Adventure Time 

You know the feeling you get when you wake up thinking it's Saturday but it's actually Monday, you have to go to work and it's raining? That's the feeling Arcturus had when he woke up thinking he was at home but realized he had to go search some ruins for a day and a half. He rolled out of bed, grabbed his tent and cubes of dried food and walked out the front door. Once outside, he jumped on a scooter he must have stolen and started the drive to the Celtic Ruins on the edge of town.

He really moved with purpose and just walked down a flight of steps dug into the earth like it was his basement. The large empty room he stood in was the start of an underground labyrinth where each room had somewhat of a puzzle to solve. These puzzles included:

1. Touching walls until they felt good enough about themselves to spin open.

2. Standing on panels that were very obviously meant to be stood on.

3. Reaching into dark holes and just feeling around for anything.

4. Pulling absolutely gigantic solid stone statues around like they were made of marshmallow.

After all that silly activity through about six different rooms, Arcturus reached the final puzzle room of the Celtic Ruins. It was a large area with another smaller room attached. The main room had a hedge maze, a few pedestals scattered about with trinkets on them, some locked doors along the edges and a gravestone right in the center. The smaller room had a tent for Arcturus to sleep in. After a full day of traveling underground, he decided to take a nap in the tent before conquering the final room.

If you were wondering why there was a tent set up this deep into the ruins, the answer probably lies with that skeleton in the corner or that plaque on the wall. Arcturus read the plaque and learned the skeleton's story. The person had entered this last area and the door locked behind him. The final puzzle posed too much of a challenge for them and they decided to chisel their story into a plaque, hang it on the wall and then just die on a mat. Didn't want to die in that tent and put anyone out. The skeleton's story was actually a little bit boring, to be honest. Arcturus got into his jammies and slept in the dead man's tent.

When he woke up, he ate a bit of dried food and walked over to the hedge maze. He had to get started so that he didn't end up like that skeleton. Thinking about the difficulty of the hedge maze, the skeleton and the gravestone in the center of the room put Arcturus over the edge and he... started to cry.

"It just looks so hard!"

When he was all out of tears, he started walking around. The funny thing about this hedge maze is that the hedges are below his knees. He could step over them if he wanted but he played it legit. You never know when a poison dart is going to shoot out of a wall because you broke the rules. Picking up small treasures scattered through the maze along the way (one of which was a 5,121 year old bottle of wine), Arcturus reached the final door. There was a pressure plate that needed to be held down in order for the door to open permanently. He looked to his right at the statue standing there and pulled it onto the pressure plate. The door opened and he walked through.

This made Arcturus think about that skeleton next to the tent. Arcturus couldn't quite wrap his mind around the idea that that person had died trying to figure this out. Dragging statues onto pressure plates was how he progressed into this very room so that skeleton was really dumb. Anyway, inside the final room there was a brightly glowing hole in the ground, a few statues and a confusing amount of graves.

Thinking about windows?

Arcturus's phone rang. It was Ahilac, the alien that had visited a while ago. He took the call. I'll assume that Ahilac was still on her home planet. So, with Arcturus 20 feet underground and Ahilac being a few light years away, it's safe to say that AT&T is not providing his service.

That's great... Oh, me?... Yeah, I'm lost and dying.

After the conversation, Arcturus went over to the glowing hole in the ground. This must have been where Elliot dropped his "thing" because it was the last room and it was shooting out some moon beams. He reached in the hole and felt something squishy. That squishy something was also moving so he pulled his hand out to find it covered in various bugs.

Brushing them off, he reached in again and pulled out... a baseball. This is what Elliot had Arcturus find? Arcturus spent 36 hours in this dungeon and nearly died for something he could've bought at Dick's Sporting Goods? Ok. If not for the reward, he'd take this baseball and throw it through Elliot's store window.

Arcturus looked around and noticed a door had opened in one of the walls so at least he didn't have to backtrack through the ruins to get out. Walking through the door found Arcturus in a small room with some pots and a flight of stairs. The pots were the most exciting thing he ever saw apparently. Not the staircase out of there. The pots.

Well, it was time to head back to town on his scooter. As it turned out, Elliot's reward was just some ancient coins that could only be spent at a special French merchant's shop. Arcturus would have to wait for his next visit to take advantage of those coins though. His time here had been spent and I was met with an immediate load screen sending Arcturus back to his home in Riverview.

France's final message:

Although this phase of the adventure is done, there are many more to be had in France. Return home, rest up, tell a story or two of adventures had, then return to France for another foray into the unknown.

Uhmmmmm, no thanks!

Home at last. Guess he didn't need to take any bags anyway, but I do wonder how he managed to change into his pajamas to sleep in that skeleton's tent that one time. Does he wear pajamas under that suit? Something to think about.

France for the Holidays

There was a time early on in this game when Arcturus's office asked him to go to France and interview five people for a newspaper article. When you think about how boring such an article would be, you wonder why the newspaper would pay for Arcturus to go there. Well, it turned out that Arcturus had to pay his own way so it wasn't really an interesting idea for him. More recently, I checked back to see if his job still wanted him to to go there for the interviews and they didn't. Oh well. He was going either way at this point.

After Arcturus awoke from his "Christmas coma", he picked up the phone and called France. I guess. Or maybe it was the taxi service. I don't know. He called somebody.

"Can I come to France?"... "Oui"... "Neat."

After hanging up the phone, the front door flew open because either the door sensed he was leaving or the lock was broken and the wind caught it right. Arcturus got, like, a little chill up his spine or something and his reaction to it was positively puzzling: stiff arms, crossed legs like he was going to wet his pants and a sheepish grin.

"Oooo, so chilly."

He trudged through the snow to the taxi. Didn't pack bags, didn't inform his office he was going on vacation, didn't put a coat on and didn't even close the front door behind him. It was just time to go. That's how baller he is. Good thing his front door closed automatically though. He got in the taxi and said, "France". The driver got confused by that statement and just crashed into a neighbor's trashcan.

Eventually, Arcturus made it to the airport or whatever. I don't get to see any of the traveling process as unfortunate as that may seem. No Indiana Jones type red line across a map or anything. There was just a load screen and then he was on the streets of a little town EAGames cleverly called "Champs Les Sims". When making this game, one of the programmers probably leaned out of his cubicle and shouted, "Anyone in here know a French word we can attach 'Sims' to!?" to which someone yelled back, "I think 'Champs' is a thing!"

"Champs Les Sims" actually means "Sims Fields", I think?

"I made a big mistake coming here. I hate it already."

They placed Arcturus right outside his new residence. There was a sparkling bulletin board on the curb in front of him that he was just dying to check it out.

He ran his finger over that board many times without
really reading anything. His mind had snapped.

The board provided some "opportunities"; small missions to accomplish in France while he was there. One opportunity, posted by an Elliot Saint James, read:

"I am looking for a daring soul who is willing to provide some assistance for an ample reward. I need you to do a bit of underground exploration for me. As it happens, my store sells tents and dried food. Head to the Celtic Ruins and find something I lost while exploring. You will know when you find it."

"As it happens, my store sells tents and dried food"? Oh damn. It's just a crummy commercial. But Arcturus was intrigued by the "ample reward" part of the request so he decided to visit Elliot and let him know the game was afoot.

"Vous voulez voir quelque chose, monsieur?"

Arcturus managed to find Elliot's store somehow and talked to him about his request. The man was happy with Arcturus's offer to help him find his "something" he dropped in the Celtic Ruins, but also had a more immediate situation that needed to be taken care of. He asked Arcturus to step behind the counter to look at a different kind of "something". 

"What are you holding there?... Oh boy."
"Etes-vous intéressé?"
"Huh? No. Get that outta here."

Arcturus quickly changed the subject to dried food and tents. He bought some materials for his mission and then just went back to his place. Unfortunately, his interaction with Elliot had traumatized him and he could not imagine continuing the adventure that day. He cried in the shower and then got into bed despite it only being 3pm. He laid there in silence, staring, thinking. Every once in a while, he would shake his head, roll over and mutter out loud, "Why me?"

Anyway, when he wakes up, it will be time to discover the mysteries of the Celtic Ruins and find that "thing" for Elliot.

Nice... apartment? hotel? hostel? I don't know what this is.

Here is the ground floor of the place Arcturus is staying.

This is the upper floor. Some private bedrooms for a lucky few.

Arcturus, however, has to sleep with a stack of strangers.

Winter is Coming...

The weather outside is frightful...

...but, oh no, Arcturus died.

The Visitor 

Somewhere around 4am, there was a weird noise outside. A really loud hum and bang. Arcturus was already up eating breakfast because he couldn't be late to another day of work. The noise didn't even make him flinch. "What's all the ruckus out there?" I thought because Arcturus apparently didn't give a flip.

What's that outside?

An alien. With a cane. Of course.

The monster rang the doorbell and Arcturus groaned. He's grumpy in the mornings. He opened the door and was face to face with an alien. Arcturus Mengsk is the first human to have contact with life from another world and this is how he reacts:

"Not impressed"

He just woke up and is acting like this isn't even the greatest thing he's seen today. Despite the look he gave her, it was love at first handshake. Somehow the language barrier was overcome and these two launched into a conversation. Her name is Ahilac Vajjevoo (dirty) and judging by the fact that she walked up to the front door with a cane, she's close to dying. That's unfortunate because Arcturus would definitely have an alien child with her if she was capable. He wouldn't even need to raise it, just impregnate her and have it exist. I'd love to see what a hybrid baby ended up looking like. Maybe Ahilac has a daughter?

So, Arcturus talked about orange and Ahilac agreed. Then Arcturus had a genius idea. He would interview her and write an article about her in the newspaper. Hopefully he wouldn't get fired for the insanity of writing an article about meeting an alien, but he would have to deal with the consequences later because this was happening. He broke out the notepad and started writing. Maybe I was quick to assume that a language barrier had been broken because despite Ahilac talking for quite a bit of time, all Arcturus came up with in the end was that she was charismatic. You can tell someone is charismatic even if you don't understand a word they're saying. She could have been telling Arcturus about her plan to destroy the world and Arcturus's reaction was basically, "Wow, you're really selling me with this enthusiasm."

Is this the face of  a man that knows what's going on?

Ahilac finally stopped ranting and Arcturus nodded. He put away the notepad and told her to look in the newspaper for the article. They just stared at each other for a little bit and then Arcturus reminded her that he had to get to work. Ahilac pulled out her cane and started down the driveway. She had a little smile on her face. It was either quiet happiness or evil. Not sure which one, yet.

"Byeeeeeeee!"

Ahilac got in her spaceship and took off. She just needed to make that one visit, apparently. It was the spaceship that caused the weird noise heard right before Ahilac knocked on the door. Hmmm. Unless it's launched into space, I suppose Ahilac won't be able to read Arcturus's article about her. Maybe he will get her to revisit once it's published. I think he got her cell phone number.