3-8: Half-Mad Mongrel

Mongrel is an impressive city for something cobbled together by scrappy fugitives. Frankly it's an impressive city by any standard. There's a wide range of shops, a Shinobi Thieves tower, even a faction HQ that I suppose serves as the seat of whatever form of government they have here. The guards and the controlling faction aren't Shinobi Thieves despite the guards having shinobi in their name; their faction is simply listed as Mongrel. It's a completely independent city.

The gang starts on down the thoroughfare, taking in the sights and sounds. Something odd sticks out: Amid the ambient chatter, they think they hear someone... beeping?

Jam turns to find the source of the noise and finds a scrawny worker drone approaching them.

Those are in fact ones across the board; read 'em and beep. This funky little worker drone will need some training and some gear if he's going to going to make it out of Mongrel.

On that note, the gang now has at least one of each of the three kinds of hiver: Jam the soldier, Silvershade the prince, and Beep the worker. Workers are overall the most fragile of the three and the most fragile of all playable characters; they have only 75 HP in each body part, excepting their head which has 125. One could argue princes are more fragile with 80s across the board making for a lower total, but people don't need to lose all their HP across all their body parts to die. They just need to lose one vital body part and it's the chest, not the head, that's the part most often hit.

Hive worker drones get xp gain bonuses to Athletics, Dexterity, Engineering, Farming, Labouring, Stealth, Thievery, Toughness, and Turrets. They take penalties to Cooking, Science, and Strength. As per the character creator:

Given his fragility, the smart thing to do would be to give Beep a crossbow to keep him out of the fray, make him a thief that doesn't fight, or keep him at home. That's not what Beep wants, though. Beep says he wants to stab the things that chase him? He'll get to. He will be a melee fighter of some sort and I will do my utmost to keep him alive while he becomes strong.

With Beep in tow, the gang starts making the rounds through the shops. First up is the weapons shop. Riddly's had her topper katana since before joined and while it's a good weapon she's become quite skilled with, she'd like to branch out. She's taken on more of a heavy fighter role within the gang, a little at odds with a pure cutting weapon like a katana. Heavy armour like hers hinders intricate bladework; the mercenary plate she wears only lets her use 80% of her Dexterity. As such, she'd prefer a weapon that uses a combination of Dexterity and raw Strength.

Cleavers are good if you want to rely on Strength, more wieldy than heavy weapons and deadlier than blunt weapons. It'll be vastly better than the topper against armoured enemies, trading the 15% armour penetration penalty for a 30% bonus and trading some cutting damage for blunt, less resisted by metal armour. Riddly buys a Mk III-grade combat cleaver from the shop, a very high grade indeed, at the whopping price of 16,566 Cats. While spending that much makes me a little green around the gills just on principle, what're all those Cats for if not sick gear?

Beep gets the hand-me-down katana. Flitting from shop to shop, the gang hears another strange sound coming from one of the bars.

This hive soldier is making a similar sound to the fogmen. Keys finds herself wondering: Do regular hivers turn into fogmen? They must, otherwise how would fogmen be made? Is it something in the fog that turns hivers after enough exposure? Surely it couldn't be that—if it was just fog exposure, people around here would have seen hivers turn. They probably would have said something to Jam and Silvershade when the gang rolled in.

Awfully curious and a little alarmed, Keys strikes up a conversation with the third hiver sitting at the table. Could be they know something.

It's starting to sound like the people here don't know any more about the fogmen than the gang does. They don't even talk about them, just the fog itself. Keys is left to speculate. She excuses herself from the three hivers' company and wanders over to the other side of the bar; Jam has joined a bunch of humans at a table there and is already chatting away, social butterfly that they are.

Oh, Jam will carry her if necessary. That was something I checked before deciding to send the gang to Mongrel: I wanted to be sure at least some of my characters were strong enough carry a friend on their shoulders and still outrun fogmen. Just in case.

Jam is always thrilled to make new friends and considers asking the other two people at the table if they'd like to join as well, but the gang is already getting pretty numerous for people who lack a reliable food source. Maybe another time. They're happy as is—they're looking forward to spending time with Beep and Shryke.

While Shryke has a few points in a wide variety of stats, nearly everything still being in single digits means she's not really that much stronger than Beep. Her starting equipment isn't going to do a whole lot to protect her either. Her polearm is of usable quality but her leather armour and boots are both Shoddy-grade and as such offer little protection in exchange for the stat penalties they bestow. She and Beep will both be training and buying new equipment before it'll be safe for them to leave Mongrel.