Teer Fradee and Me

Since this is the Monday of my week due to the holiday yesterday, I feel like doing a sort of general update post. I had previously been grinding away on my second playthrough of Witcher 2, in an attempt to see the other side of the story. I have more or less stalled out there because I am not a really big fan of the “humans” path thus far. It feels very much like I chose the correct path the first time. I am generally fine about hatred of high elves… but the dwarves and halflings are always my kinfolk. Witcher universe sets up a world where the elves are assholes, but also greatly abused assholes making me somehow care more about them. Dragon Age did the same thing to me with the Daelish, which I feel are probably at least inspired by the Scoia’tael. For now however I am probably setting this aside realizing that my first attempt was the best attempt.

Instead I managed to find traction finally in Greedfall, which is an RPG that came out last year. The control scheme is a little wonky with mouse and keyboard, but after my extensive playing of Witcher 2 it feels pretty solid compared to that mess. The game as a whole is Tolkien meets the evils of Conquest and Colonization as you set forth to the “new world” represented in this game by the Isle of Teer Fradee. The main continent is effectively divided by a central conflict of Science over Religion with its proxy factions of The Bridge Alliance representing Science and Theleme representing Relgion. You make up a third and attemptedly neutral faction called the Congregation of Merchants, which along with the Coin Guard attempts to make sure that commerce flows between the various warring groups. Lastly there are the factions of the Nauts which make up a group that controls the over ocean shipping lanes and the only route to Teer Fradee and then the Yecht Fradi which represent the native populace of the island being subjugated by these invaders.

You are thrust into a game world where the only group with potentially clean hands are those who originally inhabited the isle. I am doing my best to be a good man when presented with this central conflict and to the right and just thing… but truthfully right now that is more or less having me focus on nothing but the side missions of which there are plentiful. The Theleme are of course the faction of religious zealots dead set on conversion of the natives. The Bridge Alliance are unchecked scientific progress who wants to capture and experiment on all manner of creatures and peoples from the island. The Coin Guard and Congregation in theory are attempting to be neutral but in doing so have many of their own skeletons in their closet and a seemingly dark past that will need be accounted for. The Nauts have their own issues in the form that they demand children or “sea-born” as payment for trade contracts and any child born on one of their vessels becomes theirs as well.

You would think with all of those morally compromised positions, that the game-play experience would feel rather fraught. These things serve to set the texture of the world you are inhabiting, and the game gives you plentiful options to do the right thing and also plentiful options to abuse the powers bestowed upon you as the Legate of the Congregation. I’ve not spent a lot of time working on the main story because the game thrusts you into all of these deeply personal character arcs for your makeshift crew and I am finding myself enjoying that way more than any of the larger beats. I figure at the end of the day I will probably wind up at war with both of the major factions because I find them thoroughly distasteful. Ultimately I am spending most of my time running around with Vasco the captain of the ship that brought us to Teer Fradee and Siora the daughter of the Queen of a faction of natives at war with the Bridge Alliance who sought your assistance. I care about both of them as characters and more or less the joy of this game is running around with them doing stuff, thought Vasco’s “a bit of poison on my blade” combat line gets a little old.

I did not make it through yesterday without paying another visit to the animal shelter and seeing our kiddo. Right now we are leaning towards Josie… as in Josie the Pussycat. I am hoping all of these visits are doing a little bit of bonding along the way, in at least showing here that there are humans out there waiting on her. We still have to wait for final approval that comes after surgery… however we were given a bit of hope. There was talk that maybe just maybe they would be doing a number of surgeries today, and if she is in that batch we might get a call tonight. We have the isolation room set up and ready for her with a brand new fresh litter box, bed and some toys. However during the time when we are here we are likely going to be grabbing her and either shutting off my office, my wife’s office or the bedroom to let her roam around while we do our thing and get used to the world. You never really know how long you need before you can introduce her to the other cats.

I will close things out with another photo. While I was trying to take a photo, she kept trying to climb across my wife and come over to visit me which was adorable. She pretty much started purring as soon as she saw us, but our visit was a little truncated. By policy they have to have a staff member back with us while we interact with the animals, and in the middle of our visit they called the person up to the front to help another family. We didn’t have to leave but we opted to do the right thing and free up the resource, and I am glad we did because they had a family who had lost their animal trying to check to see if it had been captured as a stray. Right now I am hoping beyond hope to get a call, but I will I guess also be okay if I have to wait until Friday.

In the meantime however we are continuing to spend as much time as possible with Kenzie and Mollie because I am sure very soon they will be grumpy with us.