1-8: No Place to Call Home

The map. There's one blue dot in Sho-Battai (that's Ells) while Jam and Riddly's dots are to the northeast of Sho-Battai, halfway between there and someplace called Fort Mirage. Much further to the northeast, on the coast, is a place called Bark. It's one of the four UC cities Jam had marked on their map at the start of the game. Jam and Riddly are about a fifth of the way to Bark, not that they're planning to go there. One last place is marked on the map: Southwest from Sho-Battai, about as far away as Fort Mirage is just in the opposite direction, is a place called Stone Camp. It is marked with the crossed hammer-and-pick symbol that denotes slave labour camps.

After fleeing the samurai police, Jam and Riddly find themselves to the northeast of Sho-Battai. They can't go back right now, and Bark is another UC city, so they can't go there either. Same with Stoat and Heft to the south. They have just discovered this Fort Mirage place, though! Neither of them have a clue what that is so they decide to check it out.

A Y-shaped single storey stone building with a few crossbow turrets mounted on the roof, nestled in the side of a sand dune. At the top of the dune are two small windmills.

Oh. It's owned by the United Heroes League. Fuck that.

The two decide to keep pressing north, eventually arriving at a place called Port North.

A walled slave labour camp that might look like a small town if you didn't know any better. The slave master's house backs directly onto the water, and while the camp's walls stretch out a little ways behind that, they're partially submerged, as if the ground beneath them gave way at some point and they fell in. I guess that's what you get for building your slave camp on a sandy beach.

It's sort of interesting in that it's a rare coastal settlement, but it is a slave labour camp run by the Slave Traders faction. Absolutely not. Even if Jam didn't have a bounty, the gang wouldn't be hanging around here.

There's only one place left to go in the northern Great Desert and it's the last place in the world Jam wants to be: Back at their hive. They concede that the visit will probably be relatively nice for Riddly, but there's a reason hivers who leave their hives don't go back.

Reluctantly, Jam and Riddly approach the hive village.

Still on the coast, the sweeping dunes start to give way here to badlands, hills and valleys of orange rock in visible sedimentary layers. Tall, thin cacti sprout here and there. The hive village itself is comprised of five identical-looking buildings, each with rounded walls that taper to a narrow entrance on each of three opposite sides, a couple bare tree trunks sticking out at odd angles, and a roof that tapers upward to a larger opening in the centre. I am unclear what the purpose of the top opening is. Ventilation, perhaps? The buildings are made of 'that brown stuff them lot build huts out of' that Yuzuki was talking about back on page 3. Jam doesn't think twice about this. Riddly is burdened with the knowledge.

Worker Drone: Flop, flop, flop!

The hivers seem amused by the fact that Riddly has these strange floppy things attached to the ends of her legs. It's a little rude but it's better than how the Heroes were. Jam is secretly a little amused to see a human on the other side of it for once; Riddly takes it in stride.

As Riddly and Jam walk into the village, they bump into a group of Manhunters passing through. They tense up, ready for trouble, but the Manhunters aren't dumb enough to pick a fight right in the middle of a hive village. One of them does, however, make the mistake of walking through the general store without buying anything.

A hive prince follows a group of Manhunters as they walk back toward the sandy desert. Specifically, they are following a shek Manhunter who walked through their shop, hassling them to return. Hive princes look similar to hive soldiers except that their heads are much more human-like, albeit with flat faces and a single antenna that curves to point upward from the top of their head at the back.

Hive Trader: Come back to my shop, Shek

There's no pushier salesperson than a hive prince. They follow the manhunter out of the village, imploring her to come back and buy something. When she doesn't respond and just keeps walking away, the prince is left muttering to themself “Why do Shek always run away from my shop?”

As the prince walks back, Jam gathers their courage. Hive villages all have two shops: A general store and a robotics shop. Jam would really like some stuff from both. Resolving to speak to the prince, Jam leads Riddly into the general store.

The inside of the store matches the outside, with an uneven floor and curved walls made from organic material. The prince stands in the middle of a sale area bordered by tables and shelves, while various barrels and chests are scattered around the room's outer edges. Jam and Riddly are ready to trade but the prince simply screams at them to leave.

Hive Trader: LOST ONE! HIVELESS! GET OUT!

It goes about as well as expected. The princes do not under any circumstances want hiveless hivers around and will scream at them until they leave. Likely something about the pheremones the hiveless give off either being irritating to the princes or having a chance of disrupting the still-hived hivers, but that's nothing more than an educated guess.

Jam and Riddly comply with the letter of the request, leaving the village. Then they immediately come back. This time Jam stays outside, out of the prince's line of sight. The prince is eager enough to sell to a human that they don't seem to care that Riddly was accompanying a hiveless just a minute ago, so she gets to browse their wares. Unfortunately, the general store doesn't have what Jam wants today. Maybe tomorrow. Shops refresh their inventory daily, after all.

At the robotics shop, though, Riddly hits paydirt.

Riddly is shopping at the robotics shop. Not much can be seen behind the inventory window, but there are a few hive workers around the edges of the room, working away at various workbenches. The shop's inventory is the interesting part anyway. The contents are described below.

Hive robotics shops make prosthetic limbs! It's really quite a remarkable thing in this world; the hives are the only people who manufacture prosthetic limbs these days. Of course, just like weapons and armour, they come in varying quality grades, so it's quite lucky that this particular shop happens to have a Specialist-grade left arm for sale today: The best possible available quality of the limb Jam needs! Finally they'll be able to replace the arm they lost before this adventure started. Per the item description:

The Hivers are extremely proud of the skeleton limbs that they supposedly manufacture themselves. This arm is obviously made mostly out of salvaged parts from other skeleton arms, though they did make a functioning claw hand for it, quite an impressive feat of engineering in this age. The limb cap is half a grog can with some padding inside.

They are good and cheap, but not very durable, and obviously your dexterity is going to suffer from having a claw for a hand.

It sucks. It's flimsier than Jam's regular arm, it gives massive penalties to lockpicking and thievery, and moderate penalties to crossbows, dexterity, and swimming. But oh, it sucks marvellously! Jam is thrilled to have two arms again.

Jam and Riddly hang out on the sand outside the hive village. Riddly is wearing the fog mask she bought back at the Thieves' tower. Jam has taken off their armour so as to better show off their new arm! It attaches just below the shoulder. The rounded socket gives way to an arm of thin metal bars with a cylindrical elbow joint, ending in a thin hand that has two claw fingers and a claw thumb. It does in fact not look very dextrous, but it is, Jam cannot emphasize this enough, an arm.

You may note that the health bar for Jam's new arm seems a little different. It's grey rather than green like the rest of them. That signifies that the arm is mechanical, which means it heals differently. Instead of getting patched up with med kits, it'll need to be repaired with a skeleton repair kit. These are more expensive—much more expensive. Jam pesters Riddly into going back to the general store and buying an "Authentic" Skeleton Repair Kit for 1622 Cats. A hell of a lot pricier than the 77 Cats Jam paid for a basic med kit when they first arrived in Sho-Battai, but self-repair is worth the cost.

Mechanical body parts also differ from organic ones in that they get dinged up over time. As they take damage, their maximum HP will decrease, little by little. This damage can only be healed at skeleton repair beds, which are much rarer than regular beds and people charge a lot more to use. The one in this hive village costs 800 Cats as opposed to the 200 Cat bedrolls (which is in itself kind of a ripoff—plenty of places charge 50 or 100 Cats for a proper bed). You can go for much longer without having to use one, though, so having mechanical parts isn't a one way trip to the poor house or anything.

1-9: THE START OF SOMETHING ⮞