1-4: The Scrounger's Life

Jam's holding on to enough foul raw meat that they really wouldn't be able to carry anything more, and that's going to get in the way of them picking up stuff to use or sell. A backpack is necessary. There's a bunch of options for backpacks—many sold here at this travel shop, some not—that vary in price, in how much they can hold, and in how much they get in the way of fighting and stealth while you're wearing them. Jam decides to buy a wooden backpack, which is pretty much the worst for how much it hampers combat. It gives a -5 penalty to all combat skills while worn, slightly nerfs combat speed, and cuts stealth and dodging skills in half. It's pretty harsh! But it's cheap and it can carry a whole lot.

As they're laid out in Jam's inventory right now, these hunks of foul raw meat take up pretty much the whole thing. In a wooden backpack, though, they can stack up to 9 in a single 2 by 2 square. This is gonna give the gang tons more space to carry all sorts of goods. Armour and weapons don't stack but most other things do. The penalty's a pain but you can always just drop your backpack when you get in a fight. You will have to keep an eye on it, though. NPCs can't pick items up off the ground, but the real danger is that if you drop it and have everyone run away, it'll probably despawn. The wooden backpack isn't without its drawbacks, but with only two people right now it'll be easy enough to manage dropping and picking back up as needed, and hopefully I won't forget about it and lose all the gang's, er... succulent and delicious meat. Maybe if Jam tells themself that enough, it'll go down easier.

Now with actual room to carry stuff, Jam and Riddly head outside the gates to do some scavenging. Remember those rebel farmers that attacked Jam on their way in to Sho-Battai and decided to pick a fight with a herd of garru? I mentioned they were going to lose that fight badly. Well, they did. They're all scattered across the sands around their camp in pools of their own blood, most unconscious, a few dead. That means Jam and Riddly can take their stuff.

A lucky find! Riddly finds a High-quality junkbow on one of the farmers. Neither Jam nor Riddly really want to use crossbows (not that Jam even can right now, only having one arm), but when the gang recruits more members, it'll be nice to have a crossbow user. Junkbows... aren't very good, as the name implies, but a High-quality one would still be worth using and would provide some decent training to whoever was wielding it.

In contrast, the rest of the farmers' equipment is of utterly terrible quality. This sabre is more rust than steel, an absolutely horrendous thing. Jam takes it and equips it anyway because it's better than having no weapon.

This does, at least, give me an opportunity to show off Riddly's sword and how good it is compared to the stuff the duo is scrounging right now.

Riddly starts with a sword of actually ok quality. It's only a little bit rusty! Of the 15 weapon grades, hers is Refitted Blade-grade, which is only the 5^th worst. Jam's Rusting Blade-grade Horse Chopper is the 2^nd worst. Riddly similarly starts with Standard-grade clothing, the 3^rd worst out of a total of 6 grades.

How good an NPC's gear is comes down to their faction, their rank within that faction, and a little bit of chance. Each will have hard limits on how good their gear can be, too—while we found a High-quality junkbow on one of the farmers, I don't believe it's possible for them to have High-quality armour of any kind. It is possible for them to have weapons that aren't complete rusted garbage but we did not get lucky on that front this time.

While looting, Jam and Riddly notice that one of the rebel farmers has a bounty on their head. In bars you'll find posted bounties for a selection of unique characters, but generic characters can have bounties too! Much smaller ones, granted, but they're here and there if you keep an eye out.

I mentioned earlier that the bounty items you can read at the bar aren't the only way of telling if someone has a bounty. Well, the other way is that if someone has one, it'll tell you so right above their nameplate! Very convenient. It tells us that this outlaw swordsman has a bounty of c.952 and is wanted by the United Cities. It also says “This character is not wanted by the local faction” which seems weird since we're right outside Sho-Battai, but factions only own settlements—not regions—and the area they're considered to own only extends a little ways past that settlement's structures.

This bounty will give the gang a few extra Cats in their pockets for basically nothing. It's another nice find. Jam can't carry anyone with only one arm—yet another reason it's so nice to have a friend—so Riddly picks him up and the two head back to town.

Unfortunately, on the way back, they get accosted by some dickheads.

These losers call themselves the “United Heroes League”. They walk around with stupid looking helmets and shout racial epithets at nonhumans.

Jam stops and stares them down, seeing if they'll do anything.

They don't. They just keep beaking off.

And so on and so forth. Jam turns and heads into town with Riddly, thoroughly annoyed but still not able to take on 8 dudes.

To turn in the bounty, the gang rocks up to the cop shop.

While Jam and Riddly get around about a cool thousand Cats richer, the United Heroes are still prattling away in the distance, just outside the city gates. Jam and Riddly ignore them, sell the stuff they scavenged, and head out to scavenge more.

The Heroes follow them as they go, still jeering, but they don't seem like they're going to attack. At first, that is. The second they think the samurai guards can't see them, they flip the switch from racial slurs to racial violence. They set upon Jam and Riddly and it's... definitely more than the duo can handle right now.

Jam and Riddly decide to fight. They're outnumbered and outmatched but Jam has drawn their line in the sand. They are not giving these assholes the satisfaction of running away. Besides, they'd have to drop the wooden backpack in order to run fast enough. It could despawn and the gang is not losing all their juicy skimmer meat to the United Heroes of all people.

Unfortunately, Jam is weak enough that they get knocked out pretty quick. Fortunately, the scuffle isn't quite as out of sight as the Heroes thought. One of Sho-Battai's samurai guards notices and comes racing over. The United Cities' guards are not on our side per se, but there's various factions they'll attack if they see those factions attacking player characters. The United Heroes League is one of those factions, which bolsters the gang's opinion of the United Cities very marginally. They had assumed the Heroes were more or less unofficially sanctioned, but nope! The United Cities aren't racist. Just horrible in a lot (a lot) of other ways.

It's a bit hard to see in the screenshot since it's nighttime and in a sandstorm, but the samurai is there—their antlered helmet is visible in the background in the lower left, behind the Hero running away from the camera to engage.

The samurai cuts through the Heroes pretty effortlessly, then grabs one and runs back into town. That takes care of the Hero problem. The gang has another problem, though. Jam's been knocked out and they're hurt badly enough that it's going to be a while before they regain consciousness. At the same time, Riddly's arm took a beating fighting the Heroes. It's in bad enough condition that she can't carry anyone. But she can't just leave Jam out there in the sands. Jam isn't in danger of bleeding out—Riddly's messed up arm doesn't keep her from administering first aid—but this isn't a safe place to lie unconscious on the ground. Jam could get picked up by passing slavers. Riddly is gonna have to get some help ASAP.