Money! Money, baby, Money!

An alternate title for this post would be: Captain of the Guard.

Finally, after weeks of trying, I have ascended to the status of Captain of the Guard of Vault City. At times it seemed and impossible dream to achieve this honor and privledge but I perservered.

But I hear you asking, "What is Captain of the Guard?". Captain of the Guard is a status one may achieve in the game Fallout 2. Fulfilling quests for one of the towns in the game, namely Vault City, and properly kissing their leaders ass will get you this status. Now, I've played this game too many times and I know just about everything in the game. I could, if I wanted, start and finish the game in about a half an hour...skipping all the side quests, of course. But I digress...

Because I've played it so much, I just whip through it and have never been named Captain of the Guard before now. So, I decided to go back to the beginning and do it right. It became an obsession and I was staying up way too late, letting my apartment get cluttered and generally turning off the rest of my life (outside of work). Since things need to be done in a very particular order to achieve this status and since I had never accomplished this task, I began to think that the Captain of the Guard status was in a different version of the game than mine. However, all those thoughts were banished when Vault City appointed my character as Captain of the Guard yesterday.

I was really surprised at how happy I felt afterward. Relieved, elated, joyous... these words begin to describe the feeling. And I wondered why it was so. Why should success in an RPG affect me so strongly. I realize now that it wasn't success in the game, per se, that caused my happiness but the accomplishment of a task I hadn't at first believed I could perform. But now, here I sit, Captain of the Guard, with everyone around me saying things like, "Sir, yes SIR." -or- "Nothing to report today, Captain." and so on.

Ah, its good to be king.