Bay 12 Games Forum

: "I'll thank ye kindly to not mention me wife again. Anyway, as these youngsters have rightly pointed out ye've been hardly the most trustworthy soul. Assuming ye actually have one."

I'm curious, what do they do? How does one use them? The look like nothing more than circuit boards with USB ports attached, but clearly there's something going on there.

I attempted to make "wrecked potatoes" based on a recipe I saw on imgur. The process was as follows:

Acquire bag of very small potatoes. Fingerlings or so.
Boil potatoes until they are "fork tender" which I assume means that you can poke them with a fork without too much difficulty.
Drain potatoes and place in big bowl.
Drizzle potatoes with a generous amount of olive oil. Season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, crushed red peppers, thyme, and rosemary.
Toss potatoes in bowl until they're all properly coated. Dump potatoes on lined baking sheet.
Use the bottom of a glass to squish the potatoes until they're little discs about half an inch thick. This works best on the smallest potatoes; larger ones tended to just fall apart rather than squish into reasonably neat discs.
Bake at 425 degrees F (218 C) for half an hour, flipping them over halfway through.

They were supposed to come out with crispy, crunchy outsides and fluffy insides. While they were certainly fluffy inside the outside didn't crisp up enough. Perhaps they lost too much olive oil during the squishing process, dunno. At least they were tasty.

The armored priest (who most certainly did not worship Rundum, thank you very much) huffed in annoyance.

: "'The' God? Bah. Foolish notion." With one last flash of light, Gordon's staff mended the wounds of all his companions.

: "Now then, what do we do with this one? He's caused us no end of trouble, he has."

Lin

Personally, Mordecai had doubts about redirecting the energy he tapped. His arte was so strongly focused inward that trying to force collected life energy to another being might cause more harm than good. Which might actually come in handy if it could be adapted for attack purposes...well, he'd leave it in Lin's capable hands.

: "Nothing much. All I ask is that you try to keep the tome's characteristics somewhat like ordinary Dark tomes. Something extremely light or extremely heavy could throw me off stride. Same if it's considerably stronger or weaker than others of its type."

Reeve

: "Understood. I won't be long."

The vampire darted through the slaughterhouse's front door, which was unlocked despite a "Closed" sign hanging in the window, and ducked behind the counter where the owner would usually stand during business hours. There, he found his goal for the night: a pint glass filled nearly to the brim with blood, fresh from the day's processing.

It was fortunate that Solrise Academy was willing to accommodate Mordecai's needs this way. Like all vampires, Mordecai was required to drink blood regularly. The generous portions of food served at school helped minimize the amount he needed, but no matter how much he ate he would eventually go mad and perish without the crimson liquid. Mordecai had made this requirement explicitly clear in his application letters, and miracle of miracles the school came through. They had hammered out a deal with the owner of this particular slaughterhouse to keep their first (or at least, only current) vampire student healthy.

Not, Mordecai mused as he drank from the glass, that the owner of the place wanted him that way. He and Mordecai detested each other, and chances were they always would. Fortunately the owner chose to take Academy money over turning his considerable cleaver skills on the "demonspawn", as he had once threatened to do.

Mindful of the fact that he had company on this venture for once, Mordecai drank the pint of blood down quickly rather than take a few minutes to savor the experience. Careful to wipe his face clean, he replaced the pint behind the counter and returned outside.

: "Sorry for the wait. Now then, I believe I owe you one. Any place in particular you'd like to go?"

E-18

Lin

Mordecai coughed and looked suitably chagrined.

: "Sorry. Your question surprised me; it wasn't a topic I'd considered before."

: "So then, a tome that synergizes with my Arte. I don't know how much you know of its workings, but to summarize it allows me to tap into the energy that powers another living being. I then use that energy to heal my wounds. It works quite well, but there is a shortcoming; if I am unwounded, or only lightly so, then the extracted energy is wasted. It dissipates into nothing. Finding a way to harness that energy before it vanishes - other than me being so hideously injured that I require it all, anyway - would be ideal."

Fingers crossed. I just got my second jab of Moderna, and I'd be perfectly happy if it was also my last jab of the stuff.