megopolis
Why would you do this to my brain?! It has already suffered too muuuuch!
[[Shhhhhhhh. Only comfort now. *shooshpap* Do not be distressed. I shall be sure to force dear File to run all posts by me before they are revealed unto the world from now on.
Also, it’s way after midnight and I’m feeling terribly nauseous as I type this. My dedication to delivering you quality co-GM entertainment knows no bounds.
Rules will not be explained unless File tells me to explain them. I’ll tell you two things, however: one, this portion of the game will be far more focused on the nitty-gritty details than the main thread, and two: Bisia can survive for up to two turns without any Provisions before beginning to starve. Everything else? Find out for yourselves peeps.~]]
Thicket
Thicket
Thicket
Moar Thicket
Night has fallen by the time you decide your destination, but it takes less than an hour to gather up the pack and move out. While it took the scout but two hours to travel to the thicket and back, it takes your whole pack nearly a week.
(23, 93, 76)
Granitefang is quite generous with the food and water, even if it’s dehydrated military-grade meals and pellets. While he provided little else, some of your packmates brought along climbing gear for whatever reason, and though Darteyes assures you that the trees are easily climbable without them, you’re both amused and grateful to note that he’s handing you a set even as he speaks. There’s some construction supplies and equipment that’ll make the initial building much easier, some food preservation and water filtering kits that’ll help much with survival, and some warm, waterproof blankets for the thinner-furred. However, you find yourself flabbergasted when you discover that no one brought any of the hi-tech weaponry your kind had found in the Parsecblazer- only the crudely-fashioned swords, knives, bows, and crossbows your pack had used before they’d boarded the ship.
In addition to those practicalities, one Bisia corners you during a rest break and informs you in a single furtive, excitable breath that his name is Dustwhisker and that he brought along some... interesting little pills. He assures you that they'll give the pack a much-needed boost during an emergency, but is otherwise rather tight-lipped about its effects- admitting only that those who take it require much more food while under its influence.
+400 Provisions+20 Resources+40 Drugs ()(1, 6 (2), 3, 1, 4(3))
Perhaps it's due to the stress of the evacuation and landing, perhaps it's due to the unfamiliar diseases this planet harbors, perhaps it's due to simple bad luck- either way, two of the expected litters are unusually small, and the majority of the pups are stillborn. Luckily, the three other litters mostly make up for it, especially one experienced den mother who bore an astounding six completely healthy pups, and not one runt besides. The pups are awake and mobile within a few hours, though it'll take a few days before they can speak well enough, and several weeks before they grow large enough to be fully independent of their mother. Nevertheless, the pups are quickly loaded with what supplies their relatively small bodies can carry, giving some of their more burdened elders a break.
+15 Population
(4+1+10v13) You find several bushes about your height bearing small clusters of white flowers and bright blue berries. About half of them are on the ground, about half on the vine- you pick the bushes and the ground around them clean, plucking flowers, fresh berries, and overripe, seed-baring berries alike.
(1+1+10v13; 1, 2) Three of the new pups, being the curious and foolhardy creatures they are at that age, wander away from their mothers and find a small river, where they catch, break apart, and share between them the raw innards of some sort of unfamiliar shellfish- a half-crab, half-sea urchin-like bundle of spindly claws and legs and spines with mottled yellow-black stripes.
Two of them, a pair of brown variegated siblings, are dead by the time the pack finds them- the third is forced to regurgitate his toxic meal and, while he must be carried along for several days, eventually recovers. His name, ironically enough, is Thorntooth- named for his unusually early teething. The mothers are allowed some time to grieve, but you regretfully urge the pack to begin moving again after less than half an hour.
Contaminated as their corpses are, you cannot divide the dead pups amongst the tribe and devour them raw as is traditional, and as such you allow them the second-best means of honoring the dead- you bury them each beneath the roots of a tree, and mark the trees as sacred with careful claw marks and an arrangement of pebbles on the ground they are buried under. The mothers might return to this place periodically to burn offerings to their spirits, but more likely they will strive to forget their loss, letting the monument remember for them.
(18+1+10v13) One of the mated males stumbles across an absolute treasure trove at the base of a cliff- several large carcasses half-buried beneath rubble. It takes some time to dig them out, uncovering six blue-black-furred, deer-like animals with hard bone plates on their heads and down their backs. If you had to guess, you’d say that the creatures had gotten caught in a rock slide- terrible for them, lucky for you. The animals are too large for you to carry all the way to your destination, let alone haul up the trees into the thicket itself, so you butcher them on the spot. The bones you test with your teeth, then toss to the pups as a treat- the hard outer bone helps to wear down their rapidly-growing incisors, while the delicious marrow provides nutrition for their growing bodies. Plus it keeps them busy while their mothers rest- helping to prevent, you hope, another... incident.
+800 Provisions
-2 Population
(13)
Either way, you arrive at the thicket in due time, loaded with supplies and provisions. The pups bound around the clearing energetically despite the long journey, batting at and playing with the small, irregular rock-like insects attached to the exposed roots like a cat at string. Lashing yourselves around the tree trunks and digging your claws in, you follow Darteyes up near the canopy and crawl through a narrow but flexible opening in the vegetation to find your paws walking on a springy floor of tangled vines and leaves and branches.
(11)
The pack takes the time to get everything up in the thickets and preserve the meat they butchered earlier before settling in for the evening, curling around each other in a great ball of fur. You think of all there is to be done tomorrow, and wonder what it is you’ll do:
While you definitely have plenty of food for now, more food is always a good idea- as long as you can preserve it and have enough room to store it, anyway. You also need a certain amount of food stored for the Bisia to feel secure in reproducing, and expecting mothers who are forced to go without food probably won’t bear healthy litters.
You need certain resources in order to make certain things. If those resources aren’t available, you can’t make them. You can probably find the more common resources (like dirt and wood) pretty easily and nearby, but you might have to range pretty far to find the rarer, more valuable resources.
While it’s already very hard to find you in the thicket and very easy to defend yourself, there are certain drawbacks to living near the treetops. Some of those are being vulnerable to large flying or climbing creatures, as well as forest fires.
There’s not too much interesting around here, but if you send out enough scouts for a long enough period of time, something’s bound to turn up. Of course, you could send them off elsewhere, such as the Abandoned Farm or the City Sewers, or send them off to find other sites of interest- it would take some time for them to go there and back, however, leaving less time for them to actually look for things.
Population: 33
Provisions: 948
Resources: 20
Upgrades:
First-Tier Melee Weaponry First-Tier Ranged Weaponry Food Preservation Water Filtering First-Tier Construction EquipmentCharlaAge: 8 years
Height: 1.8m
Weight: 13 un
CleverInexperiencedAlbinoHeirless