2-8: Don't Get Eaten

Burn and the cannibal hunters overcome the first band of cannibals, but a second swiftly falls on them, followed by a couple beak things. Cannibal hunters start falling, cannibals start capturing the fallen hunters, Burn gets a massive hole pecked in their chest, and beak things start overrunning the cannibal village.

I check in with the rest of the gang and beak things have overrun the Flotsam outpost too.

The beak things have wiped out the Flotsam Ninjas stationed there completely. Convalescing as they are, there's nothing the gang can do but hide on the roof and watch in horror as a beak thing starts eating a fallen Flotsam Ninja alive.

So far, the gang has dealt with bandits who will just leave you on the ground if they knock you out, United Cities samurai who will throw you in jail, slavers who will enslave you, and cannibals who will throw you in a cage for a while and eventually get around to eating you. Beak things represent a more urgent threat. If they see someone unconscious on the ground, they will eat them. Immediately.

Things are going pear-shaped for everyone, but at least at the cannibal village, that means it's the cannibals getting torn apart by beak things. The coast eventually clears as the two different types of man-eater kill each other, giving Jam plenty of time to free both themself and Horse. They're about to walk away when they notice that most of the cannibal hunters they hired are now in cages here too. It does... kind of feel like their responsibility to help free them. So they get to work.

Jam and Horse set about bandaging the captured hunters and unlocking their cages. They get a couple back on their feet before it occurs to Jam they should have seen Burn by now. They consider all the caged cannibal hunters they'd last seen fighting side by side with Burn and put two and two together. Jam springs up and sprints over to check on them, leaving Horse to keep tending to the hunters. It's not ideal since now Horse is once again left with no way to flee if he gets attacked again, but Burn could be in even worse trouble.

Burn is in even worse trouble. Burn is dying. Bad enough wounds will deteriorate over time, whether your parts are organic or mechanical. If a vital body part (head, chest, or stomach) deteriorates badly enough, you die. Organics die when one of these body parts reaches a negative value equal to their maximum value—for example, when a human's vital reaches -100 or a shek's vital reaches -125. I'm not entirely sure what negative value skeletons have to reach but I'm pretty sure I've had a skeleton die in a previous playthrough when a body part was nowhere near -200. Burn's chest is at -49 here and I don't know how much time they had left before they died, but I saw the Dying status and had to act.

It takes a little while, but with the cannibal hunters standing guard and a passing tech hunter making them feel a little safer, Jam gets Burn fixed up and back on their feet. They breathe a sigh of relief and silently congratulate themselves—having just saved a skeleton's life means they're becoming a dab hand at this repair thing.

From there, Jam jogs back to the village and picks up Horse. Yet another band of cannibals has shown up by now, prompting the remaining cannibal hunters to yet again throw themselves into the fray, but there's nothing Jam can realistically do to mitigate that bad decision. They cut their losses and run, returning to the Flotsam no-longer-safe house with the rest of the gang.

On the way, however, they run into trouble. First, the trio is spotted by some 'scrawny cannibals', which are exactly what they sound like: weaker, malnourished cannibals. They handily wear green body paint instead of red and wield sticks instead of cleavers so it's easy to tell what you're dealing with. There's still enough of them that the trio can't safely take them on in their current condition, so they continue running away toward the outpost, maybe a little more recklessly than they might prefer... and they attract the attention of the whole entire nest of beak things.

Beak things run so much faster than the gang does but they're far to big to fit inside a building. The trio is within sight of the outpost by now and if they make it indoors, only the scrawny cannibals should be able to follow them. They make a break for it.

This isn't right! Animals like beak things aren't supposed to be able to come indoors, but sometimes they're hungry enough to decide the rules don't apply to them. One beak thing, manifesting visions of tasty tasty human dinner, somehow gallops right through the human-sized door without even breaking its stride. The trio flees upstairs, freaking the absolute fuck out, hoping the beak thing won't be able to pull that trick off twice and make it up to the roof.

It doesn't. The beak thing stays downstairs and starts going to town on the bulk of the scrawny cannibals, while the gang picks off the few that made it up. Burn, as the only one the beak thing won't try to eat, runs back down the stairs after a minute and slams the door shut. The gang does not want any more surprises today.

The six of them taking turns on the four beds on the outpost roof, the gang sleeps uneasily. The footsteps of the trapped beak thing downstairs reverberate in their minds. For those waiting their turn to rest, any direction they look, they can see the other five beak things systematically eating fallen Flotsam Ninjas and cannibals alike all around the outpost. They're trapped.

Eventually, once everyone has rested their way back to physical health, it's time to deal with the beak thing downstairs. The gang has to if they want to ever leave. It's here I should note that in Kenshi, every melee attack is technically an area of effect attack rather than being calculated against a single target. Attacks with smaller weapons, like standard katanas, will rarely hit more than a single target anyway, but larger weapons are swung in wide arcs that can hit a whole bunch of people at once in a chaotic mêlée. Even though a beak thing's attack is a forceful downward peck, the animal starting from an upright position to slamming its beak through its unfortunate victim and into the ground like a violent nodding donkey, it hits a wide enough area that a group of people all trying to fight it head on in close quarters can all get hit by each attack. This is, of course, a problem when fighting one indoors forces close quarters.

The gang gets pretty messed up in the fight but they ultimately take the beak thing down. Their wounds necessitate another lengthy rest but at least they won't have to take turns this time—there's a couple beds here on the first floor they can use in addition to the sleeping bags on the roof.

Burn watches as the rest of the gang sleeps, growing increasingly restless. As a skeleton, they don't benefit from bed rest. They can't sleep even if they wanted to. As they wait, though, something occurs to them. All the beak things are still out there snacking on people. That means the beak things aren't at the nest. That means Burn could theoretically sneak in and steal a couple valuable beak thing eggs.

Sneaking around in broad daylight is a dicey proposition and Burn is no ninja, but the beak things are far enough away that even a loudly clanking skeleton can snatch a couple eggs and get away clean. Burn can only carry two on account of how huge they are, but two will still fetch a healthy sum.

4,200 Cats a pop is gonna be a great boon to the gang's finances. Burn hands the eggs to Riddly and slips back out for a couple more. The beak things remain none the wiser.

By nightfall, the gang is ready to sneak out, planning to sell those eggs back at Flotsam Village. They elect not to mention the fact that it's kind of their fault an entire outpost got wiped out.

On the way back, Burn attempts levity.

Not another word is spoken until the gang reaches Flotsam Village.