assure Apollo that i do not love him for his wealth if that fails find another potential mate
[4] Apollo, though hardly warm toward you, does not seem to mind your presence all that much, which you suppose is good enough for now. You manage to have a few nice conversations with him, at least, and help him out with his work occasionally, seemingly aiding him in a certain breakthrough.
Help the injured men recover.
[1] Unfortunately, the abuse they have sustained is quite extensive, and they refuse treatment on purpose, preferring death to living like this, it seems. You feel intense regret for having ever led your family and closest compatriots to this hellish place.
Whistle for a horse! IT shall be my trusty steed, and it shall be known as Policzytańczykówianeczka! And then kill a boar and make a hat out of it!
[2] No horses arrive to become your steed, for that is not at all how animal taming works. But nothing worse arrives, either, so you have lost nothing as well.
[4] You do manage to hunt down a boar, however.
[5] And the hat you make of its head is quite exquisite in quality, and protective at that.
In my travels, I have learnt bits from many languages, but, most importantly, a sign one. Strike up a somewhat friendly conversation with female din-neru.
[3] She is unimpressed, and prepares to skewer you through the head if you do not surrender fully and without further foolishness.
Design a complicated system using rope and notched wheels attached to trees so that you have to pull three arbitrary units of rope to lift the thing tied to the end one arbitrary unit. This makes sense for reasons.
[2] You have no idea how a thing like this would work, and even if you designed it, nobody still allows you access to sharp objects, and you're not sure even Lanku would go for building such a thing.
Go find and tame a wild animal, preferably one big enough to ride. Maybe then I will be back to my old self. If that fails, I could just slaughter the foreigners until I feel better.
[5] You head out into the plains, searching for animals to tame, and finally your search brings fruit! You have located a donkey, which you manage to successfully ambush and overpower, and force to submit to you through your sheer stubborn nature, in an effort that takes a full day and much physical exertion. Victorious, you ride the donkey, who grudgingly accepts you as your master, back to the tribe, who receive you with great amazement at this act, as you are the first to properly tame a spirit of the wild among your own tribe. Amitola Yurok has told of din-nehru in the north who have done the same, and with your efforts you have proven that it is not just a form of foul sorcery.
Offer spiritual justification for enslaving the din-nehru.
[2] You can't really come up with any good ones, and suppose the practical consideration of them being people with no inherent right to independent life or enjoyment of their existence, as well as being a marvelous source of cheap, freely abused labor, will have to do.
Move to a better place.
[4] You find a less awful place to make camp deeper in the woods. It's not the most discreet of locations, but you suppose it will have to do.
Search around for a more legitimate and experienced trainer.
[2] Training is not someone can get privately in this day and age - after all, you are not a noble, and you are also not a soldier. You are simply a wandering layabout nobody particularly wants to deal with.
[6] In addition, you hear that the old man and your sister seem to have disappeared into the night together, leaving your brother-in-law to take care of all five of her children on his own. This makes you slightly reevaluate the very wonderful rapport he had been building up with her during his stay with your family.
There was a time when Arlia voiced some regret over a "din-nehru," as they now called them. And that one had been a threat, who's death was justifiable. Kutuk would have objected to the treatment of these new strangers who were now captive. Elto sighed. What was the tribe coming to...
Needing some time away from the tribe to think, Elto organizes a small group for a whale hunt.
[5] You quickly assemble a rather sizable group of people to hunt for whales, including Yun and about half of the hunters, and take the boat of the foreigners out into sea, the equipment on board either intuitive and suitable for the use of the tribesmen or repurposed for hunting huge beasts of the sea. This may be a legendary moment of sorts in the tribe's recent history, you realize.
[1] And you do certainly find a whale in the sea. A very ornery, territorial whale, dark gray and seemingly very much intent on feasting on human flesh, or perhaps simply confused at the sight of a boat and reacting with the characteristic aggression of a hunter of the seas. It rams the boat, then withdraws, sending your hunters scrambling to the smaller boats you packed along the way and getting their harpoons.
[2] They move into the water, but seem to find no sign of the whale.
Set out more traps throughout the forest and continue training the rabbits that remain.
[1] It seems that the traps you set out caught only the very dumbest of the animals, for now they seem to catch nothing at all in the following weeks. Perhaps the traps need to be redesigned.
[5] You do, however, find great success in training the rest of the rabbits in looking for valuables and keeping out intruders with screeching and biting. Akkata seems to help a bit in this, having a certain flair for handling dirty animals, no doubt from her experience with children. You even notice that the rabbits seem to breed similarly to human beings, soundly disproving the idea that they're born of lightning in the process. It is quite fascinating to watch the process of animals experiencing birth just as people do, you find.
Try figuring out how agriculture works
[5] You actually do know how agriculture works - get a plant, obtain seeds, plant them (or parts of the plant) in the ground, fertilize with fish entrails, add water, and voila, agriculture. You used to be a shaman's apprentice before the shaman died, and he seemed to know this particular secret from a scout's reports of fantastic lands to the far northwest - he revealed quite a bit in his delirium before he passed away. And the shaman, before he was killed in the invasion of the Heads, passed on the secrets of his own experimentation with these ideas to you. So you are somewhat educated on the primitive aspects of it, though you do not have any practical knowledge to speak of on this matter. You suppose someone among the Spears, the other tribe, might find this information intriguing.
Commit self to Tea House, drink endless amounts of tea and gamble with the little I have left.
Tea House: Very popular areas of both recreation and socilization, with alcohol being illegal.
[4] They let you in the tea house after forcing you to bathe in the nearby river, and then you start drinking and gambling away things that you have, and quite successfully at that. You do not lose much before you pass out from exhaustion and disappointment and they usher you out into the street.
Begin rebuilding the tribe. Make a shrine in honor of the Heads that have fallen
[6] You dedicate the tribe to building a massive shrine in memory of the many Heads that have rolled up to this point, and though you are sure the massive stones you have envisioned will not be moved into place within your lifetime, or even that of the next generation, you hope for the best.
[2] In addition, rebuilding the tribe is not something you can really do, more a thing that happens on its own over time. You are certain the work on the shrine will aid in the sense of community, as it is a thing that will unite the Heads throughout the ages.
WHAT HAS TRANSPIRED RECENTLY? WHAT ACTIVITY HAVE I OBSERVED?
HOW ARE MY FOOD STOCKS?
[1] Well, the thing is, you have observed little, mostly because a hunter discovered you somewhere early along the way.
[2] You, surprised by the hunter, found yourself to be easy prey, and were captured and put among the awful, submissive foreigners and put to work tilling fields and doing other things after they took your weapons away.
[1] You have not learned either the language of the peaceful foreigners or the now rather nasty tribe, since neither have elected to speak to you much, and the work you have to do in combination with the poor diet has taken away much of your strength, unfortunately.
[6] You do manage to dance rather well at the behest of the fool overseer, and do not get tormented at all by the painted overseers in the process (even managing to nab a smaller bronze blade from one of them during one dance in particular, something you are sure he did not notice), though the experience is nonetheless humiliating and exhausting for both you and the other foreigners.
Chantu challenges the holy warriors to re-steal the plows and show those incompetent din-nehru how real humans do it! With the holy warriors hopefully overcome by horrible xenophobic oneupmanship, Master of Dance Chantu invites the uninjured din-nehru to attend a mandatory dance party. Being a slave of the First Tribe is fun!
Tribal members are invited too (though for them it is optional, of course)! In fact, a big invitation goes to the chief to help him recover his mojo! This will hopefully lower tensions between the tribe and the din-nehru.
[2] The holy warriors laugh, saying that their job is to torment the din-nehru ceaselessly to punish them for their otherness, not to actually do any work themselves. That's kind of why they became holy warriors at the behest of the shaman, don't you know. Doing actual work would diminish their holiness as destroyers of din-nehru, after all.
[1] The dance party similarly winds up a rather grim affair, the holy warriors joining in and tormenting the din-nehru with their sharp blades until a few more die of exhaustion. And the chief doesn't even show up, being too busy taming donkeys.
Yun goes with Elto on the trip, and pulls him aside at one point to talk.
"Elto, this is horrifying. We can not let this continue!"
The horrors of the tribe are soon replaced by a single horror of the sea, a whale, to be specific. You begin to wonder if you might not die here. Perhaps whispering to Elto privately at some point might have been a wiser idea.
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Topic: History: the Minimalist RTD (Read 124874 times)