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[Naturegirl1999]

Study the blue rocks

[mightymushroom]

I'm a little surprised some shamans are urging us to explore the blue rocks again so quickly. It's true that we pinned the blame on the evil not-a-shaman; but it's also true that these spirits can be extremely wrathful if provoked. Not like the slow-acting fruit spirits. Even for a brave man, an incident that shakes the ground and leaves nine of our best minds dead ought to inspire some prudence. We never got to investigate the specifics of what went wrong, so at this point we know our standard handling and distribution is safe but hardly any clue what isn't.

Let's try the experiment where we drop a fire stick fire sticks, plural is better, down the cavern hole again. Aim in a couple different directions, see if there is a pattern. We know that falling things sometimes miss their target, as seen when we tried to push the boulder onto a blue stone. Maybe we just didn't get the torch in the right spot last time. Maybe there is a cross wind.

[TankKit]

I'm a little surprised some shamans are urging us to explore the blue rocks again so quickly. It's true that we pinned the blame on the evil not-a-shaman; but it's also true that these spirits can be extremely wrathful if provoked. Not like the slow-acting fruit spirits. Even for a brave man, an incident that shakes the ground and leaves nine of our best minds dead ought to inspire some prudence. We never got to investigate the specifics of what went wrong, so at this point we know our standard handling and distribution is safe but hardly any clue what isn't.

A combination of reasons. Your tribe believes that the blue rocks now have the shamans residing within them, keeping the more wrathful spirits calmer than they otherwise would be, and it's also accepted that the reason for their wrath was an over abundance of pride flowing into them. That was solved by 'humbling' them, by which I mean literally just leaving them in a pile of other rocks in one spot while the shaman spirits calmed them down. It's also believed that the evil 'shaman' did something specific to finally trigger them and cause the death of those 9 shamans, though obviously no one knows what. Finally, the new shamans are relatively young since they were still technically in training, and they are eager to ensure no such incident happens again to prove themselves - though it is important to note that they will only study the rocks if YOU study it with them, as understanding their youthful imperfections was hammered into them as the first of their lessons on the path to becoming a shaman.

But yeah, they're still going to be very careful and on-edge when studying the rocks.

[Atomic Chicken]

A tribe without a shaman is cursed; this is known. Our shamans are young, and their students are but untrained cubs. With the shadow of the old shamans' destruction hanging over us, perhaps it would be wise to limit the number of shamans allowed to study the rocks at any one time, at least until the new generation has been fully educated in the ways of the spirits.

[Naturegirl1999]

Study the rocks with the shamans in training

[King Zultan]

A tribe without a shaman is cursed; this is known. Our shamans are young, and their students are but untrained cubs. With the shadow of the old shamans' destruction hanging over us, perhaps it would be wise to limit the number of shamans allowed to study the rocks at any one time, at least until the new generation has been fully educated in the ways of the spirits.

+1

[TankKit]

A tribe without a shaman is cursed; this is known. Our shamans are young, and their students are but untrained cubs. With the shadow of the old shamans' destruction hanging over us, perhaps it would be wise to limit the number of shamans allowed to study the rocks at any one time, at least until the new generation has been fully educated in the ways of the spirits.

Study the rocks with the shamans in training

Study the blue rocks

(5)Before you started experimenting with the blue rocks, which are becoming known as thunder-rocks due to the sound they make when activated, you set a couple of rules for experimentation. First, only 3 shamans can be close to the blue rocks at any one moment in time, to ensure the continuation of your tribe's knowledge. Second, you most be close by whenever such an experiment happens, so you know what happens. Third, all experiments must be approved by you and performed with the utmost care, to ensure an incident like the last one does not happen again. With those rules out of the way, you began experimenting.

The thunder-rocks are... interesting. From what you can gather, the spirits inside the rock are docile when left alone with poor memory, but easy to anger when anything disturbs them. Upon any rock hitting them with any amount of force, a small blue light will seem to enter the offending rock and explode outwards, shattering it from within. What's more interesting is what angers the spirits the most. The spirits don't particularly seem to care about the size of the attacker, possibly being unable to understand such a complicated thing, but rather seem to care about how hard it is hit by said object. For example, one of your first experiments was quite simple: You had two rocks, one large and one small, placed on either side of a thunder-rock. The large rock was slowly rolled, with some difficulty, to press against the thunder-rock, but only elicited a small reaction that cracked the side facing the thunder-rock. The small rock was, after a few tries, kicked into the thunder-rock from a distance, and exploded with such violence that the rock shards carved unnervingly deep gashes into the ground nearby. In all of these experiments, the thunder-rock remained completely unharmed.

Essentially, the spirits within the rock are angered by sudden, violent knocks on their home. Some of your shamans also reported a tingling sensation in their hand when they had gotten used to handling the rocks which seemed to affect them over time regardless of how careful they where. After this you performed a new experiment, where large rocks were rolled into the thunder-rock with considerable force until one of them cracked, but didn't shatter. That rock was then slowly rolled down a slight hill until it gently touched against the rock - at which point it violently exploded, shards of rock flying in all directions. This suggests the spirits also remember previous offenders and, should someone put down and pick them up too much, they will slowly begin taking damage to their hands whenever they grab the rock.

You wonder at the combat uses of this rock. With the new discovery of strange furred people in the forest, you could potentially kill and terrify them by throwing these rocks at them, should you find a way to ensure your own safety from such a use. Something to look into another time, perhaps?

Let's try the experiment where we drop fire sticks, plural is better, down the cavern hole again. Aim in a couple different directions, see if there is a pattern.

(2)After figuring out the rocks, you decide to go back to another thing you once failed at discovering the importance of - the hole leading downwards. With no other to direction explore the cave in sigh, you'll have to climb down the hole to discover what's at the bottom. Still, until the rope is finished, you'll just have to settle with throwing light-sticks down the hole. Hmm, maybe there should be a better name for this type of light, as it is different from sun light... eh, you'll think about this later. For now it's time to throw them down the hole!

You crouch at the edge of the hole, looking down into it for a few seconds before crossing your legs, grabbing your light-bringer and getting to work. Time seems to extend as you push the sticks against each other over and over, the fibre keeping your tools together seeming to wear down unnaturally fast as you do it, but eventually you are able to bring light to a light-stick in a previously prepared patch of ground with the plants removed. This time you are determined not to miss, as you see the perfect spot to throw the torch to keep it in place. You grab the light-stick by the dark end and, after carefully aiming it, let it drop and pull back you hand to avoid being over-lit. It misses your target and your curse as you watch the light disappear. You turn around to pick up another light-stick, but when you look back at the hole you can't seem to find the previous spot you saw, no matter how hard you look. You frown, and let the stick drop in a different good spot, only to watch as it once again misses the spot and disappears deep into the hole.

You begin simply chucking light-sticks down the hole to observe their fall, and you notice something rather curious after the third light-stick. For some reason, each one seems to disappear further up than the last, as if the shadows of the hole are thickening and rising to meet them. You turn around to grab another stick, but there are no more sticks. You could of sworn you brought more, but oh we-

(?VS?)You frown suddenly. You did bring more light-sticks with you... right? Eh, well, you're not perfect. You probably did just forget them.

You leave the hole and continue with your daily activities, soon forgetting the odd occurrences that took place that day.

(3)Meanwhile, progress on the ropes has recovered somewhat with your help. You were eventually able to create a new rope to base designs off, and you have more intelligent people working on it now. Among these people is the young boy who contributed a notable amount to the fibre storage - you have a feeling he'll help research go better from now on.

(5)As for fibre storage, you've figured out a few working designs. Essentially a long-square is created, with the sides left open. The longer sides have sticks attached to them by lots of smaller fibres intertwined with the overall design to help it stop from collapsing better. The short sides are made so that only the side fibres of the long sides have their ends sticking out. These are then tied to a stick placed over the centre of the main fibre square using more fibre. The result is a bag capable of holding multiple plant foods or rocks. A larger piece of fabric can be used similarly, but with a separate, longer stick for each end of the design to be tied to. This design can hold at least thrice as much as the smaller one, but require two people to hold and is more difficult to carry depending on what's in it. You definitely won't be able to easily carry rocks of any kind using these.

It has been 27ish moons since you first began experimenting with the thunder-rocks again, so What are you going to do? There are no issues of immediate importance, but some of your tribe's people want to be allowed to relax more.

[King Zultan]

It kind of sounds like there's poison gas angry spirits in the pit so we might not want to mess with it to much.

How about we throw one of the thunder-rocks at a tree and see what happens, this will also help figure out if we can use them in combat as thrown weapons.

[TankKit]

How about we throw one of the thunder-rocks at a tree and see what happens, this will also help figure out if we can use them in combat as thrown weapons.

You throw a rock at a tree. The bottom of the tree explodes into a splintered mess, leaving the rest to topple down. A predictable result.

You're pretty confident that this will explode anyone it's thrown at into many small pieces, like it has done with everything else.

[Atomic Chicken]

What if we throw a thunder-rock at another thunder-rock?

[King Zultan]

What if we throw a thunder-rock at another thunder-rock?

There's potential for this to go very poorly, lets do it.

[TankKit]

What if we throw a thunder-rock at another thunder-rock?

oh no

[mightymushroom]

You wonder at the combat uses of this rock. With the new discovery of strange furred people in the forest, you could potentially kill and terrify them by throwing these rocks at them, should you find a way to ensure your own safety from such a use. Something to look into another time, perhaps?

Exactly the thought I had when the first showed up, that these stones would make simple slings the equivalent of gunpowder weapons. Not today, though. The tribe must learn if and how we may keep the spirits friendly toward ourselves despite flinging them around.

How about testing how strong the reaction is over time: use the same one thunder rock over and over to see if the spirit inside retains its strength, lashes out ever more violently, or if it weakens. If it weakens, the next investigation is to give it a break to see whether it recovers. If more violently, let it rest to learn at what speed its anger subsides. We know that the thunder rocks had a rest after the death of the old shamans, so resting them should be effective. This might be what the previous shamans were working on, be extra careful.

We should also investigate the effects on 'victims' over longer intervals of time. Perform the 'remembering the previous boulder' experiment with a long wait between the two interactions – say, a half or even full turn of the moon – to test the duration of the spirits' wrath. Also insist that the apprentices who have the strongest symptoms in their hands take a break; humans and boulders have a different nature and perhaps the spirits are more forgiving of flesh than mineral.

[helmacon]

The rising darkness of the pit is extant concerning to me.

Still though, we have an easy means to fell trees with the blue rocks, meaning a project like our fathers wall would be considerably easier.

As for handling the blue rocks, let's have people wrap their hands in animal skins or woven fibers when handling the rocks, so that they are not touching them directly.

[1freeman]

We have seen the deadliness of bows and arrows first hand, we should try to craft some of our own, maybe using blue rock tips for some of them. More accurate and longer ranged than most slings with less training required to become competent. Start with non blue rock tipped ones first.

Also, let the people have the rest they desire.