1-7: It Sucks to Be in the UC

The whole time Ells has been working on escaping slavery, Jam and Riddly have been mining iron outside of town and making a decent amount of money. Seeing the Shinobi Thieves so graciously provide their friend safe haven, they mosey on over after selling their latest haul and strike up a conversation.

There are a number of factions you can ally yourself with in Kenshi, each with various requirements and offering various benefits. The most basic benefit to allying with any faction is that they'll help you out in combat if they're nearby, though this can actually be kind of a drawback with the Thieves since if you piss off the guards of a town they're in, the Thieves have a tendency to all get themselves arrested or killed. They're not very strong.

The other benefits the Thief Boss mentioned are the real reasons to ally with them. The training equipment is quite nice to use in the early game—you can train up your combat skill by a little bit and your lockpicking and assassination skills a decent amount. The shop, though, is the real reason that entry fee will basically always pay for itself. They sell a bunch of thief-themed gear, including blueprints if you're lucky, and it's all half off. Don't sell to them, though—they also buy your stuff half off. Theoretically, they'll buy stolen goods, which you otherwise might not be able to sell without getting into trouble with the law... but if you steal stuff from one faction, you can always sell it to a different faction with no problem. You always sell stolen goods at half the usual sell value anyway, so halving it twice leaves you with very little to show for your efforts.

Riddly buys a High-grade fog mask—one of my favourite headgears, it has pretty good damage resistance numbers, gives no penalties, and gives 100% resistance to dust storms and gas. Gas is a very rare environmental hazard but a deadly one, so while that's not the main reason Riddly is buying this, she'll be glad to have it when it comes up. She also buys a small thieves' backpack, which is the only backpack that does not impart any penalties whatsoever for wearing it. A good buy, especially when it's a mere 1,500 Cats from the Shinobi Thieves.

Unsure of their next move, the gang decides to take advantage of the Thieves' training facilities for a while. Riddly and Jam start training their lockpicking skills while Ells works on his combat form. Ells may have thrown off his shackles, but the guards are going to be looking for an escaped slave for a while.

As Ells just escaped slavery, he's stuck with the Escaped Slave status for a day. It means that members of slaving factions (like the UC) will attack and try to recapture him if they notice he's an escaped slave. The likelihood of this happening depends on the “Looks like slave” stat, which is only at 10% for Ells right now because he's wearing clothes and he's not wearing shackles. In fact, it shouldn't even be 10% - there isn't anything he could do to look less like a slave—but the Escaped Slave status sets that stat's minimum to 10%. The reasoning is that since he just escaped, people will be looking for him, so there'll always be a chance they could catch him no matter what he's wearing.

10% doesn't sound like a lot, but samurai are pretty eager to spot slaves, and after his recent experiences Ells isn't so eager to take his chances with them. He decides to wait for the heat on him to die down a bit before taking any more risks. In the meantime, Jam and Riddly train, mine, and cook some skimmer meat.

This whole time, Jam has been carrying around stacks of raw meat (and raw foul meat) as the gang's only food. That's all well and good for them, but Riddly and Ells can't eat raw meat and they're starting to get hungry. Jam and Riddly would like to just build a campfire next to the iron node, but the gang isn't allowed to build things in other factions' territory, and that includes campfires. No big deal. They creep down a nearby sand dune and get that meat a-roastin'. Now the whole crew can eat it.

While they're out, they notice an unconscious samurai scout and steal his naginata. Ells doesn't have a weapon since that god damn cop nicked his crossbow, so he'll appreciate the gift when they get back. They're not really sure what could have knocked out a samurai around here—must have been a skimmer? Samurai scouts are much weaker than the samurai in the cities, so maybe a skimmer could actually be strong enough.

Night falls before Jam and Riddly return to Sho-Battai. Pockets full of iron and a stolen naginata on Riddly's back, they rock up to the gate and are greeted with a very unexpected sight.

This place has been lousy with Manhunters the last couple days and they've been bringing all sorts of people in as slaves, but to see a samurai enslaved is a shock to say the least. Jam and Riddly were already a little surprised to see a samurai scout unconscious in the desert, but a samurai gate guard is in a whole different class. Those guys are super tough and wear really heavy armour. The only thing they can think of that could have knocked this guy out long enough for manhunters to enslave him is if he went out and fought a group of skimmers alone? Or perhaps if he got hit by some extremely unlucky friendly fire from one of the town's turrets.

The “how” aside, it's obviously incredibly weird to see this guy standing at his post as if nothing's wrong, still wearing shackles and rags. It's also surprising that Manhunters were able to sell a UC samurai as a slave to the UC and didn't immediately get their insides splattered all over the slave shop walls. They must not have recognized him until later. That's the only way it could have gone down.

In terms of game mechanics, slaving factions will enslave literally anyone who is not in their own faction, even members of an allied faction. I'd never really had to consider before what happens if someone gets thrown in a cage owned by their own faction, but based on this I suppose they must be able to just walk out. No one has helped this guy get his shackles off, though, and the gang doesn't dare. I made a save and tried it just to see what would happen, expecting I'd probably get done for terrorism. The guy himself said “Thank you” and the other gate guards left me alone, but a bunch of samurai police sprinted out from wherever they were watching and did in fact arrest Jam for terrorism. I reloaded.

Jam and Riddly walk past the shackle-wearing guard back into Sho-Battai, offering nothing more than a sympathetic look. As they sidle up to the bar, the bar gossips are chatting again.

Jam reminds themself they were lucky not to get arrested for poverty when they first showed up in Sho-Battai and starts idly wondering if there's anywhere better to be around this desert. The only other cities they know about are also United Cities and probably no better, but perhaps there are other places to find. That might be wise to look into.

Meanwhile, looking out from the Thieves' tower after passing Ells his new naginata, Riddly notices something unexpected on the roof of one of the slave shops: A set of Specialist-grade samurai legplates! Just sitting out there. Ripe for the stealing. They probably belonged to that gate guard. She waves Jam up to the window and the two watch for a few minutes, seeing if anyone is going to pick them up. No one does, so... if they're just going to sit there, why shouldn't Jam help themself?

These things are crazy good protection. They're also heavy as hell (12 kg!) and nerf a few skills into the dirt, namely Stealth, Dodge and Martial Arts. One of the gang will probably equip them soon, but for now, they go in Riddly's backpack until someone's strong enough to wear them comfortably.

Ells' status has since changed from Escaped Slave to Ex-Slave. It drops his minimum “Looks like slave” stat down from 10% to 1% but lasts a lot longer. He had been thinking of trying to sneak out of town tonight, but he was getting really hungry while Jam and Riddly were taking their sweet ass time getting back to town, and it's hard to sneak properly when your stomach's rumbling so loudly. Jam's given him a whole bunch of dried meat since, but the sun's come up by now and it wouldn't be smart to try that in the bright light of day. As such, Jam and Riddly head out once more, expecting to spend another day mining while hoping there'll be something interesting to scavenge instead.

They don't get too far before they see another unconscious slave face down in the sand. Like last time, Jam crouches down to unlock their shackles, trying to stay out of sight. This time, though, they fuck up. A samurai cop spots them and comes charging toward them. Jam's been caught committing terrorism. They immediately drop what they're doing—and the wooden backpack—and start sprinting away.

The cop picks up the woman Jam was trying to help, which adds insult to... well, hopefully there's no injury. Things are looking dicey, though. Even without the backpack, the cop is faster than Jam. There isn't anyone else Jam can see to lead the cop into as a distraction, either, so Jam is down to one last trick. People have to stop briefly in order to swing their weapons. When they swing, the blow has to actually connect. So if every time the cop gets in front of Jam and swings his jitte, Jam jukes left or right...

Jam tries it. They get hit a couple times but dodge more often than not. For a whole half an hour, they dodge and flee, until they finally spot a group of people who might be able to take on the cop: A couple rebel farmers and their bonedogs.

Frustratingly, the cop wins this fight. The rebel farmers must have been enslaved at some point because they have shackles and no weapons, but the bonedogs give him hell, at least. Jam hides a short ways away over a dune, watching, as they wait for Riddly to catch up with the wooden backpack.

Jam has successfully shaken the cop, but that terrorism charge has earned them a whopping 5,000 Cat bounty on their head and it's gonna be there for a while. Ells is just gonna have to catch up with them and Riddly later—Jam needs to find someplace new to be.