First published on 2025-12-17.

rangifer’s diary: pt. cxlv: Slimy sovereigns, superb sorceresses, spell-strengthening sauces, & setting the stage for the Second Station

pudella? More like… 💩⁠della!! Am I rite‽‽ It’s time for the real stars of the show: lv1000boss (Lv1Crook, Level1Crook, xXCrookXx, Macer) the robber baron, Shpongle (Kokeshi, Suntory, Taima) the stiletto warrior, & of coarse yore hoast, cervid the reänimated STReleton — collectively known as Oddjobs!

lv1000boss, cervid, & Shpongle (@ Sleepywood) — A—are they laffing @ me…?

U knoe how it is. We own this city. That’s why we gotta teach the competition a lesson by — yugue S tit — doing even moar fr∗∗king Keigh Peak Queue (≝ KPQ).

The gang @ KPQ stage 1

💡 Did you know? Kerning City is contributing to the Swamp of Despair’s rapid loss of biodiversity (hence the Swamp’s name) by dumping all its untreated waste directly into the despondent bayou. This is reflected by later versions of the game,^[1] in which Horny Mushroombs & Curse Eyes no longer inhabit the marsh.

Un4chun@ly, that does mean we have to endure barrol mathematicks.

KPQ stage 4 — Shpongle is allergic to the number five, hence the lacrimation.

💡 Did you know? Shpongle is actually so allergic to f∗ve that she had to chop a finger off each hand. Brutal.

lv1000boss, Shpongle, & cervid vs. KPQ Jr. Neckis — We mite knot bee able 2 hit ’em, but I’ll be h∗cked if week ant wave our weapons @ ’em till they lay down & dye of shear dread.

💡 Did you know? Jr. Necki (PC) are so called because they’re actually PCs, controlled by other players. Only players who have been very naughty respawn as Jr. Neckis (PC) when they die.

And for the grand finale, we gave Kingpin Slime another “attitude adjustment”.

The gang vs. King Slime — If we’re being honest, King Slime is really getting up there in years, so we take it a littol easier on ’im thee’s daze.

💡 Did you know? At this point, King Slime no longer harbours any enmity towards Maplers. In fact, he pines for the days when Maplers used to come flooding through the gates of KPQ and assault him breathlessly one after another. It gets lonely down here, you know.

Simply another flawless run. What can we say? Just doin’ our (Odd)jobs.

The saga of dorontabi the fabled wizard

Now, we might be the mob bosses behind this hole operation, but even we are capable of being humbled.

Meeting dorontabi (Shpongle: oh wow lv 30) — **dorontabi**, legendary ultrapowerful wizard of thirty (30) levels

dorontabi casting a mythical Thunderbolt @ Top of the Hill — *Artist’s impression of dorontabi at the height of her powers*

After exchanging introductions, we invited dorontabi to KPQ with us. With the help of her sagely wiz(ar)dom, I myself was able to nighen one (1) steppe closer to gr8ness.

cervid hits level 29 @ KPQ stage 1 — dwendy nighen..

Regrettably, even with dorontabi’s guidance, my wizardly abilities were still lacklustre.

cervid using level 18 Energy Bolt on KPQ Ligators

Transcription of the chatlog in the above image

cervid: level 18 energy bolt and it still misses 100% of the time
worthless skill

dorontabi: dang

Shpongle: Heinz will teach you better magicks eventually

💡 Did you know? After investing 21+⁢ SP into Energy Bolt, it becomes the far more powerful Energy Bullet, which allows the magician to make pew-pew finger-guns 👉👉 to fire bullets at her enemies. The bullets deal no damage, but if the target plays along by pretending to be wounded, they actually die.

Indeed, not only are my magix impotent, but even Shpongle (big STRong warrior with 4 base INT, not even aloud to use MP) knows more alchemy than I do.

Shpongle: if you compress Squishy Liquid into a slab, it forms a valid pq ticket — And yet all Heinz^® ever teaches me is how to generate more blue jooce so that I can… make more useless Energy Bolts‽ What is this, some Mr. Miyagi sh∗rt‽‽

💡 Did you know? JM From tha Streetz used to craft PQ tickets from Squishy Liquid as a side-hustle until v4 when PQ “smuggling” was outlawed and the industry had to move underground.

In any case, with dorontabi @ our sighed, teaching King Slime a lesson was +57% easier.

The gang + dorontabi vs. King Slime — Wowie look @ that Magick Lore go. I don’t thinq I’ve ever seen anything quite lie kit.

Being a sorceress of unimaginable prowess, dorontabi naturally has a whole collection of her own rare artefacts. So many, in fact, that most of them are worth hardly anything to her — maybe a few mesos at best.

Aluminum Baseball Bat from dorontabi — A parting giffed from dorontabi

Ultimately the sacred Al Bassbawl B@ went to lv1000boss, partly because he’s the head honcho and partly because his Swine Novella was cruelly stolen from him by Ut∗h. We would, however, need to grow significantly stronger before any of us were capable of wielding an armament of such immense might.

With dorontabi moving on to more important wizardly duties, it was time for The Gang™ to turn elsewhere.

The haphazard Henesys headwear heist

Now, we might be operating several dozen protexion rackets on & around the island of Vittoria, but that dozen’t mean we don’t offer real protection. It just means we use badminton racquets as weapons sometimes.

In this case, an elderly woman by the name of Maya, of the local Henesys Townstreet, was in need of protexion from Darrc’s Tumps who were rather r00dly sneasing @ her every time she went to Piery On to visit her daughter Sophia. You might be thinking “that’s normal I get sneazd upon by monocular quadrupedal tree trunx all the time” but not only has Maya been living in Henesys her hole lyfe, but in her old age her immune system is simply not up to the tasc of phending off Leafborne dizeeziz.

The Gang @ East Rocky Mountain IV — That’s where we come in.

💡 Did you know? Darrc’s Tumps are named in honour of C. Inther Darrc, who invented Darrc Sight, and first demonstrated it by perfectly blending in with a dusky-coloured tree. When he (ab)used this power to rob just about every store in Victoria, he was forced to take refuge behind a small forested hill — now known as Darrc’s Tump — where he was ultimately Assassinated in an event known simply as Stabbin’ C. Darrc.

In our adventures @ Eace Trock Him Mountain Fore we learnt a bit about the biogeography of gastropods.

Salted caramel aversion

Transcription of the above

Shpongle: both dork stump and dork hacks stump down here, nice

lv1000boss: are there actually slugs and snails that live in the desert

Shpongle: i’m not sure, but they thrive in the dessert

cervid: jummy

lv1000boss: yeah unless its salted caramel

Although there was no salted caramel to be found here, I was fortunate enough to stumbol upon something even rarer & even more sticky-sweet.

cervid finds a Sap of Ancient Tree — I’m not yolking about the stickiness, either. Merely a single glance at the thing is enough to have your clothing sticking together for weeks. 🍯

In any event, once weed weeded out every lassed Darrc’s Tump in the hole of Peery Yawn, we reported back to Maya and ~~extracted the protexion money~~ accepted a generous giffed of three (3) of her Bramboo Hats.

cervid obtains a Brown Bamboo Hat from Maya (Maya: Cough, cough…) — Don’t worry — the Bamboo Hat protex me from the cough particles.
(Also yes, that is my `F2`, just to be clear. I’m not sneasing.)

Crazy for crusht cramberry

Transcription of the above image

Crazy for crusht cramberry

Buy it right now

Just do it don’t think

Consume
or don’t, I don’t care so long as you buy it

You are worthless unless you spend more money

As we leffed the Henesys Townstreet and started east, we were surprised to see a Rain-Forest brimming not with porky piggos but instead with Terkies & their easily-swiped Terkey furnishings. Naturally, we could hardly resist a littol bit of avian extortion.

Shpongle, cervid, & lv1000boss farming Turkeys @ The Rain-Forest East of Henesys (lv1000boss: this event is just op wtf)

The most inch resting of these furnishings was sertingly the Cramberry Sawce. Besides being a pleasantly tart staypol of any good Thxgiving feeced, it’s said to grant its masticator magnificent magickal might, majorly magnifying their mana. Eager to test whether this might finally make my Enner Jib Oalt useful, I gobble’d up some cramberry and threw down with some hodmandods along the way to Ping Beantsch.

cervid Energy Bolts some Blue Snails for 77 & 63 damage — Behold! The power of cramberry!!

Now, I don’t mean to claim that I’m a real mage now or anything, but… I am basicly the most powerful witch in all the lanned. I can even kill Pings with it.

BEFORE: “MISS” / AFTER: cervid hits a Pig from afar for 66 damage / TREE FRIAL: www.cranmyberry.info — These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. *Cramberry Source*^® is a dietary supplement and is not a meal replacement. cranmyberry.info disclaims any adverse effects that may result from abuse of *Cramberry Source*^®, including but not limited to high blood pressure, alopecia, frequent urination, ancestral flashbacks, hygrophany, memery loss, being too cool for anyone else, hypotension, gish cravings, death, or even life.

As we were grynding @ Big Peach, we were visited by the invisible spirit of ~~Whack-a-Racer™~~ wackyracer, who used his deïfic powers to Bless us GM style.

wackyracer [weather effect]: Happy Mapling~!! :D / cervid: TQTQ

All jooced up on GM pills, we briefly became so all-powerful that not even The Ironickall Hogge was untouchable to us.

If you can believe it, GM pillz are even mightier than the cramb.

Mighty enough to elev8 me, I mite add, to Level 3X Status™.

cervid hits level 30 @ Pig Beach

For which I received the usual congratulatory ritual…

Grats deer — I chect and I am tied for № 5 on the defame rankings.

Thirsty for thirty

Transcription of the above

Thirsty for thirty

lv1000boss: your EXP is mine, old man

Maple Administrator: wait. that’s illegal

Mrs. Ming Ming: what the fuck

In any event level thirdy is priddy f0cking hyoodge (pardonnez mon français), but it dozen end their. The rest of The Gang needs level XXX too (not to be confused with level 32), so let’s use our fresch Piggle Ribbles to have an awkward convo with Lucas’s identical twin…

…And also to allevi8 Mrs. Ming Ming’s first worry — namely that she won’t have enough ingredients for her 1950s vintage lime ribbon Jell-O^® salad recipe.^[2]

Also involved was a screamin’ earrin’ upgrayed:

cervid’s new Emerald Earrings — Now I can defend against the next ten magical attacks I take.

💡 Did you know? Actually, ten magic defence means that the Emerald Earrings can defend against magical attacks of level ten or lower.

And for Oddjobs level 90, it seems most appropriate to return to KPQ.

Shpongle hits level 30 in KPQ stage 1 — Shp0ngl3

The Gang vs. KPQ Curse Eyes — The Al 🦇 hits so damb hard the Cur’s Sigh went flying

vs. King Slime — Look how pleased he is that we’re back to break his green gelatinous kneecaps again

Perfect. Oddjobs is level XC now, so I’m sure you’re champing @ the bit for those joocy Second Flights. Unfortunately I’m gonna have to cut ya off for now — but sticc around for the next episode, of coarse!!

💜

Footnotes for “Slimy sovereigns, superb sorceresses, spell-strengthening sauces, & setting the stage for the Second Station”

[↑] In GMS, some patch in the (inclusive) range v13〜22 (2005-11-30〜2006-04-18) removed these spawns from the Swamp of Despair–Dangerous Croko region. This was presumably the same patch that made the Monkey Swamp maps more distinct from one another. Swamp of Juior Necki (sic; renamed to Swamp of the Jr.Necki in v56) wasn’t added until v49 (2008-01-23).
[↑] Lest you think I’m making this up, see for example Hunter Oatman-Stanford’s interview with Ruth Clark (of Mid-Century Menu) “Making, and Eating, the 1950s’ Most Nauseating Jell-O Soaked Recipes” (2013-02-26, Collectors Weekly).

(…cnvpstdf…)

cnvpstdf

Level 1 crook advert

Transcription of the above

Shpongle: i saw some insane Level1Crook ad
where the Crook fired an assault rifle out his butt

cervid: lmfao wat

Shpongle: Matt is pretty crazy when we aren’t around

cervid: yea that must have been ign Level1Crook
with his machine rifle xbow nx cover