4-12: Home and Dry

Jam, Burn, Horse, Silvershade, Beep, and Pilaf return home to Riddly and Ruka grousing about how uneventful things have been in their absence. Jam nods sympathetically, trying to keep a smile from creeping in; secretly, they're glad not only that no crises happened while they were out but also that people are raring to go for another adventure soon. They're craving more themself.

Soon. There are a few things to take care of first. Cat has finished researching a new tier of defensive walls and Karst is itching to build them, having held back so far only because tier 2 to 3 walls isn't a clean upgrade. Since tier 3 walls have a slightly longer span, we can't just hit the Upgrade button to build the new and improved version in the same space like we can while upgrading most other structures.

The gang has to rip out the old walls and replace them entirely. It's a multi-day process that involves a lot of work and no small danger. With gaps in the walls the whole time as the new ones are being built, any old bandit or beastie wandering by will come charging through the gap, eager to exploit the weakness. A couple days into the process, that's exactly what happens.

A shot of the lower half of the base, with the farms in the foreground and the newly upgraded gate and partially-finished wall in the background, now higher and with a more solid construction of stone and steel. In front of the farms, a beak thing lands a devastating peck on Karst's right arm. Karst staggers under the blow, blood spilling down their arm and pooling on the ground. Silvershade fends off a second beak thing next to the wheat farm and further away, Outlaw Hana battles a third next to the smithy. The rest of the gang is further still, engaged in a fracas with hungry bandits near the gate.

A group of hungry bandits rushes in, prompting a swift response from the gang. Hungry bandits are not in and of themselves much cause for concern but while I'm watching the gang carve through them, a trio of beak things gallops through from the other side and starts ripping through the few people who'd been deliberately staying out of the bandit fight—people like Karst, who I wanted to stay healthy so they could keep working on the walls.

The setback is a minor one in the grand scheme of things but Karst isn't too thrilled to have their arm broken by a spade-like beak. The work goes much slower while they recover. Grouchy as they are at having to convalesce while there's walls to build, though, there are people around here with bigger problems.

A shek man in a conical iron hat and light travelling clothes lies on the wet grey Deadlands ground, bleeding profusely, with an iron spider standing over him. He's close enough to the base that the walls are visible in the distance.

Just down the path from the base, a tech hunter named Shark lies near death, his skin sizzling in the acid rain as he bleeds out from a gaping stomach wound. Silvershade and Pilaf sprint out to wreck the iron spider that did this to him while Burn rushes to his rescue.

Shark is in dire condition. With his stomach at -116 HP, he would have died already if he was a hiver or a human. As a shek, he'll survive until his stomach reaches -125, an alarmingly close number for someone simultaneously bleeding and being pelted with acid. Burn scoops him up, runs him to the base and out of the acid rain, and tends his wounds. When they're satisfied the man has stabilized, they lay him down in one of the gang's beds.

Shark, still with his head and torso covered in blood, laying in a bed.

While Burn comes down from the tension and Silvershade patches up Pilaf from a job well done turning that iron spider into a hunk of scrap, we can piece together what must have happened to Shark.

Shark was on his way to the gang's base to do some shopping. For one reason or another, he decided to cut through the Deadlands. There, he was ambushed by an iron spider. He put up a valiant fight but after getting his leg broken and his arm badly hurt, he took a nasty jab to the gut and lost consciousness. Some time later, he awoke and patched himself up but didn't get far before the iron spider was on him again. It gave him a knock on the head and gouged another hole in his stomach, dropping him to the ground where he lay burning and bleeding for quite some time before Silvershade discovered him.

I'm quite confident in this version of events. For starters, tech hunters don't normally enter the Deadlands, meaning the only reason one would be there would be if they were travelling to the base. Second, we can surmise Shark patched himself up at some point since in the screenshot from when we found him, some of his healthbars had those light yellow segments that indicate bandaged wounds. We know it's stomach wounds that took him out both times since his other vitals, head and chest, are both above 0. Finally, it's safe to say he laid on the ground for a long time and took a lot of damage from acid since he has two health bars tied for highest: His chest and right arm, both at 44. It's unlikely the iron spider hit him exactly as hard in each of those two parts; the obvious conclusion is therefore that the acid rain reduced both all the way down to 44 from his maximum of 125. If you ask me, it's neat that you can tell so much just from looking at health bars and context.

Later that day, Shark regains consciousness and slips out. I missed it actually happening and so couldn't check how he was doing at the time but unfortunately, there's no way he actually rested long enough to heal completely. I can guarantee he sprang out of bed with a messed-up stomach and a bad limp. NPCs simply aren't programmed to seek out beds when they're hurt—you can even see in the bed screenshot that his goal is Aimless rather than Sleeping, meaning he'll get up and start wandering around as soon as he regains consciousness. Wherever he went off to, I hope he'll be okay.

The next few days see the wall upgrades completed. Karst takes the briefest of moments to admire their handiwork then leaps headfirst into their next project, wanting to get one more thing done before half the gang leaves for another adventure. With help from Jam and a few others, they get to work on a three-storey tower that'll serve as a training facility.

The ground floor of the training tower. This smallish circular room is centered around two sets of thievery training boxes, which take up quite a bit of space. On one side of this area are the stairs; on the other, separated by a zigzagging interior wall, a small area with two lockpicking training boxes. Off to one side of the entrance, Ells and Silvershade sit on cushions, chilling while Riddly and Beep practice thievery and lockpicking respectively. The second storey. The stairs spiral around the tower walls. On this storey, wooden beams frame the entrance from the landing to the room, which contains three assassination dummies. Cat is practicing on one of them.

The ground floor features training boxes for lockpicking and training piles-of-random-clutter for thievery; the idea behind the latter is that the trainee has to filch something from somewhere in the pile without knocking anything over or making noise. The second storey is for assassin training. While assassination dummies look like they're made of wood, they're crafted from leather and raw meat, making them what I assume is a smellier equivalent of those ballistic gel torsos you might see on, for example, a terrible circa 2010 Spike TV show of which I was definitely not an avid fan.

The third storey looks pretty much the same as the second but with melee attack training dummies. The roof sports a couple training turrets. Of the various facilities, most train their respective skills up to 30—the melee attack dummy is the exception, only training to 15. These will be vital both for getting new members up to speed and for broadening the skillsets of established members. Lockpicking is handy for everyone in case they're captured by any of the various factions disposed to do so, thievery and assassination are core thief skills that are otherwise hard to train up from nothing without pissing a lot of people off, and turrets is a skill you otherwise can't train up at all except when hostiles choose to drop by your base.

With that done, everyone can take a step back and relax in earnest. The gang has more projects in mind for the future but this feels like a good note to leave on for a while. The base just needs one finishing touch: A name. With everything the gang has poured into it, this feels increasingly like a real place; it feels weirder and weirder to just be calling it “the base” all the time.

An aerial shot of the base, now with new and improved walls and the new training tower sitting on the other side of the gate from most of the buildings, near the foot of the hill with all the mining machines. There is also a second iron refinery now, parallel to the first. Shh! The others don't know about it.

Jam, Ells, and Outlaw Hana call everyone together to discuss what their new home should be called. Some get more invested in the process than others—as someone generally uninterested in settling down, Riddly really could not give a rat's ass. On the other end of the scale, Cat jams his motor-mouth into high gear, spitting out pitch after increasingly esoteric pitch.

In the end, it's one of Outlaw Hana's first suggestions that carries the day. Taking inspiration from the swirling patterns in the mud, hearkening back to the watery, fingerprint-like impressions that struck her when she first prospected this place, she proposes that they call it Whorl. Throughout all the turbulent brainstorming, the gang finds it sticking with them.

Whorl. An imprint they hope to leave on the world. An eye in the continent's storm; not a placid place but one safe enough to rest, to plan, to live free of the major nations' oppression. A fine name for what they've built, all together, with their own hands. Ankle voices her approval with a happy bark.

For a long, sweet moment, the whole gang basks in the glow of camaraderie and shared accomplishment. Then Riddly clears her throat and reminds everyone she's been cooped up in Whorl for three weeks and is going to lose her god damn mind if she doesn't see the open road soon. Several others agree it's time. After all their hard work, it's time for another adventure—one longer than the Deadlands excursion with more of them along for the ride. Perhaps it's time to see what lies southwestward bound.

5-1: [coming soon] ⮞