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.