“You want to ride the bees? Okay, if you think you can!”
He turns toward the inside of the hut.
“No stinging, friends!” he yells. Then he snatches the flask from Zelda and disappears into the back of the hut.

This is an obscure one. Conly appeared in a Choose Your Own Adventure type book based on the Zelda franchise called The Crystal Trap. In the book, the villain Ganon has captured Link and Zelda has a time limit to save him. Along the way, she encounters a hermetic Beekeeper and it can either go well, or not go well. If Zelda heads to his hut as soon as she hears about him, he angrily attacks her with his bees. If she spends time doing other things and learns what he wants, he helps her save the day.

Conly lives just outside of the town of Ruto, only recently come there as a stranger. The people of Ruto eye him with suspicion because he is an “unfriendly old coot” with magic bees and he won’t let anyone taste his honey. Described as a “short round man dressed in heavy robes” he certainly has the symptoms of someone suffering from Beekeeper Rage. In the bad path, when Zelda just shows up and declares she is in a hurry to save Link, Conly sics his bees on her without a thought (though it should be noted that his bees do not kill her in this ending, they just cause her to run blindly through the woods so she falls into a pit). In the good path, in which Zelda offers him some fairy flower sap, an ingredient in his favorite drink, Conly is perfectly happy to take the payment. He not only gives her the honey, but agrees to let her use the bees as transportation. Is it possible that the people of the Ruto just refuse to pay for the honey and Conly’s curmudgeonly reputation is just because he’s sick of moochers? Could be, but we’ve nothing to prove he’s particularly nice either.

Conly’s magic bees sound pretty cool. From a distance they resemble blue and gold sparks, they live in Conly’s hut (entering and exiting through the chimney), they respond to Conly’s requests, and they are capable of surrounding Zelda to carry her off to the castle where she has to save Link. Sounds like some quality bees to me.

Three Honeycombs out of Five.

Vreddites

This species has arisen on a planet called Vredd. At the moment, the species is at a turning point. Their intellect has only recently (in evolutionary terms) separated them from similar species, and brought the into a fertile tropical valley. At this time, there are only about 20,000 Vreddites on the planet, most living in tribes.

Vreddites’ locomotion is performed by a large “foot” that makes up the large bottom of their body. This foot allows them to hop around, while two appendages on their back, the kickers, can propel them at higher speeds than the hopping alone. The kickers are also useful for delivering a powerful blow, assuming your target is behind you.

One Vreddite, named Wyeenk, was once mocked by Little Choy. Once, I was planning on doing a comic about the Vreddites before I got going on the Secret Government Robots instead.

Uzzer is the leader of a tribe that has been driven into the mountains by stronger tribes. Life is hard for the mountain-dwelling Vreddites, having to deal with temperatures much colder than their species is used to, and food is scarce. Uzzer wants the best for the tribe, but if they can’t get back into the valleys, they may starve. But the valleys are full of other tribes who don’t want to share. Some drastic action needs to be taken, and it is going to end poorly for someone.

Edowa is the tubemaker of her tribe. The making of air tubes is one of the most advanced technologies on the planet at this time, mostly used by combining naturally growing bamboo-like plants with squeezable bulbs that blast pressure through the tubes. Most tribes are complacent to use these to propel rocks as weapons when hunting, but Edowa’s tribe has taken to experimenting with other uses, such as propelling water through long distances for crops or for fighting lightning fires.

Nyllyn is from a tribe that lives near a large waterfall. Though they like the waterfall, it has been a cause of death for several tribe members, which causes problems. It is a Vreddite tradition for survivors to eat their dead, so that they will be forever a part of the tribe. But when a Vreddite dies in a manner such as falling off a waterfall and being swept away, as Nyllin’s sibling did, there is no body to be eaten. To this day, Nyllin is terrified that her sibling’s corpse will return in some dark night and force its rotting remains into Nyllin’s mouth.

A Fact About Vreddites: Vredd is a very cloudy world, so its sun is not seen with great frequency. This is one major reason why Vreddites have yet to realize they are seeing the same sun every time. By their current thought, it is imagined that suns are large, bright objects that happen to pass by occasionally.

Universe: Blue

When last I PDR Updated, I thought I had gotten better and just had a minor lingering cough. As suggested by the fact I am doing another post about it, I was not back to full health.

Phase Four: March 22 to April 3

This is the period in which I thought I was on the mend. I was working and, though I was lethargic, was mostly living as normal. The only suspicion I had of the cough that wouldn’t go away was that, at least once a day, I would go into a serious coughing fit wherein my body would try for about ten minutes at a time to get something to come up, but nothing ever would. It was annoying, and even occasionally painful, but I just assumed it was a quirk of the cough that would go away with the rest of it.

The Weekend O’ Healing

On Monday and Tuesday the third and fourth of April, I did not work for two nights. I decided this was the weekend I was going to get rid of the cough. I bought various things from the pharmacy that either looked like they might help (such as this vaporizer thing that is supposed to throw out healthy fumes), or which I had been recommended by people (Epsom salts, I was told, might make a bath more healthy). And I continued all the healthy stuff I had been trying for weeks (as an example, Google had told me that pineapple juice was good for breaking up phlegm, so I had drunk tons of the stuff. Those examples are the tip of the iceberg, but I did all that and also slept as much as possible. I figured that, if all of that couldn’t get rid of the cough, nothing could.

Wednesday April 5

I worked again this night. The cough was still there.

Thursday April 6

I finally caved in to the advice of family and friends that I should go into a clinic and get the cough looked at. I was certain I would be told that it was just a normal cough and not to worry about it and it would be a waste of everyone’s time. Instead, about five minutes after I got there, I was on my way to get x-rays at the hospital. About five minutes after I got the results of the x-rays, I was being booked for surgery.

Phase Five: The Hospital

I was brought to a room in the thoracic section of the hospital. Time was meaningless for me there, so I can no longer go chronologically with my notes. The medical situation first: I apparently had a lung that was sealed off, full of fluid, and collapsed. Because I looked healthy and was walking under my own power and stuff, the doctor figured it probably wasn’t infected. That is, until we got a tube in my back and began draining it and found out that it was VERY infected. I believe that I was told that if they knew how infected it was, I would not have been given the slow draining tube surgery, but would have been brought in for a proper cut-me-open surgery. But we were draining, and the fluid was coming out of me, slowly. They would, once a day, put a chemical into the tube to break up the gunk sealing the lung, and the rest of the time, the tube was used to drain whatever comes out. That was my life for that time. The tube in my back did, of course, make it hard to find a sitting/sleeping position that wasn’t incredibly awkward. I went for x-rays and ct scans multiple times, the latter including radioactive dye being put in my blood. I got a “PICC Line” stuck in my arm, which is another tube (I am an expert at getting tubes in me by this point) that goes in my arm straight to my heart. I am certain I have forgotten things about my stay, but… I kind of want to.

Mentally, the stay was worse. As I said, I felt mostly fine. I certainly wasn’t in a state of mind where I thought I needed to be stuck there, so the fact that I actually needed to be stuck there was pretty galling. I got pretty restless in there.

Thursday April 13

This was the day I got out of the hospital! And then had a nap! And then went back to the hospital!

In the morning, the tube in my back was removed and I actually got freed from the hospital not much later. It was pretty great. Because my infection is so bad, I am going to, for six-weeks, be visited daily by nurses who will administer an antibiotic through my PICC Line. I basically slept until it was time for that only to be told by the nurse who arrived that my PICC Line was clogged and I had to go to the ER to get it unclogged. That meant I spent six hours of my “first night out of the hospital” back in the hospital. And given that the PICC Line is already giving problems, I am imagining the worst. I don’t even know what kind of surgery I’ll require if the PICC Line clog turns out to be a daily thing. It’s going to be annoying to find out…

Update From Later That Night

Friday April 14

Well, I made it through today’s visit with the nurse who uses my PICC Line without finding out that it had re-clogged. I made it through today. That gives me a little more confidence, if a temporary kind of confidence.