This biome is dotted with tea trees. Bim learns a little about tea processing. The simplest process is for white tea, which he makes to drink at Desertbolts' library. The others (green, black, fermented) he compresses into brick form.
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He'll break one of the bricks down into a pile of loose tea leaves (glob, uses 50), and brew 3 units for the mountain climb.
Desertbolts' library is the redundantly named Palace of Strategy. There Bim improves his student skill to adequate and shrinks his traveling book collection from 6 down to 4 (animal foraging, wind, stars, rainfall). They're all copies which is a good deal better than carrying originals, as loss doesn't mean a piece of the world has gone missing.
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Each book weighs 2r. That's a good drop in weight, as 4r is 2 units of raw meat, or 4 units of raw offal.
The news of the area has an ettin, a cyclops, and 3 giants rampaging about. Bim left the semimegas alone in the Kingdom of Day as the citizenry were free to take flight if they chose and there were plenty of random melee units to offer defense. This grouping occurs in an area enclosed by mountains, with only the guards from the one fort. Bim adds 4 of the 5 to his new masterwork lychee wood bow, but 3 of the 4 are pure artifice as Bim uses a knife to slash their throats before tagging them with final arrows. Eh.
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On the other side of the mountain chain, beyond the cradled valley, is a sequence of dwarven settlements. At hillock Stancedike, Bim learns that the purple monster Os Hexlies the Plague of Thieves created the vault Bladeblockade, 6 quest map tiles north, 1 west.
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He's not quite interested in clearing it, as it's not a shoot-friendly environment due to respawns/body material. Also do rangers clear vaults?
A look at world_sites_and_pops.txt shows something of interest:
1315: Äïmeiyathi, "Cherishbasins", forest retreat
Owner: The Seducer of Glumness, goblins
Parent Civ: The Musty Dread, goblins
1 dwarf
1 human
1 elf
1 purple monster
Possibly, instead of the likely melee nature of a dark fortress, Bim can run an archer-ranger's game against purple monster Os Hexlies the Plague of Thieves. If he can secure 21-25 distance, then it's a run of the mill pincushioning just like one would a web titan. Could be a fun novelty kill, but will have to think about it. Could also be the sort of thing that is so narratively unsound, it unmoors the whole run.