1-9: The Start of Something

While Riddly shops at the hive village and Jam enjoys testing out their new arm, Ells resolves to make this night the night he escapes Sho-Battai. He's got a goodly ways to run to reunite with the gang but after being thrown in a cage and clapped in chains, he'll be more than happy to see the back of the place. He slips out of town and makes to join his new friends.

As an aside, if you're curious why this hive village is marked on the map as Distant Hive Village, well, it's part of what's called the Western Hive, and this is the northeastern corner of the map. It's very far away from most of the rest of the hive.

It winds up being not too much of a problem for Ells to run to, though. He nearly runs face first into a skimmer at one point and gets chased but it gives up pretty quickly and lets him get on the rest of his way. When he finally meets up with Jam and Riddly, they're mining again, trying to make enough money for the other thing Jam's been wanting from the general store.

The sun rises on a new day and Riddly checks the store once again. This time they have it!

For people who scream and yell whenever a hiveless hiver comes into sight, the princes sure do make nice stuff specifically for hiveless hivers. Whatever. Jam is happy to have it, even if it's annoying to have to have someone else go buy it for them. The protection is worth the hassle.

On the way out to do some more mining, the gang spots a bunch of rebel farmers in the distance. Some of them are on the ground and a bunch of them are bloody—there must have been a battle. Then the gang looks closer. They all have shackles on. A group of Manhunters must have come through here, enslaved them, then gotten in another fight or something and just left the farmers here. Well, the gang isn't just going to leave them like that. They head over and start picking the locks on their shackles.

The farmers have a variety of reactions to being freed, from “Oh god! Freedom!” to “We should leave, quickly” to “No! Don't be a fool! They'll punish us both!” That's expected when it comes to freeing slaves in Kenshi. Not everyone has hope they could actually escape. Not everyone has any clue where they could even escape to in such a hostile world. Some people freeze up. Some run off on their own.

Some decide to join the gang.

She says she's weak but she's more or less tied with Riddly for the strongest member of the team.

Her stats related to melee weapon fighting are around 10 across the board, a solid start. She's also the team's best medic with a score of 14. It's kinda funny that the outlaw farmer doesn't have any farming skill at all, but I suppose the fact that the rebel farmers are all half-starving and resorting to banditry implies that they haven't had much opportunity to do any farming for a while.

And yes, her name is Outlaw Farmer. The game assigns random names from a list to certain kinds of characters: Drifters in bars, most shopkeepers, people who start the game as slaves, and a few other sorts. Generally, this will encompass the characters you can recruit. You can't recruit a random outlaw farmer normally. Pretty much anyone can become enslaved, though, and when freeing slaves there's a chance they might want to join you, so you can end up with recruits with generic names that way. There is a way to change her name and she might decide to in the future, but for now, she's Outlaw Farmer.

The gang is happy to have her. They give her some dried skimmer meat and let her know she can rest and recover her stomach wound up at the hive village. Before she manages to make it there, though, the other three come under attack by starving vagrants.

The gang gets rolled. They are still incredibly weak—for all their hijinx they've still barely done any fighting—and the starving vagrants outnumber them three to one. At least the vagrants don't get their food. All the food is in the wooden backpack and that's on the ground a few feet away. As with many bandits, the starving vagrants will rummage through unconscious people's inventories and steal their food, but as usual they can't pick items up off the ground. The food is safe in the backpack.

This does mean Outlaw Farmer has to delay her own rest, though. The hive only has two beds to rent and she's now the only member of the gang who's conscious and able to walk, so she ends up having to pick her new friends up, carry them to the hive village, and tuck them into the bedrolls she was about to use. Not the best first impression but it'll surely only get better from here.

Ells and Riddly get to rest first. Jam is actually hurt the worst of the three, but the gang is a little worried about just how annoyed the prince would get if Jam slept in their shop.

The princes really don't let up, do they? Ells and Riddly are trying their best to get some shut-eye but this guy keeps rattling off sales pitches regardless. And that's not even mentioning half the hive walking directly over Riddly while she tries to sleep! The hives are, I must emphasize, way nicer than the UC, but they are kind of a pain in the ass.

While Ells and Riddly rest and recover, Jam and Outlaw Farmer have to find something to do. There are occasional skimmer attacks here, which means occasional meat and claws to scavenge, but there isn't exactly a steady supply. There aren't any enemies around here they could reliably beat. Outlaw Farmer could shop but there's not much more the gang could really use right now. They could mine, but the gang wants to set their sights higher than a slow, boring, reliable trickle of money.

The gang has to get stronger.

Outlaw Farmer takes this quite literally and, filling her pockets with iron and carrying Jam over her shoulder, starts strength training. Strength is one of two base stats that affects melee attack damage and unlike the other, Dexterity, it can be trained up in ways other than fighting. That's because fighting isn't all Strength is used for—it also determines how much you can wear and carry without slowing down. Since you train a stat by using it in Kenshi, that means you can train Strength by walking around carrying a bunch of really heavy stuff. In order to get the most out of strength training you have to both overload your limit and carry a person around at the same time, so... Jam gets to go for a ride.

Over the next few days, the whole gang takes turns resting, strength training, and helping the hive defend itself against occasional skimmers and bandits. Jam never receives any warmer a welcome here—when it's their turn to rest, the prince spends the whole time yelling at them—but it doesn't matter anymore. The prince can't shake their resolve. If the gang is going to make their way in the world, they're going to have to get serious about getting stronger. Tougher. Faster. Smarter. They throw themselves against a skimmer before the hive's defenders do and end up having to spend another day resting because of it, but another defeat just means more toughening up. It's all part of the process.

After healing up yet again, the gang gets together to discuss their next move. There's nothing more for them here in the hive village. Jam is persona non grata. Riddly is itching to hit the road again. There's the whole rest of the world to see, but where to go first? Well, in the immediate sense, that question is easier to answer than it might seem. To the north is the impassable ocean. South and east are United Cities lands where Jam still has that hefty bounty and Ells and Outlaw Farmer might get identified as former slaves. The only way left to go is westward to the lands beyond the UC.