We have fishing rods, yes? Set anyone not working to fishing duty, and sail to the right.
[3] You begin to fish and paddle to the right, since you have no sails, and neither brings you much luck - no land is visible within the next few hours, and you only obtain a few fish.
AFTER BEING POSSESED BY THE FORCE THAT HAD TAKEN THE TWO FISHER TRIBE BROTHERS AND MANY BEFORE THEM, SHE TRIES TO KILL ALL AROUND HERSELF IN REVENGE FOR THE FORCE'S FAILED PLOT TO BUILD UP A POWERFUL EMPIRE TO RULE THE WORLD
[6] You decide that the world of the living holds nothing of value to you, and wait until night, at which point you walk out of your home and begin killing people in their sleep, one by one, families included, killing your way through about a third of the scarcely guarded Gulls' encampment until a set of guards, attracted to the midnight activity, attempts to capture you.
[3] You cannot put up much of a resistance to people who can actually fight back, and are promptly disarmed and put in a cage as the Gulls wonder what sort of spirit may have possessed you. The shamans of the Three Tribes convene to interrogate you.
Elto catches Kutuk's favorite fish, to put on his funeral pyre.
[4] You believe Kutuk would have appreciated the gesture, were he still alive. May his favorite fish be with him in the spirit world.
Say that Kutuk in fact, was plotting against out tribe alongside the Painted Tribe remnants, to poison our water and food supplies. It was all done due to the direness of the situation and patriotism along desperation and lack of time.
[1] They laugh, and then ritually execute you in the manner previously described, making sure to keep you alive for as long as possible, which they succeed at for the first four pieces removed, shockingly enough, leaving you armless and legless in your cage, and the last two cuts involve separating your chest and your abdomen, then cutting off your head, which is mounted atop the chief's tent, a look of agony frozen on its face, attracting a massive amount of flies even before the day is done, which some take as a sign that they did good by executing you with haste. Your severed head shelters a whole three generations of hungry flies before decomposing to the point where only parts of the skull remain.
Take my Bronze Hoe, and start tilling the earth. As I do this, try to teach the tribesman some of our language by pointing at things, then saying what they are. "This.... this is a 'Hoe'. This.... this is 'DIRT'... this... these are 'STUPID EVIL TRIBESMEN THAT STEAL OUR SUPPLIES'."
[3] Till the earth you do indeed, but the work is difficult, since this is earth that has never been worked at all, and not particularly fertile in any way. There's actually a layer of infertile sand right below the layer of detritus in the area you have landed in, and to make things grow here will be difficult indeed.
[2] You don't, however, have any luck in teaching these people your language, chiefly because a man who communicates in dancing and drawings and in no other way seems to be in charge of communicating duties. Your comrades seem to enjoy spending time with him, though.
Returning from our honeymoon took a bit longer than expected... Mourn the passing of Kutuk with other tribesmen - while old healer wasn't the best person around, he really cared about a tribe as a whole entity... Also, inquire Arlia about rituals needed for pregnant Pallia.
[6] Arlia gladly obliges your request, and has Pallia withdraw from society for about a month or so while the two of them conduct mysterious rituals you are not allowed to know about so as to not diminish their effectiveness. After this month, you are allowed to see Pallia again, and she seems to have attained a very healthy glow of sorts, and also appears to have missed you badly during the time she was gone.
((I think our word for foreigners should sound like "Dinner".))
Play it off, something about the murder causing a disturbance, then make with the execution using my swords. Hope a strong wind comes to back me up.
[1] People don't really believe you, and you dull your swords quite a bit during the execution when you discover they're not so good at slicing through bone - the other tribesmen take over the process with their flint sawing tools and leather straps to prevent fatal bleeding. You also throw up the first time you try to drink the marinade. Today is clearly not a good day for you.
Oh well. Check on the plants.
[5] The berry bushes grow admirably, and have borne quite a lot of berries! The gatherer women are extremely excited by this development, considering that now there's a whole island full of nothing but berry bushes to supplement the things they find in the forests. The alcohol makers are especially thankful for providing such a handy source of supplies for them, and agree to help with similar attempts later on if the results are going to be so impressive.
Yun quietly steps forward in front of the tribe, and speaks.
"Kutuk would not want them to die for this. Kutuk was a forgiving man, and if he were here, he would let them live. The spirits will understand."
Yun then quietly talks to the Elders.
"I'm...not sure I can replace Kutuk."
You vouch for Kutuk's killer, but then she decides to slander the dead, at which point her execution is performed with extreme prejudice.
[2] The elders do agree that you seem a tad inexperienced to be a proper healer, but they also think there are no proper alternatives, either.
Create elaborate story of the creation of the world.
[6] "In the very beginning, there was only the far-up sky and no world, and it was dark as night, for there was nobody to drag the sun along the heavens. Over a time longer than one can imagine, the sky swirled and twisted, and from this interplay rose strife - the spirits of the sky were disunited, different, and so they clashed, and through clashing their differences grew - spirits divided into the types of wind, earth, fire, water and more, and named parts of the sky their own - through battle and disagreement, the world came to be, partitioned into the domains of the spirits that exist to this day. The strife animated all within this world, and from it rose the animals and plants of the world, brought into being as the power released from the clashes of spirits took physical shape - you can observe it to this day when mushrooms grow rapidly after the rain and animals form when lightning strikes the earth. And during one particular battle where all of the essential forces of the world met, the people of this land were created, people who are born of each other, procreating in perpetuity - these people are the First Tribe. This very tribe is that tribe - direct descendants of the first human beings, created in a titanic clash of all the forces combined. And the First Tribe did learn the secrets of ensuring their existence, even thriving from the scraps of the eternal war of the spirits, their dominion of the borders between realms undisputed by even the spirits themselves to such a degree that they only dared war where humans permit, or where they forgot to forbid in their ignorance, and this is how it is today."
"But this existence was not to last, as then came things from without, the din-nehru, the "soul-bereft" in the olden tongues, creatures from the darkness beyond the far-up sky, who sought to devour all that exists not because of hunger or need to exist, but out of simple pleasure and boredom. Their goal is to destroy all that the people need to survive, and to make the world like their place of origin, undoing the spirits, humans and everything inbetween. To do this, they take the shape of humans and adopt their ways, seeking to infiltrate and subvert where they cannot outright destroy. Though weak in mind and spirit, they were ultimately extremely numerous, and populated the world like the humans could not, pushing them far out of the heavenly lands they once inhabited, leading them here, where they must continually fight for survival and die pointless deaths where none are needed. And that brings us to this very day, when the First Tribe finds itself surrounded and sought out by din-nehru from all sides, all harboring nothing but evil intentions, even when it may seem otherwise. The First Tribe can have no lasting friendship with the din-nehru, for they have no capacity for good, as their souls are nonexistent, and can never become one with the spirits, for they have never lived in the first place. They must be enslaved, slain, ostracized even when allowed to live within the tribe, or otherwise put below the humans of the tribe, and never allowed to assume power, for they will lead the true people to their doom."
You believe that's a very fine creation story, and the tribesmen seem to feel the same way after you relate it to them. They find the information about the din-nehru especially enlightening.
Teach the old man my language and Alphabet!
[1] Your writing is actually logographic, and the man cannot make heads nor tails of it, seemingly pronouncing it to be witchery to himself, and this taints his perception of your language as well. Your family still like him a lot, however, possibly due to the fact that he doesn't speak their language rather than in spite of it.
Carry goat to the next oasis. We will find it, Lord willing!
[5] Through a combination of willpower and sheer miracles, you and Goat travel onward without pause throughout the entire next day, and when you are about to collapse, you realize you seem to be in your homeland at last - a city is visible on the horizon, and it proves not to be a mirage, either - you are received at the gate along with Goat, and are recognized as one of their own, and allowed rest and recuperation without need for compensation, as is customary when finding a traveler on the edge of death, especially in this part of the desert. The fact that this sacred duty has not been forgotten is all that saves you and Goat, and it takes you a week to become coherent again, at which point you realize that you seem to have reached your own home city somehow.
Call Heads to rest, they have done well, and have done their tribe good
[6] The Heads rest, though still the tribe numbers less than half of what it was a mere year ago, and that includes the women and children. To make matters more unfortunate, the Spears and Gulls do not return even after a month has passed, oddly enough. You would have thought they would not encounter any difficulty subjugating a tribe as tired and terrorized as the Fisher Tribe. And there is also talk of evil spirits possessing a girl from the Spear Tribe.
Ultimately, though the war party returns in full numbers, their faces brimming with cheer, followed by equally happy Fisher tribeswomen and children (and also two of the remaining men), all outfitted similarly to the Spears and the Gulls. They retire to their respective camps without calling any sort of tribe meeting, which distresses you.
Chantutututututu danced back to the foreigners and conveyed to them, using dance and drawings bilaterally as needed, that in exchange for directions to the source of these secret rocks, the foreigners would be made into honorary members of the tribe! Such a wonderful gift for them: this would grant them immunity to xenophobic stabbing and good seats to the shaman's stories!
[6] They fall for it without a second thought, or at least some of them do, and one of the din-nehru proceeds to teach you the basics of the art of prospecting they know over the coming month, with suggestions coming in from other members - you absorb much more information than any tribe idiot in history ever has before in such a short period of time, and their great enthusiasm in explaining the basics of looking for minerals effortlessly flows into detailed explanations of how farming works, at which point Lanku joins in with you, listening carefully and acting as a sort of second observer to compare notes with - together you form a sort of oral compendium of the mining, metallurgical and farming arts, Lanku specializing in the latter while you specialize in the former.
You wonder if now would be a good time to execute these silly creatures. After all, they have supplied much of what they seem to know, and even gotten into the subject of silly din-nehru law and other things you do not particularly care about, but listen to anyway with a smile.
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Topic: History: the Minimalist RTD (Read 125739 times)