2-2: Creepin' Darkfinger

Title text on the screen reads 'Darkfinger', signifying that the gang has entered the region by that name. Up ahead, the sand changes from orange to white and the thick scrub thins to nothing. Hills of sand-covered rock dominate the landscape ahead.

Jam: Keep your eyes peeled, we're in cannibal country now.

With that in mind, the gang takes care in approaching the village they spot on the horizon.

Atop streaks of pink in Darkfinger's white sand, a shack on stilts, a couple tents, and numerous human-sized cages delineate a village. A cannibal village. Near the cages, a group of cannibals sit. They are naked humans wearing elaborate body paint in red, black, and white. Each carries a large cleaver.

Yep, that's definitely a cannibal village. Best to give it a wide berth.

Curious if there's anything here other than cannibals, the gang creeps carefully up the east coast of Darkfinger. Between the pink leaves on the palm trees and the pinkish hue of the sand here and there, this place would have its charms if it weren't for the constant danger of ending up as someone's dinner. The gang doesn't have the luxury of enjoying the view. Halfway up the coast, though, they make an interesting discovery.

Sheltered in amongst rocky cliffs, two weathered old metal buildings sit on raised foundations. One is a round, two-storey building of solid make with small square windows dotted around the second storey. The domed roof is heavily rusted. The other building looks like it was once a twin of the first, but is now completely destroyed. Little remains above the foundation.

There's some ruins here! Ancient ruins like this can be full of treasures, from long-lost knowledge to high-grade gear to a wide variety of machine parts. Any ruin that's still intact has a reason it hasn't been looted over the past several hundred years. Either it's hard to reach, it's got deadly defenses, or...

The gang creeps stealthily around the foundation's outer ring, a wide walkway that surrounds the building proper. The cursor, hovering over the door, tells us that it is locked and that Jam ha a 0% chance to pick it.

...Something as mundane as a securely locked door. Despite the time Jam, Riddly and Ells spent with the Shinobi Thieves' practice locks back in Sho-Battai, none of them are skilled enough to even attempt the lock here.

The gang is undeterred. If the lock's too tough, they'll simply break the door down.

The gang wails on the door with their various weapons.

They check both ways for cannibals, then get to work. Breaking a door down takes a lot longer and is a lot noisier than picking the lock, but when force is all that's left to you, force is the path you take.

There's a couple close calls but ultimately, the gang gets inside without alerting any cannibals. The ruin turns out to be an ancient library.

The library interior. It's full of bookshelves as one might expect, but the scene is barely visible behind all the little text boxes indicating items. Most of these are just Damaged Books—worthless junk—but a few are Parchment, Old Maps, and one is a Book. This Book's text box is green while all the othe text boxes are white, indicating that the Book is a higher-quality item.

Most of the books here are too damaged to read but there's a few in decent shape. Jam gathers them up.

Jam's inventory is open, showing a Book. The Book is a Research Artifact and bears the description: 'A book from the University of Machinists. Everything they learn is compiled into books like this one in an attempt to teach others and improve the world.'

Books are used for researching technologies. It'll be a while before the gang starts doing any research but it's well worth Jam's while to stuff any book they find in their backpack until then.

The gang also finds a few stacks of blank parchment to sell and a variety of old maps. Some of these old maps don't lead to anything and are only good for selling for a few Cats, but others lead to other ruins they could actually go visit at some point.

Ells' inventory is open, showing a map called Ancient Military Documents. The description reads: 'This looks like it could be a valuable find, it details the location of an Old Empire military cache. It might have some valuable equipment'.

The game treats these maps as consumable items, meaning the gang has to choose between reading these maps to find the locations they lead to or selling them. The maps don't sell for a huge amount of money or anything but these locations are all findable without using a map so it's not always a clear-cut choice. For now, the gang is anxious to get out of cannibal territory, so they hold off on deciding what to do with the maps. They grab up everything worth selling and head back south toward Sinkuun.

The gang makes good time leaving Darkfinger, the cloak of night shrouding them from any cannibals looking for a meal. In a moment they're sure no one else is around, they pause to appreciate the beauty of the clear night sky.

The night sky over the rocky hills, vast blackness dotted with myriad stars. Two large celestial bodies dominate the scene, each largely shrouded in darkness with only a crescent reflecting any light. One, a greenish blue that gives way to a vast white south pole and the other, less than a quarter of the size of the first, a mottled grey.

I don't think those are two moons in the sky. The smaller one is a moon, sure, but the larger one is way too large to make sense as a moon orbiting the planet of Kenshi. I think that's the planet the world of Kenshi is orbiting. I think Kenshi takes place on a moon.

Whatever celestial body the gang calls home, they have to turn their attention from the stars back to the path ahead of them. They've nearly made it out of Darkfinger when they're surprised by a band of cannibals cresting a hill up ahead.

In the dead of night, cannibals trudge across the white sand.

Travelling at night was definitely smart. This was a close enough call that these cannibals probably would have seen the gang in the daytime. While each individual cannibal isn't all that strong, they have numbers—13 to 4. This wouldn't have been a good fight to pick.

As it is, the gang slinks around the other side of the hill and remains unnoticed. By the time day breaks, they're back in Sinkuun and have found themselves on the doorstep of a fortress called The Bastion.

A fortress with thick, forbidding walls, perched on top of a hill in the Sinkuun badlands. A gate guard muses to no one in particular.

Cannibal Hunter: As long as I breathe, the savages will pay.

The Bastion is the headquarters of a faction called Cannibal Hunters. Jam heads inside and takes a look around. They were kind of hoping to find a merchant to sell all that parchment from the library, but no luck. The Cannibal Hunters are totally focused on their mission—there's not a single shop here. After milling around for a bit, Jam ends up running into their leader.

In a small room at the back of the Cannibal Hunters' HQ, Jam speaks with a fair-skinned human man named Robun. Robun wears heavy metal plate armour on his upper body, a metal plate face mask over the bottom half of his face, a chainmail hood, and leather pants and boots.

Cannibal Hunter Robun: Looking for a cannibal hunter?

Jam: You hunt cannibals?

Cannibal Hunter Robun: Yeah. Got a cannibal problem that needs taking care of?

Jam: Nope. Just curious.

Cannibal Hunter Robun: ... Right.

Totally focused. They'll help out if you're going to fight cannibals but that's literally all they're interested in. There's not really anything here for Jam and the gang.

2-3: A FOREVER WAR ⮞