Three hours. Three measly hours of sleep in my drafty old shack before it was time to get my ass out of bed and set out for the tropical paradise of Bruma. I mean, I’ve never been there, but it’s far to the north so I bet the climate is spectacular. Nothing but warm weather, blue skies, and sandy beaches. And the town itself, famous for its amazing architecture and vast array of cultural splendors. The very finest food, drink, art, music — Bruma is where it’s all at.

Right.

REALLY?!

On my way out of the Imperial City, I once again passed the corpses of the pirates I killed in self defense. Are you kidding me? This is just unsanitary by now. I even watched as a guard had a conversation with a flamboyant elf right next to the bodies. I’m starting to wonder if I’m the only person that can see them. Maybe they were cleaned up days ago, and the stain of guilt on my murderous soul has caused me to hallucinate the crumpled remains of my victims.

Ha! Gotcha again!

I made it out of the main gate bright and early, stopping only to say a quick hello to a random fellow loitering by a small inn. I figured I’d just be polite and go on my merry way, but naturally this guy had a terrible problem that he couldn’t solve on his own. I swear, this entire kingdom would fall apart without me. It seems this guy, with the pretentious name of Aelwin Merowald, used to be a fisherman who had a lucrative contract with an alchemist. Aelwin would collect Slaughterfish scales, and sell them to the alchemist for a huge profit. It was the perfect setup until Aelwin practically got his leg bitten off by one of the fish he manhandled. I glanced at his legs dubiously — they both looked fine to me. The guy didn’t even have a limp. But Aelwin insisted that he was close to retiring on the money he made off these scales, and if I helped him finish up his contract, he would reward me greatly. The question is would his reward be worth more than I could make by cutting out the middleman and delivering the scales directly to this mysterious alchemist? Shit, I’d love to retire, too. I added this to my “I Do Everything Around Here” list and set off for Bruma for real.

Unlike the previous day, the weather was fantastic, with a clear sky and chirping birds. Nothing could go wrong. Due to my terrible sense of direction, I made sure to stay on the road and follow the clearly marked signs for Bruma. I even checked my map periodically. The countryside did its best to tempt me with all sorts of interesting looking forts, ruins, and villages, but I kept to my route. Unfortunately, my route just circled around the Imperial City, and after six hours of walking, I was still the same distance from the Imperial Phallus, almost like its extreme penisy nature transformed it into a magnetic pole. Hee…”pole.” Consulting my map again, I realized that if I had just traveled in the direction of Vilverin, the ruins where I slept the other night and was later ambushed by Jalbert the Jizzmopping Jerkwad, I would have cut straight through the center of the circle and probably arrived in Bruma by now. Shit. Shit shit shit.

This is not okay.

Well, it was too late to change my course by that time. But you don’t care about my boring navigational issues, diary. You want to hear about my fantastic exciting adventures! Bad news on that front. Sticking to the roads patrolled by the occasional Imperial City guard cuts down on a lot of the potential for terrifying battles to the death, although it wasn’t entirely smooth sailing for me. At one point, the road cut through the ruins of a fort, and some sinister music alerted me to nearby danger. I turned to see a naked flying humanoid monster hurling fireballs at me. Two could play at this game! The fireball hurling, not the naked flying part.

I was much more skilled at wrangling fiery balls than the motherfucker who attacked me, almost as if I’m an honorary Suikoden male. Naturally, I had to loot the monster’s corpse afterward, which was a much more convenient process since he was already naked. But I was in for a rather disturbing surprise. The imp — for that is its proper classification, not “naked flying fucker” — sported quite an impressively muscled ass. You could bounce a septim off it. The only explanation is that Miles Edgeworth designed this creature.

My theory was proven wrong a few moments later when another imp foolishly attacked me only to fall victim to my flaming balls. This imp landed on its back, and despite its frighteningly ripped torso, it was pretty much a Ken doll down there. Don’t act all judgmental, diary, you would have looked, too. If Edgeworth was indeed responsible for the imp’s design, I’m sure it would have sported a giant horse cock. I don’t mean to imply that Edgeworth is into screwing monsters like he’s some kind of demented furry, but..well, he does hook up with Larry Butz, so it’s not like he possesses impeccable taste.

This is still not okay.

But enough about imp schlongs or the lack thereof. Later on, I passed some Ayleid ruins. I noticed a guy standing amidst the ruins, staring at me, but I decided to be a kindly traveler rather than preemptively attacking the shit out of him. It turns out this was the wrong choice, as he started firing arrows at me with no provocation whatsoever. That asshole. I guess he didn’t expect me to have projectiles of my own, so he probably felt pretty sheepish for a few seconds before he tragically died. Before I could carry out my tradition of looting his corpse, some dickhead orc lady attacked me, too. What the hell — is everyone on the rag or something? I was just trying to travel here!

The orc lady’s corpse flew high in the air when I burned her to death with more flaming balls, which kind of made up for the fact that I had wasted even more travel time. I got some decent heavy armor to sell out of the deal, but I didn’t have a chance to do further exploration of the area because the sun was already starting to set. I probably would have appreciated the beautiful sunset even more if a) I was anywhere close to Bruma, and b) wolves didn’t attack me every several feet. I tried enlisting the help of Bonehead to deal with them, since I was not in top form after traveling and flinging fireballs all day on very little sleep. I could have saved the MP, since he basically just stood there while the wolves ignored him and tried to chomp my face instead. I think I accidentally killed him once, too. So much competence all around.

PENISES!

After that, things took a turn for the worse. No, I didn’t get attacked by an ogre with a raging dong, thankfully. But the road became even steeper (uphill, of course), night fell, and the frigid wind started howling through the snowy trees. Yes, motherfucking snow. To think I was complaining about rain just the day before! At least it wasn’t actively snowing. Even so, I was tired and very much not in the mood for any of this. I would rather recap a thousand bogus evidence room incidents than travel to this godawful bunghole of a city again.

Finally I reached the city walls. I wish I could describe the surroundings in more detail diary (not really) but it was dark and I just wanted to go inside. I chatted briefly with the guard just to be polite again — you never know when these guys are going to get all dickish and prevent you from entering a city. For some reason, he wanted to talk about Homonymous Lex but then acted like he’d barely heard of the guy. A likely story.

True luxury.

As you might have guessed from my extremely subtle foreshadowing, Bruma was not at all the vacation destination I was hoping for. In the dark, all I could see were wooden buildings with thatched roofs, only a small step up from my own shitty shack. I was sure glad I had risked life, limb, and sanity in order to make the journey. Luckily, the local inn/tavern, Olav’s Tap and Tack, was right near the city entrance. I rented what might be the cheapest room in all the land for only 10 gold. Although the price was right, Olav warned me that the room was going to be filthy and disappointing, and he was not kidding. I’m just glad I wasn’t carrying a black light with me.

Actually, I’m so tired after all I’ve been through in the past few days, I wouldn’t even care if the sheets are woven from Tidus’s pubes. Okay, I’m lying — I would care and now I have new nightmare fodder stored in my subconscious along with chiseled imp pecs. And now I’m picturing a bare-chested imp wearing Tidus’s hoodie and nothing else. I hate my brain.

Jeanne Recapiere
Heartfire 3
3E433
11:32PM