From Stone to the Stars

[Redium]

[X] [Memory] Establish competitions (Promote Folk Wrestling)
[X] [Victory] Settle some of the People in to support them. (Establish Waystation)

A vein slowly started to pulse above Feodor's right eye. The years after the People's successful defeat of the Fingersmen tribe was filled with low-level strife. Most of the people they'd taken in had been former slaves - the foreign word sat uncomfortably on Feodor's tongue - or children and elders with some adults mixed in. Despite that, the uncomfortable ideas the the Fingersmen had didn't quite die with their elders. Some of the young had the same problematic thoughts. Those children who had been given the the Fingersmen as slaves were mistreated and forced to work by their contemporaries. Often doing unpleasant tasks, like butchering meat or tanning leather.

The strange part to Feodor was how foolish people could be when they had such great ideas. The wooden palisade and harvesting clams from the Finger's many riverbeds, and sourcing rotfruit, bunch-berries or crunch-seeds from trees; all of those were things that the People had never tried before.

Heck, rotfruit a new personal favourite of his had always been left as poisonous! It tasted terrible when eaten off the tree, but the Fingersmen had learned that if you covered it in a pot and let it sit until it became completely soft, it actually tasted fairly sweet!

It made no sense to Feodor how the Fingersmen could eat so many sweet and succulent things and still be so cruel. How could a fully grown adult sit there and dump a task on someone who had yet to take their Rite of Adulthood while they did nothing? Feodor had entrusted the Fingers to Tymon while Lucjan worked at Crystal Lake while he bounced between the two of them, assisting as necessary. Despite Tymon's skill at organizing People, things had somehow continued to get worse.

The fact that these children kept their attitudes despite Tymon's best efforts to separate and properly educate them baffled Feodor. Eventually, though Tymon and he had enough. The conflict was growing more intense as more of the People were settled and the children of the Fingers aged. Fights were breaking out and the former slaves and their children were being bullied, pressed into doing far more work than was their fair share. Tymon had declared that the Fingersmen were going to be split up, some shipped to Crystal Lake while others to the River-Bend camp.

Even when Feodor came to personally restore order, it didn't much help. He wishes, at times, that he had his departed mother's gift for words instead of his father's gift with spears. Instead, what Tymon had done was ordered the former Fingersmen divided up, mixed in with those of the People living in the River-Bend Camp and back at Crystal Lake. That triggered a riot, men and women grabbing spears and bows, even rocks to object to their 'enslavement'.

As if the People would ever use such a practice; Feodor couldn't see why they ever would.

Still, the former Fingersmen had finally resorted to true violence and that was something that Feodor could respond to. Anyone who struck at their kith in the People was cut down. One afternoon of violence was all it took to enforce his will and by evening he had all of the troublesome Fingersmen gathered up. Tymon had stood behind him as he berated them for their idiocy.

The signs of the spirits were clear: the weather had continued to be of the highest quality that anyone could remember. None of the People, the River-Bend Tribe or the Fingersmen went hungry or unfulfilled. How could you bring strife and discord to that? Did people want a repeat of the Night of Ice and Fire? Everyone who now inhabited the Fingers knew how fragile settled life was. A single fight going out of control, a major fire, and all of them would starve. After all, why should the People save those who offended against them a second time?

What really cinched it, even if Feodor was reluctant to admit it, was probably when he gave his berating; he hadn't yet dried himself of the blood of the rioters that he'd cast down. What a figure he cast, sitting there covered in bone and blood while people looked on in fear.

It was intoxicating. Maybe that was why the Fingersmen were so insistent on their slaves; the feeling of power. It had been something that Feodor had noticed in himself at the annual competition the People had started to hold. The one commemorating the Night of Ice and Fire. They wrestled and fought, shot targets with boys, ran and raced while pulled along by wolves. The People had even taken to doing one of the Fingersmen Rites of Manhood!

Boys were sent out at dawn to gather wood and then return at dusk and build the largest pyre they could that would last the whole night. It was supposed to demonstrated resourcefulness, woodcraft, overcoming adversity, intelligent planning; everything that was necessary in an adult.

The games were dangerous, but they pushed everyone to do better.

Value Gained: Honoured Elite!

Spoiler: Honoured Elite

The People are one. From the youngest child to the greatest elder, all of them are family. Kith and kin. There is no greater calling than to develop your skills and put them to the People's use. Skill with the bow, the spear, and the club are particularly valued.
Pros: Martial gains per-unit is higher, chance to develop potent Martial traditions.
Cons: Social stratification, increased potential Martial loss in combat

In the end, the Fingersmen accepted his ruling and were quietly divided up while more of the People were brought in to replace them. It didn't completely end the friction, but after the blood of the Fingersmen and People started to mingle in newborn children, the rift slowly came to be healed.

Still, that great redistribution of People had revealed a surprising deficit; food was not being brought in adequately. It wasn't a problem for the moment due to bountiful rains and short winters, but if the weather were to turn against the People at all, some would start to go hungry. Tymon believed that it was because of the fact that the People had three camps; Crystal Lake, River-Bend, and the Fingers.

Each location required maintenance; time spent repairing the camp instead of searching for food. The smaller groups also had issues due to simple mischance. A hunter did not always bring back a kill. Thus, by having a lot of hunters go out at once, it was likely that someone would bring back something. There just weren't enough of the People for it to be self-sustaining for them to have three camps.

There was also issues with how close River-Bend and the Fingers were; four days if one went by canoe down river. Some of the People had slowly been drifting out of River-Bend, attracted by the Fingers' more bountiful location. These people were often young, fit, hardy; the exact type of people that provided a huge portion of the People's food. Their departure meant that food was having to be shipped back up river from the Fingers; a task that took 12 days. It was a little thing, a slow change that was easily overlooked with all of the trade that normally moved on the Great River, but it was immensely wasteful. Food was very difficult to move and often inefficient. You had to carry more food to feed you on a trip, which meant a heavier burden, and in turn a longer trip with more needed supplies. It was much, much easier to source food locally, if possible.

It was like butchering a beast out in the forest as opposed to dragging the entire back to camp, Tymon explained. Butchered in the woods, you would have to carry less dead weight back with you and thus have an easier trip. Since it took less effort, you didn't have to eat as much of the beast just to feed yourself.

It was a problem. River-Bend was becoming a net drain and didn't really help the People maintain contact between the Fingers and Crystal Lake.

What do the People do?

[ ] [Waystation] Resettle River-Bend
[ ] [Waystation] Forbid people from leaving River-Bend
[ ] [Waystation] Close River-Bend and move the People to the Fingers proper
[ ] [Waystation] Find a different location for River-Bend further from the Fingers

The River-Bend tribe, the tribe of Feodor's departed mother, seemed to realize the predicament too. They had always been a small group, smaller than the People, and suffered from constant, low-level raids from the Fingers. Given the violence that had been visited upon them by the Bear-Woman, they were at the smallest size they could ever recall. More than a few of the River-Bend tribe had suggested that the move in with the People. Their ties of blood to the foremost of the People was well understood; they were the family of the Three Brothers' mother and thus their cousins.

Combined with more couplings between People at the River-Bend camp and the River-Bend tribe, it was likely that the vast majority of the River-Bend tribe would soon fold into the People. Especially if they were moved. No one want to be split from family.

The impending merger brought something up that Tymon had been contemplating for a while; how to organize the People. Normally, leadership was on a very ad-hoc basis. People acted on their own initiative and called for a council of all adult members of the People to determine matters of grave importance.

It worked, but Tymon was already pointing out points of strain. The problem with River-Bend tribe being a net loss on the People's food safety margin was only his first (if extremely) concerning point. With the absorption of the Fingers, it simply wasn't possible to form a full council. Going from the Fingers to Crystal Lake took one and a half turns of the moon. It wasn't practical to deal with things of critical importance. Combined with a rising population among the People and perhaps it was time for a change.

How do the People reorganize?

[ ] [Organize] Change nothing, keep the all-inclusive council
[ ] [Organize] Have each camp elect delegates and send a few to a new, central council
[ ] [Organize] Formalize the informal leader positions that the Three Brothers have had and let them lead a camp
[ ] [Organize] Elect a single leader among the entire tribe to make decisions
[ ] [Organize] Have each camp create their own separate council

How did the People's Heroes work?

(Martial - Pick 1)
[ ] [Martial] Increase Hunting
[ ] [Martial] Expand Wolfpacks
[ ] [Martial] Raid
- [ ] North North Lake
[ ] [Martial] Promote Folk Wrestling
[ ] [Martial] Expand Traps
[ ] [Martial] Build Palisade
-[ ] Location

(Art - Pick 2)
[ ] [Art] Investigate Special Stone
[ ] [Art] Create Annual Festival
[ ] [Art] Expand Traps
[ ] [Art] Found Holy Site
- [ ] Location
[ ] [Art] Investigate Spirit Food
[ ] [Art] Prepare Trade Goods

(Admin - Pick 1)
[ ] [Admin] Create Annual Festival
[ ] [Admin] Study Travel
[ ] [Admin] Establish Waystation
[ ] [Admin] Harvest Water-Grass
[ ] [Admin] Collect Shellfish
[ ] [Admin] Build Palisade
- [ ] Location

What else did the People Focus on? (Pick 1 2 due to Climate Rolls)

Spoiler: Actions

Expand Wolfpacks - Increase the number of tamed wolves that follow the People. Willfully leave out food for them in order to attract more wolves and begin taking their young into the tribe as Hunters.
Create Annual Festival - Celebrate widely and graciously for the success that the People have faced. Eat, drink, and be merry!
Increase Hunting - Double down on the People's traditional method of gathering sustenance. Work to bring in additional meat, fur, and leather.
Explore (Wonderful World bonus) - Search far and wide in this strange new land for things that may be of benefit to the People. Resources can be found and contact established with other tribes.
Study Travel (Wonderful World bonus) - Invest time in learning how most effectively to travel. The world is harsh and strange, learning how to traverse it will save the People much in effort and food.
Establish Waystation - Create a relay point for the People, a place that they can stay during their travels or when they make annual trips to different locations.
Found Holy Site - Create a small shrine in honour of the spirits. Can be placed at places of geographical or cultural significance. (River-Bend, Fingers)
-Location?
Investigate Special Stone - The Spirits have been generous in providing numerous tools for the People to work. Investigate them and try to find new ways to apply the unique properties of these stones.
Promote Folk Wrestling (Increased by Bellicose Bearing) - Children fight as children will, wrestling and playing in order to learn the basics of violence and hunting. This is normally discouraged as they age by the Elders so that they can focus on necessary violence, but perhaps they should act to promote it instead? Encourage people to maintain the skill at violence against people that they acquired as children.
Raid - The People have turned their hunting of beasts into the hunting of humans. Strike down those who stand in your way and collect the rewards.
-Target?
Expand Traps - A new invention for the People, these clever man-made dead falls allow beasts to be crushed without any danger to a hunter, or, indeed, without any effort!
Harvest Water-Grass - A curious plant that was found and cultivated by the River-Bend tribe. Workers in canoe strip seeds from stalks growing in the water and then boil them for food.
Build Palisade - Like the Fingers used to have, build an embankment of earth and crown it with rough cut logs. A potent defense for a safe camp. (Fingers, River-Bend, Crystal Lake)
Collect Shellfish - The Fingers primarily fed themselves by collecting clams and other small shelled fish. Continue that practice and look for ways to increase the take.
Investigate Spirit Food - The Fingers used to boil water in prodigious amounts and turn it into a highly sought after brown power. It's apparently like berries, but incompatibly better.
Prepare Trade Goods - The Finger used to be a site of significant trade. This stopped during the skirmishes between the People and the Fingersmen, but now that the situtation has died down, it is likely that trade will resume. The People lack the spirit food of the Fingersmen, but they do have other trade goods. Look at what could be offered to other tribes in exchange.

[ ] [Action] Expand Wolfpacks
[ ] [Action] Create Annual Festival
[ ] [Action] Increase Hunting
[ ] [Action] Explore
[ ] [Action] Study Travel
[ ] [Action] Establish Waystation
[ ] [Action] Found Holy Site
-[ ] River-Bend, Fingers
[ ] [Action] Investigate Special Stone
[ ] [Action] Raid
- [ ] North Lake Tribe
[ ] [Action] Promote Folk Wrestling
[ ] [Action] Expand Traps
[ ] [Action] Harvest Water-Grass
[ ] [Action] Build Palisade
[ ] [Action] Collect Shellfish
[ ] [Action] Investigate Spirit Food
[ ] [Action] Prepare Trade Goods

AN: The number of actions will be reduced after your government type changes. I'm going to consolidate things like Expand Traps and Increase Hunting. You have a few redundant food gathering actions.

 

[Redium]

We're not boosting the Honored Elite value. Ever. Fuck the patricians.

Click to shrink...

I promised I would come back to his after work and here we are.

Now, stratification, where did it start? It's best to look at the epitome of stratification first: the King. For history, he (usually given human sexism, although, Poland did have a female King) was the end all and be all of temporal authority. His word was law and was often either inherently divine (God-Kings) or divinely inspired (Divine Right of Kings). The king held authority of life and death. If you trace the word "king" all the way back to its origins, you find it in the first city-states: Ur, Uruk, Babylon, etc. To them, King was merely a word that meant "Big Man".

So what's a Big Man? This is something that I think AcademiaNut misunderstood and misused in his game. In our game, for example, you've already had four of these Big Men: Alvar, Feodor, Lucjan, and Tymon. A Big Man is an informal position that some bands/tribes had. A Big Man had no official power. They couldn't censure people, they couldn't give orders, they couldn't punish; the only thing they could do was talk. They could bribe and cajole, but their only way of getting things done was by convincing people. This is a form of hierarchy that I'm pretty sure everyone (even Anarchists) is comfortable with.

So how did that end up creating Kings? It was a slow process. But an inevitable one.

Big Men constantly jockeyed for position against each other. Human bands and tribes often had multiple Big Men, all of whom were ambitious and charismatic and existed in parallel with equivalent 'authority'. You gained in prestige and authority as you managed to convince more people to follow you. This often involved making sure your people's needs were met (this meant not only food but sexual partners for the smaller men who followed the Big Man) and that everyone was kept safe. The system is intensely meritocratic. It's also extremely unstable.

Eventually, over time, the system tends to collapse. Big Men are suborned by other Big Men who in turn give their allegiance to bigger men. Having informal sway over a large portion of the population allows you to turn that into even more and more influence. Knowing people allows you to get more done. Interpersonal connections were the real currency of the Neolithic Age. This creates a runaway feedback loop. Even if all Big Men were equally skilled, simple chance would propel some to the top while others crash. The system if inherently unstable. It cannot persist.

So how do you force the Big Man system to self-propagate against its inherent collapse? Well, the easiest way is to start murdering each and every Hero you get. They're Big Men who won. Then you want to stamp our every hint of ambition. Someone wants to better their situation? Heresy. Someone makes the entire tribe laugh with funny jokes? Rip out their tongue. They could turn the positive feeling of humour into interpersonal connections almost immediately and eventually into kingship. Having too many friends is a sign that someone's becoming a Big Man. The very act of having friends makes you powerful. Chairman Mao said 'All political authority descends from the barrel of a gun;' he's not completely wrong. Power is the act of being able to mobilize people. If you have friends, getting them to do you a favour is easy. You can then leverage this as a broker of favours to get more friends and more favours. We are social animals and we are literally wired to do this.

This is literally how your in-game economy currently works.

People also naturally teach their children and pass down their social connections. Friends will likely have children that can grow up knowing each other and then eventually becomes friends on their own. Social connections (and thus power) are naturally transmitted down generational lines. Sure, education can help, but unless you're a moron education is something that any one can succeed at until you get to the highest levels of intellectual ability.

If you want to prevent this, the inquisition that destroys all interpersonal relationships will have to be run by somebody. Even if it's only an informal, ad-hoc council convincing the tribe to ostracize and murder outcast members. Hmm... this position sounds in no way like one that would attract an ambitious, powerful, and charismatic man. Stalin would cry tears of jealousy at the amount of authoritarian power necessary to do thus.

So now that we've established that Big Men are inherent in human societies and that these social systems tend to collapse inevitably into one with a single Big Man on top, how does that get us to Kingship? That's actually relatively easy. A system will one Big Men will probably have a number of Middle Men. These are all powerful, connected, and influential people, but they lost out the race for the top spot. If there's a dozen of them, then it's trivial for the Big Man on top to engineer disagreements and fights between the Middle Men. These Middle Men are then forced to jockey for the Big Man's favour in order to compete against the rivals. If the Middle Men all ganged up, they would trivially overthrow the Big Man, but none of them do.

Why not? This gets back to human psychology. People who have to compete against each other for resources will grow to hate each other. It fosters enmity and prevents them all from working together. There's also an element of risk assessment involved. Sure, if you flip the table, you could end up in charge, but you could also end up dead. That's a lot of risk for minimal gain. After all, as a Middle Man, you're not top dog, but you are very near the top. If you're playing blackjack, are you going to ask for another card when you're sitting at 20? Sure, you could do better, but it's extremely likely that you'll bust instead and lose everything.

Thus, the Middle Men are deadlocked against each other and the Big Man's position starts to calcify. Even if the Big Man is outmaneuvered, the one most likely to replace them is a Middle Man, the situation doesn't change much. This new system begins to stabilize at the top.

So what happens if a Little Man wanted to replace a Middle Man? That might happen. If the Little Man can defeat the Middle Man and then present himself as a replacement as a fait accompli. Since the Little Man won and became a Middle Man, the Big Man is likely to accept it. After all, he doesn't care about who the Middle Men are as long as they're divided and not all working against him. In fact, it can be beneficial for a Little Man to be promoted since they're likely weakened by their struggles and will need to rely on the Big Man for support. The new system begins to stabilize in the middle

For a Tiny Man, the situation is pretty different. The Tiny Man is really low on the totem pole. If he wants to try and replace the Little Man, he's trivial to crush. The Big Man can do this fairly easily on his own. Thus, very few of the Little Men will be replaced by Tiny Men. Even a Middle Man could easily crush a Tiny Man. They're likely even good to do so. After all, if a Tiny Man tries to beat a Little Man, what's to say they won't grow to try and beat a Middle Man? Thus, the top of the system manages to keep the bottom of the system in line. This system inherently stabilizes at the bottom.

Now it's possible for all of the Tiny Men to team up (i.e. the Baron's War and the Magna Carta) but there are likely a lot of Tiny Men. How are they going to all team up?

Over time the system will continue to calcify, becoming more and more like a noble-run society. I mean, the language just changes: Big Man = King, Middle Man = Duke, Little Man = Count/Marquis, Tiny Man = Baron. This system is inherently stabilizing at every level. It's basically evolution; a stable system is better at propagating itself than an unstable system. There's no way to escape it. Trying to fight the system is exactly as fruitless and impossible as trying to fight evolution (descent with modification over time).

If anything, having an Elite trait line helps with the (likely unstated) goal of being meritocratic. If people have to be the best they can be, they can be demoted for incompetence faster. If no one cares about competence, then Big, Middle, or Little Men tend to drift along without being challenged as seriously. If you don't have an Elite trait, social stratification will continue to develop. It's unavoidable. If you fight it, eventually your civilization will explode under the strain. All of the survivors will then automatically pick up additional stratification after they crawl out of the Dark Age you caused. Hierarchy gained in that way is likely to be extremely harsh compared to that which arises naturally.

Even in the modern day, social stratification exists. Perhaps more so than many people think and, arguably, to a greater degree than any time in history.

(Sorry for anyone who thought this alert would be an update.)

@Redium Can we have confirmation? Is there are Palisade at the Fingers settlement or was that burned down?

Click to shrink...

The Fingers palisade burned down with the rest of the Fingers settlement.


Also, could people clean up their votes? Elected Representatives is technically winning, but Plan Consolidate has 2 extra votes that aren't counted with it. Correcting the vote will change who wins.

 

[Redium]

[X] Plan Consolidate

Spoiler

-[X] [Waystation] Close River-Bend and move the People to the Fingers proper
-[X] [Organize] Formalize the informal leader positions that the Three Brothers have had and let them lead a camp
-[X] [Martial] Build Palisade
--[X] Fingers
-[X] [Art] Investigate Spirit Food
-[X] [Art] Found Holy Site
-- [X] Fingers
-[X] [Admin] Collect Shellfish
-[X] [Action] Increase Hunting
-[X] [Action] Expand Traps

Miri hummed as she walked, an easy smile on her features. Granduncle Feodor had called her out organizing the crews to gather fish along the shores of the Fingers and that was despite being only... Miri had to stop and take off her slippers; one, two, three... 14 worlds old (she thanked each of her wriggling toes as she put them back in their slippers). She wondered, for a moment why the spirits would make the People count even higher than they had fingers and toes. Wasn't counting the entire reason you had them?

Thoughts up in the clouds, Miri slowly made her way through the People's settlement at the Fingers. The place had been swelling in size and importance for as long as she could remember. The climate was nicer than Crystal Lake; less snow and the winds were not as cutting. Most of the people from the former River-Bend Tribe and the remaining Fingersmen had settled there, building homes within the massive palisade that granduncle Feodor had ordered raised. It kept them safe, Miri knew, but she thought it looked terribly ugly.

The palisade was made of cut spear-wood trees and built on top of a raised earthen embankment. Each stake was a massive tree, split in half and fastened to the ones next to it. The wall stood two and a half time the height of the tallest man that lived amongst the People making it nearly impossible to climb. The outside was rough cut bark, but caked over with mud to prevent anyone from setting fire to the entire structure. The wall itself had also had a completely unexpected benefit: reduced use of firewood!

Wind seemed to be channeled up from the south along the river. When life fled from the world, the wind seemed to steal the very heat from the body, scything it away as if the air itself was twice as cold. Having the palisade acted as a bulwark against the wind, diverting it and breaking it up. The palisade seemed to contain all of the heat produced by cook fires and other sources of warmth and kept it close, like a cloak.

Still, a little part of Miri was deeply uncomfortable living inside the palisade. It was a reminder of war, raids and violence, but that wasn't something that had ever touched her life. How old had great-grandfather Alvar been when he led the People's hunters against the north? A boy, she had heard it told, fresh faced and young. Feodor had fought for years against the Fingersmen, the children of whom she now called kith and kin.

Every one who called themselves one of the People had been to the Broken Finger, the massive burn scar that was baked into the earth north of the current settlement. Charred timbers jutted up from the ground like broken teeth and ash nearly a foot deep covered everything. It wasn't uncommon for children playing on the grounds there to unearth human bones. The old settlement of the Fingers was a dead place; cursed too if what Miri knew was correct.

Feodor had a holy shrine built there. A massive bowl, carved from Whitestone was set upon an alter with a fire slowly burning with it. Idols of clay, wood, stone, and bone, effigies of the animals and other spirits surrounded the flame, protecting it. During the winter months, it was left uncovered and the bowl slowly filled with snow and ice. When the world was reborn, the ice melted and flowed out of the bowl, allowing the fire to be relit. It was supposed to show the eternal recurrence of the world, Miri remembered. How even though things will be choked in ice and snow, new life will eventually return.

All it brought to the People was conflict.

Those who were once Fingersmen or River-Men appreciated the gesture, seeing it as a signal of reconciliation. Their settlements had been lost and their ancestral lands left abandoned. Having a symbol of recurrence seemed to encourage them, letting them know that they had made the right choices. For the People of Crystal Lake, however, it was all wrong. There were not proper offerings to the spirits of stone, crystal and water. While ice was involved, it was profaned by mixing it with fire. The time when the world was filled with life was the opposite of when it was filled with snow and ice. The two spirits should not mix, according to those of Crystal Lake.

Government Upgrade: Anarchic Collective -> Localized Duarchic Big Man (Archaic)

Spoiler: Localized Duarchic Big Man (Archaic)

Big Men are elevated from amongst the People in each settlement. The process of elevation is opaque and can vary between differing bands or settlements. General acclaim and skill is required to rise to the level of Big Man and a Big Man recognized among one group may not be recognized by another. This increase in those vested with leadership makes the People able to divide their attention and gives strength to succession against disaster or uncertainty.
Pros: Double number of inherent actions, some actions develop organically, chance roll on each action for Unity, Works of Scale become possible in limited circumstances
Cons: Chance roll on each action for Division, consequences of negative Stability increased

The voices weren't loud, at first, but in the end it was enough that Grandfather Tymon had to permanently move to Crystal Lake and start working on solving the problem. Going from one definitive center of spiritual worship to two had, if anything, heightened the divisions that already existed. It just added that little bit of resentment on top already existing problems.

Aside from the issue of spirits and holy sites, the biggest difficulty was trade. A round trip between the two settlements was equivalent to the turning of two full moons. Traders were out of contact for extensive periods of time. Crystal Lake produced White-, Black-, and Berrystone while the Fingers produced little of value. Wood and bone were too bulk to transport, furs were too easy to acquire locally, and there wasn't much else that the Fingers produced that was worth trading. The People could go without Whitestone or Berrystone if necessary, but losing access to Blackstone would hurt tremendously.

From what Miri had heard from her long chats with some of the hunters, everyone preferred using Blackstone to flint. The cutting edge it gave to knives, spear points and arrowheads was incomparably better. Plus, it was easier to work with. You had to know how otherwise it would shatter, but once you did, it took significantly less time than working flint.

Thankfully, that had finally changed once the People rediscovered how to make spirit food. The secret had been in an Fingersmen legend. That tribe had used to hold their Rites of Manhood in the spring. Boys were sent out into the woods to gather as many materials as they could by sundown in order to build a pyre that would last the night. The goal was to show the rest of the tribe how resourceful, intelligent and committed you were.

Anyway, there had been a boy. In order to demonstrate his cunning and humility to the tribe's womenfolk, he had planned to turn his pyre into heat for a stew. Making food was vastly more useful than a vanity fire. He gathered a small pile of dried wood, some kindling but mostly larger logs that would provide long-lasting heat. He had caught a rabbit, picked berries, and water-grass. It wouldn't be a feast, but it would be more than enough to reliably feed a family.

Seeing this, the spirits knew the boy to be weak, easily thwarted in revenge for the Rite of Burning that would occur that night. An eagle swooped down on his rabbit, but he managed to fend it off. Squirrels made off with the berries he had picked, but the boy merely gathered more. A flock of pigeons devoured the water-grass, but the boy was wise this time and had some water-grass on his person. Finally, a antler beast ambushed the boy on his way back home, knocking over his bucket of water. The boy cried as his efforts were dismantled. There would be no way he could return to the river and gather more water. Why were the spirits being so cruel?

Where is your Care? The spirits called back. Men create fire, you deny our brethren their birthright.

One spirit, though, saw this and was touched by the boy's kindness. The spirit of a great tree had been spared the axe by the boy's modest goals. Instead of burning in a giant conflagration, it could continue to grow. Seeing the boy stymied in his own growth, the spirit of wood felt kinship and pity. He offered the water from its own body so that the boy could still complete his challenge.

When the boy brought this secret water back to camp and set it to boil on his modest fire. It wasn't the largest or the brightest, but it burned through the night. it boiled into a stew that was simply indescribable. Sweeter than any berry, the taste of it was almost overpowering. Everyone in the tribe was rendered speechless by the product of the boy's cook pot. Universally was he proclaimed a man.

The boy remembered the tree that had helped him and when he became immensely respected in the tribe, he asked that the tree that helped him and all of its kin be spared the bite of an axe until the end of time as long as they produced secret water.

The People had sought out these marked trees and found many of them. The distinctive V-shaped scar showed that it was only a certain type of tree that sap was drawn from. After it was boiled and boiled and boiled until all water was gone, it left distinctive tan coloured crystals; the spirit food that the Fingersmen had been so proud of.

Compared to anything else Miri had ever tasted, the tan crystal food was so much better. The closest comparison she could make would be to ground berries, but that was a pale imitation. The sweetness of berries wasn't even a tiny bit of a tiny bit of the refined brown crystals. On a single taste, the traders from Crystal Lake had agreed to exchange their cargo of Blackstone for it.

Miri pulled to a halt. Wasn't she supposed to be somewhere? Right! She jumped before racing down to the river. She had been assigned to work on fishing. The great river to the south of them narrowed enormously to squeeze by the island of the Fingers. As a response, the water formed a sort of white water wave that never seemed to move. She was actually the one that noticed that fish would stop in the shallows sometimes while they tried to fight past the standing waves in the river. It was trivial to find a few of these placid pounds along the edge and hem them in with stones. The ponds could be opened up to let fish in and then sealed off to easily entrap them.

Considering that a single shovel-head fish weighed half as much as Miri herself, it went a long way to securing food for the Fingers. Skipping down to the water, Miri pulled up short. Several canoes were racing hard for the beach, filled with hunters who had set off south.

Miri's knees felt weak once they got close enough to shout.

They were being followed.

=====

Feodor sighed once the message of the 'traders' was finally translated by one of the older Fingersmen elders. Apparently, this group was of a tribe from upriver; one of the Hundred Bands. They were known previously to the Fingersmen, but apparently they had been distracted in recent years by intra-group troubles that had escalated to violence, cutting off trade. It was only recently that some of their northernmost scouts started to see the smoke from spirit food-making.

Recalling a story from his boyhood, one of the more powerful band leaders among the Hundred Bands had outfitted a trade expedition. His band had captured numerous women and rival warriors in combat and it was said that the Fingers would trade spirit food for more hands to work. Given the distances involved, the trade leader thought the unruly workers would be a lot less unruly when they couldn't simply return home. Why not get rid of one untrustworthy problem and secure a tasty luxury?

When Feodor's distaste for the practice of forced labour started to become relevant, the lead trader shrugged. Many thought like that before they saw the benefits, he said. But, if the People were not interested, he would find something else to trade for spirit food. And find another way to freely dispose of his unruly prisoners.

A tribe from the south has arrived at the Fingers. They claim to be part of the Hundred Bands, traders that used to deal with the Fingersmen. They want to trade for spirit food, the delicious tan crystal powder than only the Fingers is known to produce. In exchange, they offer 'troublesome' men and women captured in their own internecine conflict that they cannot, themselves, use as slaves. How do the People respond?

[ ] Accept the proposed trade of workers for food.
-[ ] Accept them as workers
-[ ] Accept them as adoptees
[ ] Find something else to trade with the northern Hundred Bands
[ ] Refuse to deal with a slave trafficker

 

[Redium]

[X] Accept the proposed trade of workers for food.
-[X] Accept them as adoptees

Spoiler: Miri's Choices

[X] [Admin] Build Palisade
-[X] Crystal Lake
[X] [Admin] Study Travel
*Proc -> Great Trace Megaproject 1/4-6
[X] [Diplo] Explore
-[X] South of Crystal Lake
[X] [Action] Great Trace 2/4-6
[X] [Action] Tap Sugar

Tymon wondered what his brothers would have thought had they still been alive. He was old now, among the last living in his generation. His teeth had started to fall out and his limbs had none of the vigor of their youth. Even his mind was starting to slow. At least, in comparison to his granddaughter, Miri, his mind was slow. The young woman was always moving, always with a new idea in her head. All of the troubles that he foresaw, he knew that she would safely handle. The woman had all of his skill when it came to organizing the People and all of his mother's skill with words to make the People follow along.

It made him smile to see her bustle in, chat with a few of her friends, and then have them accomplish the work of a dozen in a single afternoon. Listening to her voice seemed to put you in a trance and make work happen far faster and with fewer mistakes.

Even the new adoptees respected her, for the most part. There were, of course, some that stole canoes and stole food from the People, trying to make their way back to their lands in the south. The losses hurt, but not enough to cause lasting damage. The Big Man of the northern Hundred Bands was quite cross with the People for allowing them to leave, especially when some of his tribe were killed by returning warriors, but he took no concrete steps to make his displeasure known; the palisade of the People at the Fingers was fearsome. Tymon also made sure that their palisade was covered in mud to prevent fire damage and that the snows were quickly cleared away from it. Feodor's daring raid would not be repeated as long as he had anything to say about it!

Still, Tymon had definitely noticed the fact that there were fewer adult men and youths given to them; though some boys still were. When Miri had pressed the Hundred Band Big Man about the situation, he had excused it as: 'Men are muscled and sink in the river. Women are fat and float.' The men were drowned in other words so that they wouldn't leave the People and become a problem to the Big Man of the northern bands. It was cold-blooded murder for convenience, but it was also a topic on which Tymon would say nothing. The People were too fragile to bring hostilities against the Hundred Bands.

The adoptees that did arrive on the People's shores at the Fingers, were quickly put to work, tapping more trees for collection of 'sugar', as it was starting to be called. During the months were life returned to the world, the People's hunters slowed their efforts temporarily and focused on gathering buckets upon buckets of tree sap in order to boil for sweet sugar. They were tied over by the gathering of water-grass and trapping small fur-bearing animals, but it made for a few moons of rather bland fare.

It was worth it, though, many times over. Sugar was the most distinct taste that the People knew and quickly became a staple of many of their meals. It went a long way to hide the taste of meat that had gone to long from when it was killed. If added early, just after the meat was dried, it made it last for months!

The extra production had also been necessary in dealing with many of the difficulties between Crystal Lake and the Fingers. Before the widespread use of sugar, there had been a significant imbalance in goods produced between the two settlements. Blackstone was in extremely high demand by everyone. It was good for weapons, for knives in the preparation of rawhide and leather, cutting plants down to size to cook; virtually every area of life benefited from having access to Blackstone.

More than a few had grumbled about making the two moon long round trip in order to drop off supplies that would not benefit the People of Crystal Lake. That had changed as sugar production slowly increased. Given all of the food that had to be brought back to feed the a caravan making the trip back, the limited production of sugar wasn't seen as a massive bottleneck. Even when some was diverted to pay the northern Hundred Bands for the slowly increasing number of captives, the amount of sugar production managed to keep pace. The fact that Crystal Lake seemed to lake in the type of trees that made the production of sugar possible (even if only in comparison to the Fingers) it firmly tied the two settlements together.

Access to sugar had paid dividends for Crystal Lake when Miri had organized an expedition to the south, along the rim of the great bay. They had traveled by canoe only a few days to the south when they came across an area of the bay riven by rivers that was inhabited by a tribe they'd never before seen! They had been completely shocked at the coming of the People, especially once they realized how close the People's camp actually was!

Apparently, once Miri had managed to piece together enough of their language to have a short, broken conversation, she found out that they were from the south. The land that they had come from had not one other tribe, but four who were engaged in constant, low-level raids. The entire area was a large expanse of flat land that was extremely fertile. The tribes feed themselves by cultivating the land, which meant that land was extremely valuable. It was also, they had said, often easier to take the land another tribe had cultivated, than turning the vast forests into productive farms.

The entire tribe had broken off from the various belligerent tribes to the south, forming a group that foremost sought peace. Every one of them had lost a family member to war and they wanted no more of it. They believed murder and killing to be a sin in the eyes of the spirits; unforgivable when they could just plant their crops. It meant they must work harder, be more prudent, and have fewer children, but that's what the spirits had intended. They had moved to the north then, and passed through the Rough Lands until they found the eastern edge of the great bay.

Miri had told the People's story, but, perhaps wisely, glossed over the difficulties the People had with the Fingers. She emphasized the fact that the People were a coalition; People, River-Bend, Fingersmen, and now Hundred Band folk all together. This pleased the Peace Seekers and caused them to invite the entire exploratory party to a great feast.

The sugar that Miri had brought with her was an immediate hit among the Peace Seekers and they eagerly shared their evergreen tea in thanks. They claimed that it had medicinal properties (and from what Tymon knew of the evergreen that the People had later managed to source in their own lands - it did) and made the hurting and the old much, much younger.

The feast had also given the Peace Seekers the chance to show off their unique pots and other earthenware before the People. It was clearly more advanced in manufacturing, but it also came in numerous colours. Not only brown, like the People's, but in grey, white, red, and even yellow. When Miri returned, it was with trade goods, medicine, and news of other tribes. Even the most reluctant of People at Crystal Lake had to admit their thanks for a girl born of the Fingers.

Even though relations between the Peace Seekers and the People were cordial, with occasional trade, Miri managed to turn the presence of another tribe, one so close to the People of Crystal Lake into a way to bind the People together. She imported huge numbers of workers from the Fingers to construct a palisade in Crystal Lake. The huge number of woodworkers brought in and the length of time it took to fully construct the palisade resulted in many of those workers, whether they were Fingersmen, People, Hundred Band, or River-Bend, settling down in Crystal Lake. The fact that many of the young men in Crystal Lake soon learned that there were a lot more young women in the Fingers caused many of them to move down in the hopes of better being able to attract women.

It was a temporary transfer of population, but it did a lot to heal divisions between the two Settlements.

It also brought to light several issues that weren't really noticed before. Specifically in how the People treated debt and 'marriage'.

Tymon, as the most local of the two great Big Men, had been called in to arbitrate a dispute between two men. They had come to blows over a debt that one of the men owed to the other. The actual fight was of little consequence and was stopped before either party was injured to the point where it could become a problem. Dust ups were common in the People, especially among young men, and weren't really seen as a matter of import as long as no one was injured to severely.

The aggressor had ended up asking for judgement because he claimed to have been wronged. He claimed to have lent the men he attacked a large amount of food in exchange for a supply of sugar. The second man did provide the sugar, but it was of profoundly terrible quality. It was known that sap could only be collected for one or two moons during the thaw. If you gathered before, the return was very poor, and if you gathered after that, the resulting sugar tasted terrible.

The second man claimed that it was not his fault that the other young man mishandled the sugar given to him; exposing it to water quickly made sugar turn sour. Other witnesses stepped forward at that point, however, and noted that the second man was a known scoundrel. There had been more than a few people that he had cheated or lied to. The man actually had accumulated informal debts from nearly everyone. He had just managed to evade the consequences for years by tricking others out of small amounts of food and moving between Crystal Lake and the Fingers.

Everyone agreed that the man was a scoundrel and a cheat. Normally, what happened in such cases was that people simply refused to allow that person to borrow anything. Reputation was currency among the People. If you weren't renowned, you didn't have friends, family, or connections, and you didn't pay your debts, people wouldn't give you anything. Starvation was a frequent out come at that point and from what Tymon could see of the man, that was likely to soon be his fate. The reason he had stole as much food as he had was because he wasn't able to get enough of his own and no one would lend to him.

The man needed to be punished, but in what way?

[ ] Provide restitution to the victim, but do nothing about the thief's debt.
[ ] Put the man to work on behalf of the People, his food ration will be given upon him working.
[ ] Force the man to pay the debt back to the person he stole from, however he can manage it.
[ ] Brand the man a thief and allow nature to take its course.
[ ] Exile him.

 

[Redium]

[x] Put the man to work on behalf of the People, his food ration will be given upon him working.

Spoiler: Miri's Actions

[X] [Diplo] Create Annual Festival
[X] [Admin] Great Trace 3/4-6?
[X] [Action] Great Trace 4/4-6?
[X] [Action] Increase Hunting

Slowly, Miri walked along the southern edge of the great river. A path had slowly been worn along the southern bank, cut by thousands of feet passing by in ones and twos. In her youth, when she and her friends frolicked along the Fingers' rivers, she had noticed small traces leading away into the forest. Most of those trails were made by game; bears, wolves, antler-bearing animals of all types, but some had been made by the People. Hunters, woodsmen, and sugar makers going out to fulfill their duties.

The changes were small, but she noticed the paths grow deeper and deeper every year. Some of the more widely traversed paths were slowly worn down to bare dirt. Trees and grass no longer grew there and made it significantly easier for the People to pass.

If the People could create a networks of traces cut through the wilderness by pure happenstance, what could they do if they put their minds to it?

The greatest challenge that the People had faced in Miri's time was in the sheer distance between Crystal Lake and the Fingers. It was only the skills of the Brothers Three, her grandfather and her granduncles, and then her own subsequent leadership that had allowed the People to continue as one, unified being. The discovered of tree sugar had staved off the difficulties. The subsequent building of the palisade and the movement of woodworkers from the Fingers to Crystal Lake helped heal the divide. Even the discovery of the Peace Seekers to the south helped bring the People closer together by giving contrast against Outsiders.

None of that, though, healed the underlying issue. The journey from Crystal Lake to the Fingers took half a moon. The journey in the other direction took three times as long. There were many of the People who made the trip down and then decided not to return, deciding the trip back was too long and too difficult.

The river was clearly the problem. The solution, then, became simple: remove the river.

Over the years, Miri had slowly encouraged hunters to range further and further along the south shore of the great river. They took furs and explored and she organized the transport of goods along the river. It was the work of years; five sets of ten, before the wanderings of hunters firmly cut a trace into the ground. Miri had been insistent. She had bribed and cajoled, encouraged and even threatened, but the cut through the wilderness was slowly made.

She didn't even have to find the best way to make the path work; the People she assigned made it work all on their own. Miri simply trusted that the People would make their own lives easy, taking the past of least resistance. Grasses and shrubs were slowly pulled out, the path meandered left and right in order to follow the natural curvature of the land and trees stuck in the way were girdled.

That was an interesting technique, Miri thought; a failed experiment on extract more sugar from the sugar trees. Tearing a circle out of a tree's bark didn't cause it to release more sap to turn to sugar. Instead, it simply killed the tree.

The cutting of the Great Trace had also paid dividends in an unexpected direction; the hunters working on the Great Trace had stumbled across a way of making dried meat keep forever. The meat that they caught and dried was often crushed into powder for convenience when they carried it or set it by canoe to Crystal Lake or the Fingers. The processing tended to leave the meat bland, however, so many of the hunters added rendered fat, berries, and even tree sugar to improve the taste. A single handful could feed a working hunter for a full day!

Coming out across a hill top, Miri smiled. A tall, interlocked wall of cloven logs ringed an enclosure, from which smoke lazily drifted into the air. A massive lake was tucked into the far side of the palisade, gleaming in the slowly setting evening light. Crystal Lake almost looked like the village she had grown up in. It was even full of friends, new and old.

The trip she had just completed up for her the recognition of cousin's true relationship had taken her less than the turning of a single moon. It was a hard trip, walking constantly for most of a day again and again and again, but the Great Trace worked. Now, the People could move from the Fingers in small groups in a fraction of the time. It still was not as fast as going by canoe down river and couldn't bring as much baggage back, but it was immensely faster.

Any fears that Miri had about the People splitting were laid to rest.

Indeed! This was a day of celebration and union! One of her cousins was to formalize his true relationship. He was the son of a woodworker that she'd quietly encouraged to move to Crystal Lake while the palisade was built. The son of a grandson of granduncle Feodor, he had declared his intentions towards Mila, a beautiful young girl of the Peace Seekers. She had come north in her canoe along with others of her tribe, bartering pottery and a mix of red and yellow paints for sugar and Blackstone. Her cousin had seen the Peace Seeker girl and instantly been smitten. It took him a few years, but he eventually managed to win the approval of her tribe and the chance for her hand.

Mila had naturally accepted. Few women were willing to turn down the attentions of an attentive man, much less one who was one of the obviously spirit-touched Winterborn. Her cousin was no Feodor, but Miri knew that he would care deeply for the Peace Seeker girl and any children she gave him.

Their courtship was to be recognized at the holy site of Crystal Lake before the new couple moved to stay with the Peace Seeker tribe. Mila's husband-to-be was smitten enough that he could not deny her the opportunity to see her family. To him, family was someone that could be close to a moon's turn away downriver. What was a few days of travel south?

Crystal Lake had swelled in size from all of the visitors, tents spilling out onto the open fields around the settlement. Miri herself was seated at a place of high honour, across from Mila's father. Food was brought out and offered freely, allowing everyone the unheard of opportunity to eat as much as they wanted. Sweet mixtures of berries and sugar were poured over succulent cuts of meat and served with steaming bowlfuls of water-grass.

Instruments were quickly brought; bone flutes and rawhide drums, setting a comfortable, rhythmic beat as the night wore on. Great bonfires were erected and lit as the sun finally dipped below the horizon. Youths gathered between the flames, wrestling and singing and chanting. Offering thanks to the spirits and requesting the recognition of a fruitful match.

Miri swayed to the beat, smiling and offering constant toasts of evergreen tea while her cousin truly got to know his Peace Seeker bride. The atmosphere was hypnotic and Miri knew that she had eaten far too much. The flames were hypnotic, drawing the eyes as young men wrestled for dominance and shouted encouragement to their friends. She felt light headed, wet with sweat and nauseous, as she stumbled to her feet and begged off from the party. She couldn't make a scene at her own cousin's wedding!

The world seemed to lurch, twisting in ways incomprehensible; Miri was deafened by the silence. Everything twisted as something reached its ice-like fingers deeply into her chest and squeezed. Her breath stopped short. To breathe again was death, she was certain, even if she didn't know how.

Miri's eyes eventually fixated as the world stopped spinning. She saw her cousin, sitting there with the self-acknowledged giddy grin writ wide across his features. He was dead. His skull crushed, brains leaking from his ears even as he closely clutched the savaged corpse of Mila.

The entire camp was filled with silent death. Everyone that Miri had ever seen was dead. Some by violence, but many looked like macabre mockeries of their normal selves. They were reduced to skin and bone, hollowed out and reduced to something close to ash and dust. Their eyes were dried out, the sockets filled with embers that had long since cooled.

Flickering flames lent a ghoulish cast to the remains of the party, burning without sound. Feeling her lungs begin to ache and finally burn, Miri blinked and nearly screamed. A wolf stood before her, stretched and starved. Ribs poked out from under patchy fur. Teeth bared, a grow low in its throat, the beast relaxed, fractionally. Brushing along her flank, Miri represses an instinctive shiver. Whatever touched her could not have been flesh. It could not have been something that had ever been alive.

Miri couldn't turn to face where the wolf walked, couldn't look. The wolf's growl slowly rumbled out of its chest, growing in volume. Turning into a crescendo that ended only when Miri felt something crash into her back while teeth wrapped round her neck.

Starting awake, Miri waved off the worried looks surrounding her. She suddenly felt old, as if her body suddenly weighed three times as much. She offered her sincere congratulations to her cousin, but her heart was not in it. What had happened?

Clearly, it was a warning from the spirits, but what did it mean?

[ ] [Spirit] Recall the violence, the People must be prepared for war! (Promote Folk Wrestling and Increase Wolfpacks)
[ ] [Spirit] See the starvation, lean times are ahead (Increase Hunting + Harvest Water-Grass)
[ ] [Spirit] Know killed kin, this marriage was a mistake. The Peace Seekers should not be kin to the People. (Raid: Peace Seekers)
[ ] [Spirit] Feel the spirits displeasure with the People's piety, they require more. (Unlock Build Shrine + Build Shrine: Crystal Lake)
[ ] [Spirit] Think on what was to be shown, the People must prepare for visitors. (Produce Trade Goods + Investigate Special Stone)

When Miri finally returned to the Fingers nearly a moon later, she felt every one of her years as her advisers filled her in on the situation. The Hundred Bands to the south had greatly increased the price in sugar they demanded for releasing prisoners to the People. There was also a new tribe that appeared from the north. They never moved close enough to talk with the People; cautiously watching from a distance instead. When a few of the People's hunters moved out in canoes, the tribe north of the Fingers quickly pulled back.

There were also a hundred other annoyances that had built up on her trip to Crystal Lake. Tasks that the People as a whole needed to respond to, but which they must be convinced to work on. Miri had hesitated after the death of her grandfather. He had been the People's Big Man, cajoling everyone into working together in order to accomplish what needed to be done. There were many among the People who claimed the title of Big Man, but none who were as elevated as she was amongst the Fingers.

She needed what her fore bearer had. A second Big Man to watch over Crystal Lake while she deal with issues developing in the Fingers. Big Men were those amongst the People who were great. Someone with many friends, a great hunter, an organizer that could get things done, an artisan that made tools everyone used; there were many forms of greatness all of which were near impossible to judge one against the other.

Given her skills, her connections and her friends, it would be trivial to elevate the person of her choosing. A Big Man was built by the connections they formed. The only question was who to push to prominence?

[ ] [Big Man] Someone who covered her weaknesses.
[ ] [Big Man] Someone she could control.
[ ] [Big Man] Someone she could mold in her image.
[ ] [Big Man] Someone who could claim the title of Big Man without help.
[ ] [Big Man] Someone who was close kin.
[ ] [Big Man] Someone favoured by the elders.

 

[Redium]

[X] [Spirit] Recall the violence, the People must be prepared for war! (Promote Folk Wrestling and Increase Wolfpacks)
[X] [Big Man] Someone who covered her weaknesses.

Spoiler: Miri's Choices

[X] [Diplo] Prepare Trade Goods
[X] [Admin] Harvest Water-Grass
[X] [Action] Raid: South Reach (Disunity: Action stolen by Peace Seeker Diplo Hero)
[X] [Action] Lost due to climate rolls.

The years had been harsh, harsher than any of the People could ever remember. The weather had started to turn worse and worse over the years, the winters longer and longer, while the summers grew ever so slightly shorter. Snow piled up and it would be often be more than a moon after the snows were supposed to be gone that they would even begin to melt. Many animals were starting to be born sickly or not at all.

The future did not look promising.

A few years after her cousin's wedding, Miri noticed something strange among the People. It took her a while to source the growing sense of unease, but she eventually tracked to a very recent group of adoptees that had arrived from the Hundred Bands. The group was smaller than usual, and unusually tight knit. They claimed to be close kin that had been captured at the same time, thus explaining their bonds. They were productive and contributed, working the shifts assigned to them as Debtors without much complaint.

That was what really tipped her off. Debtors were required to work extra hours, sometimes a lot more depending on the scale of their debt. They also tended to be assigned duties that were harder or less enjoyable; digging out a canoe with an adze after it was initially shaped by fire, hauling buckets of tree sap to be boiled to sugar, or tanning animal hide into leather. Not only did it help them pay off their Debt faster, but Miri also thought it taught a good lesson about not foregoing your debts in the future!

But that family of Debtors was different. They didn't protest having to pay of their sugary; the price with which they were purchased into the People. In fact, they seemed to view replacing the sugar lost to purchase their freedom as more important than most of the People!

Further inquiries from some of the individuals who had been adopted into the People revealed nothing about the particular family. Literally nothing. That wasn't again, extremely strange, but it was unusual. The conflict with the Northern and Southern Hundred Bands tended to constantly scour the same few islands as raids bounced back and forth. Most who were adopted into the People knew of each other, at least vaguely.

This implied that the Northern Hundred Bands were able to push further south and were winning their confrontation. But that that was thought to be impossible. The Northern Hundred bands were a small minority of all of the Hundred Bands. Most of the population was located much, much further southwest. The river slowly widened until it was at least ten times the size of the Great River. Throughout it, the place was strewn with islands. Many of them were small; holdings fit only for a single family. Others were much larger and could hold hundreds.

Each person who controlled and island had the right to call themselves a Big Man and all were invited to a yearly gathering. In practice, most of the Big Men were irrelevant, only the five Great Big Men of the south and the Northern Big Man who had managed to get himself acknowledged as Big Man of all of the North, truly mattered.

The math was simple. There were five Great Big Men of the south, each one ruling a great island that dwarfed all of the others, and only one Northern Big Man. One could not overpower five. Ultimately, this was irrelevant. The Wars of the Band did not concern the People. But, Miri remembered her dream and she was a naturally curious person, trying to figure out how people fit together. Those meddlesome ways had only intensified in her old age!

When Miri she called the family forward to be questioned about the strangeness of this situation, they responded with instant violence. They were easily overwhelmed, but not before two of them were killed. The People had been on edge for years since her vision, training hard. Virtually every adult carried a staff; any violence was extremely unwise when everyone was armed.

Later questioning of the prisoners revealed that they were not adoptees at all, they were from the Northern Hundred Band! Their leader, a woman named Sasha, was the daughter of the North's Big Man. In order to serve her father and help secure his position, she had convinced a small number of her friends to sell her and themselves to the People. She was apparently extremely adept with crafts and believed she would discover the process by which the People made sugar.

They had succeeded.

The People's own tendency to use Debtors to do the heavy lifting involved with moving tree sap quickly twigged Sasha onto which trees were necessary to tap. In fact, they had actually been planning to steal canoes and supplies to leave only a few days after they were called in for question! None had escaped with the method, so far, but the question was what to do?

If the thieves were executed, it meant that the Northern Hundred Band would seek vengeance on their behalf. Miri knew that the People would in that situation. Of course, if they released the thieves, the Northern Hundred Band might seek revenge anyway and that would mean that the secret of sugar making would get out. It wouldn't be a critical loss to the People; they had Black, White and Berrystone still for goods, but it would immensely hurt their trade.

Miri could also simply keep them with the People and use them to ensure the Northern Hundred Band's compliance, but that would almost certainly provoke some type of rescue attempt or a break out. The People simply didn't have the reliable means to keep someone against their well. They had never learned how.

The last and most unlikely choice was to convince them to stay of their own will. Given the that two of them were dead, beaten by the staves of the People, Miri thought it was unlikely she would accomplish it. She could, but it would be a risk.

[ ] [Thieves] Kill Them
[ ] [Thieves] Exile Them
[ ] [Thieves] Keep Them
[ ] [Thieves] Convince Them

Just as that situation resolved itself, Miri heard news from the Big Man of Crystal Lake. Apparently, the Peace Seekers had come to them, begging for aid. Refugees from the south had come north and dislodged the Peace Seekers from their space along the eastern great bay. The poor weather had caused many crops to fail and inspired a new orgy of violence in the dangerous but fertile regions to the south. Refugees, warriors, and raiders, streamed away, seeking better fortunes elsewhere.

When the Peace Seekers greeted their southern cousins with gifts and welcomed them to warm fires, they were met with only sneers. The tribes from the south were hardened and took what they wanted.

A Winterborn daughter of Mila fled to Crystal Lake and begged their aid. She claimed that her parents were dead, her father crushed beneath the clubs of the enemy while her mother was savaged to death. The Big Man did not take long to offer aid and put together a team of hunters. Mila had married into the People, her daughter was kin and deserved the People's protection and the restoration of her home.

It was a noble sentiment, but foolish. What if the warlike folk of the south turned their eyes further north? Then again, what should Miri have expected? She had chosen someone to compliment her; young, strong, a fierce hunter; someone who was everything she was not. It should not be a surprise that they acted in a way she would not.

Two clashes occurred between the People and those from the south, both were ultimately inconclusive, but the southerners did retreat to their homes. The southerners fought with enormous two-handed war clubs. Each one had a large stone head that could easily shatter the bone armour of the People in a single swipe. Compared to the People, their arms and wooden armour was far more study. A single bad deflection could break one of the People's spears.

Where the People reigned supreme, however, was at range. Their bows had significantly better range and impact than those of the raiders. The wolves that the People brought with them also proved adept combatants; their instincts for war having been honed by recent years of training with the People. During the skirmish and the hunt afterwards for those that fled, the People were unquestionably superior. They lost many in the true clash, however.

Training definitely was on the side of the southerners, but starvation robbed them of any possible gains there.

In the end, the child of Mila had their home back. The question remained, though, for how long?

The Big Man of Crystal Lake seemed to think that the fighting was very informative and really showed where the People were in comparison to many of their neighbours. Those to the south of Crystal Lake were known to be extremely warlike and the People had managed to draw with them. Something would need to be done, an edge gained for future encounters. The answer was simple, on consideration. Where did the People had resources that the southerners simply didn't?

Their wolves. What lesson should be prioritized for the wolves?

[ ] [Wolf] Strength
[ ] [Wolf] Speed
[ ] [Wolf] Intelligence

For the most part, Miri was content to let the matter lie with the south. She had no need to go borrow more trouble. What required most of her attention was the debate springing up amongst the People in regard to Debtors. The spirits were clearly displeased; winters were increasingly harsh and food was becoming more difficult to find. None could remember tales of a time that were it was more difficult to feed themselves.

On the other side, the spirits also clearly rewarded the useage of Debtor's labour. Many Debtors had spent rotations assigned to harvesting water-grass along the rivers. It was subtle, but the People had clearly noticed that areas harvested by Debtors tended to grow more thickly and yield many more grains in subsequent years. The reason why this occurred completely eluded the People. They could find no reason why except that the spirits were obviously pleased by Debtor labour. Every other source of the People's food was dwindling except for this one.

There were others who argued the opposite, that this was a temptation to test the People. Forcing kith and kin to work was wrong, they claimed. The current state of the world was simply a test to determine if the People would do what was convenient and what was easy, or take the more difficult path.

Still others said that was foolish. The People should focus on expanding their supply of Debtors and look for tribes that they could acquire them from outside of the Hundred Bands. Crystal Lake had the warlike tribe to the south and there was also that group that had skulked in from the north previously.

In the end, they decided to:

[ ] [Debt] Expand the use of Debtors within the People.
[ ] [Debt] Ease off on using Debtors.
[ ] [Debt] Capture additional Debtors from other tribes.
[ ] [Debt] Do nothing for now and let the situation develop.

 

[Redium]

[X] [Thieves] Kill Them
[X] [Wolf] Intelligence
[X] [Debt] Do nothing for now and let the situation develop.

The spirits had turned fully against the People, smiting them for their sins.

Over the course of a single night, enough snow fell from the skies that everything was utterly blanketed deeper than most of the People's arms were long. So much snow had fallen that many dwellings had outright collapsed; crushed under the sudden, massive weight. Many of the People died that night. Frozen or crushed while the spirits screamed their rage from all possible directions. Miri herself was brought low, crushed under the weight of her own home.

The People's eyes were filled with tears and their hearts with grief as they combed through the rubble, searching for survivors and supplies. Dozens were dead; men, women, children; none were spared the spirits' wrath and more bodies were recovered by the hour. Bitter recriminations quickly followed, some of which escalated quickly to violence. None, thankfully, were killed as the kith and kin fought. Once the tears and the fighting were spent, the People were simply left exhausted.

As the sun slowly descended, the People piled high the bodies of their dead. Simple burial was the normal custom amongst the People. Even in the winters when the ground beneath their feet was frozen, the People would attempt a shallow burial. Most of the time, graves were already dug the summer before. That was impossible now; far, far too many had died.. After the rescue efforts, no one had the will or the energy to dig the substantial number of graves necessary. Instead, they dragged the remains of those who had died out to their holy places and stacked them high atop broken timbers, spare wood and lots of kindling.

Cremation would have to serve for those who had lost their lives. It was a poor substitute for burial, but corpses that were left out would quickly draw the anger of the spirits. Curses would writhe from their flesh as their former kin bloated and rotted.

Several hours after the pyre was lit, the ritual drums fell silent. The screams started a moment later. The people on the pyre began to move; some drawing into a fighting stance, others sitting up, and even one that stood and walked out to collapse on the ground. Some realized that not only were the screams coming from the People, but also from the pyre. A hellish, high pitched whine, a piercing cry that cut through everything. Each time the cry died, it was picked up again and again. A chorus formed from the slain.

The People were horrified. What had they done for their own recently departed to curse them so? The hate visible on the faces of the People as their loved ones burned; it would haunt everyone until their final days. Many fled the scene, a few outright abandoning the People wholesale and all of the evils they'd wrought there.

When the next day dawned, whatever temporary unity that had been created in the aftermath of disaster, shattered. Recriminations were freely fired and blame was thick to lay. Everyone knew that the People had sinned in the eyes of the spirits, the question only remained: what was the cause?

Even now, when the Big Man assigned Debtors to a new area to harvest water-grass, the grass would grow back thicker and more plentiful. There was no explanation that the People could find. The spirits rewarded the act of fulfilling a Debt. The fact that the People had done nothing in order to acknowledge that simply meant they were being punished as they deserved.

The argument was persuasive to most, only a minority resisted the logic. They argued that the People erred not in ignoring the importance of debts, but in doing things for their own convenience. The pyre on which they had burned the dead was obviously a perversion of the natural order. They should have buried everyone, no matter how much it had cost the People in effort and precious food. Debtors were superior in growing plants because of the additional hours they worked as well as the thankless tasks they were assigned. The drudgery and difficulty that they encountered was then rewarded later on.

A third group, an extremely small one, put together an alternative hypothesis. The Debtors and the pyre were completely unrelated to what the spirits were actually doing; they were testing the People. For as long as anyone could remember, the spirits had abundantly blessed the People. Never did the snows linger too long. At least, never before this day. They argued that the Debtors and the pyre was completely irreverent. The spirits were not mad at the People, they were testing them. They had given great boons and allowed the People to grow strong. This was their way of determining if the People actually took advantage of what had been offered to them. Instead of appeasing the spirits, they should instead focus on giving their spite right them back. As long as the People passed the test, they would be rewarded.

In the end, what did the People decide they needed to do:

[ ] Honour Debts
[ ] Work Honestly
[ ] Persevere

AN: There will be one more phase to this turn. I've already rolled for it, it just didn't really fit into this part.

 

[Redium]

[X] Persevere

As the night of horrors ended, the People found themselves filled with resolve. They were tested by the spirits. As they had first been nuzzled in warmth and plenty; they were now being asked to find their own way. It was like a mother feeding their child. For years, a newborn would be feed directly from the body of their mother. Eventually, however, that ended. A child would be asked to help around camp and slowly taught how to hunt, to fish, to gather and build.

This was that time for the People as a whole. They needed to step up and take responsibility if they wanted to progress into the state that was adulthood.

Value Gained: Ordeal

Spoiler: Ordeal

The People believe that the spirits test them always. They might test by ones and twos, or they could test everyone of the People as a whole. These moments are often times of great struggle that trigger transcendence. Or destruction.
Pros: People are more willing to endure hardship
Cons: Increased cost for failing a 'test'

Despite the decision, some that still whispered: "If this is a test of childhood? What, then, would be the test, for adulthood?"

The next trial was not long in coming. A few weeks after the great snow, an armada of canoes crossed the horizon from the south. The sharpest-eyed among the People were quick to pick out the canoe leading the pack. The Big Man of the Northern Hundred Bands stood proud, a spear lashed to the front of his bow. Atop that was an impaled skull, one belonging to a great antlered beast. The message was clear; they were not here for trade, they were here to fight.

Quickly, the People armed themselves. Not only the hunters and woodsmen, but everyone of the right age to bear weapons. For many, it was the first time they lashed spear tips to quarterstaves, turning them from tools of practice into objects of killing, but there was little hesitation. Everyone within the People had tested themselves against the other, crossing staves or wrestling. Now was the time to see who truly was the best when it was keeps they played for.

Only frail elders, women who carried children within themselves, and the youngest of children huddled within the palisade. Even some of the People who could not fight tried to gather weapons. This clearly was a test of the spirits, to stay behind was unthinkable. The shame, unbearable. Only the ironclad argument that such people would get themselves and their kin killed, made them stay behind. The spirits didn't test in the same way, the elders reasoned. Each person was tested in their own way. For some, it was a feat of arms. For others, it was a test of patience.

The raiders were ragged to the People's eyes, like they had come from battle once already. The canoes they pulled up onto the shore were far too numerous for the raiders they carried. Normally, four sat in a single war canoe. One at the front and back to paddle and two in the middle to use bows or spears. A noticeable number of canoes were missing a forth person. Even with extra space taken up by strange oval shaped, rawhide covered tools, they were obviously missing raiders. Numerous raiders.

A single arrow was launched duly from the People's best archer as a warning shot. The only response the People received was a quick laugh from the Hundred Band's Big Man and a harsh insult in his guttural tongue. Subsequent shots seemed to leave the man's arrogance rewarded. The massive oval shaped constructs the raiders carried stopped a significant number of arrows. Some still fell or took wounds after Blackstone arrowheads crashed through wood and rawhide, but the numbers were significantly less than the People expected. Even when the raiders closed enough for slings and darts to become useful, they were much less effective than normal.

The shields the raiders carried were huge, heavy and unwieldy, but they served their purpose. They allowed the raiders to slowly surmount the hill at the center of the Fingers and force the People back inside the palisade. It wasn't that they were afraid to engage the Hundred Bands, but that it was pointless. The raiders couldn't possibly wait out the food reserves of the People and there was nothing outside the walls that they truly needed to defend.

When the raider's Big Man called for kindling and firewood to be chopped down, it was clear he was not in his right mind. The Big Man screamed, berating his raiders and hurled curses at the People. His grief had absolutely overruled his reason. For the execution of his daughter, he would have vengeance, and it would be brutal.

For the rest of the day and into the early evening, the Hundred Bands gathered brush, wood, and kindling. All of it failed to ignite. The massive snow storms of weeks passed still had not melted. The ready source of ice and the cold prevented fire from ever really catching. Axes were brought shortly after and all the People could do was wait while their defenses were hacked down. The palisade kept them safe, but it also prevented the People from effectively fighting back. Bows could be used to shoot over it, but without line of sight, hitting a raider was more luck than skill.

The People sunk torches into the snow and set up a brazier for warmth while the raiders cut and hacked through the palisade. It was night by the time the enemy was finally through, only letting stars and flickering torches witness the bloodshed unleashed. The fighting was even, for the most part. The Hundred Bands seemed to favour the massive, two-handed clubs that those south of the Peace Seekers used. Though, they lacked wooden armour.

The tide finally turned when a young man tamed fire and turned the hellish heat into his weapon. Beneath its Blackstone head, his spear was consumed by flame. Hypnotic, distracting, and extremely deadly. He up ended the brazier the People had brought out for heat, hurling it at the enemy. Dancing in between the sparks and coals, he caught the enemy Big Man unprepared and speared him through the heart. The other raiders quickly lost their courage after that, most of them breaking and running.

Celebrations were quickly cut short once the People realized the brave youth was severely burned for his efforts; stuck on the edge between life and death. Once the high of victory wore off, it slowly sunk in what the youth had done. He had used fire to kill. The hellish screams of the Night of Horrors were not that long ago. Condemnation quickly started to pile up. Others wanted to heap praise on the youth, despite the cursed way in which he killed. In the end, it was decided to:

[ ] [Fire] Execute the blasphemer while he's weak (+1 Legitimacy)
[ ] [Fire] Quietly let the youth die of his injuries (+1 Stability)
[ ] [Fire] Praise his aggression
[ ] [Fire] Praise his initiative
[ ] [Fire] Praise his mastery of fire's spirit
(Currently at Stability 0 and Legitimacy 1)

Months later, after the snows melted, Crystal Lake reported that there had been further raids from the lands south of the Peace Seekers. Again, the People had stepped in to support their southern kin, but this time the help was clearly unwanted. After the People drove away the southerners, they were ridiculed and cast out by the Peace Seekers. They claimed that the spirits clearly hated the relationship between the Peace Seekers and the People. Not only was the weather clear damnation, but the constant raids from the south were further confirmation.

So sure were the Peace Seekers in their decision that they cast out all of the children amongst them that had blood ties to the People. Not only did they throw out the descendants of Mila, but large numbers of unwanted children that they claimed the People had forced on their women. The Big Man of Crystal Lake doubted the full truth of this last claim. It was likely easier for many among the Peace Seekers to claim the children unwanted in the rabid, exclusionary atmosphere that dominated the Peace Seekers.

When the Big Man asked how the Peace Seekers intended to protect themselves, when the southerners came again, the leader of the new Peace Seekers simply spat.

The discussion ended quickly after that.

Over all, the People from the Peace Seekers were interweaving themselves well with the People at Crystal Lake. They were kin and ties had been relatively close from before. Many who moved in had friends and extended family to support them during the transition.

While the two Big Men of the People spoke, their children played. One of the kids from Crystal Lake demonstrated some well known magic among those of the lake in order to impress the other children. Apparently, if sea shells were burned in a hot fire, they bleached completely white. The fire somehow lingered amongst the sea shells and caused water to steam, smoke and bubble when it was later added to the bleached shells. That amalgam created a putty that slowly hardened into stone after it was left to dry.

Once the Big Man of the Fingers saw his children dabbling in the magic, a solution to a problem he'd been mulling instantly came to him. With liquid stone, the People could easily reinforce dwellings which had collapsed! They might even be able to use it to reinforce their palisade. The Fingers had access to tremendously more sea shells than Crystal Lake, especially since they could be cultivated for food.

There were other competing considerations to focus on as well. The People were low on food, close to hunger in many cases, even if there was no starvation yet. There was also the frayed relations with the Peace Seekers or their response against the Hundred Bands to consider as well. The People were also feeling strained by the recent past. Focusing on improving happiness could also be useful. What was the most important to focus on?

[ ] [Action] Reinforce dwellings with liquid stone (+1 Legitimacy)
[ ] [Action] Don't go hungry, idiots! (Expand Aquaculture)
[ ] [Action] Try to mend fences with the Peace Seekers (Send Trade Party)
[ ] [Action] Retaliate against the Hundred Bands (Raid: Hundred Bands)
[ ] [Action] Party! (Create Annual Festival)

 

[Redium]

[X] [Fire] Praise his mastery of fire's spirit
[X] [Action] Don't go hungry, idiots! (Expand Aquaculture)

The Night of Horrors slowly faded to a bad memory amongst the People. Springs bloomed strongly in the years after the great snow, bounty returning to the world. Clear were the spirits in their testing of the People, but also were they free with rewards. Food reserves that had once been stretched close to breaking, slowly refilled. Empty homes, abandoned after they were crushed under winter's weight, were slowly occupied as more People were born and replaced those lost.

It was almost like the horrors of the past were reduced to a simple bad memory. The People did not forget, however, and ideas flourished.

The driving force for the People was a simple question: How had a youth had mastered the spirits of fire, the most unpredictable thing that the People had ever encountered, and turned it into a weapon of war? After the young man had finally recovered from his injuries, he had sheepishly admitted that all he had done was wrap his spear in birch bark. It looked impressive, but there was no magic there.

The answer was... unsatisfactory, many thought. It was long known that birch bark burned quickly and it was often sought by the People for use as fire starters; there was no mastery of spirit there. Instead, what truly captured the People's interest was the magic that turned sea shells into liquid stone. Lime, as it was being called. How could sea shells, an element of water, combine with fire in order to get solid stone? It made no sense. Even the wisest of the People could offer no satisfactory explanation on why this was so.

Eventually, the disappointed were galvanized, trying to find something that would provide a proper answer. Over time, the People became quite skilled in the art of burning things. Instead of fire pits, they realized that surrounding the fire with a large clay vessel, actually increased the flame. The same amount of wood stacked inside one of these vessels would burn down to ember faster than a fire pit. Once the fire had burned out, the People could easily break open the vessel and retrieve the leftover sea shells.

It was inside one of these vessels, a kiln, that something new was discovered. One of the magic-seekers added a handful of Berrystone, thinking to add their brilliance to a batch of lime. The batch came out just as white in the end, but the Berrystones were fundamentally changed. Instead of their deep, berry colour, they came out shinning like the sun. Translucent and yellow in colour, the Berrystones were completely transformed. Somehow, the crystals had absorbed the essence of flame; Berrystone became Emberstone.

Even more questions thundered through the hearts of the People. How was that possible? How could fire interact with sea shell and crystal, transforming them into something that was clearly different? The questions bantered back and forth, across cook fires and on long walks on the hunt, and slowly led to a new bred amongst the People. These individuals were ones more skilled in the matters spiritual, masters of the unseen forces that governed the People.

Instead of focusing on hunting, gathering, or leading the People, they focused on appeasing the spirits. Given how much the weather had improved, their efforts were clearly working. In thanks, and to repay an almost unfathomably large debt, the Big Man of the People organized the consistent delivery of food to these shaman. No longer would they need to hunt; their efforts pleasing the spirits would serve the People to a far greater degree.

Foremost among these new shaman, were the Ember-Eyed. A secretive group, even amongst the taciturn shaman, they practiced the secret arts of lime fire. Just as the element could transform sea shells or crystal, they said that it could transform people. Now only did they study the uses fire could be put towards, but they used it to strengthen their bodies through secret rites. Only the wisest and strongest amongst the People were selected for refinement, but all those that underwent the process turned into fearsome warriors. Their numbers were few, for now, but as the months passed, more and more forged their Emberstone bead and were accepted into the secret order.

As the Ember-Eyed trained in secret, the People were spurred to better themselves in turn. They knew that the spirits would come again to test them. They enjoyed respite and ease now, but it was only a matter of time before the spirits believed them ready for their next Ordeal. From the last, the People knew that there were two areas in which they were deficient.

First, in their housing. The Great Winter had killed many of the People. Not through the cold, but through the sheer crushing mass of snow that winter dumped in a single night. Vague ideas had slowly begun to surface of improving the homes of the People to become more resilient and better reinforced. If the weather was again to turn against the People, they would need some way to survive it.

On the other hand, there was a competing realm of thought; the People should instead focus on finding a way to better their palisade. When the Hundred Bands had raided them, it was almost impossible for the People to actually push them back once they were forced within its walls. The Hundred Bands had not been back to bring violence upon them, but that could change at any time. Just as the People were taking time in order to rejuvenate and heal from recent loses, it was likely that the Hundred Bands were doing the same.

In the end, it was simple: how were the People most likely to be tested? By weather or violence?

In the past, the weather had always been consistently good. Only once had it been harsh. As for violence, the People were in current conflict with the Hundred Bands and relations with the Peace Seekers were not much better. There had been no contact, but the Peace Seekers were steadfast in their desire to ignore the People. All trade had ceased and none of the People who plied the waters of the Great Bay reported even incidental contact.

Despite their nature, there were concerning signs among the Peace Seekers that left many feeling uneasy. Spurred on by curiosity, for a family they'd never known, a group of young people had nearly snuck into the Peace Seeker camp. They turned back at the last moment, but they noticed an enormous number of canoes beached on the shore. Far more than the small population of Peace Seekers could ever need. A bored sentry watched the canoes. A man armoured in wood and carrying one of the massive war club of the so-called Barrow Builders to the south of the Peace Seekers.

The youths didn't get to close to the Peace Seekers, but they heard no evidence of screams and saw no fires burning freely. What did that mean for the relationship between the Peace Seekers and the Barrow Builders? Supposedly the former and been chased from their last home by the latter. Now they appeared to be welcomed in.

With all the uncertainty surrounding other tribes, there was one bright spot. A new tribe, and a friendly one at that, had come into contact with the People at the Fingers. Hailing from a place to the southeast they called Arrow Lake, the newcomers brought with them gifts and friendly smiles. Chief amongst these goods was a wonderous substance; it was blue and so bright that it looked like a piece of the summer sky had fallen to earth. Second among their treasures was a stone, incredibly soft and easily shaped compared to the native Specklestone that the People primarily dealt with. It wasn't nearly as interesting as their prized Skystone, but there were possible applications to be had in making cooking vessels.

In return, the Lakers expressed great interest in Blackstone, sugar, and the crystals of the People. Much was gained in trade. The southerners left a few days after having arrived, happily exchanging much of their treasure with the People. Relations there, at least, looked positive.

Regardless, the People had work to do.

[ ] [Ordeal] Reinforce Houses
[ ] [Ordeal] Improve Palisade
[ ] [Ordeal] The spirits will not test yet! (Improve Annual Festival)
[ ] [Ordeal] Who is it to know the spirits? (Undergo Ordeal)

Actions (Pick 2 3 due to Climate rolls!)

Spoiler: Actions

Annual Festival - The People deserve to party! Build morale by opening up the stockpiles and having a night of feasts, dancing, music and fun.
Build Shrine (Crystal Lake, Fingers) - A building created within a Holy Place, this shrine houses and supports a number of dedicated shaman who focus on and work tirelessly to please the spirits. Instead of the typical ad hoc treatment they used to receive from the People, the spirits have been found to work best with those who focus solely on them.
Expand Hunting (Dogs, Traps, Herd Animals, Prize Animals) - Improve upon the hunting techniques of the People. Work to increase the amount of meat that is available to consume and empower the People. A risky activity and one that requires a great investment of skill and energy, this provides the largest gains of food.
Expand Aquaculture (Water-Grass, Mussels, Fishing) - Most of the People live close to a river and are able to gather one of numerous sources of food. Often much easier to obtain than food from hunting and much less risky, these sources of food are much more vulnerable to shifts of the seasons and that of the weather.
Explore (Specify Direction) [Wonderful World] - There is much to be found in the world. Countless things, often placed by the hand of the spirits themselves. It is up to the People to find them.
Found Settlement (includes: Palisade, Holy Place, Sugar Shack) - While the People build homes where they will, often where food or resources can easily be found, these places are settled without organization or care. By founding a formal settlement, it becomes possible for central authority to exert itself before the People become too fracas. (Requires: 2 tiers of Econ and excess population. Available locations: North Bay, East Bay, River Fork, River Bend. 1 settlement possible to found.)
Manage Forests (Sugar, Timber, Evergreen, Berries, Nuts) - While the forests provide the least of the People's food, they have provided that which is most useful. Sugar is wonderous in taste and highly sought after as a trade goods. Evergreen tea soothes aching bodies and quiets headaches. There is much to be found in the unknown, perhaps rare, but of significant value.
Promote Folk Wrestling [Bellicose Bearing] - The People are fracas and have a tendency towards physical confrontations and violence. By carefully channeling this tendency, it's possible to develop further skill at war and turn hunters into skilled and deadly raiders.
Raid [Bellicose Bearing, Retributive Justice] (Peace Seekers, Hundred Bands) - The hunting of beasts turns now into the hunting of men. Strike down those who oppose the People so that we may be kept safe.
Study Travel [Wonderful Word] - Invest time in learning how most effectively to travel. The world is harsh and strange, learning how to traverse it will save the People much in effort and food.
Study Fire - The greatest and most capricious of spirits, fire is of immense use to the People. The recent discovery of lime and the founding of the Ember-Eyed has spurred substantial interest in developing understanding of this forceful spirit further.
Study Stone - A solid and stable spirit, the People have found numerous type of stone with different properties. How these properties can be best served to support the People is unknown. Learning to work the material will likely pay enormous dividends in the future.
Trade (Arrow Lake, Peace Seekers) - It is clear that the People do not hold all that is significant within the world. There are other tribes that hold interesting, useful or beautiful objects. By offering up some as gifts, things that the People do not have will be provided in return.
Undergo Ordeal [Ordeal] - The spirits test the People, always. By forcing extra pressure on themselves, the People grow in strength and often find new ways of doing things. A potentially damaging process, this forcing of hardship could be used well to spur directed change if properly channeled.

Megaprojects:

Trials of Adulthood [Bellicose Bearing, Ordeal] (4 actions) - The People have had trials for adulthood since time immemorial. Informal things, they often served as a way to demonstrated that a youth was fully grown and capable of adding their voice to the People's in debates and decision-making. By refining and making these trials more difficult, it is likely that the People would be able to spur the development of more effective leaders and workers.
Runner's Relay [Wonderful World] (5 actions) - The Great Trace between Crystal Lake and the Fingers ties the People together. A journey that once took nearly two moons now takes less than one. Still, there is further room for improvement. Communication between the Big Men of the two settlements is sporadic and often weeks out of date. By stationing numerous youth to serve as runners along the length of the Trace, it would be possible to cut down messaging times to a fraction of what it is currently.
The World in Miniature [Wonderful World] (7 actions) - The world is a grand place, seemingly endless in scope. The People's exploration and search for wonders has pushed them to find a way to more effectively communicate discoveries with each other. Trail markers are a start, but they are not easily portable. More can be done.

[ ] [Action] Annual Festival
[ ] [Action] Build Shrine: (Crystal Lake, Fingers)
[ ] [Action] Expand Hunting: (Dogs, Traps, Herd Animals, Prize Animals)
[ ] [Action] Expand Aquaculture: (Water-Grass, Mussels, Fishing)
[ ] [Action] Explore: (Specify Direction - more specific the better)
[ ] [Action] Found Settlement: (North Bay, East Bay, River Fork, River Bend)
[ ] [Action] Manage Forest (Sugar, Timber, Evergreen, Berries, Nuts)
[ ] [Action] Raid (Peace Seekers, Hundred Bands)
[ ] [Action] Study Travel
[ ] [Action] Study Fire
[ ] [Action] Study Stone
[ ] [Action] Trade: (Arrow Lake, Peace Seekers)
[ ] [Action] Undergo Ordeal

(For Hunting, Aquaculture and Forests, you don't need to specify which subtype you want to use. That just targets were you get any innovations and what trade goods develop. If it's not specified, it will be directed at all options generally.)

 

[Redium]

[X] [Ordeal] Reinforce Houses
[X] [Action] Runner's Relay [Wonderful World] (1/5 actions)
[X] [Action] Expand Hunting: (Dogs, Traps, Herd Animals, Prize Animals)
[X] [Action] Expand Aquaculture: Water-Grass

The climate had continued to be excellent and the People enjoyed gentle summers and easy winters. Work on improving their dwellings went generally well. Before the improvements, the People generally lived in longhouses formed from countless wooden stakes embedded into the earth. Strips of bark or thin branches were woven together between the posts for walls and the frame of a great arch was raised over it to form the roof.

The longhouses were large, often housing an extended group of kin. Everyone from doddering, old grandparents to the youngest infant could be found within. The dwelling was often warm enough, but it left something to be desired when the winter winds whipped through and the snows piled high. Rot set into the wooden longhouses unpredictably and when an enormous snowstorm occurred, many homes collapsed underneath the weight. The People were always diligent about replacing damaged sections, but telling when wood rot or termites set in was extremely difficult.

Not to mention the number of trees needed. A longhouse could use hundreds and hundreds of straight poles to form the frame and countless more to actually build the walls in full. Fire could be used by the People to straighten crooked wood, but the sheer number needed meant that saplings had to be cut from near and far. The People needed something that resisted wind and water, didn't rot, and was much more easily sourced.

They quickly found it.

Mud bricks had long been known to the People, but often saw little use. Water seeped into the cracks and crevices between them and when the seasons turned to winter, they tended to disintegrate as ice expanded from the cracks. Lime solved this problem by acting as a binder and a covering to ensure water couldn't seep through. Mud bricks were often dried under the sun, and tended to leave a soft, crumbly quality to them. By firing them within a kiln, they took on a consistency much closer to stone. If the kiln was build big enough, hundreds of bricks could be made in a single firing. The fact that all it took was simple clay meant that producing bricks was profoundly easy. Most of the earth along the Great river, as well as the land it bounded to the south was clay. As a building material, it was without end.

There was even a quality to them, one that the People couldn't really name, where they seemed to hold heat far better than wood. Even in blocks of the same size, fired bricks retained heat for much longer than wood. The only part the People did not like was that most bricks often had small grey stone beads extruding out of them that had to be brushed away. It was a little thing, but having to carefully brush down every brick before use did slow things down.

Within a few years, most of the homes within the Fingers and on Crystal Lake transitioned from old wooden longhouses to brick designs. There was still some debate among the People whether the use of thatch roofs or clay tiles should be used, but by the broad strokes, the lives of the People had changed and for the better.

That was until the Hundred Bands returned, hell bent on blood and fire.

It had been years since their last raid. The People had not expected them to come back at all. Their noses had been bloodied and their Big Man killed. Clearly, they had not understood the memo. Instead, they had returned in force, acting like they had never heard of the beating they received at the hands of the People.

The numbers that the Hundred Bands brought were enormous, far larger than they had brought in the past. Each of their warriors came dressed in drab leathers with grey pigments ground into their skin. They still bore the same great two-handed war clubs that had been so popular among the Hundred Bands, but they wielded them with far more comfort and skill.

When they arrived on the People's shores, it was in a completely different manner than previously. They arrived in the spring, precisely when the People were most vulnerable. Most of the People of the Fingers were dispersed into the wilds surrounding the settlement, collecting tree sap in order to boil it into sugar. It was a bold move, to attack with few supplies so soon after the end of winter, but it paid them immense dividends.

None of the People were certain how many were killed in the initial skirmishing and how many were forced to flee, either losing their way or starving in the wilds. What was certain was that the number was high. Days passed before the angry and pained howls of the People's died down to silence. Once the Hundred Bands had dispersed most of the People's hunters, woodsmen and young men outside the palisade, they settled in to attack it.

Again, the inability of the People to aim their fire against the attackers as they cut into it with axes proved to be their undoing. The large wicker shields wielded by the Hundred Bands provided too much protection for lucky arrows to really take their toll. Once the palisade fell, the situation descended into pure chaos. So many of the People's hunters and men were caught away from the Fingers that resistance was ineffective. Even the dogs and their snarling fangs failed to slow the enemy for long.

Only a young girl heroically cooking off all of the Ember-Eyes lime reserve seemed to even stall the Hundred Bands' orgy of bloodshed and violence. Many of the People managed to escape in the confusion, as fires burned through the settlement, but far more were captured by the raiders. Countless others died, either to the clubs of the enemy or the fires that slowly raged out of control.

The fires burned for the better part of two days after the Hundred Band raiders left. Most of the brick buildings of the settlement still stood, even if many were missing thatched roofs, or had walls that partially collapsed. Initial estimates suggested the settlement would be easily rebuilt considering how easy it was to restack bricks, but that thought seemed more a mockery than anything.

What they discovered on closer inspection horrified them. Elders too old to quickly move had been tied together and their skulls smashed systematically by the clubs of the enemy. Others had been forced into buildings while the roofs slowly burned and collapsed. All of the People's dogs, even the pups, were slain. The young and all of the women had been carried off.

As days passed, more of the People trickled back; survivors of the raids, or travelers coming down from Crystal Lake. Eventually, a young hunter returned, but with a prisoner of the Hundred Bands in tow. He had not be treated gently, and the People's treatment with fist and foot left him near insensate. Still, the prisoner lived long enough to speak about what had happened within the Hundred Bands.

Apparently, after the People slew their Big Man, the Northern Hundred Bands had collapsed into infighting. They had a number of individuals who could plausibly claim to be the new Big Man, but no one could really make it stick. It was the arrival of a delegation from one of the Southern Hundred Band's Big Men that ended the infighting. As the leader of a one of their 'great islands', he had enough men with him to quickly quell the disorder of the north and force them to pay homage to him.

This new Big Man was ambitious. With the north secured, he was well positioned to begin asserting his authority over the Big Men of the Hundred Band's other 'great islands'. He decided that striking against the People, succeeding in an attack that the last Big Man of the North had failed at, would truly cement his control and serve as a future springboard. If he could somehow figure out how to produce sugar like the People, it was quite plausible that he would convince enough of the Hundred Band to follow him that he could leverage that into being the undisputed Big Man.

After the prisoner expired and had his body dumped in the river, another armada of canoes was spotted on the horizon. Fear gripped the hearts of many. Fire flashed behind their eyes and some turned to flee. When it the sharpest eyed among them realized that they were looking at the People coming in force from Crystal Lake, it was like a massive weight had left their shoulders. The tension snapped like an old bowstring. They were safe.

From what the hunters of Crystal Lake said, the Fingers had a dog to thank for the rescue. One managed to escape after being wounded and managed to escape to one of the first way stations that had been established for runners. The knife wound in its flank showed clearly that there was violence brewing in the Fingers. Arguments from cautious elders convinced the Big Man of Crystal Lake to send down the hunters, just in case.

Any happiness their reinforcements might have had quickly gave way to grim-faced expressions upon hearing the situation. The Fingers were secure, for now, but the situation was desperate. The People needed to find some way to respond to the aggression of the rising Big Man of the Hundred Bands.

What was to be done?

[ ] [Action] Fight Back! (Raid: Hundred Band, at least +1 Stab)
[ ] [Action] Focus on the Defense! (Improve Palisade, +1 Stab)
[ ] [Action] Search for allies against the Hundred Band! (Trade: Arrow Lake + Peace Seekers)
[ ] [Action] Try to negotiate with the Hundred Band (Trade: Hundred Band, potential Stab changes depending on negotiation)
[ ] [Action] Abandon the Fingers
[ ] [Action] Do nothing

There was also a lesson for the People to learn in this failure. They had been tested by the spirits and found wanting. How were they deficient?

[ ] [Lesson] Allowing a Known Enemy to Recover! (+1 Stab)
[ ] [Lesson] Lack of Defense! (+1 Stab)
[ ] [Lesson] Not Taking Seriously the Spirits' Ordeals!
[ ] [Lesson] Not Enough Humility!
[ ] [Lesson] Their Justice was Wrong (-1 Stab)