." 01:27 <VoxPVoxD> "Oh?" 01:28 <VoxPVoxD> That's a relief. Stewart's not even at like baseline-endgame yet. 01:29 <Crion> "I'm trying to think of the polite way to say this." She pauses. "There's no polite way to say this. You know how sometimes French people will tell Americans trying to speak French to them, in broken English, to just speak their own language? Because they're such snots they rather disgrace your tongue than theirs?" 01:29 <Crion> "He's kind of like that. He wants to play Path of Exile." 01:29 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "What, like, party up?" 01:30 <Crion> "Yeah. He downloaded it earlier today. He wants to voice chat. Won't trust you unless I'm there." 01:30 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "So your reputation's on the line. Lot of pressure." 01:31 <VoxPVoxD> "Besmirching the name of Lauren Ipsum? Couldn't be me." 01:31 <Crion> She laughs at that. "I carried his ass through the last two raids. What's he going to do, go pubbie?" 01:32 <VoxPVoxD> "Do you know how much he knows? PoE's got a pretty steep learning curve." 01:33 <Crion> Lauren: "Oh, he knows what Diablo is, and he knows it's like that. And he knows it takes 'less skill' than Destiny 2 or Call of Duty, because he's a little shitlord. But he's quite adaptable and smart once you get past all that." 01:34 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Alright, sounds like we'll be able to just get in the game then. Two things. One is, have you ever noticed him get real mad at something it wasn't obviously stupid to say or do? Like, I don't wanna - you know, cause a diplomatic crisis or something." 01:35 <Crion> She waves a hand. "His attention span is 13 and his voice is 13, but he's not going to drop gamer words or start screaming if things don't go perfectly." 01:37 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Okay, cool. I was a little more worried about him acting like a 400 year old than a 13 year old, but it sounds like that's not a big deal. Second is, what do I call him? Is it just Lister? Am I gonna be going 'that's a staff skill, your majesty, you can't use it with axes'?" 01:37 <Crion> Lauren, munching on another wonton: "I call him Listy when I'm annoyed with him. He hates it." 01:37 <Crion> "Lister's good." 01:38 <VoxPVoxD> "Langford Lister." 01:38 <Crion> "Ugh, don't speak that into this world." 01:39 <VoxPVoxD> "Did I tell you that that first night back in September when we got motley'd up, List gave us a pep talk about like, the different roles in a WoW raid?" 01:40 <Crion> Lauren cackles at that. "That's SO like him!" 01:40 <Crion> "He games with his kid." 01:41 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart's face does not get weirdly tight at all, and he's not visibly thinking about how many children he might have had by now. 01:41 <VoxPVoxD> "That's cool." 01:42 <VoxPVoxD> "How old's his kid?" 01:43 <Crion> "Man, Dante's gotta be...15, now?" Her smile fades a bit. "They don't get much time together. That's the impression I get, at least. So during summer vacation when school's out and he's not running the Summer Court, they sort of fall down a gaming hole." 01:45 <VoxPVoxD> That's a hell of a lot more than he ever got from his dad. No, no, no, hold up, this is a tailspin, you're tailspinning, Stewart. Briiiing it back. There's a slightly too long pause before he says: "So do you want the big chair or one of these?" 01:46 <Crion> "Since the face cam's off, I could just sit on your lap..." Her eyes flash. "But this chair's fine." 01:47 <VoxPVoxD> All dark clouds are banished. Stewart grins. "Cool. Let's clean up and then I'll log on." 01:48 <Crion> Turns out she left him all six of the second packet of crab rangoon. 01:49 <Crion> Anyway, once you're all settled in, the account you'll need to friend is leprincedesjoueurs. 01:49 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart doesn't know a lot of French, but he knows 'gamer' in several languages. "God damn, that's a handle." 01:50 <Crion> Lauren: "He bought it off someone." 01:51 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart sends a friend request. Let's see what's up. 01:51 <Crion> She is not, actually, in Stewart's lap, but she is as close to him as her chair can get her, nominally so she can yell at the Prince through the mic. 01:51 <Crion> The friend request is instantly accepted, and Stewart is whispered a Discord link. 01:51 <VoxPVoxD> This is nice. Wouldn't want to get too distracted. Let's hop into Discord. 01:52 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart plays with a table mic and no headset, so they'll both hear everything. 01:54 <Crion> Nevertheless: as close to him as her chair can get her. The server is called Baltimore eElysium, with a couple different accounts logged on -- Lister, TheCount, Hailey5 and, uhhh, HerrDoktor -- and there's an audio channel called LE CHEMIN DE L'EXIL, with just Lister in it. 01:55 <Crion> Looks like it's open to join. 01:55 <VoxPVoxD> "HerrDoktor, huh." 01:55 <Crion> Lauren's voice is suddenly very serious. "Never talk to him." 01:55 <Crion> "If he messages you, do not return it." 01:56 <Crion> "No matter what it says, or what it promises." 01:56 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart nods. "Oh, that reminds me. The other day, the day we extracted Loser, we were talking about the Loyalists and I made some offhand comment about how Kid Kid Kid is like a nazi who spends all day on the Internet." 01:57 <VoxPVoxD> "Nels, without missing a beat, 'What's a Nazi?'" 01:57 <VoxPVoxD> "Total fucking silence. Five people in the room, you could hear a pin drop." 01:57 <Crion> Lauren, grimly: "The Doctor of Sciences is a Nazi." 01:58 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I had a hunch it was something like that. Father Jesse mentioned him offhand, that one night, and even the way he did that was bad news. It was like, 'oh jeez we better hope this string of murders isn't the Doctor of Sciences'." 01:58 <Crion> "Yeah. He's kept in check by...a series of agreements." 01:59 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "If there's anything in any world more powerful than a series of agreements, I haven't seen it yet." 01:59 <Crion> She shakes her head. "...Anyway! Join the channel." 02:00 <VoxPVoxD> Double-click. 02:00 <Crion> A very young voice: "Hullo? Who is there. Is this some...Stew-aaart?" 02:01 <VoxPVoxD> 'criticalmass': "Hi! Yeah, this is Stewart, I'm here with Lauren." He pauses so she can confirm her presence. 02:02 <Crion> Lister: "Ah, est-ce vrai? Alors c'est ton homme, Lauren?" 02:02 <Crion> Lauren: "Parlez anglais, imbécile." 02:02 <VoxPVoxD> How's her accent? 02:02 <Crion> He tuts. "But that iss indeed Lauren. Hello, Stewaaart." 02:03 <Crion> Pretty much perfect modern French. School-taught but flawless. 02:03 <VoxPVoxD> Oooh. Nope, nope, getting distracted. Gotta focus. "Hello, is this Lister?" 02:05 <Crion> Lister: "No, my friend, this is a particularly gropey skunk, from the cartoons. I have determined how to operate a computer, and now have no object but to game." 02:05 <Crion> "I hear that I shall be clicking upon things, until they die?" 02:06 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Or in their general vicinity, yeah, that's the hope." 02:06 <Crion> "Excellent. Then we shall log on!" 02:07 <VoxPVoxD> "But Path of Exile is first and foremost an incredibly customizable game, from a build perspective. It's possible to construct characters that chain precisely timed skills to maximize their damage, and characters that just, walk around, and monsters die around them." 02:08 <Crion> Lister: "Mmmmm. Much like real life, no. I would prefer to play a class that does not rely on stealing life, or blood, or any of that. Big, strong man. Tough and sturdy. Or, sneaky fuck. But no, ah, lifelink." 02:08 <Crion> "I am on this character creation screen. This Scion. I like her." 02:09 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Scion is a really cool class. It your generalist, you can build it to do anything. It starts right in the middle of the skill tree and takes ability from all the other classes." 02:11 <Crion> "I enjoy the sound of that! And she is very French murder-chic. Une belle femme de violence. My apologies, Lauren." 02:11 <Crion> "I would ask about the Ranger but...arrows. They are too much like stakes." 02:11 <Crion> Lister: "You think this would not be so bothersome after such a long time, but no." 02:12 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You don't have to build Ranger as an archer... my last Ranger build was a Frost Blades Raider, but yeah I take your meaning." 02:12 <Crion> "Mmmmmm. Which is better, for what you are playing?" 02:12 <Crion> "You ARE starting a new character, of course...?" 02:12 <VoxPVoxD> "I thought we'd be starting characters-- yeah, absolutely." 02:12 <Crion> "Excellent!" 02:13 <VoxPVoxD> "I'm thinking Templar. I haven't done Templar in a while. Mess around with Smite, that's a fun early-game skill." 02:14 <VoxPVoxD> "The Templar model doesn't wear pants for some reason, so, if the thighs of a tiny elderly Scottish man offend, speak up now." 02:15 <Crion> Lister: "If the thighs of elderly Scottish men were completely insufferable, I should have had nothing to eat in the 1830s. I shall play Scion, with a complementary build." 02:15 <Crion> Lauren, thumbing the mute: "That's a joke. I think?" 02:16 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart shrugs. "I'm just gonna roll with it. Whatever he says, I've heard worse." 02:17 <Crion> He will load in with a character named VraieReinedeFrance 02:17 <Crion> . 02:17 <VoxPVoxD> Before coming off mute: "What's that mean?" 02:18 <Crion> Lauren: "The True Queen of France." 02:18 <VoxPVoxD> "How romantic." 02:19 <Crion> Lauren, still muted: "He can be like that." 02:19 <VoxPVoxD> Off mute: "Alright, so this very first zone we'll be doing alone... there's tutorials if the interface is opaque but you can click them away if you get it." 02:19 <Crion> "Ah!" Lister says, as his Scion wakes up on the shore and has to kill the other survivor. "Well. More biographical than I'd like." 02:20 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah, I know what you mean." 02:20 <Crion> "Mmmm. Perhaps we'll talk about that sometime. Will you be at Halloween tomorrow, Lauren?" 02:21 <Crion> Lauren: "You know I hate parties, Lister." 02:21 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart, by streamer's habit, runs past all the zombies in the Twilight Strand and just kills Hillock, who'll level you up to 2 from nothing. 02:21 <Crion> Lister: "That's not an answer!" 02:21 <Crion> Lauren sighs. "Yes." 02:21 <Crion> "So I will surely meet you then, Stewart." 02:21 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I'm looking forward to it." 02:21 <Crion> "Ah, you've run away from me. One moment." 02:22 <Crion> "Mmm. Hmmmmm. Let us see..." 02:22 <Crion> Lister: "I play left-handed, so I must rebind...this entire keyboard. One moment." 02:23 <VoxPVoxD> "I'm left-handed too. I play right-handed, though, because that's how every other computer in the world is set up." 02:24 <Crion> Lister: "I dislike change. Unfortunately, that seems to lead to having to change everything at least once." 02:24 <Crion> A moment later: "Ah! I am set. This giant man is an ass." 02:24 <Crion> Soon, however, he joins Stewart in Lioneye's Watch. 02:25 <Crion> It's probably not necessary to narrate getting through the first couple areas. 02:25 <Crion> What build does Stewart recommend, however? 02:27 <VoxPVoxD> Soemthing melee. Stewart's Smite will clear reasonably well, but the single target's not great. Combine it with someone on Viper Strike or Double Strike, though, and Merveil will die before she's had time to grieve her children. 02:27 <VoxPVoxD> Is not a thought Stewart vocalizes. 02:28 <Crion> Lister plays it well and intuitively, though he still needs guidance through most of the steps. 02:29 <Crion> When they finally defeat Merveil -- he plays his part perfectly -- he says, "Well then." 02:29 <VoxPVoxD> Yeah, there's a lot of, just, *stuff* you have to learn, and it's real easy to miss something or learn it and then mix it up with something else you learned eight steps later and then get frustrated having to unpick your entire gameplan to see what's not working. 02:29 <VoxPVoxD> "Nice! What do you think so far?" 02:29 <Crion> "C'était déprimant comme merde." 02:30 <Crion> Hastily: "Ah! I am enjoying the gameplay. I especially like the economy." 02:30 <Crion> "You do not get this economy in Destiny 2." 02:30 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart hits the mute and glances at Lauren. 02:30 <Crion> Lauren: "'This is depressing as shit.'" 02:30 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart sighs. "You know that is not one of the parts of Diablo 2 that I missed, necessarily." 02:32 <VoxPVoxD> Off mute, if or after Lauren responds: "The PoE economy is really robust. There's a lot of play space in just flipping items and spotting inefficiencies if you've got the inclination." 02:33 <Crion> Lister: "Mmmmm. I might. You know, Lauren, we've lost our werewolves for the forseeable future. Kolsch and Cuth say they have business. So we might have to put Destiny 2 aside..." 02:33 <Crion> "This would be an acceptable replacement, I think, for gaming night." 02:33 <Crion> "If you agree, Stewart?" 02:34 <VoxPVoxD> "That sounds fun! Is it the shit out in the county that's pulled them away, you think?" 02:34 <VoxPVoxD> "I was in Catonsville the other night, there were Park Rangers with anti-materiel rifles just sitting in plain sight on the back of their trucks." 02:35 <Crion> Lister sighs. "Pourquoi sont-ils toujours aussi bien informés. Yes, I would say it is likely that." 02:36 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart clicks his tongue. "I hope they're alright. Lauren told me about them, they sound nice." 02:37 <Crion> Lister chuckles darkly. "Oh, they can be. But one prefers the intervening medium, much of the time. They are, after all, still werewolves." 02:37 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart nods, then remembers he's not on cam. "That's fair. "So in act 2 there's a choice you have to make, about some bandits. The game will lay all your options out for you with like the story and mechanical implications, but if we end up taking different paths we might have to split up very briefly." 02:38 <Crion> "That sounds excellent, I will--pardon." 02:38 <Crion> His mic goes muted or dead. 02:38 <Crion> Then: "My apologies, Stewart. I believe I have to go." 02:39 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. I hope everything's alright." 02:39 <Crion> "It is, or it will be soon." 02:40 <Crion> Some incredibly indistinct shouting can be heard in the very far background, but no words can be made out, and it cuts in and out. 02:40 <VoxPVoxD> "Then I'm looking forward to meeting you tomorrow. Good night." 02:40 <Crion> "Good night, Stewart. Lauren." 02:40 <Crion> Lauren: "Good night." 02:40 <Crion> Lister leaves the channel. 02:40 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart'll log out and do the same. 02:41 <Crion> Is there a window in the computer room? 02:41 <VoxPVoxD> Yeah. It's normally blackout-curtained so the streetlight doesn't mess up the room lighting, but if Lauren was stuffy in the kitchen she'll likely have insisted on opening one in here too. 02:42 <Crion> She did. She'll walk open to it and open it a bit further, though; it is a bit hot in the room with at least two big machines. 02:43 <Crion> Then she'll turn back and lean against it, in her sweatpants and tee, grinning. "Cela s'est très bien passé." 02:43 <Crion> "Picked up a couple languages on the other side." 02:44 <VoxPVoxD> "And more importantly, the accents." 02:45 <Crion> "Mmmmm." She saunters over to Stewart, straddling him. "Now let's head one room over, et je vais vous montrer ce que j'ai appris de plus en France--" 02:45 <Crion> Something slams against the window. 02:46 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart stands up abruptly and leaps to the window. 02:46 <VoxPVoxD> Lauren sort of slides off him. 02:47 <Crion> Before he gets there, a grasping wing of metal and feathers reaches underneath the sill and opens it, and then something about the size of a vacuum cleaner falls into the room, squawking mechanically, caught up in the blackout sheet. 02:48 <Crion> Lauren scrambles away, to the far wall. 02:49 <Crion> Then it rises up, wearing the sheet like a cloak. "LAUREN IPSUM!" it bellows. 02:49 <Crion> It seems like...an animatronic pelican? 02:50 <Crion> She cowers in the corner of the room. 02:50 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart's voice is calm considering how fast he's moving, grabbing the kitchen chair and hefting it in one hand. "Any idea what we're looking at?" 02:51 <Crion> In a quiet voice: "It doesn't matter if you kill it or not." 02:53 <Crion> Drawing itself up to its full height, the pelican intones: "FACTORY RECALL." 02:53 <VoxPVoxD> The chair hurtles across the room. Both it and the bird shatter. 02:53 <VoxPVoxD> He goes to her and holds her. 02:54 <Crion> The bird crumples and twitches, and its head slowly twists to consider the both of them as the light fades from its eyes. Its red, LED eyes. 02:54 <Crion> --fin.