Prepare for a last raid on the invading war party if they do not retreat
[1] You are about to prepare for a raid, but the invaders strike before you are ready, apparently not taking the insult of your night raid well.
[1] You are the first victim of their assault, getting beaten to death by the barehanded war party before they move on to take your weapons.
Go off and test my old theories of trapping animals with kindness.
[5] Over the next few weeks, you set up bait without traps in specifically-prepared spots in the woods, and explain the idea behind it to Lanku, who agrees that the concept seems to be sound - after all, it works on people, as she can personally attest. And it does seem to begin to work - with your bait, you seem to be able to get animals to come closer to the camp - not too close, but fairly close, so close that you can begin to observe them in greater detail - wolves and wild boars seem most responsive to the bait, it should be noted. Grazers do not seem to particularly respond to it, but then again, they literally live in a veritable sea of food all day.
"HE'S LEADING ME BACK HOME!! I CAN'T COME BACK WITHOUT-
Wait... This man may be ill, he needs medical attention!! I guess it's time to help someone out for once."
We continue to my homeland.
[5] You continue onward through the desert, helping the old man find the oases on the way, and within months reach your home city, basking in the splendor of the rising sun after a long time spent walking. As you enter, you feel quite at home, and the old man looks filled with wonder at the sight of the adobe buildings, the busy streets and the general activities of the civilized people going about their business. You are fairly certain that this must be like some sort of divine world to him - he has definitely not seen its like before. You thought he was wowed by the desert, but this is something else entirely.
Since they are unsettled by me personally, leave negotiations to Tuktu. Make sure I, or at least someone, learns their language.
[3] Your recommendations are largely ignored, though the tribe does insist they're trying to learn the language to the best of their ability.
Send one tribesmen to the foreigners to stay with them and learn their language and any other secrets they might have. Have some tents made for the foreigners while we check out the supplies in the ship.
[1] You send one of the hunters to look out for the foreigners, and then check out the ship, only to discover that somebody already seems to have stolen its contents somehow while you weren't looking. All of them, in fact. How this has happened, you have no idea - somebody around here was probably responsible, but it seems like nobody knows anything as usual.
We will not allow this to stand, Slaughter them
[4] Despite not having weapons and being severely outnumbered, you are not immediately killed as you converge on the Fisher Tribe!
[4] Indeed, you feel the battle begin to turn a bit in your favor as you reclaim some weapons and take the fight to the enemy, killing several of their women and their chief!
[1] However, at this point the tribe mobilizes, and over half of your remaining tribesmen are killed as the fighting force, composed primarily of women and elder children, attack from several sides, seemingly quite enraged by the death of the chief rather than demoralized by it.
[6] At this point, the rest of you cut your losses and retreat as far as possible, which is quite far indeed - you yourself stay behind to repel the pursuers, killing two, but getting quite wounded in the process, only barely escaping with your life.
[4] However, you do know how to heal wounds adequately - all Heads do, of course. And so you and your ragtag war party have retreated, the assault not having gone particularly in your favor, though you have slain their chief - this you are sure of.
(Many rolls required because of fighting at a very significant disadvantage)
Run to the shore. Tell the two others not to leave yet. Climb a small tree or a rock to get a view of what is happening.
[4] You run off the top of the mountain much faster than is technically safe along with your comrades, the ground quaking periodically, the smoke from the liquid fire intensifying, and as you make it to the foot of the mountain, the entire top suddenly explodes, a massive plume of ash shooting up into the sky, spreading outward - the ash, flying outward, begins to rain from the sky as you run, a massive pyroclastic flow beginning to follow you downward from the top of the mountain. Perhaps vainly, you continue trying to escape - the shore is not far, this much you know.
[4] Fortunately, the flow is successfully blocked by an obstacle, a lucky peculiarity of the mountain's shape that diverts it along a slightly different path - now you only need to contend with the fact that it suddenly seems to be very dark, and also rather difficult to breathe. Eventually you make it to the shore.
[6] Your two fellows, despite you having been away for several hours, still have not made significant progress - you have never been gladder, you must say - in the deep midnight surrounding the island, friends are something you dearly need - with their aid, you believe you may be able to make your way out of the area - there is nothing to see here, only blackness and ash.
Try holding storytelling sessions again, now that I am more respected. Encourage caution in youth.
[3] They do listen, but they have definitely heard cautionary tales before in great quantities from their parents, and your tales are simply slightly more fanciful retellings of what they have already heard.
Trek forward, shuffling or crawling if I must. Pray for a miracle.
"If nothing else, Goat must make it! She is the true hero, the champion of us all!"
[2] You move on through the desert with Goat, shuffling forward largely through willpower rather than physical strength, until you eventually reach an uninhabited oasis, at which point you and she require two solid weeks of recuperation to be able to travel again.
Chantututututu goes over to the foreigners and begins to dance the dance of temporary non-aggression to put them at ease. He then shows them how to communicate solely through dance and asks them to divulge their secrets.
[4] Through the medium of dance, you establish a channel of communication few others have even tried to harness, and your dancing does seem to put them at ease, much to the surprise of your fellow tribesmen. They seem fairly skilled at methods of nonverbal communication, you discover after a period of trying various dances, and it appears they are very much open to the prospect of further communication of this sort. They do not quite trust you enough to divulge their secrets (and you are not sure they can simply through dance, since that is more suited for simple ideas), but you do believe that you are now the official intermediate between your tribe and the foreigners.
Experiment on poison! Try to use alcohol!
[5] You find that nobody really gets sick from drinking strongly fermented juice, not in the sustained vomiting and stomachache sort of way indicative of regular water poisoning, which is not really the case with the river's water - clearly, there is something about alcohol that repels disease. The alcohol itself is not particularly poisonous, you find, and it would take quite a lot of it all at once or smaller amounts over a longer period of time to particularly harm a person. On the other hand, datura, which grows in certain places among the woods, is a far better tool for poisoning, since it is indeed very toxic. Not incredibly good, of course, but you have heard tales of one of the shaman's daughters requiring the utmost skill on Kutuk's part to avoid death after she thoughtlessly ate too much of it to achieve its peculiar effects.
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Topic: History: the Minimalist RTD (Read 125740 times)