Donald Trump on Rimworld - an a17 story

Started by shayame, November 27, 2017, 06:04:26 PM

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shayame

Scenario played: Donald Trump.
Difficulty: Random Randy Rough on icesheet.

Brief summary of scenario:
After 4 years of presidency, Trump had saved the world by building a wall around Mexico, telling everyone that he loves China, bombing the middle east until it was a crater and then banning the muslim refugees who fled the destruction. Knowing that his work was done he launched himself into space to find another world to save.

Your faction will be a colony.
Start with 1 person.
He will be between 66 and 70 years old.
Starting character will have the traits beautiful and too smart.
Start with:
- meals, steel, components and wood.
- Silver x1000000 and some gold
- Glitterworld medicine
- Assault rifle



Narrator: This screenshot comes 2 years after the crashland. I'm writing this story now, 2 years later, with the hope that the story will eventually catch up to current gameplay. Trump certainly didn't start with such good stats. In particular, he was a poor grower and a much weaker constructor and miner. His "too smart" trait has helped him level-up his skills tremendously over the last 2 years.

This is my first story. I aim to upload something new every day or two until I catch up to the current storyline. If the pictures end up deleted after a few months, you can head to https://www.rimworld-stories.com/ and search for donald trump to see the full story.

I would love to hear feedback. Thank you for letting me share my amazing Donald Trump story with you.

shayame

Lights are whirling, buzzers are beeping, the temperature is rising and somewhere, there is the hissing noise of depressurisation as Trump's ship tears itself apart in a maelstrom of destruction.

This is what happens when you buy a ship with components made in China, Trump thought.

He was stuffing any essentials he could find like food into his crashpod. Other essentials include an assault rifle, a hairbrush and a million silver. With little time to lose, Trump hits the eject button and steers the pod to the only inhabitable settlement within sight. It looks like it's on ice sheet in hilly regions. Looks cold.




Caption: Average temperature -20.7 C (-5 F). Growing period – never.

Trump misses the settlement with his crashpod, landing westwards by 2 hexes. He was meant to start with 1 000 000 silver but the spawn radius permitted only a maximum of about 250 000 silver – the rest we'll chalk up to having burnt up on atmospheric entry.

Trump's first thought was to pick up all the silver and food, march into the nearest town and get voted for presidency there, but he quickly realised he could only carry 10 000 silver at most, less if he were to pack food and a gun. He wasn't convinced he would ever be able to find his remaining silver again in these god-forsaken mountains if he walked off now with just a fraction of it. It was also very very cold and he had no warm clothing. A trip would have to wait. Instead, he spots an old building made of limestone walls, carved into the side of a mountain. The place is not too shabby, a 7x7 with tiled floors. All it needed was a door and you could survive the night here.

Looking around for building materials, Trump counts around 500 steel and 500 wood, but by far the most abundant material in the vicinity would be silver. So the door is made from silver. As are the beds, the tables, the chairs and any future walls. Money may not be everything... but on the rimworld, it is.

Shoddy silver bed? Deconstruct! Remake! I refuse to sleep in anything less than a normal quality bed. I am too beautiful for a reason and I am smart enough to know that quality makes a difference.

shayame

#2
Lillica. As told by Donald.

I no longer remember how Lillica joined us. Lillica is 17 and female. Maybe that's the reason why I accepted. Lillica is pleasant to talk to and knows a thing or two about medicine. She constantly says no to my romantic advances, but I'm sure she'll come around one day. Who else is there? AmIright?

Lillica seems to know where the town is that I was trying to crash into but spending every day with Lillica has changed my mind. It's not so bad out here, starting a new colony. I can tell she thinks I'm beautiful and smart. The beauty of me is that I'm very rich. She accepts I'm boss and does what I say. I could learn to like life out here. We sleep in separate beds but within arms reach – for warmth. We sleep next to the electric stove, which is next to the butcher table which is next to the steel table and steel chairs. It's a little cramped, but it saves on heaters.

We have more silver than we know what to do with. Lillica suggests that she heads into town and see what she can buy. I'm not sure how comfortable I am letting a young lady like her hike into town on her own, but it's really cold here and we need warmer clothing. We could do with better weapons as well if the tales of raiders that Lillica tells me hold any truth. We could probably do with more food and essentials as well. The food will run out soon and we are a long way from being self-sufficient.

Lillica convinces me that the trip to town will take 4 hours, tops. She packs her bags, with a day's worth of food and as much silver as she can carry.

She leaves in the morning but fails to return by nightfall. I worry for her... and for myself. I spend a lonely night alone, pondering how many more lonely nights there will be for me.

shayame

Lillica's first (of many) shopping trips

Lillica, age 17. Notable skills social 6. Medicine 3 (burning passion / double flame).

It was cold. I had a t-shirt and pants and had to move quickly in order to keep my heat up. I got lost and the trip took longer – much longer – than I had anticipated. By the time I arrived, my fingers were blue, my ears were numb and my toes... I didn't even want to look at my toes.

The citizens have called their town "Politician's Municipality." Donald may like it here; I think he said he was a politician, or something like that. He also said he owned businesses. Plural. But out here on the rim, he's a nobody, just like everybody else. He may fit into this town though if he's a people person. But large towns are not for me.

They welcome me with a hot drink and the usual social chit chat. I don't enjoy it, but I have a job to do and so I trade the usual greetings before talking trading the goods.

I prioritise food and warmth, followed by security.

I walk away with 2 muffalos, hundreds of slices of raw meat, rice, potatoes, some meals, 2 assault rifles, a steel mace, a few parkas for the winter, all their components and a wooden grand sculpture of Fernand I just couldn't take my eyes off. Fernand is a celebrity where I came from. I think his gorgeous physique in our kitchen will really brighten things up. It'll brighten up my mood, that's for sure, heh heh.

shayame

Buddha. As told by Donald.



Caption: This is Buddha 2 years down the line. He started with cooking 6, artistic 11 and shooting 13 I think. He's my favourite pawn because of his optimist and steadfast traits – very useful traits in a cold place with no food in my opinion.

I no longer remember how Buddha joined us. I could ask him but then he'll think I'm dumb or something. I'm not stupid, you know. I'm 71 years old, I'm smart, I know things. But sometimes when you know a lot of things you just forget some things. Doesn't make you not smart.

Buddha's a young space marine. We've all forgotten his real name. He's Buddha to us. He always sees the positive side of life and takes insults with a smile to his face. He's a dumbass though – say shoot and he'll shoot, say haul and he'll haul – no questions asked. He spends all day cooking and hauling. It's meditative for him or something. We're all here freezing our asses off and complaining of the thread count in our clothing and he's humming a tune and grateful for the dead man's vest he's wearing that saved his life allegedly.

One day, we're sick of living in cramped quarters. I think there's 5 of us by now or something and we're all still packed in the one massive room that houses a kitchen, a dining room and a communal bedroom all in the original 7x7 room. The snoring is driving me mad. So we vote to all get separate rooms. As leader, I get the first separate bedroom. I also install the grand statue of Fernand in there to celebrate. Remember the statue that Lillica got from that town? It's BEAUTIFUL. The man there reminds me of my younger self. His pose shows confidence and power. His physique is magnificent. I can see why Lillica likes it – he looks just like me.



When we started building rooms, we agreed that we'd all get a private room each. But then we run out of space or energy to dig more rooms so Buddha here volunteers to keep sleeping in the kitchen-diningroom-bedroom. Says it's closer to the stove so he can keep cooking right up till bedtime – efficiency or something. Fine by me. It's his call. If he wants to be disturbed in the middle of the night as 5 people go take a piss outside or wake for an early breakfast, that's his business. Less digging for me.

Buddha is a champion. Nothing gets him down. Dead bodies? Oh Buuu-dhaaa, where aRRRRRRRe you? Tough as nails but dumb as a doorknob. The world is made up of Buddhas but they need a leader, you understand? That's where I come in. A leader.

shayame

Buddha

I miss birds. Back on my homeworld, birds would sing and you'd know it was morning. This place ain't so bad but it could do with more birds. I've got the living room all to myself now – smells like breakfast all day and makes it easy for me to cook. I love cooking for people.

There ain't much ingredients to work with. Alpaca meat, bought by Lillica that time. Cat meat, also bought by Lillica. Wolf meat. You get the idea. If we're lucky, Donald lets me use some potatoes or rice in our diet, but he usually points to the meat and says use that first since it will go off. Makes sense. He's a good leader. Firm, but sensible. And he's smart. He knows what he's doing.

I spend my day cooking mainly. Sometimes I milk the muffalos. As an ex-marine, if they need stuff moved, I move it too. Donald tried to show me how to grow some rice but that didn't work out so good. I tried to build a chair but it came out wobbly so Donald got me to take it apart again. Not sure what happened there – I got 60 silver and stuck them together to make a chair then when I took it apart there was only 40 or so left. Donald gave me a look like he thought I pocketed 20 silver or something but really, I think I was just as confused as him.

Lillica looked nice today. She'd just washed her hair and it was hanging out drying around her shoulders and it gleamed in the living room light as she ate a dinner with a potato I snuck in just for her. She gave me a smile and it's a smile I'll remember forever.

shayame

The Wall. As told by Donald.

I built a wall. All around our base. We didn't have time to make it out of slate. Those raiders are greedy and they know about the money by now. So we had to build it fast. So I built my wall out of silver.

It was the greatest wall ever built. The greatest. I mean, China had a wall but it wasn't like this. This wall cost 15 000 silver and was 100% silver. I placed doors here and there so we could get in and out. We did it real good. Top notch quality.

I left an entrance at the north, riddled with invisible traps. People are dumb. I tell you and I tell you right now. People. Are. Dumb. I mean, who goes to the trouble of making this huge wall only to leave a tiny hole for you to walk in to? It's trapped! Of course it's trapped. But I tell you, people are dumb. And the raiders are the dumbest of all. Time and time again, they keep walking into the trap. There are so many deadfall traps there they barely even get past it all. Silver deadfall traps, mind you. And if they do... if they do get past the traps, we shoot them dead.

shayame

Lillica

I really enjoy shopping. It's just cold air with me and my muffalos trudging off to the nearest town. The first trip was the hardest but I've since got a nice thick alpaca parka that keeps me warm. Unfortunately, summer is ending and the colder weather will make it harder.

I don't remember whose idea it was but somebody suggested building a comms station to trade with passing orbital ships and to communicate by radio with nearby settlements. It's proved to be a life-saver. Literally.

We're swimming in cash here. Donald keeps complaining it's not enough, but it's more cash than I ever thought I'd see in a lifetime. I mean, we got so much of this stuff we're building walls out of it. I mean WALLS. Of Silver. We're rich. I never thought I'd be this rich. We can afford anything. There's even a megascreen television I bought on my last trip that's just sitting in storage because we don't have room to set it up. We don't actually need to work another day in our lives. We just need a comms station to spend our cash. No idea why Donald didn't get us to build one earlier.

So on the first day we get the comms station working, Donald gets me to call out to anybody nearby and then starts sending them gifts of silver! He says he wants to entice them to begin trade with us but he's just handing out thousands of free silver. Do they want to come to trade with us? You bet they do. They're practically drooling to come trade with us. With that, he shuts off the comms station and smiles. Says our supply problems are done.

He's right. The traders come and they keep coming. When they stop coming, he gets me to call them again and with some more bribes they come again. He's a charmer, he is. Says they're coming for my sweet voice but we both know that it's his money that's drawing them in. We buy food, parkas, cloth, weapons, steel, components and other necessities. But then we notice we're getting low on silver. Well, we're not poor, we still have tens of thousands, but we start having to budget – no more freebies. The trade caravans slow down until eventually, we find we can no longer afford to buy luxuries, and later we can't even afford food. But that's later. We really did stretch out the last of our money for essentials like food.

We stopped making walls of silver that day. We didn't take down any walls though. Donald's bedroom walls were made of silver. I think that's the real reason why we didn't pass the rule to take down the walls. This man does like his silver. Someone asked him how come he was the only one to get bedroom walls of silver whilst the rest of us got bedroom slate walls. In Donald's defense, we did agree to build his room first and we built everything out of silver at that time. By the time we built the other rooms, we had realised we were starting to get short on silver and so we started mining slate instead.

So I defend him sometimes and there's a lot to admire of our leader. But the more I see of Donald, the more I don't like. I mean, he saved my life. I'm going to be forever grateful for that and if a smile of mine can make his day I'm happy to give it. But he took my statue for his bedroom. I mean, that was my statue. I carried that back home all the way in the freezing cold. Fernand means something to me. I always thought I was going to marry Fernand one day. I mean, those were just teenage dreams but still, he didn't have to take my statue.

I'm ashamed to say it, but I cried the day he took Fernand into his room. I mean, it's a stupid statue. But it's my statue. Buddha held me as I cried that day. I don't think he gets it but he said some nice words. Pointed out that we owed Donald our lives and that if we could help prevent Donald from getting moody we should – the least we could do for the man, I guess. And it's his money and all. Said he'd carve me another some day. Buddha really does have a talent for art. He made me this snowman last week and I could tell he was trying to make it look like me. Even got the female anatomy right but he tried to make it all modest and stuff under the snowman parka. It was cute.

shayame

Running a colony with money. As told by Donald.

I loved my previous life. I had so many things going. I like to work, but this is actually more work. I somehow thought it would be easier. I mean, running a colony is hard work. I mean, I knew it would be hard but this is hard. I like to work, but this is actually more work.

Money makes life easier. Lots of people out there will tell you life is not about money. But out here on the Rim, let me tell you. Money is survival. Where would you get all your parkas from if not money? You'd have to make it yourself. Where would you get all the cloth and fur from? You'd have to either kill an awful lot of animals for it – and there are no animals here – or grow it yourself, which involves a massive investment in cotton farming. Money is the shortcut to surviving here on the Rim.

Let me ask you another question. Where would you get your weapons from? Everyone and everything out here on the icesheet Rim is tough as nails. You have to be tough to survive. So if all your enemies have guns, and you don't have a gun, what do you think's going to happen? Again, money is the answer. You buy your guns.

And what if someone gets depressed? I mean, life out here isn't a theme park ride. I see my people working hard and we live, but we're not happy. Again, the answer is money. You buy some beer from a trader and lock it up. When someone looks a little down, you drape your arm around their shoulder and you say, "Son. You look like you could use a beer." Then you give 'em the keys and ask 'em to help themselves to a bottle. It might seem like a waste of resources to you, but trust me, it's good. Economically good, I mean. If he or she goes and gets depressed, because you have to be politically correct these days, if he or she goes and gets depressed, then he or she loses out on productivity and then he or she becomes a liability to the colony – all eating and no work, you know?

This political correctness is killing me. It's killing me. You can't talk like this and sound natural. So you know what? I'm just going to say him when I think him and she when I'm thinking of a she. It's simple. He is a he and she is a her. Agreed?

A bunch of huskies appeared one day. No idea where they came from. Probably got separated from their masters who are still out there somewhere in the cold. But the huskies made it to our base one morning. Now, Buddha looks at those huskies and gets all teary and wants to make pets out of all of them. Sure he can milk a muffalo but he doesn't know the first thing about animals. Does he know how much a husky eats? No. Neither do I. Do I want to find out? No. And neither should he.

On the other hand, you get someone like Lillica who wonders how much she can sell the huskies for or how much meat is on a husky. Now that's more like it but it's still not the big picture. I see the huskies and I see the big picture. I'll tell you why?

They're target practice. Yes. Target practice. Then medicine practice. Then target practice and medicine practice again until they become food. You think I'm cruel. But you're not living on an icesheet in a god-forsaken Rimworld. Out here, you learn to survive or you die. Simple as that.

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Author's note: Lillica with a burning passion (double flame) for medicine, started with a skill of 3. Practiced her skills on 5 huskies and several arctic wolves over several seasons and improved to a skill of 8. Donald eventually got too lazy to walk back and forth from the garden to the hospital just to fire a few shots at the huskies. He made Lillica practice her mace on the huskies as soon as she finished healing them, then made her patch them up again immediately after. Hitting the huskies then patching them up, hitting them and patching them up again, over and over and them eating their remains when they finally died. May God forgive me for what I made Lillica do to those huskies. I know Lillica didn't enjoy it, and neither did I.
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Fluffy (l2032)

These are awesome! First time in a long time I've read something about Trump that made me smile instead of frown...

shayame

Thanks Fluffy. I actually use one of your mods - stack merger. There was a funny story I was debating writing about regarding stack merger, Trump and stockpiles of silver. He did walk around for hours rearranging the silver in his stockpile. From my perspective, he looked a little too obsessive. I didn't end up writing it since not everyone would know what stack merger was.

Thanks for your mod and the feedback.

I'm going to try to keep these little stories coming once every few days. I'm going to experiment with new styles. To anybody reading this, please let me know what works and what doesn't.

shayame

Hunger. As told by Buddha.

I've never seen the horrors of war, though I've trained for it. Never had to kill anyone until I joined up with here. I killed my first man here. I tell myself it was me or him and I have friends to protect. But did we really have to eat him?

It started before we got the comms stations up and running. We had hundreds of slabs of meat we just kept on the ice outside. They were frozen most of the time. Certainly, whenever we checked they were frozen. What we didn't realise was that during the day, for a short period, they thawed and after a whole summer, they had rotted. There was literally tens of thousands of silver worth of meat we had traded for. All rotten.

Donald went mad. He blamed me, he blamed Lillica, he blamed everyone. We were all hungry. We'd look at our remaining food, then distract ourselves with other jobs until our hunger could stand no more then we'd pounce on a meal and gobble it up so fast and look at the next meal, fighting our basic urges to just open it and eat more. We'd sent Lillica to town to buy more food but it was snowing hard and she was late coming back. We were praying every hour for her to return.

When she did come back, she looked haggard. It was clear she hadn't had much food either. Said the food the town had was meagre and she had eaten most of it on the way back. She brought back with her only one meal for her efforts and you could tell it was an effort for her not to have eaten it herself.

We put the meal on the shelf with the plan to divide it amongst the five of us at dinner but it was gone by dinner time. Nobody knew what happened to it. Obviously one of us had eaten it but nobody was owning up. Donald went berserk. He kicked the door and stormed out. We didn't see him for a few days. Olga and Chris were the other two who were with us by then and they went for a walk. Lillica's face could have been made from stone. She'd just risked life and limb to get this meal and someone had gone and eaten it for themselves. I couldn't imagine what she was going through.

I held her in my arms and took her to sit in a corridor. Sitting in the kitchen just made us too hungry. She smelled dirty, of sweat and unwashed muffalo. You could feel her bones beneath her parka and she was skinnier than when I had first joined. She asked me who I thought took the meal. I shrugged. "One of the other three," I replied, "Not you."

Lillica then asked me, "How do you know I didn't take it?"

I laughed. I said that of the five of us, she is the only one who couldn't have taken it. Told her that not only was she the sweetest thing on this Rimworld, but that if she wanted to have the meal to herself, she could have eaten it before returning home and none of us would have known, yet here she is, sitting here, hungry, just like the rest of us.

She nodded, then quietly produced a potato from her pocket. She whispered something but I didn't hear her. The blood in my ears pounded with a hunger I never knew I could possess. I saw the potato with a keener vision than I had ever seen any other potato. To this day, I remember exactly what that potato looked like. It was brown with a small patch of skin peeled away on the side. The eyes of the potato stared unblinking at me, appraising me in as much depth as I was appraising it. It's lumpy-shaped irregularity was an ugly disguise for the mouth-watering starch it hid inside its brown skin. I had never seen anything so beautiful. My stomach made an involuntary growl and my vision blurred slightly as I reached to touch it, my mind playing tricks on me making me fear that it was an optical illusion. But it was real. The skin was smooth and I savoured every bump of its beady eyes as my fingers ran across it like a lost lover.

From far away I hear Lillica's voice, "I didn't steal the meal. This potato is my potato." Her voice was soft. Her story held so much emotion I didn't know how to comfort her. She went on to tell me how she tripped and almost lost her life on the way back from town. She only had a small bag of potatoes from town but she dropped them all as she scrambled to regain her balance under the snow that suddenly gave way beneath her. The terrain was treacherous and the potatoes bounced all the way to the bottom of a ravine. One potato was stuck on the ledge only half way down the ravine. Lillica risked her life to rescue that potato but was unable to get the rest. She didn't want to tell the group because she felt ashamed of having lost the sack of potatoes. She was hungry and tired and wasn't concentrating so she didn't realise how close to the edge she was. She blames herself. But this potato meant something to her.

She told me she loved me and that she wanted to share the potato with me. If I hadn't been able to admit to myself that I loved her before, I certainly felt like I loved her then. Or maybe I was just in love with the potato. I proposed to her on the spot. She said yes. We should have spent more time talking about love but to tell the truth, we were both just thinking about potato. We were too afraid to cook it so we halved it and ate it raw, right there in the corridoor.

Raw potato had never tasted so delicious, or so shameful. We never told the others about it.

shayame

Cannibalism. As told by Lillica.

I love Buddha and I can tell he loves me too. The way he cooks for me and sometimes sneaks an extra potato for me. I can tell he makes my meals pretty too. It's funny, when food becomes a scarcity, something in the human psychology makes everything in life revolve around food. I remember hearing someone tell me about a study they did once where people in a war situation had undergone starvation for two years. Upon the end of the war, after conditions improved, many of them went into food-related industries like chefs or waitressing. Their period of starvation seemed to have altered their psychology and affected their very lives in a way that even they didn't notice.

I wonder if that's why I feel I love Buddha. Because he's the chef.

It makes me cheap to think that I'm like that. Buddha is a nice man, and the only one around here who's my age. And even if he wasn't the only one, he'd probably still make me smile. I really admire how he just holds up even in the face of adversity. He knows he is the backbone of this group. Donald may be the leader but when the going gets tough, Buddha always volunteers for the hard jobs.

He proposed to me that day and I said yes. He's never brought it up again and I don't know why. I tell myself that it's because life on the Rim is so hard and full of all its busy moments that we just never get time together alone. Just a quick hello here or there, playing horseshoes together sometimes and that's it. But he never talks about the proposal and I don't know why. His smile does it for me though. I like it when he cooks and makes a heart-shaped potato just for me.

Not that we have any food at the moment.

Chris first brought it up. Ever since Donald started on the garden, not letting any of us touch it, Chris has taken over building things. Chris is a practical, no nonsense mechanic whom we bought from a slaver and he's grateful that he's no longer treated as a slave, though he sometimes jokes that he works twice as hard since he's joined us. He appreciates what he's got though. Sometimes as I walk past his room I see him stroking his silver bed, like he can't believe he's sleeping on silver.

Chris first brought up cannibalism.

We'd just fought off 3 raiders and their bodies were still frozen out there. We hadn't had time to bury them, yet and part of me wonders if Donald de-prioritised burial in case it came to this. Donald has a contingency plan for everything. Comes from being leader, I suppose. So when we found ourselves starving, Chris suggested a plan B, which Donald claims was his idea first but he didn't voice it first. I like to think that I put up a bit more resistance than most, but in reality, I think it was a unanimous decision. When you're starving and hungry, any meat is meat. Olga in fact ate the meat raw. She was puking afterwards and I'm sure she regretted it, but it just goes to show that when you're starving, you're starving.

Buddha as usual, volunteered for the ugly job. He stripped the dead, carried it to the butcher's table and cut it up for us. The rest of us busied ourselves elsewhere but I doubt any of us were concentrating on what we were doing. We made Buddha butcher the human, then cut the meat into strips, then we forced my Buddha to cook that meat into a meal that the rest of us could imagine was something other than human.

We broke him. We broke my Buddha and it's all my fault. He still wakes up in the night screaming and sobbing. Sometimes he apologises to nobody, or to everybody. I hold him in my arms and tell him he did it for us, for our survival and that he should be proud but it only seems to make him worse. He tells me that the corpse's eyes still stare at him in his dreams, accusing him of murder, accusing him of butchering him up like an animal. He says the smell of cooked human flesh is seared into his nostrils forever and that God will never let him into heaven.

Nothing I say makes him feel better. He's my Buddha and I love him. In my opinion, he saved our lives and he's never forgiven himself since. My Buddha. My rock and pillar. I hope one day you can forgive yourself.

Maybe one day you will propose to me again without food as an incentive and mean it.

shayame

Self-sufficient food source. As told by Donald.

When the meat all rotted away I knew we had a problem. A big one. Nobody else saw it but I did. Money couldn't keep buying food. Soon, everybody was going to run out of food. Now, when that happens, do you want to be the person holding the money or holding the food?

Let me tell you. You wanna be the one holding the food.

At the same time that Buddha was doing his bit in cutting up corpses, I was doing the hard work finding a place to grow food. It's the only way to be self-sufficient in food. And we needed food. Bad. We needed food bad.

It's not easy on an ice sheet, you know? You have to dig and dig until you find dirt. More often, you find ice instead and then you've just wasted your time. You then have the problem of sunlight. Yeah. The sun's not bright enough to grow plants here, so I've got this little gizmo here called a sunlamp. Two problems with the sunlamp. One, it needs a heck of a lot of power to run and two, it's only bright enough for a small patch of crops. So you have to find a patch of dirt somewhere that's large enough to fit within your sunlamp and then you also have to build yourself some power source. You also need the temperature to be warmer than what it is outside so you need a lot of heaters. And a reliable power source for them so the plants don't accidentally freeze. If they freeze, that's all your good work gone Kablooie. You understand? Kablooie, right out the window.

Here's what it will look like when it's finished.




It's hard work. First you've got to mine the steel. Then build the power stations. You can't connect it to the colony's existing power lines because if a short circuit happens, trust me, you'll wish you had different sources of power for your plants. After mining steel and using that to build the power stations and batteries, you'll need to lay the cable to the garden patch, wall up the garden patch, double insulate it, install heaters and a sunlamp, then grow. You gotta position the sunlamp so you get as many plants growing as possible. I managed to squeeze an 80% efficiency out of that. 80% efficiency. That's top notch. I then squeezed even more efficiency by installing hydroponics. It's good work. Real good work. I can see it in the others' eyes. They know good work when they see it.

Finally, you plant the crops. It's gonna be rice. They grow faster than potatoes or corn or strawberries or near anything else. And we need food fast.

The guys I'm with are swell but none of us have ever mined a rock in our lives or planted a seed ever. Still, I know how it's meant to be done and I go and do the hard work. It's not hard. You get a pick and you hit the steel. You get a shovel and you dig. I can't believe I'm teaching them how to do this.

Finally it's done. We have food. They look at me and I can tell they're grateful. I've saved their bacon. All we have to do is wait for the rice to grow, then I'm going to have to show them how to harvest it.

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Narrator's note: Donald had a mining skill of 4 but was still the best at mining out of all 5 pawns. He also had a growing skill of 3 and was also the best at growing. I found it frustrating but quite funny that Donald got to do all the hard labour.
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shayame

Bionics. As told by Lillica.

Donald is our best doctor, but he got shot up in his arm real bad. He's moody all the time. Buddha tells me that intellectuals like Donald always get depressed and now that Donald can't use his hands properly, he's even worse.

We have a bionic arm I bought early on and it's just sitting there. I've told him I can try to fix it on him but he keeps looking at me like I'm some little girl and that I can't do it. I mean, he's probably right. I have no idea how to fit it on but it comes with like instructions, doesn't it? They make these things user friendly these days and the unit even talks you through the procedure.

But then, Donald's a thinker and it's his arm, so I guess he just wants to be cautious.

One day, he snaps. Says he just can't take the pain anymore and wants to die. He does this often so we just let him go wander outside for a while, usually a day or two and then we go find him, drag him back to hospital and I feed him. He often insists that he only wants me to feed him when he's like this. The others give us dirty looks but I ignore them. He's like a father to me - a father to our whole colony even.

After one such session he asks me what I know about wake-up. It's a drug I know. Some people are addicted to it. Me? I've sworn off drugs. I don't touch the stuff. He tells me that some doctors take this before they do their surgeries. Says it helps them with their reaction time and perception. He wants me to fix his arm – to give him a bionic arm – but only after I've taken some wake-up.

I don't know how I feel about this. I mean, I was in a coma most of my childhood and I've had all sorts of drugs pump through my body. I don't want any more. But this is a man I love like my father. He's literally saved my life more than once over the last few months. His arm is banged up because he was shooting to cover me. We're a team and I really want to help him out.

I've had a lot of practice with medicine. I recall all the grueling hours that Donald insisted I spend patching up those huskies. Donald had always been our doctor until his arm started hurting. He made me practice on huskies saying that one day I would be a better doctor than him because of his arm. He always said the only reason I'd be this colony's doctor would be because of his arm, not because I would ever be better than him because of my skill in medicine, or that he might be incapacitated in a fight, but because of his arm. But I wonder now if he was so insistent on the huskies training just for this moment – this moment of surgery for his bionic arm.

In the end, I do it. I owe Donald my life, and if we're to survive on this Rimworld, we need to do it as a team. We wait for a passing trader to come and we buy one unit of wake up. The kick hits me like nothing I've ever known before and pow-wow I install his bionic arm. I remember feeling so good I wanted to do his leg too.

With his bionic arm doing wheelies in the air, he is clearly the better doctor, but only for a few days and then BANG! Another raid another injury on his other arm and I'm the better doctor again. We'll talk more about this raid in the next chapter. It's a long story and involves a new guy, Owl. But if we fast forward a bit, Donald gets grumpy with the pain in his other arm. He want both arms bionic since the first was so good. We wait for another trader. A few months later, we find a suitable bionic for Donald. We had no wake-up this time but I aced the operation anyway. Donald now has two bionic arms. And he's in a good mood these days.