Entry #24: Virtual Horse Metaphors

We're back at town to restock, and Bryan's taken up the virtual reigns again. Speaking of reigns, nobody seems to care if we a-steal their horses. Now Bryan bribed a policeman over a fistfight. Great start. That's about it for now, just switching virtual saddles here.

Entry #23: Drunk as a Skunk and Just as Smelly, Too

The lying stinky-face! Get this, the drunken irishman wasn't trustworthy! We have half a mind to kill him. The other half is concerned with beating him silly. He was supposed to lead us to a machine gun, but instead lead us to a lot of other guns... with people holding them! And they shot at us, too. We'll get our vengeance yet, though. We've having trouble running across anyone we can even remotely trust at this point. With the ranch missions behind us, at least for now, and the marshall ones as well, we're stuck with an odd "crack team" of sorts. Maybe we'll go wander around and find something useful to do. I'd like to make use of this treasure map sometime.

Entry #22: Scumbaggery

Mr. West Dickens has taken scumbaggery to a new level. If you don't count the murderous mulitude of misinthropes who exceeded even Dickens' scumbaggishness. During our trek with him on his lovely little carriage he revealed the depths of his foul trickery. He also revealed that he was entering us into a race. An easy race, at that, since we won it without trouble. We wished it would allow us to shoot the other racers, though, as that would've made it far more exciting. But such is life. Very unexciting around these parts. We now have to find a drunken arms dealer to stop the evil outlaw Bill who's nearly killed us once before and won't rest until he does it right the next time. See ya.

Entry #21: Funny Man

There we go again. Jumping (or walking) onto trains we have no business being on. Luckily for us, jumping off does not kill us. Though we did have some reason to get on this particular train. It took us away from a certain man with extreme speed. This man called himself Jimmy Saint. The name sparked a reminder in Stephen's brain: he'd read about him in the paper; Jimmy was a novelist or some such thing. Jimmy went on at length about how exciting and incredible the Old West was to him, and he was most obviously from the east, and all the worse for it. For some reason the game just zoomed in and forced us to watch a guy holding up a newspaper. Very odd. Our next task is to visit old West Dickens, which I find quite pleasing, since he has some of the most entertaining dialogue in the game, and that's saying quite a lot. On a side note, did I mention our PS3 is propped up on soup cans? There's no real reason for this, we just feel that's how the cowboys in the old days did things. No, really, it was overheating where we had it and making a great deal of noise, so this way it's better of functionally and way better off aesthetically. But enough of that. We have an odd old man to converse with.

Entry #20: Crazy Men

So we helped a crazy man. I guess we all need to stick together. It's odd playing through missions that teach us things we already know so well. This mission was teaching us how to hogtie people and throw 'em on our horse, something we mastered very early on. My suspicion is growing that Seth will end up being the final boss, and I fear we will never be prepared for that moment. We just now bought a new edition of the paper. We haven't had one of those in awhile. So, I'm off to read that now.

Entry #19: Another Night

Well, upon reloading we found we were back at our house, and it was getting late. So, we spent another paranoid night stalking the grounds for any intruders. We found one, as it was making a good deal of noise: an armadillo. We chased it around the property before finally catching up and giving it a good kick down a ridge. But there were more. Many-- Stephen's chasing a raccoon as I type. And kicking it. Anyway, there were more. Many more. We soon were dashing about, crouched, dagger in hand, causing the vermin to flee every which way, and startling passersby. But this all accrued to our benefit, for people should fear this place. They should fear us! We're leaving now to go find Seth, but this place is safe in the hands of the reputation we've built for it. Dead rabbits aren't trivial things, you know.

Entry #18: A Break

After a break that led to a longer break that led to another thing that made the break even longer, we are back and ready to help Seth out in his curious exploits. Though soon we'll be having dinner, which, I think, will constitute a break.

Entry #17: New Ways

Things are going well. Today when someone asked us for a favor in Armadillo we just pointed a gun at his chest and sent the man running. We then picked up some ammo and rode off to find one "Seth" who the snake oil salesman recommended we speak to. Upon seeing the odd little wretch I can't see why he'll be of much use. He's after some sort of map, and we apparently need to help him find it. We are a bit richer for this journey, however. We found $13 in the run-down church.

Entry #16: Who Needs Sleep?

After our harrowing night of swearing off being good, we took that to heart when dealing with the local wildlife around our house. We killed and skinned a rabit at our doorstep to serve as an example then hopped up to our roof (our old watchtower) and looked for birds. We got one before realizing a horrible fact. If we went to sleep inside, someone could climb on the roof and shoot through it to kill us. Conversely, if we slept on the roof, someone could walk inside and shoot us through the roof. This led to our leaping off the roof and charging into our outhouse. Before we could panic anymore about sleeping arrangements, however, we realized it was already dawn. So, we set off down our path, finding a wild horse all too close to our property and spending many a bullet to send it on its way, shooting it in the leg even. Stephen also just made an amazing shot, hitting a songbird that was at least 15 miles off. Impressive.

Entry #15: No More Good Deeds

Too many good deeds. We saved Bonnie after quite a gunfight. We even found a run-down saloon in the place that we're thinking of sprucing up and running it. We'll name it: "Marston's Martinis". After asking our horse to give us a few reasons not to shoot it, we rode it away from the desolate town. We ran across yet another good need needing doing (a woman lost her cart) and did the deed that needed the doing. While I've been writing this Stephen sauntered into someone's house and started rooting around in their personal closets. He had to pay a witness to keep it all quiet. Blast! Now somebody's asking us for a ride. When will this end? Oh. She stole our horse. That's it. Now more good deeds.

Entry #14: The Dead Man Peter

Well, we found Peter. Or should we say, the dead man Peter. Or should we say, the dead man Peter's TOMBSTONE. He might not be dead, but the tombstone made him seem like a dead man. And that is that, and that is a fact.

That aside, things are bad. Bonnie's been kidnapped by Bill's men and we have to ride with the Marshall to get her back. Given our track record for hostages, this could go very, very badly. We're enjoying the riding sections, though, as they look great and are filled with fascinating dialogue. So, I'd like to get back to that now, in fact. I'll update you soon.

Entry #13: Good Fellow

Our second time into Armadillo went little better. When I was off getting ice cream, Stephen got himself into some trouble with the law when he shot a man who was attacking some lady. This apparently counted as a count of assault and the citizenry started attacking him. After losing the lawmen, he headed back into town, dodged a few bullets, and paid off the bounty. We then actually made it into the tavern and talked to the stranger. He had information about Peter, the poor soul trapped inside the Vial of Nagranth. But he wouldn't loosen his tongue unless we either paid him $5 or talked his wife into staying with him. He seemed like a jerk, but we decided to give talking his wife a go. On the way there, however, a shopkeeper ran up, yelling about a theif. We (quite literally) dragged the thief back into town and handed him over. Yet another good deed done. By this time the man's wife had disappeared, though, so we just gave him the $5, learned that Peter was dead, and went on our way. It seemed things we finally winding down when several vagabonds on horseback rode into town, firing their pistols with a terrible lack of accuracy, as they were just shooting up into the clouds. We shot them up without so much as a mite of trouble and we're now heading off somewhere. Where are we going? Oh, yes, Odd Fellow's Rest. Where it was said Peter is now. It's a graveyard, you see, so I was able to deduce that Peter is dead. Or the lantern is there. Take  your pick.

Entry #12: The Outfit

Our day has already been a productive one. On our way to Aramadillo we found a poor man being shot at by yet another pair of malcontents. We took them down with little trouble and got something quite maginificant for our work. With that act we'd earned enough honor to unlock the Duster Coat: a spiffy trenchcoat-esque outfit. When heading back to our house to try it on we came upon a couple campers a ways away. We figured it was the same people we'd scared off looking for a place to relocate. We decided to leave them be, though. Unforunately, when we arrived in Armadillo and waltzed into the saloon, the game locked up. Bah. We were just approaching a stranger, too. Well, I'm going to grab some tasty ice cream while Stephen rides back into town.

Entry #11: OUR House

We're fools to leave this property alone as long as we do. Why, we came home to find a bird perching on our roof. ON OUR ROOF! We promptly shot the thing dead, but it collapsed its bloody corpse onto our overhang. We clambered up after it and plucked its feathers. Then a man approached. We were about ready to shoot him too when he gave us a sad story: His wife was going to be hanged soon, and he couldn't do nothing about it. We decided if there were vermin on our property it  was our concern, so we followed the man and readied ourselves. Not enough, however, for when the time came, we fumbled yet again to even draw our gun and everyone but us ended up dead. Although this was to our liking, it's a sad story. We headed back to our little shack, shooting wildlife along the way. While watching a stunning sunset and commenting uponthe lack of apprecation for foot posture, we spotted a couple ruffians making camp just beyond the footpath leading to our house. This wouldn't do. We let off a round into their midst and yelled them a warning. They took this pretty well and charged off on their horses, but not before firing back once or twice. After this victory we headed for bed, thogh it was perhaps a bit early. We got up around midnight, so we're going to sleep some more.

Entry #10: The House

On our way to Aramdillo, since that's where all our work takes us, we decided to haphazardly aim our gun at the man who wants our treasured property. Somehow he saw us even though we were all the way up on a high ridge and it said we failed the quest. While we're fine with this, if it means never handing over the deed to that scumbag, we worry it may also not allow us to use the house as our residence anymore. It's not showing up OH MY GOSH WE'RE GOING TO BE RUN OVER BY A-- oh. It stopped. I thought we were dead there. Anyway, did I ever mention we jumped on a train from our horse before? It was very exciting, you see. Thrilling, even. But we bailed when we learned the train was on its way to Mexico. Mexico! Yeesh. So we're off to our house to make sure nothing funny has happened to it. Oh, good, it's still our house. It just doesn't show up on the map for some reason. Oh, wait, now it *is*. Weird. Well, it's all good. All good. I hope you enjoyed this disjointed entry. I tend to get nervous and disconcerted whenever our house is in an jeopardy whatsoever.

Entry #9: Take Three

We're learning things the hard way here. As our first act of swashbucklery (Stephen's wording not mine, though I do endorse it) we decided to track down a local bounty. It wasn't far to the south of the ranch, down by a place called Bristlebrush Ridge. It was quite a sight to behold, but we were here for more... unsavory business. Killin' business. Just weird horse physics sometimes. (Stephen's wording, not mine.) On our first attempt we got ambushed by a few rustlers. We died very fast. On our second attempt we made it as far as the bandit camp. We died pretty fast. On our third attempt, however, we made it so far as to tie up the offending criminal and murder/capture the rest when we realized our lack of foresight would be our doom. For once the villain was disabled, his cronies on horses came bounding up the ridge to save their captive leader. We were caught woefully unprepared and jumped into Dead Eye mode to save our rapidly disappearing lives. Things went awry when our horse leaped in front of us and Stephen was a bit slow with the controls, riddling the skull of our beloved companion with a triple-shot of lead. Moments later we reloaded and were back in our shack on the ranch, ready to head out again.

As I've been typing this, Stephen's been trying yet again, and this time it looks like he's gonna make it. He's riding away with the offender on the back of his horse and rapidly approaching the ranch. Hoorah! With that, I leave you. We are successful, despite our rocky start.

Entry #8: Learning the Ropes

Stephen had quite a time learning the ropes. After the unfortunate shooting, he proceeded to cause more trouble, including sneaking up to people with knives while they slept shouting threatening remarks and walking into a poker game with weapon drawn. Apart from this he bungled a night patrol mission, though even I can't figure how that was his fault. We now head to bed and await the new morning sun, whatever it may bring.

Entry #7: Stephen Just Shot Five Horses

Yep.

Entry #6: On the Road Again

Well, that didn't take long. As suddenly as it came, Stephen's affliction went, and our troubles along with it. We can now continue with our journey, though with one distinct difference: Stephen is now in control. I look forward to chortling at his many failures. But as for where we are... we are at the ranch, and it's 11:00 PM, Sunday. We'll probably start with some meandering about the ranch as Stephen fumbles his way through the controls then head off somewhere. Where, you may ask? Somewhere is all you need know.