From Stone to the Stars

[X] Plan Sorry Hannz You Have Everything

Feodor slowly packed the last of his supplies, double checking the food, extra Blackstone, flint and leather, before stringing them to his back. In the end, father had seen wisdom in his proposal: they were going to war. Vengeance was at hand. It wouldn't bring back his younger brother, but it would prevent any of the People's other children from succumbing to violence. Feodor had been raised on stories of the Battle at the Creek where his father had lead all of the People's hunters and struck back at the tribe from the North Lake. Several of the People's hunters had died, but far more of the North Lake's hunters did. Not once was there trouble again from the tribe of the north after that point.

He had learned from his father's story. You only had to use violence once, judiciously and generously perhaps, but it solved problems.

Permanently.

Value Gained: Retributive Justice!

To be honest, the prospect of a raid excited Feodor more than a little. It would be a true test of his skill. In hunting, his father was more skilled than he. When they crossed spears, however, he won nearly every time. Not that they crossed spears all that often anymore. Father was old. Every year, he was just that little bit slower, his reflexes less sharp.The death of his son had obviously weighed on Alvar in ways that Feodor couldn't understand. Maybe when he was a father, he would.

"Feodor." Lucjan stopped his elder brother before he could move to the staging area. He handed over a long thin club, "Here."

The club was as long as a man's arm and thin for its size, equivalent in width to someone's thumb. It was heavy, obviously made from spear-wood and hardened in a fire. Wolf motifs danced up and down the flat of the club and deep grooves were laid into the side. The tusk of an orker hung from a leather strap at the bottom. "What is it?" Feodor asked.

"It's a club," Lucjan said. Pulling out a stack of Blackstone flakes, he slotted one into the side. "But, it's also more. If your enemy has armour, use it as a club. When they don't," Lucjan grinned as he slotted in another Blackstone blade. "They won't even feel it when you cut them."

Feodor was quiet for a moment. Lucjan had never been a killer. Even when they had gone out hunting together and Feodor found a beast caught in one of the traps, Lucjan had always been unwilling to kill it. The only time he did, Lucjan had emptied his stomach immediately afterwards.

It was something that Feodor had never been able to understand that about his younger brother. Seeing the half-feral grin on his brother's face as he offered a thing of beauty up to be made into a tool of killing left Feodor feeling slightly sick.

"Thank you." Feodor quietly tied the club to his waist. What else could he say? "It'll be put to good use. For our brother."

"For our brother," Lucjan agreed.

A few dozen men gathered along the river-bend, packing supplies into canoes and checking weapons. Only a few dozen were arrayed, many with women and children looking on; the best of the People's best. Feodor could see Tymon wrestling with a group of wolves, trying to convince them to sit in a canoe. It didn't work, one of the hunters he'd managed to convince to help him in the task went sliding across the mud only to land on his face when one of the wolves bolted and dragged him by the lead. Feodor laughed, as did most of the other hunters nearby.

Lucjan just watched on in fascination. Feodor shock his head, his brother was always strange. Maybe that was part of being Winterborn; Tymon was strange too.

"Hunters!" Alvar called. "Double check your gear; we leave soon. And Tymon, leave the damn wolves. The Fingers are four days to the east, the wolves won't sit that long. Especially when it takes us twelve to get back. Move out."

The hunters of the People were completely unopposed on the great river. Aside from cheers from their cousins in the River-Bend tribe, the only sound Feodor heard were the singing of birds and splashing of their paddles. When they finally arrived at the Finger's Feodor's heart fell. The entire settlement was surrounded by a crude embankment of earth with rough cut logs planted in the earth. It was like a giant had decided they needed to cap the top of the hill with a house. The few gaps in the wall were gated and always watched by alert-eyed hunters.

Attacking the Fingersmen in their settlement was out of the question. Feodor knew that trying to force the gates would bring ruinous casualties. Even if they brought all of the People, forcing the gates would just result in their deaths. They could try to burn a section of wall down, but he would bet nearly anything the the Fingersmen had massive reserves of water stored in their camp for just that reason.

After consulting Alvar, his father had agreed that the Bear-Woman seemed to be the type to think ahead like that.

"North we'll go then." Alvar pointed to one of the lesser branches of the Fingers. Numerous canoes moved up stream, ferrying people and helped bring cut logs back to the settlement. Likely to be used as firewood, Tymon guessed. The entire valley smelled of wood smoke and the Fingersmen seemed to move far, far more wood than they actually used in the buildings they'd assembled.

The first few days, the People's hunters reaped a rich harvest in blood. All of them were hunters, born and bred to stalk beasts in the empty woods of the world. The Fingersmen seemed to have none of that knowledge. They were woodsmen and loyal to the Bear-Woman, but that was all Feodor could say of them. Within days, the northwestern reaches were cleared of hostiles. A few of the Fingersmen's woodcutters had surrendered, but most did not. The Bear-Woman had apparently organized things so that it was mostly fathers and mothers out gathering wood while their children were back in the settlement watched by grandparents or cousins. The threat against their families was unspoken.

While the People had slain many times their number, the Bear-Woman had organized a response and had her hunters out in force extremely quickly. Virtually everyone that could hold a bow or spear was brought. There were more fighters mobilized against them than in the entire population of the People!

Despite that, the People won. It was embarrassing to Feodor how easy it was to frustrate them and run rings around the Fingersmen. They knew the land abstractly, but most of the woodsmen and hunters had died or been forced to flee during the People's initial raids. It was easy to move by night or to carry their canoes with them to another lake, another river, and escape their pursuers. Hunting while they moved keep the People's supplies high while the Fingersmen took them from their settlement.

The Bear-Woman was consummately in command, organizing her warriors in exactly the right way to minimize damage to them or their supply lines, while maximizing coverage. It didn't help when Tymon could counter her organization and both Feodor and his father could lead any band to victory against one of the Bear-Woman's search parties. Slowly, bit by bit, the People cut holes in the net of the Fingersmen. They couldn't win, Feodor had realized that quickly; the Fingersmen had too many warriors, but they could inflict casualties so disproportionate that the Fingersmen wouldn't be able to retaliate.

It was against that backdrop, that Feodor finally saw a hole open in the Fingersmen's net. The Bear-Woman's supply protections had been disrupted and some of her forces had outrun their supply lines, forced to wait while some of the Bear-Woman's retinue gathered more. She was exposed, the heart of their enemy was vulnerable after years of harassment.

Racing towards her, Feodor pulled up short when he realized he was expected. The Bear-Woman was vulnerable, but she was surrounded by her personal guard. It was a gamble, Feodor realized. The Bear-Woman had deliberately made herself vulnerable to try and pull either himself or his father into a personal confrontation. She thought she would be victorious in a fight.

She was wrong.

(+1 Prestige: Hero Versus Hero Kill!)

Feodor took her head off with a single clean swipe of his bladed club after a short fight. The Bear-Woman was good, but his skill at combat had been honed from direct fights and raids over years. Even her armour, a thick bearskin woven with thin wooden boards was not enough to stop the crushing force of his club. Her guards broke after than and ran for their lives. Feodor let them. The Fingersmen's efforts disintegrated after that and they quickly retreated to their fortified settlement, only venturing out to collect water-grass under heavy guard. The People had to let them go since storming the settlement was impossible, but their ability to project power was gone.

It left a bad taste in Feodor's mouth to leave the job unfinished, but he knew that the alternative was too bloody to consider. At least... it was until Lucjan brought forward a solution. Apparently, he had been inspired by seeing a wolf drag a hunter across the mud. If someone could slide across something slippery like mud, why not something else, like ice? He had fashioned sliders, carved leg bones that were ridged along the bottom to be able to dig into ice.

They worked, but it was hard work. Pushing across the ice was exhausting... which was why he brought out the wolves. They could run for days and attached to a harness, they could pull a hunter or their baggage. The most difficult part had been taming wolves and raising them to harness rather than actually building the slides.

The sliders and wolf combination gave the People an enormous advantage: winter movement. The great river froze every winter, preventing virtually all winter travel. With the skates and the dogs, though, so many things suddenly became possible. If only for the young, Alvar had taken a single look and left the winter raid in his eldest son's hands.

It didn't prevent Feodor from cursing his brother while he flew across the great river behind one of the People's wolves. As ridiculous as it was, they moved faster than hey could by canoe, even if they could only bring a tenth as much equipment. Some hunters crashed, breaking bones or in one case, outright dying, but the vast majority of their raiding party arrived at the Finger's without incident. Just as Tymon expected, snow had been driven up directly against the settlement's wooden wall. The Fingersmen hadn't cleared it off. After all, why would they? No one had ever raided in winter. Snow drifted as deeply as a man was tall in most places and made conventional travel impossible.

Feodor was the first hunter over the walls that night and among the first to set fire to the Fingermen's houses. They were quickly forced from the settlement when the Fingersmen realized what was going on, but it was too late by that point. The fires spread despite the snow and ice, leaving most of the settlement burned to the ground by morning and virtually all of their supplies destroyed.

The Fingersmen scattered after that, forced to try and subsist on rations too meager to support their population. Many went into the woods, looking for game. Others got into their canoes and tried to escape starvation by finding help along one of the rivers that made up the Fingers. Some few even begged the People's hunters to take them with them, adopt them into the clan.

(Civilization Destroyed: Fingersmen! +3 Prestige)
(Epic Age Resolved: +5 Prestige!)

Feodor returned, victorious to his father and spoke quickly of his victories.

Alvar Winterborn died peacefully that night.

What was to be done with the remaining people of the Fingers?

[ ] [Victory] Settle some of the People in to support them. (Establish Waystation)
[ ] [Victory] Adopt them into the People.
[ ] [Victory] Support them with food so that they don't perish.
[ ] [Victory] Let them die.

How do the People remember this victory?

[ ] [Memory] Celebrate! (Create Annual Festival)
[ ] [Memory] Establish competitions (Promote Folk Wrestling)
[ ] [Memory] Thank the Spirits (Found Holy Site)
[ ] [Memory] This was a tragedy, no memory will be made.