Story Time With The Hat!!

[The_Hat]

I am The Hat, and I play Rimworld. Rather than bore you to tears with the obligatory, "YAHYAHRIMWORLD IS DA BEST GAME EVAAAAA!!!!" rant, I will get straight to the point with my rather cool playthrough. I am currently starting my fourth year of squishing as many colonists as I can in an impenetrable mountain fortress. The storyteller is Randy Random. I start out with the peaceful setting (don't laugh), as the main point is to actually build a base, and for me, nothing ever seems to get done when the difficulty is set any higher. Although at the phase of the story I am currently at I have it set to base builder.

Let's begin:

First Season: Aprimay 5500

We will begin with three colonists. Norda Sullivan is a 36 year old female skilled in shooting, medicine and plants. Her traits are psychopath, sanguine, and hates dumb labor, which is part of a mod I'm using.

Brian "Khan" Furr, despite the name, is a woman. She's good with animals and intellectual, despite her age of 19, because one of her traits is "quantum aberration." Her other traits are careful shooter and creepy breathing. Her continuous wheezing will undoubtedly put off even the friendliest of colonists.

Elida Watts, an iron-willed undergrounder, she is good in shooting, construction and mining. Of the three, Elida will be the most crucial to the early growth of our colony.

So we land on a peculiar red planet. Our pet is this useless Iguana that I'd butcher straight out for food if it wouldn't upset Khan. Sullivan is tasked with making a garden. In her spare time, she cooks animals we kill on an open campfire. Between bouts of vomiting, Elida builds a mine for easy steel and then starts digging into the mountain. This will be our home. Because there are no other significant tasks, Khan busies herself by hauling to a short term stockpile zone.

Some early hijinks ensue when a group of hungry ferralisks (these six-legged spider things) take an interest in our packaged survival meals. We kill three of them. Elida is bitten, but Sullivan has access to good medicine. The toxic buildup from the creature's venom poses a concern, but she's expected to recover.

We spend the first few nights lying in sleeping bags near the fire. I prioritize the meals Sullivan is making over the packaged meals because the former spoils first. It turns out that no one likes bug meat. Also, Sullivan's cooking skill is a piddly 3.

The camp is attacked by a piddly squirrel. Khan easily stabs it to death. The only other interesting development of note is a chunk of obsidian that fell from the sky and landed on a poor turtle.

More to come.

 

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[The_Hat]

Second Season: Jugust 5500

Our first mental break occurred early, as a low psychic drone prompted Sullivan to resort to a sad wander while she was working in the garden. We collected our very first rice harvest and finished digging out our three colonist rooms, one of which will double as storage in the short term while we try to find room to dig a storage basin amidst all the other building assignments.

Before the end of the season, we would finish digging out a small kitchen and a larger freezer. The freezer, incidentally, is huge and may even prove excessive for our current needs, but it was designed because Rimworld food requirements can change sharply as colonist populations explode, and because we were digging through shale, which is almost as soft as clay and thus quick and easy to mine.

Later in the month, a spacer named Mushinto crashed in our backyard, and I sent someone out to capture him for recruitment purposes. He was housed in one of the colonist rooms; Khan would have to sleep in a sleeping spot in the hall until we could dig for her another room.

On the 13th of the month, we had three traders visit from the Nation of Abeve and promptly get into a brawl at the entrance of our as-of-yet unfunctional freezer. Green smashed Brio in the chops with her bow out of rage from not having slept in a guest bed the night before. Their ally, Loumaxo, immediately got in on the action and brought her own bow down across Brio's shoulderblades. The two of them proceeded to curb stomp poor Brio, and then Green flattened Loumaxo as well before angrily stomping off the map.

It was noticed that Loumaxo was wearing a parka in spite of the warm weather. We stripped her of her clothes (also helping ourselves to Brio's 40 silver) and left the two of them lying in a puddle of their blood, vomit and excrement while we continued to dig into the mountain. At length, we finished digging a fourth room for Khan. Brio tried to steal the new bed for himself before Khan claimed it. But we are generous colonists, and Brio was allowed to take Khan's former sleeping spot while he shabbily patched up his own injuries.

Elida stitched up some decent parkas at our new tailor bench, and then concentrated her efforts on establishing a power grid for our freezer. Then late on the 15th, Brio, driven by a savage hunger, snapped and tried to strangle Khan in her bed. Khan defended herself, stabbing him in the hand with her knife. That took all the fight out of poor Brio, and he collapsed at the entrance to her room.

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[The_Hat]

Third Season: Septober 5500

Brio, still suffering from the savage beatdown he received from his friends a day or two prior, and immobilized from having been stabbed through the hand by Khan, succumbed to starvation at the beginning of the month. No sooner had we thrown his body outside then another group of traders visited. Their leader, Boss, doled out a beating to one of his own, Lan, leaving him unconscious at our doorstep.

With our freezer effectively operational, Elida built an oven and butcher table adjacent to the mess. Then it happened. A ferralisk ate Ingrid, our iguana. Elida, Sullivan and Khan rushed to defend, but it was far too late to save the lizard. Khan was grieving, but I still had her haul her dead pet to the freezer to be made into a meal.

There was a transport pod crash on the 4th. We tried to subdue the occupant, but Chief resisted us and tried to run before Sullivan shot him in the back. Meanwhile, we started digging a sick bay and research room, allowing Khan to finally begin researching. I believe her first project was solar generators, which we desperately needed to remain power-viable, as our two wind turbines had a frustrating tendency to not generate power due to the lack of day-to-day wind, no matter how many obstructions we destroyed.

There was a refugee chase event on the 5th. We welcomed McConnell, an abrasive, overweight and unclothed toady who is strong in cooking. He was chased by a single pursuer from the Grey Basin Treaty, Vasca. McConnell ran straight to the site where we had killed Chief and stripped him of his clothing. Our fatty chef got partially dressed, but Vasca caught him pantsless, and almost beat McConnell into submission with his club. McConnell escaped without sustaining injury, and we murdered Vasca right next to Chief.

Lacking a dug out room with a bed, McConnell spent the night in our developing sickbay. The next morning, Sullivan made our last plant harvest of the year. With Khan having finished researching solar generators, Elida built a handful next to the wind turbines. Khan was still unhappy about the death of her bonded animal (and having to haul Ingrid's still-warm corpse to our freezer). After failing for the umpteenth time to convince Mushinto to join us, she snapped and began hiding in her room. Luckily, Elida calmed Khan down by sharing a word about botched surgeries.

Mushinto agreed to join our growing colony on the 7th. Proving he was one with the cause, he immediately went about hauling a dead muffalo to the freezer, a task that kept him up most of the night. With our power grid still unstable, Elida dug out a room to store batteries, as our freezer tended to fizzle out every time the sun went down.

Gogomar, a visitor from a neighboring faction, fell prey to the no guest beds curse. He tried to take out his frustrations on a sleeping Khan, and had to be neutralized by Elida. We stole his valuables, and then took him to a hospital bed while his ally, Nomea, ran for his life. We let him go.

On the 9th, McConnell started throwing a tantrum due to the hideous state of his kitchen. He rampaged around camp, throwing objects and even zapping Khan with his stun gun when she tried to calm him down. Mushinto was forced to beat McConnell into submission. Sullivan had to rush out into the wilderness to find enough herbal medicine with which to treat our distressed colonist. That was when I noticed McConnell, in addition to having the "well fed" buff from having eaten yogurt, was afflicted with a chronic kidney condition. Also, Mushinto had straight out ripped one of the middle fingers from McConnell's left hand.

Construction of our batteries was completed on the 10th. A low psychic drone caused Mushinto to start wandering in a psychotic state (he was calmed down by Khan). And a grizzly bear self-tamed. Khan would eventually bond with the animal, naming her White.

On the 13th, McConnell tried to woo Khan by complimenting her clothes. Khan, understandably still peeved over having been zapped by a taser-wielding McConnell several days earlier, ignored him.

We found another pet in a large drop pod. A blossom sheep has joined the colony. Also on the 13th, we rescued a spacer named Alo, who would have a colorful last few days enjoying our hospitality. Alo was a staggeringly ugly homosexual, but he was also strong in medicine and animals, and I hoped to recruit him. 

We barely saved Alo. Then, Alo developed a torso infection, which Sullivan couldn't immediately treat because she was out hunting this awful inferno beetle that was threatening the camp with its fire bombs. The beetle singed Sullivan with its second firebomb, while Sullivan's gun was having limited effect on its hard carapace. Luckily, Elida saved the day by killing the bug, freeing up Sullivan to tend to Alo.

Alo's infection became severe. We struggled to find enough healroot to treat it (I had neglected to assign a good healroot patch the prior spring), and in one instance, Alo shrugged off Sullivan's doctoring efforts to treat his illness himself. Of course, we had good medicine, which I refused to waste on a guy who might not even join us when he was recovered.

Alo's infection caught up with his immunity at 85%. Honestly, the poor guy seemed doomed. Had the infection been in his arm or leg, I would have merely amputated, but it was in his torso. It was a matter of letting the fates decide. At about 93%, the infection had overtaken the immunity. Hoping for a miracle, I had Sullivan scrounge up our last healroot for a final make or break treatment. It worked. Barely. Alo gained immunity with the infection at 97%.

Now it was time to recruit him.

More to come.

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[The_Hat]

Fourth Season: Decembary 5500

With Alo now fully recovered from his torso infection, it was now time to see if he was interested in joining the colony. But Alo chose not to. He merely wandered around in our decrepit sickbay until he collapsed of starvation. Alo died shortly after. To narrowly survive a pod crash and an infection, only to starve to death. What is this rimworld coming to?

But we had Dawn, a new colonist spawned from a refugee chase event. Dawn's most important strength was building, and we were in serious need of adequate constructors. Her pursuer was Lacey, who dug in to the rocks and got into a shooting standoff with Sullivan. Lacey was seriously wounded, but Sullivan couldn't get a good blast off without exposing herself to gunfire. Elida outflanked Lacey and shot her in the backside. Lacey was downed. Problem solved.

Dawn built her own bed in a new room that had only been partially dug out. Mushinto got sick with food poisoning, and McConnell continued with his semi-persistent flirting with Khan, who was still not interested. While cooking on the fifth, McConnell compared Khan to a magnificent fir tree. Khan was unimpressed. Smooth moves there, tiger.

There was a crashed spacer event on the 7th, but the lone occupant was only a teenager named Wes and teenagers are useless, so I let him go. During the evening of the 7th, we had another visitor go postal in the freezer, and all hell broke loose shortly after that.

Only hours after having compared McConnell to an outlaw, Moilanen snapped over having had no access to guest beds. She beat up another visitor named Mills, then got into a fight with Krand in the mess. Krand downed her, and then himself proceeded to have a mental break over his hideous environment. Krand was some kind of boss. Having already beat up Moilanen, he then proceeded to singlehandedly beat up most of his other faction members. The big kitchen brawl saw him down three more visitors, as Anita, Ana and Beryl were no match for his wrath. The other visitors fled, with Krand in hot pursuit. Our colonists watched the events unfold and then picked up close to 200 in silver. The survivors were housed in our sickbay, to be released for the extra faction respect once they had recovered from their injuries.

A rundown of the worst injuries is as follows: Mills, in her freezer battle with Moilanen, was savagely stabbed in the leg three times; Anita suffered a punctured lung from getting stabbed in the chest; Ana and Beryl were badly bruised but not seriously injured; Moilanen received stab wounds in an arm, hand and leg.

It was not the final visitor brawl of the year. On the 11th, we had three more visitors from Ithoum, John, Latch and Gecko. John was abrasive and also rivals with Latch, and would continuously insult him in addition to anyone else who got within earshot. A war of words shortly broke out between John and Latch in the kitchen, with John insulting Latch's value as a human before directly insulting his eyes. I focused on other things for a time, before suddenly being alerted that weirdness was happening by this bizarre noise that sounded like a screeching cat. John and Latch had continued their dispute outside, and I noticed Latch's head was spinning like a top. I initially dismissed this as a graphical glitch, but a closer look revealed that the screeching noise was coming from him. Also, Latch was projectile vomiting all over our garden. He resembled some bizarre puke fountain.

A look at Latch's mental state revealed that he was possessed. I couldn't believe my eyes, I had never seen this happen before. He was also matching John's insults in equal measure, comparing John's brother's nephew (yes, you read that right) to a panther, and calling John himself a barbarian. That was the final straw, and John beat the holy hell out of Latch right there in the snow. Still angered to no end at the personal slight, John went on a warpath and attacked a boomrat, which exploded. The explosion covered John's body with burns, and he collapsed in the snow.

We tried to rescue both of them, but had not enough herbal medicine. Finding more in the environment was not an option, as the region was blanketed with snow. Latch would pull through, but John died of an infection on the 14th.

More to come. 

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[The_Hat]

Fifth Season: Aprimay 5501

It was the anniversary of our arrival in this inhospitable clime, and love was in the air. Mushinto wooed Dawn by telling a story about computer technology. That shit turned Dawn on (no judgements!), making Mushinto and Dawn our first couple. A refugee chase event added Pacheco, an iron-willed, abrasive ascetic with advanced kidney disease to our ranks. His pursuer, one Karl, was intercepted by Sullivan and Elida before he could reach the base and got shot dead.

On the 3rd, Elida was injured by a maddened meadow ave, which is a large flightless bird that is supposedly harmless under most circumstances except under the circumstances of random brain-melting psychic wave scenarios.

A flabby naked lady named Harriet crashed on the 4th. Harriet was McConnell's mother. We chose to let her bleed out rather than save her because we didn't have a spare room for her to occupy (which is unfortunate because she was strong in construction and mining; I'm wondering what the hell I was thinking at the time?), so now McConnell hates us temporarily.

On the 5th, I could have sworn I witnessed a trader, one Crouir of the Nation of Abeve, steal a simple meal from our food larder. In retrospect, I may have been mistaken, but long story short, I sent Mushinto and Pacheco to rough old Crouir up a little, so we are now enemies with Abeve. Mushinto stabbed Crouir in the kidney, and left him to bleed out in our mess.

We received some friendly cows on the 7th, but we honestly have no use for cattle, so we slaughtered them.

It was Aprimay 8th, and Pacheco really wasn't fitting in well. He had taken a grave dislike to Elida, and was now slandering her whenever she was near. He would exploit his strategic post at the stonecutting table, insulting any and all who dared pass him as well. Tensions exploded on the 8th when Pacheco hurled invective about Elida's aunt's beliefs while working in the production room. They squared off, and Pacheco savagely bit Elida in the leg. Elida, though iron-willed, rapidly became depressed with the Pacheco situation and the pain of her injury and resorted to pigging out on food.

On a positive note, Mushinto proposed marriage to Dawn after less than a season as a couple on the 9th. The wedding is supposed to be sometime next season.

All in all, it was shaping out to be a fairly mundane month, as Elida and Dawn focused construction efforts on making some of the rooms more presentable. We started by smoothing the cave walls, a process that would take all year (especially as given how much of the shale walls were to be replaced with marble to make all of it match), but it would be highly worthwhile in the end.

On the 12th, we finally got around to opening the two large spacer capsules that had been sitting around the region for the prior season. In tandem, Elida, Sullivan, Khan, McConnell, Dawn and Pacheco went out to confront the ominous threat. The first capsule was only filled with "harmless" megascarabs (had they devoured the occupant?). The second contained two occupants. The first, Gardner, was seriously injured and unable to stand. The other was named Seikilos, and he had to be shot down. Sullivan sustained minor wounds in the exchange of gunfire.

On the 13th, Mushinto started to dig out a proper storage unit, as our main storage room was becoming bloated even after we moved all the steel to an outdoor stockpile. Another noteworthy building project was a marble wall extending around the exposed parts of camp that are unprotected by mountain. The end of the month saw Mushinto get to work on digging out a crypt adjacent to the mess, to afford colonists with the potential to stare at entombed bodies right after supper. It was a decision that would foreshadow events to come.

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[The_Hat]

Sixth Season: Jugust 5501

We kicked off the season with a chased refugee event, as Gustav, who is Sullivan's sister, was pursued by two soldiers of the Grey Basin Treaty. Our enemies were tribals, but we weren't taking them lightly; Elida, Sullivan, Khan, McConnell and Mushinto all rushed out to intercept. The conclusion was foregone, although one of the raiders did manage to get close enough to club Sullivan in the knees.

Gustav just so happened to be a cannibal, and under cover of darkness, she managed to sneak the two bodies in and butcher them for meals. Although everyone else was asleep, this did not go unnoticed by the other colonists...I guess human meat has a distinct natural odor? Anyway, the whole colony would be suffering for some time from the "we butchered humanlike" debuff.

A tamed bouldermit joined the colony on the 2nd, and although I've no idea what the hell I will do with a tame bouldermit, I decided to abide the creature for now.

On the 3rd of the season, Elida built a geothermal generator to bolster our power grid, while Gustav (our new best miner) dug out rooms to serve as prison cells.

It finally happened on the 4th. Pacheco, whose condition had worsened since developing an artery blockage the prior season, died of a heart attack. Even though White, our lovable bear, managed to haul him to a medical bed with remarkable efficiency. Sullivan treated him with the herbal medicine, rather than the good stuff, so that might have contributed. Pacheco was our first colonist death, and although hated by many for his abrasive personality, his loss imbued us all with a feeling of crushing hopelessness at our collective plight. We are out a talented crafter.

Pacheco would be interred in a wooden sarcophagus in our new funeral crypt, and it seemed only fair that Elida, as his most despised adversary, would get to be the one to bury him. It was a matter of grim irony that she would entitle the engraving on the top of the casket "No. 6VI4," and feature the art therein depicting the moment Pacheco slumped to the floor unconscious from coronary arrest. Which is precisely how everyone wants to remember the foul-mouthed torpedo.

At almost the exact moment of Pacheco's death, McConnell had a nervous breakdown over having to constantly work in a filthy and dark kitchen. As he was suffering from cabin fever as well, I decided to reassign him to hauling for the time being while Mushinto took care of the cooking in order to give McConnell some much needed sunshine.

On the 6th, we captured an injured spacer named Eva, who, after recovering from her injuries, joined up with us without much convincing. Also on the 6th, Mushinto and Dawn were married, and all of our colonists arrived to celebrate the festivities. But things took a much more sinister overtone when one of our visitors, the appropriately named Hannibal, had a mental break and began stalking the sleeping colonists in their rooms. He spent most of the night eerily standing over the newlyweds' bed, yet did not attack them. In the morning, Dawn managed to sneak out to work without alerting the still-crazed Hannibal, before Mushinto decided enough was enough and stabbed the guy in the leg in self-defense. We rescued Hannibal, treated his wounds, and discovered him to be a go juice addict.

On the 7th, Hannibal's ally, Lumi went nuts from the lack of hotel beds curse and attempted to shoot Khan and Dawn in the back as they fled down a hallway. That was when Mushinto jumped into action, stabbing Lumi in the back to protect his wife, and then Khan recovered her nerve and shocked Lumi with a charge from her stun gun.

On the 8th, we harvested our first payload of cotton. McConnell made Eva's recruitment official, and Elida, Dawn and Eva got started on building an impenetrable line of defenses in the lone opening into our encampment, plus a second line of turrets just in case the first was defeated. We added more cooling units to our freezer in order to cope with a heatwave, and finally got started on a recreation room with a poker table and a pool table adjacent to production. On the morning of the 13th, Mushinto experienced a trade deal inspiration while fracking his wife.

Elida built for Khan a multi-analyzer to assist her research on the 14th, and in our biggest boon of the month, a drop pod dropped for us a decent quality triple rocket launcher. The base defenses were completed on the 15th (with a geothermal generator to power them), and constructors also finished building our defensive wall. Shit was about to get real.

The season ended with another refugee chase event. Pablo had a highly volatile and uneven temperament, but he was a skilled builder, and we needed someone to help expand our storage depo, as I realized that I had accidentally built the thing in the shape of a giant dick. This seemed a good moment to test our new defenses, but the individual chasing him was from Orion Installation and was fitted with an Orion exoskeleton.

Pearl had no problem catching up to Pablo―who is quite aged and thus slow afoot, as if it would've mattered―yet upon reaching him, she actually bypassed him altogether, seemingly to examine the pile of objects strewn about the ground in last season's crashed spacer event. Pablo, for his part, went for a gun that was lying there, and then Pearl went ape. She shot poor Pablo in the face, damaging one of his eyes and downing him. Leaving Pablo for dead, Pearl took what she could carry from the pile and fled.

We rescued Pablo, but it was questionable as to why we had even bothered. Harboring an eye injury, the guy was now useless to us as a builder, and his volatility and psychic hypersensitivity will undoubtedly lead to drama we don't really need. Also, the guy is 54 years old and possesses a congenital heart defect, so he is naturally slower at getting about. I decided to just assign Pablo to mining and to hope for the best. 

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[The_Hat]

Seventh Season: Septober 5501

Gustav threw a party that ended prematurely because everyone had to run outside to stop a fire caused when Sullivan hunted a boomrat a little bit close to the garden. On the 2nd, Eva tried to romance Mushinto by implying good things about her own melee fighting skill, but Mushinto wasn't interested. Then, McConnell stepped inside and immediately went berserk because of the darkness. He would fixate his anger on Sullivan, following her around and periodically insulting her. He started by running to the mess and loudly condemning her emotional stability in front of everyone, and then followed her down the hall, continuing the harassment by comparing her brother to a crab.

On the 3rd, shady, volatile and half useless Pablo had his first mental break, freaking out while assisting Gustav in digging out the storage area. Wanda became our latest visiting trader to have a mental break in the freezer, while Pablo was prompt in opening Pacheco's casket and dragging his corpse on top of the kitchen table (fortunately, there was no one in the kitchen at the time). Mushinto replaced Pacheco's bones in their resting place.

While this was going on, McConnell started working in the kitchen, but would flee in panic whenever he saw Wanda, who finally got beat up by her ally Shield. Shield had one of his eyes crushed in the fight when Wanda jammed it with the butt end of her machine pistol. As the toxic behavior continued, Dawn made a comment on Gustav's facial hair, embarrassing her in front of everyone.

As everyone went to sleep on the morning of the 4th, visitor Peter went berserk over exhaustion, and immediately after, Shield went berserk while wandering outside. Pablo, having reached the biological age of 55, developed frailty in his bed, and then Peter went to sleep in a puddle of vomit in the hallway, with fellow visitor Flebe lying a short distance away.

Later that morning, another trader named Squirt from the same faction (Ithoum) visited. Squirt immediately opened fire on a still raging Shield, but failed to hit him, while Shield himself remained oblivious to the bullets whizzing over his head. Sheild finally succumbed to exhaustion, and then Klob, yet another visitor, went berserk several feet away from his sleeping form.

Still later that morning, Flebe went berserk in the kitchen while chatting about lovers with Pablo. The reason was (you guessed it!) no guest beds. As our colonists fled for cover, Flebe took his frustrations out on Squirt, and then hastened outside to do the same to Klob. With Klob having been beaten senseless, Flebe looked for another target to take out his frustrations. He was subdued by Peter, who then fled our base. We helped ourselves to over 1000 in discarded silver and called it another day of good business.

A funny thing happened on the 6th of Septober: this old guy with cataracts and bad hearing named Erling crashed in a spacer pod. Erling had serious injuries to both legs, but managed to get up and immediately walked out of the region under his own power.

On the 7th, another drop pod fell from the sky. This one was contaminated with some weird animal/plant hybrid life and managed to spawn forth a hostile little creature called a cactipine, which then ran towards base, no doubt planning to kill us all...before immediately being hunted and killed by a land kraken. I sent a team out to destroy the pod before it produced any other nasty surprises.

With our steel stores depleting, Gustav was tasked with finally getting some use out of our mines. We finished work on an orbital trading beacon (which wouldn't see use for quite some time because we would still be trading regularly with Ithoum). In fact, the last batch of insane visitors who had recovered from their injuries and left the map healthy did in fact prompt Ithoum to think of us as allies.

On the 8th, we obtained a pet muffalo from a crashed transport pod that should prove valuable for carrying if we ever find time to process pemmican for a long trip. Also on board were two spacers, Xina and Rubber, who agreed to be arrested without putting up a fight. Xina joined us almost immediately, and has become our second go-to cook to work alongside McConnell. She is also a decent medic.

On the 9th, Khan went out to slaughter our useless bouldermit, who pulled random chunks out of the ground and did nothing else.

On the 10th, Elida offered Rubber fresh eggplants for free if she would join. Rubber decided to sleep on it. Also on the 10th, a strong builder named Maskinnen was chased into our zone by a total of eight raiders from the Nation of Abeve. Seven of the raiders ran for our defenses, but the eighth headed north and destroyed one of our unprotected freezers. The raiders were killed to a man without too much trouble, but a few of them almost crossed over our sandbags before being killed, so we would expand our fortifications to include a maze and a killbox that would make using the surrounding rocks for cover impossible. Idiot Pablo had another mental break in the evening over chronic pain, and would relegate himself to psychotic wandering throughout the night.

It was discovered that Maskinnen was a cannibal, as she began eating the recently slaughtered corpses of the battlefield raw. We imprisoned another crashed spacer for recruitment purposes, this one named Bolla (Sullivan barely managed to save his life). Another crashed spacer (Burke) wasn't as lucky, and died in our prison before we could administer aid.

There was a near disastrous event on the 14th of Septober. Bowman, yet another visiting trader, wandered to our defensive line and became berserk from being too cold. He decided to take his frustrations out on a sleeping wildpod, which is incredibly stupid. Wildpods are a creature added by one of my mods that are virtually invulnerable to small arms fire and melee attacks, so you can probably imagine how that turned out.

The enraged wildpod effortlessly downed Bowman. Maddened, it proceeded to wander around my defensive line while the colonists slept in the relative safety of the main complex. For the first time, I thought my colony was finished, as a single wildpod was more than enough to take out the entire colony, guns be damned. I doubt even my triple rocket launcher would have been much help in this situation.

Yep, goodbye colony, I recall thinking, as I expected the foul beast to sweep over my turrets, to go after the colonists when they got up for work. But something strange happened. The deranged wildpod completely ignored my turrets, even as they slowly whittled it's life down, hour after agonizing hour. We used a diversion employed by a fleeing trader named Shade to grab Bowman's goods before the wildpod could come back. Fortunately, the creature was slow afoot, and my colonists managed to stay two steps ahead.

Finally, after a battle that had lasted an excruciating seven hours, the wildpod was downed. I sent Sullivan out to finish it off, and we put the creature in our food stockpile. 

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[The_Hat]

Eighth Season: Decembary 5501

Lane, shivering from hypothermia and frothing at the mouth from a distinct lack of guest beds in the colony, became the latest visitor to go postal on the 1st. Predictably, he got into a fight with one of his allies (Kena, in this instance) over circumstances she realistically had no control over. Kena downed Lane, and as usual, we helped ourselves to the fallen's silver.

A regular Ramada Inn we've become.

Elida recruited Bolla to the cause, and I assigned him to work the hydroponics room. McConnell cut up that giant wildpod creature at the butcher's table, gaining us a bounty of nutritious plant fiber, and the whole encampment helped themselves to Lane's discarded soft drinks around nightfall.

Another of our visitors sustained a serious mental break on the morning of the 2nd. Anane, suffering from severe hypothermia from having spent the night outside in -15 weather, abruptly decided that he was going to get us, but Anane was 54 years old and also had a bad back, thus he couldn't get inside where it was warm quick enough to inflict damage and instead just collapsed from the cold. We rescued him, thus saving him from losing a finger and toe to frostbite.

Jen wandered in from outside of camp and offered to join us in exchange for food and lodgings. Her only decent skill is in social, but we could use a reliable custodian. Visitors Kena and Reikguard were the next to go nuts (Kena over serious pain and Reikguard because he was depressive), and Reikguard beat the holy hell out of Kena in our freezer entrance, which has seen some battles.

We had been having a problem with animals getting inside the base for weeks that had baffled me. On the 3rd of Decembary, I finally found out why; some idiot had left a pile of marble bricks in our southeastern entrance that were keeping the door from shutting. We cleared out the last of the animals that were wandering around inside, including a cowardly wolf that ran when we shot it and a crazed megasloth.

On the 4th, Bolla had some derogatory things to say about Gustav's appearance, and they started fighting in the storage section. Dawn extended the mountain around our freezers to prevent a repeat of what happened during the most recent raid, and Bolla offered free, fresh corn cobs to Rubber, enticing her to join us. Her stay didn't exactly get off to a remarkable start; Rubber spent part of the night sleeping outside in the cold because no one had a built a bed for her.

On the 6th, our second near disaster occurred. A black hive, the insectoid equivalent of a mechanoid raid, appeared at the fringes of our valley. Five bugs emerged and made a mad dash to camp. Most of the insectoids were of little concern, but what was of great pressing concern was the huge mammoth worm that followed them slowly at a distance.

The more agile bugs made a beeline for our wood doors, all but smashing them down collectively. They gave up, but then the huge mammoth worm easily plowed through the weakened structure, while the smaller bugs fortunately made around to our turrets on the southern lines. The mammoth worm was inside! I recalled all of our able-bodied fighters from the lines to deal with the ominous threat, while the mammoth worm took to smashing our wind turbines and solar generators.

The mammoth worm managed to destroy one of our turbines. Meanwhile several generators were getting demolished as much by wild shooting as by anything else. I elected to send Eva out with our triple rocket launcher in the hopes of blasting the thing, but couldn't lure it far enough to avoid threatening the entire power grid. While this was happening, Pablo was serenely hanging around outside going for a walk and decided now was probably a good time to go inside where it was safe. But he ran directly into the path of the mammoth worm, which moved right over him, crushing one of his legs.

We finally downed the magnificent beast without receiving any further casualties, and it's just a lucky thing the creature wasn't carrying a ranged weapon, or we probably would have been toast. It's also damn lucky that the insects didn't all enter the broken door, or they would have been able to coordinate. Our guns easily killed the remaining insects. That was when White, our amazing circus bear who hadn't eaten in awhile from being cooped up in camp, savagely pounced on the downed mammoth worm and ate its head.

We immediately reinforced our doors with better materials to avoid a similar incident in the future. Also, I sent Elida out to take care of the black hive threat before it spawned any more creatures.

With all the excitement, we haven't had enough time to really furbish the colonist rooms. This made Eva upset, and on the 7th, she had a mental break over her unsightly environment. Later in the day, Jen began binging on alcohol (didn't even know we had any) because of her tattered apparel.

It happened again on the 12th. Only six days after a black hive incident almost killed our most useless colonist and destroyed our power grid, another black hive spawned in almost the exact same spot as the first. Fortunately, there were no mammoth worms this time, only a horde of lesser bugs. Sullivan and Dawn were out hunting and hauling respectively and almost got caught out in the open, but managed to get inside in time to beat the wave. Then, a new colonist (a weakling named Von Schild) entered the region while being chased by Ash Crooks.

Saving him turned out to be a delicate process. I had to make him stand and wait while the bugs ran far enough ahead of him to prevent them from seeing and probably eating him, while at the same time keep him far enough ahead of his pursuers to avoid the same kind of fate. Fortunately, all was well; Von Schild passed through our southern door just as the bugs were starting to get slaughtered on the battlefield, and somehow managed to avoid getting shot to death.

Meanwhile, one of the insects was straggling far behind, and encountered the invading pirates before they reached our defenses. Smelly was stabbed in the torso by the megalouse, opening up a severe wound, but the invaders sustained no other serious injuries. With the insects all dead or dying, the raiders navigated our pre-battlefield maze, and proceeded to get virtually annihilated after coming out of the business end.

One of the raiders, however, managed to ignite a turret with a blast from an incendiary launcher. I commissioned Jen to momentarily take the big risk in exposing herself to extinguish the fire before an explosion demolished our entire line. Fortunately, she avoided serious maiming injury. Meanwhile, emotions were running high on the battlefield; two of the nine raiders were actually brothers, one of whom fell. Polecat suffered a mood loss from his brother's death, and to make matters more intolerable, he endured an insult from one of his friends who snickered at Polecat's brother's sincerity.

Having bullets whiz over her head while being subjected to the sight of so many corpses caused poor Jen to lose it. Abruptly gaining a huge fascination with death, she ran off to liberate Pacheco's skeleton from its sarcophagus. As she was breaking, a bullet from a fleeing raider nicked her in the leg. Then Bolla went to talk her out of desecrating Pacheco's corpse, and Jen viciously insulted him for his recreational preferences.

It was the morning of the 13th. While hauling bodies to a hidden stockpile zone, Pablo found some discarded smokeleaf and decided to have a puff. He collapsed and had to be rescued. Then, one of the downed bugs suddenly recovered and went on a tear. It was easily destroyed by our turrets, but several colonists were almost caught in the crossfire.

We continued to make the place nicer. We had hauled out all the chunks from the caves and were now in the process of smoothing the walls, making new floors and providing lighting with glowstone. It wasn't fast enough for McConnell, who snapped again over his ugly environment and started binge drinking nuka-cola.

On the 14th, Pablo was insulted at the poker table and dejectedly hid in his room. Eva recovered a warg from a crashed pod and named it Lev, and there was an interaction between two visitors in which Jones tried to woo Sappy by complimenting her crafting skills. Sappy rejected him.

On the morning of the 15th, visitor Artemis went berserk in the funeral room and promptly duked it out with Blackburn. Once everyone was out of bed, the colonists rescued her and also helped themselves to her smokeleaf. Blackburn collapsed from his injuries later in the day. Our visitors got fed up at that point and left the map.

A Ramada Inn we are not.

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[The_Hat]

Ninth Season: Aprimay 5502

Our offended traders didn't leave the map quickly enough. Sullivan was out hunting rhinos when one went berserk and chased her. Fortunately, Jones had fallen asleep nearby, and was directly in the path of the plant eater. He didn't last long. Sullivan bagged the rhino, and we took Jones' 599 silver, while a hungry rabbit helped itself to some of his packaged survival meal.

It was the first day of the new year, nearly two years after we found a new beginning here, and the camp was thriving. Gustav named our blossom sheep Minia on the 1st, and our builders got to work on digging a proper quarry for more specific items. We also finally got started on providing the cave with a source of permanent lighting. Lastly, there was a wildpod that had been stubbornly wandering around our turrets for a couple seasons, and I assigned it to be tamed by Khan before it became a liability and possibly raged against us after the inevitable friendly fire.
   
On the 2nd, the builders got started on an ugly barracks to house new colonists until we got started on a more permanent housing solution in the caves to the south. Mushinto and Jen got into an argument over a game of poker on the 4th, and Mushinto displayed absolute class in sinking his teeth into the latter's leg.
   
Sullivan fell prey to a hunting disaster on the 5th. She was attacked by three boars, managing to kill one before the other two downed her. Elida straightened things out with the stupid pigs, but Sullivan was in pretty bad shape. Her worst injury was a gore wound to the left ear. Fortunately, Bolla rescued her before it was too late, but it would be awhile before our resident psychopath was fully recovered.

We harvested our first big yield from the new hydroponics garden on the 6th. Khan demanded obedience from the wildpod but the wildpod refused, and then Pablo collapsed in the kitchen due to food poisoning. Sullivan, in intense anguish over her myriad of wild pig-induced injuries, sad wandered out of camp. I was extremely concerned for her well-being, and so sent out Bolla to calm her down. Bolla did his part by criticizing Sullivan's hardiness. Unsurprisingly, this failed to settle Sullivan down.
   
By the 7th, visitors Grey and Calderon both went berserk, with Calderon picking a fight with Oxana in the freezer and getting beat up. We rescued Calderon and his 319 silver (in addition to four cheeseburgers that the colonists wasted little time in wolfing down). Also on the 7th, Khan successfully tamed our wildpod. Remember this moment, because it is important.
   
On the 8th of Aprimay, Sullivan collapsed in her food while discussing cannons and blackjack with Pablo in the kitchen. On the 9th, a wildman named Val wandered into the zone. Khan slapped Val in a show of dominance. Val accepted and has opted to join our merry band of crooks.
   
On the 11th, our camp was attacked by a pack of vicious man-eating raccoons. At the same time, we also had to kill a maddened megasloth (that was fortunately easily shot into paste by our turrets) and a psychic wave that rendered all of the ibex in the region insane. Val stupidly went out into the midst of this madness to hunt, and was immediately overtaken by an army of chittering, garbage stalking balls of angry fur. In the ensuing chaos, we managed to kill all of the attacking animals with minimal casualties; Val was hurt the worst, in addition Gustav found herself momentarily cornered and Maskinnen was exposed due to an ill-advised hauling mission. Bolla also sustained minor injuries while he was attempting to rescue Val. With the few raccoons that weren't dead focusing their attentions on Bolla, Sullivan got out unnoticed and managed to stabilize Val with this medical bag we had recently purchased in what had turned out to be a very smart trade deal.

Val, for his part, got out of bed on the 13th, and, deciding that our gardens constituted an ugly environment, started pigging out on food. Then on the 14th, there was a psychic ship crash. In the early hours of the 15th, I sent Pablo out alone to examine it. I knew I'd probably be sacrifing him, but I had hoped that the mechanoids within would move towards our firing line. This was ill-advised because after incapacitating Pablo, the mechs demonstrated no interest outside of protecting their crashed ship part.

We would be forced to engage the mechanoids in open fire without defenses. It was fortunate that only one of the mechs (an assaulter) had any sort of ranged capability. We stayed one step ahead of them, managing to destroy them all with very limited damage to us. In the end, only Eva was injured, and that was by a friendly fire incident.

With that out of the way, it was time to get back to the base. It was at that moment that one of our injured guests, Calderon, abruptly developed brain damage caused by wake-up addiction and slipped into an unresponsive coma.

More to come.


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[The_Hat]

Tenth Season: Jugust 5502

Things are promising. We survived our first mechanoid attack with nary a scratch, and are almost finished smoothing out the cavern walls, the first step towards making everything pristine and pretty (and staving off whiny colonists overly concerned with their hideous environment!). As Mushinto went about disassembling destroyed mechs, we had an incident to the north of camp where one of our berserk guests took out her frustrations on a passing rhinoceros. Vienna was predictably downed. Not only did we get her 177 silver and three fine meals, we also claimed a prosthetic lung and a Mintcraft cartridge. I am reminded to queue up an arcade construction table as soon as possible.

A cordial discussion about the weather that Rubber was having with Xina randomly turned hostile when Xina loudly insulted Rubber's food choices. They crashed in a spacepod together, and now they were fighting. Rubber was so angry that she actually bit Xina's arm.

On the 2nd, we got started on a second line of turrets to fall back to in case the first line falls in a dire raid, or something of equal measure. Calderon's condition worsened from comatose to vegetative state, as the brain damage from his rampant wake-up abuse was now too wide and systemic for the guy to do much of anything other than drool into a cup. We planned a marble floor for the hallways, and so Gustav led the miners in digging the required marble from the quarry.

On the 5th, the colony sustained an epidemic of plague. Elida, Gustav, Dawn, Rubber, Xina and Eva were all afflicted. We have no idea how it started. Another big concern: Animal corpses started to rot in our freezer as we worked diligently to replace the existing walls with marble (I couldn't stand to look at the difference in color!). We would also lose +60 simple meals, which was a severe loss, even as we had over 200 more. Sometimes food can go rapidly in Rimworld.

The drama continued with a new refugee chase event. An elderly woman named Kaleun requested asylum. Meanwhile, Eva sustained a mental break over being in severe pain from her illness and began furniture hoarding. As eleven invaders headed towards base, Calderon died in his bed. Then while our soldiers that weren't incapacitated with plague fought to keep the raiders out, Pablo went berserk and started trying to slaughter animals. I had to enlist Mushinto to stab his ass before he murdered our wildpod, our muffalo and our faithful bear, White (the blossom sheep and the warg didn't matter as much).

We held off the attack, narrowly preventing a molotov cocktail from destroying our primary firing line. Pablo, meanwhile, had sustained a punctured lung in his fight with Mushinto, and was in serious need of medical aid.

On the 6th, this huge spider called a duneallisk entered the map, and the game warned me to kill it before it could raise a vicious brood of hatchlings. Elida had enough over being recreation-starved, and had a mental break (Khan calmed her down). Eva was the first to develop immunity to the plague, which surprised me because she had also been the most stubbornly persistent in staying out of bed. And then Pablo stumbled and fell on his face while mining rocks in the quarry and had to be rescued by Mushinto.

I sent a party out to eliminate the giant spider. This was accomplished without adverse circumstances. Most of our plague-sufferers were fully recovered by the 6th, but this didn't stop Gustav from having a mental break and consciously deciding to murder McConnell in his sleep. This development was made all the more astonishing by the fact that they consider one another friends! McConnell is Gustav's third best friend after Mushinto and Elida, with +26 opinion.

McConnell was asleep in his room at the time, and totally unexpecting. Gustav entered and swung her shotgun into his shoulder. McConnell then fled down the hall, holding his broken arm and screaming. Finally, Elida and Khan intercepted Gustav before she could do any more damage and beat her into submission.

A heat wave commenced on the 7th. Von Schild was the first to lose it to the heat. As the outdoor temperature soared to 44 degrees, he meandered for hours in a sad dejected wander (if he wouldn't insist on wearing a tuque and parka all the time, maybe he wouldn't be so damn hot!). Luckily, our mountain base is well-equipped enough that even the worst heat waves aren't really a big problem.

White collapsed of starvation, and had to be rescued by Xina. Of course the problem was that our bear was always confined to base, where there was no game. I remedied this by allowing White free reign to go outside. Xina staved off White's extreme starvation by feeding him a bag of dried rice fresh from the garden. As the unchewable kernels filled his throat and stomach, White's condition drastically improved.

We lost a megasloth carcass to the heat. The loss in food stockpile would force us to add a third cooler, and have all three running constantly during heat waves.

On the 8th of Jugust, Pablo collapsed due to heatstroke and had to be hauled to a room with safe temperature by White. Incidentally, Pablo became the first occupant of our ugly barracks room. Getting out of bed, he immediately had a mental break and started to vent his spleen on our animals. Fortunately, Jen talked him out of doing anything too stupid.

That was not the end of Pablo's drama. On the 12th, he became angered again and promptly decided to take it out on our PILREKIN couch, which required a king's ransom in cloth to build. There was no choice but to enlist our wildman thug Val to end the dispute. He did this by swinging his rifle into Pablo's face, shattering his nose. Pablo would recover, although the injury to his face (and his ego!) would remain permanent.

I thought it vaguely amusing that a random warg started hunting cattle owned by visitors as they were departing on the 12th. Ivy killed the beast with a blast from her incendiary launcher, also setting ablaze their threatened cow.

On the 13th, our camp was plagued with a raid from a lone plunderer. Xiaoer was from Orion Installation, carrying a MRG-5 pistol and also fitted with an Orion exoskeleton. He was also afflicted with rapid aging, although that really didn't factor in to the conflict, as he was killed immediately upon stepping on the battlefield.

By the evening of the 13th, Pablo became fed up with our civilization, and decided to leave the colony to become a wildman within the southern portion of our walls. No one tried to discourage him from this foolish course; we were all sick of him, too.

On the 15th, McConnell pursued Maskinnen by comparing her to a shining moon. Maskinnen responded well and is now McConnell's lover. Also on the 15th, a pair of raging inferno beetles, driven to a manhunting rage, attacked camp. Fortunately, we managed to kill them.

More to come.

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[The_Hat]

Eleventh Season: Septober 5502

So Pablo left his clothes in the garden and ran forth to be one with nature. Von Schild, the wimp, collapsed from food poisoning on the 1st, but he did so in the dumping stockpile reserved for corpses, which made it a needless hassle to drag him out. A new colonist named Colin joined us, pursued by an Orion Corp soldier. Those guys are lightning quick with the exclusive technology, but there was little danger to our colony, as the raider, Mila, went about beating up one of the departing traders and stealing a ceremonial headpiece while Colin scampered to the relative safety of our walls.

On the 2nd, Elida dealt with a maddened megasloth that almost got into camp because our stupid animals kept ignoring their restricted zones and were moving in and out through the doors. McConnell butchered the dead trader before I could stop him, and we got to work installing beautiful marble flooring in our cave.

On the 7th, Pablo of the Jungle collapsed due to malnutrition and hypothermia. Also, he had somehow managed to cut himself in the hand, and the wound had become infected. He was still within our walls, but I took the good riddance approach and left him to succumb to his injuries. Rather than laying Pablo to rest in the funeral room, we left his body in the corpse stockpile, a feast for the worms.

On the 12th, Val was attacked by a manhunting hare. Mushinto became sick of eating simple meals and started pigging out on simple meals, and on the 13th, we picked up a pretty good incendiary laser in a trade deal. Also on the 13th, we picked up a new prisoner to be recruited; Emily was found downed inside a transport pod. Sullivan patched up her injuries with her medical bag, and she was able to temporarily walk around. We arrested her anyway.

Our second transport pod rescue didn't come off as smoothly. There were three pawns inside this one. Hotaru was downed, Viper passive. Corvenus was violent and had to be put down. After seeing our display of brute force, Viper agreed to come along quietly, as did Hotaru, who really had no choice. Later that day, Eva defeated Elida in an election and is our first colony mayor.

Jen immediately opened the 14th by ingratiating herself to our prisoner, Emily. She started the recruitment process by "asking Emily about her nose." Another space refugee named Coley fell from the sky, and we decided to imprison her too. Late in the day, Eva found and activated a mysterious artifact. The artifact summoned a single scyther which fortunately charged our turret line and was cut to pieces without me having to rouse anyone from bed.

Note to self: Don't do that.

On the morning of the 15th, Hotaru decided to stage a daring escape with the rest of our prisoners, Emily, Coley and Viper. Emily was the first to be lasered into submission, and she was rapidly followed by her fellow jailbait. Appropriately, Hotaru did not survive the conflict (as Sullivan lasered her brain), but Emily, Coley and Viper were still in good shape. Also appropriate to the scenario, Khan "encouraged Coley to ask about her honesty" and "asked Coley about her emotional stability."

More to come.

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[The_Hat]

Twelfth Season: Decembary 5502

While attempting to recruit Viper on the 1st, Khan experienced a revelation that could be applied to prisoner recruitment. Viper was a shoo-in after that. Expressing herself plainly, Khan displayed interest in Viper's face. She told Viper about all sorts of things: missiles, affection, and strength. Viper rapidly decided to join us, and will be added to our increasing fleet of builders.

On the 2nd, we had a reasonably massive manhunting incident. Seventeen pebblemits. All of them extremely angry. None of them were interested in our line of turrets, instead attacking the section of doors in our northeastern corner. But it didn't matter, because we were equipped with a trained bear and a trained wildpod.

I coordinated all of my shooters outside base, and we picked the pebblemits off. Actually, White was the first to attack, reaching them just as they were getting into range. Tiny claws and shells went flying as White went to town. Then our wildpod got into the fray and downed or killed eight pebblemits without assistance. Our guns eliminated the rest.

We recovered the carcasses to add to our food stockpile. White was in bad shape from a friendly fire incident (and by being swarmed by the little clackers), but fortunately Von Schild attended to him before it became dire. Our wildpod slowly lumbered away virtually unscathed. There were no other injuries.

A small fire ensued from all of the laser blasting and incendiary launching. On the evening of the 2nd, I started sending haulers out to save the uncollected carcasses from the growing blaze. Jen somehow became ignited and developed burns that needed tending.

By the 3rd of the season, McConnell and Maskinnen were no longer on speaking terms. McConnell proposed marriage, Maskinnen refused, and now they're broken up.

On the 5th, the colony was stricken with a malaria epidemic. Malaria. In the middle of winter. Great. The sick colonists included Khan, Bolla, Jen, Von Schild, Kaleun and Sullivan. I sent them to our triage unit. Because two of the sickened were doctors, I needed to keep Sullivan and Von Schild up longer than I'd have liked to assist Xina in tending the others. While receiving care, Kaleun suddenly compared Bolla to a vampire.

The colonists were slowly recovering by the 6th. Bolla, in stark defiance of doctor's orders, arranged a hangout between himself and Jen. I put the big kibosh on that. Bolla is somewhat aged, and needed to get as much bed rest as possible.

On the 7th, Emily (one of our prisoners) became distraught as to her situation and began slitting her wrists in the cell she was sharing with Coley. It could be because, what with the hubbub surrounding the malaria epidemic, no one had bothered to feed her in awhile. She finally collapsed late in the hours of the 7th. I sent someone to administer food to her, as Em is still a cool chick.

By the 8th, people were starting to recover. Von Schild was the first. While Xina was feeding Sullivan, McConnell walked by and tried to woo her by lauding her culture. Xina turned away.

Later on, we received a new colonist, Pederson. He was chased by a gaggle of twelve tribals. Their attack rapidly fell apart. Our only injury in the skirmish was to White, who was hailed with a bevvy of opposing faction arrows and friendly fire. Six of them turned tail and ran. We waited for the survivors to emerge from the maze and slaughtered them to a man. Jen was so outraged by the ferocious display that she threatened to walk out on the colony. Luckily, she later came to her senses.

Our bear collapsed outside of camp after the battle. We barely managed to save White's life after this one. The worst thing is that the friendly fire inflicted permanent burn scars to both of White's eyes. The efficiency of his eyes is thereby reduced to 91 and 87 percent, respectively.

On the 9th, Von Schild's tattered apparel prompted him to begin obsessively cleaning his surroundings with little regard for his well-being. Khan expressed interest in prisoner Coley's leg hair (smoothly played, Khan), before going out to singlehandedly (well, singlehandedly but for her bear and wildpod) subdue a blizzarisk clutch mother.

On the 11th, who should just happen to appear unaccompanied at our compound and request to join but Khan's lover, Biz. We destroyed an overgrown drop pod on the 12th. That same day, Von Schild hilariously flirted with Kaleun by comparing her to a wonderful quarry. Kaleun accepted, and the two are now lovers. Age was no deterrent in their love; Kaleun is 68, while Von Schild is 24. Time for Von Schild to do some mining.

There was another incident on the 15th. A psychic wave rendered many of the area's raccoons insane. There was enough time for everyone to fall back to the walls (there were only three or four of the little buggers to begin with), but our traders had spent half the night sleeping on the snow, and were a little slow to depart. One of them, a 91-year old infirm dementia ridden old man named Skinner, was massacred by a lone raccoon (he was only bitten twice), which the other traders wasted little time in dispatching. Incidentally, I checked the raccoon's health tab, and it seemed that it was harboring a cancerous tumor inside one of its lungs.

The departing traders actually killed the remaining offending raccoons for us before leaving the map.

More to come.

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[The_Hat]

Thirteenth Season: Aprimay 5503

The new year began on an ominous note. A group of raiders, thirteen soldiers strong, attacked the base at high noon. Biz, out hauling alpaca carcasses, was unfortunate enough to get caught out in the open, but lucky to be just far enough away where the attackers couldn't swarm him with gunfire. He escaped with only minor injuries.

At the same time, our incredibly stupid warg left base to give them a nice greeting―I mean that literally, Lev hadn't been trained to fight―and almost invited the raiders inside. Our no less stupid muffalo, ignoring his restricted zone, also went outside, and received a few bullets for his trouble.

Given the fact that the raiders came from the east, and the southeast was cut off by mountains, they were forced to take the long way around camp to reach our defenses in the south, where our soldiers waited, seemingly for an eternity (the deep snow would also have been slowing them down). McConnell couldn't handle the pressure and snapped. I had to undraft Khan to calm him down, and even then, McConnell still insisted on ditching the coming battle to sulk in his room.

The war unfolded as follows: Bamsefar was the first of the party of thirteen to reach the end of the maze. He was immediately downed by turret fire and Sullivan's laser pistol, which perforated his left leg, right arm and stomach (an alpaca we had marked for hunting was also downed). Willow, Hawk and Howl rushed into the carnage. Willow was killed outright, Hawk was downed, and Howl was crushed flat by our wildpod. Lane ran up, guns blazing, and was shot down by a bevvy of turret fire, and with Bamsefar's still living body burning to death, others continued to crawl over him in a mad dash for the sandbags. Kristina was the next to die, a laser blast narrowly missed vaporizing Wilkenson, and Anderson grimly pushed on, exchanging pleasantries with Jesse before he too was killed.

Anderson's brave and stupid death broke the raiders' nerves, and they bolted. The colonists, as always, amassed at the other side of the maze and waited for our foes to emerge. Sam was the first to come out, and his desperate chain shotgun blast wounded Jen before Elida lasered him into submission. Jen was wounded in the torso, and I undrafted her so that she could seek medical aid. AJ met the same fate as his friends, and then Jesse succeeded in downing the pathetic Von Schild with a single shot from her machine pistol. Jesse was also killed, and our wildpod finished the last fleeing raider, Wiley.

In all, we pilfered 244 silver from the dead or downed raiders. Our bear, bleeding from a dozen injuries himself, rescued Von Schild. Wiley, one of the few survivors of the slaughter, got up and self-tended, and our bear collapsed in the infirmary immediately after placing Von Schild safely in bed.

For inviting disaster on the camp, I had Khan slaughter our stupid warg on the morning of the 2nd, as an example for the muffalo. Our wildpod laid spores (which according to the information tab would have hatched into a little wildpod if all went well; it did not, as we were in the midst of a cold snap at the time) in the exact spot where little Lev breathed his final breaths. I had people strip Bamsefar, who was surprisingly still alive, but not worth recruiting.

Later on the 2nd, Mayor Eva went berserk and tried to stab Khan to death. Khan endured getting stabbed in the face before Mushinto became involved in a knifefight with our rather disgusting excuse for a leader. Mushinto really went to town; a melee expert, he slashed Eva in the face and neck and severed one of her toes. Xina narrowly brought Eva from the brink of death.

That wasn't the only bit of poor luck that befell us on the 2nd. Towards the evening, Dawn had a mental break while out scavenging due to being ravenously hungry and opted to start pigging out on food. Shortly after, Kaleun did the same due to being drowsy.

On the 3rd of Aprimay, we narrowly escaped a disaster that probably should have ended our camp. At the time, we were working on building our main hospital directly to the west of our defenses, but as we were replacing the mountain walls with smoothed walls, it offered a breach for wayward animals to just pour in. Some time before, a gallatross had meandered in. It was late on the night of the 3rd (when most everyone had gone to bed, which was incredibly fortunate given how the events unfolded) that I sent Biz to cull the unwanted animals in our fortress. Starting with our friendly gallatross.

What could possibly go wrong? I was about to find out.

To begin with, a gallatross is no laughing matter. They are best described as living, walking mountains. Their short stubby legs are able to propel them impossibly fast across uneven terrain, and their attacks are near instant death kills.

Biz was the only one out there, but he was equipped with a flamethrower. Now, I wasn't expecting it to be easy, but I took a leap of faith, hoping that maybe gallatrosses are vulnerable to fire.

Now I know they bloody well are not.

Biz firebombed the gallatross while the huge creature was sleeping in our garden. Huge mistake. The creature ran around in circles, on fire and confused, for only a short time before galloping towards Biz at an impossible speed. Biz managed to squeeze one or two more shots off while running for his life. I looked at the gallatrosses health bar. It was still full.

Oh no.

Now, I had taken the precaution of drafting the laser-toting Sullivan for support, but as Biz led the gallatross back to her, I wondered if this was a fruitless thing. Then the gallatross caught up to Biz, lifted him high in the air...and tore off his left leg.

For a short time, Sullivan and Biz worked in tandem, keeping the massive creature at bay by setting it on fire with their weapons, even as Biz was bleeding out. Which were barely doing any damage. It was at this point that I rationalized this as a fruitless imperative. I decided to send Sullivan to the safety of the base, preferably quickly. Didn't need this formidable creature rampaging around indoors.

Biz didn't have much time for me to contain this menace. Truthfully, I thought he was a goner. But the gallatross saw Sullivan take flight indoors. It was going to follow her. As the monster effortlessly ripped the first set of wooden doors from its hinges, Biz decided to take one for the team. With one final blast from his flamethrower, he caught the lumbering monstrosity's attention before it could get through the second door and probably rip Sullivan limb from limb. He didn't have a chance. A single thrust from the gallatross' horn was enough to gore his left shoulder and shred his remaining leg and head. Biz's night was over, but he had saved the colony, for the moment at least.

Biz, your sacrifice will never be forgotten.

The lumbering gallatross made a distinct beeline to smash all of our turrets. This is the only thing that saved Biz's life that day. In the break from the carnage, Sullivan was able to sneak outside and get Biz to our infirmary. Buying him some time with her medical bag, she dragged him inside, got him to a bed, and saved his life. Wow, too intense.

The fighting continued into the early hours of the 4th. The gallatross decimated two lines of turrets. The only ones that were saved were the ones that stopped firing when the power conduit attaching them to a geothermal generator was severed. But they had taken their toll. The gallatross was riddled with a hundred bullet wounds. It was staggered. With a bit of luck, we might win the day.

I played my last card, electing to draft Khan and having her dispatch our greatest weapons, our wildpod and our bear. I thought about sending someone out with the triple rocket launcher also, but viewed this as a needless waste, as I thought it would needlessly imperil the shooter.

That was the day two mighty leviathans fought. Only one would survive. The epic battle was fought even as White bravely nibbled at the gallatross' heels. But something was happening. Our wildpod was inflicting terrible damage to our new enemy, but I noticed he was losing health at a slightly faster rate. It was a race to see who could inflict the most damage.

White was somewhat of a distraction for the gallatross, which was forced to turn away from the wildpod periodically to fight a two-pronged attack. I sent Sullivan back out into the madness to set the gallatross on fire with her laser. Then Dawn got out of bed and ran down south to fix the turrets and actually didn't get stomped to death. Miraculously, our wildpod won, but he was pretty messed up. Sullivan proved the difference maker. I think if the gallatross hadn't been forced to extinguish itself repeatedly, rather than attack attack attack, I believe even our wildpod would have been curb stomped.

The colony was saved. Good grief.

The battle took all of six hours before the gallatross was downed. Sullivan finished it off. The bounty of meat from the felled leviathan was enough to feed the colony for a week.

There was another problem. With most everyone sound asleep, no one noticed the fire from Biz's early fire-shooting spree had destroyed about 25% of our garden. We lost a frozen but almost fully mature crop of healroot in the blaze. But it was a small price to pay in light of how bad that could have been. Biz developed an infection in his shoulder that needed tending also.

We picked up the pieces and moved on. Our first priority was to repair the defense grid while things were relatively settled. I didn't know for how long it would remain so. Randy Random is the most foul beast in the game. While we were doing this, another grizzly bear wandered in in full on hunting mode. White, still severely injured from the recent skirmishes and not at all in any shape to defend himself, was the target. The encroaching bear passed Elida on its way into camp. Elida killed it dead, and that was the end of that.

The drama continued to unfold with a giant herd of aerofleets entering camp. They were peaceful, but I was in no mood to harbor any more animal runaways. I assigned them all to be hunted. How was I to know they explode on death? We almost lost part of the garden to fire again, and Eva was seriously scalded as well.

Shit hit the fan again on the 5th. A pack of horrible maneating caribou arrived on the map. Nine of them.

I amassed the troops. Our already almost healed wildpod set up a barrier and killed many of the caribou. A few others swarmed Sullivan and almost downed her. Sullivan tried to retreat indoors, but the last caribou got her. The shadow of a looming wildpod was the last thing that caribou saw as it was given only a short time to question its life choices.

There was limited time for respite. On the 7th, I accepted another refugee chase event (our new colonist, Tina, was a greedy psychopath). We had just rebuilt all of the turrets, so good timing. Luckily, Randy Random stepped in, and the attackers were surrounded by a small army of angry, frothing bears. Madness ensued. The bears overwhelmed two of the nineteen raiders outright. One of the raiders had its head bit off, while the second lost a foot. A third raider was killed by a friendly frag grenade. Several more raiders were seriously injured.

We were waiting along our defensive perimeter when Gustav lost her mind to a psychic drone and had to be calmed down by Khan. Then the fighting started. Takaru, high on go-juice, was the first enemy to fall. Rosalyn had her leg shot off, Hartley died right after. Rynyk was downed, several others killed. Fox and Agatha were set on fire, and the rest headed for the hills. Kevin was torn to pieces by our bear while fruitlessly attempting to break down the killbox door. Reuben was shot down from behind while fleeing, but managed to land a shot on Elida. Only Snow and Massey escaped with their lives, although hardly unscathed.

We captured the survivors, Rynyk, Fox and Agatha. Managed to save all three. At about the same time, Coley (another prisoner) recovered from her go-juice addiction.

More drama: Tina, who had just joined us, and whom we afforded shelter from the recent wave of attackers, had a mental break and ran to the jail cell to motivate those self-same attackers to initiate an escape attempt. Two-faced harlot! Her motivation was the psychic drone, which perhaps gave her cause to do things she wouldn't otherwise do. Rubber caught up to Tina, tried to talk her down, but it was no good.

So Tina ran to the cells. Addressing a recovering Rynyk, Tina "talked about how beautiful the river is, and offered freedom." Trying desperately to avoid disaster, Rubber was hot on Tina's heels. She smashed Tina with the butt end of her LMG, but it was too late.

Again, this could have been worse than it was. Emily and Coley made a break for it, but the other three were still recovering from injuries making it impossible to walk. I organized a firing line to greet them, prompting the two to abruptly lose their nerve. Coley was shot in the back, while Emily fled back into the prison cell in an effort to overcome Rubber, who had downed Tina by irreparably damaging her left leg. While this was happening, Rynyk abruptly made her move, but although a melee monster (she's a stiletto assassin), she was too weak to do much damage.

Our firing line advanced. Von Schild, the wimp, took a spot of friendly fire in the back and was felled. Khan, McConnell and Jen rushed to assist Rubber with taking down Emily. In concert, the three of them shot Emily in the back of the head. Crisis averted.

The psychic drone caused Rubber to lose it on the 8th, and she began obsessively cleaning her surroundings. Tina, Emily, Coley and Rynyk all came close to dying from their injuries, but somehow, all were saved, although Coley developed an infection. Later on the 8th, a raider from Orion Corporation attacked us. Teddy the Pimp was shot dead when he rushed our firing line singlehanded. He was incredibly fast, but our colonists' guns were faster. A laser shot from Elida grazed Teddy in the head, severing one of his ears, and then he fell in a hail of MRG-5 bullets issued from the pistol of Kaleun. Somehow, we lost a single turret in the battle, but that was immediately remedied when Elida built a new one the same day.

While hauling corpses, Val abruptly developed stress trauma and began hiding in his room. Emily and Coley both agreed to join us on the 9th (Emily after being asked about her sexual experience by Khan).

Things finally seemed to be calming down on the 10th. At 7h of that day, Von Schild planned a date with his senior girlfriend Kaleun for the 12th of Aprimay on hour 20. We opened a space capsule that contained four pawns, but had to kill Engie, the only one of their number that wasn't downed. We captured three more prisoners, Monkey, Beamer and Hanfy. Once again, Von Schild was downed in the conflict. While assisting others in mining out our future hospital wing, Colin became fed up with his hideous environment and resorted to slitting his wrists in his room.

Okay so maybe things weren't calming down. On the 11th, a poisoned ship part crashed. Before we dealt with it, we had to contend with a maddened doe. Elida easily killed it, and then assisted the other colonists in building a line of sandbags and steel barriers for the coming mech battle. The building project was completed at approximately 13h on the 12th.

At 15h, I lined my fighters on the line. Elida, McConnell, Coley, Val, Jen, Rubber...even Von Schild, whose date with Kaleun was to start in a few hours. Bolla, armed with a laser sniper rifle, took up a defensive position more distant from the battle. Sullivan and Kaleun were the last to arrive. For some reason, I didn't draft Khan, whose animals would have been an asset in the fight. Especially considering what a disaster it was.

We disturbed the ship with a rifle blast. Oh no. SEVEN hostile mechs. One of which was a centipede. The tiny mech proved no match for small arms fire, but the two melee mechs immediately closed the gap and started bashing my poor colonists. Rubber managed to destroy one, but the other immediately downed Kaleun. The remaining melee fighter injured Sullivan, while McConnell was downed by a burst from the centipede's heavy charge blaster. Our sniper perforated the remaining small arms mech, but the fight was fast becoming a disaster. All hands surrounded the melee fighter, but Elida and Val were downed before we could disable it. Miraculously, we destroyed the assaulter, leaving only the centipede. But with much of our fighting force disabled, there was no other choice but to flee.

Von Schild rescued Sullivan. Jen recovered McConnell. Rubber rescued Kaleun. Bolla took a big risk in rushing up and saving Val. Coley attempted to save Elida, but seriously injured in the legs, she was way too slow to accomplish this and still outstrip the approaching centipede. She abandoned this task, leaving poor Elida in a desperate situation. Xina, meanwhile, awaited the casualties in our infirmary.

Von Schild was the first to get home with Sullivan. Sullivan was incredibly banged up. Having been stabbed and blasted in the arm, she had only four hours to live. Xina took care of tending her, while Von Schild busied himself to eating some (forbidden!!!) pemmican he had stolen from the freezer. Then Bolla returned to camp with Val, who was in even worse shape than Sullivan.

This was turning out bad. Really bad. Something had to be done for Elida, she was one of our colony's founding members. I enlisted Maskinnen, the closest pawn at hand, to outflank the centipede and hopefully carry Elida home. McConnell and Kaleun were both taken to hospital beds (both of them were near death also). Over on the battlefield, Maskinnen had reached Elida, but was now taking heavy fire from the centipede. She was downed almost immediately. Dammit.

Von Schild, one of our few qualified medics who was not incapacitated, chose that moment to clock out and binge on alcohol that we didn't even have in stock. He was calmed down by Khan, and returning to his work, narrowly managed to save McConnell. Rubber arrived home, and she was followed by Coley, likewise near death.

Desperately attempting to make a last ditch effort to save Elida and Maskinnen, Bolla put up a strong singlehanded front against the centipede. Ducking behind a corner, he sniped and he sniped for hours on end. Despite taking serious injuries himself, he successfully destroyed that damn centipede. Their way now clear, Khan and Gustav rushed out to save Elida and Maskinnen. However, Elida perished while Gustav was bringing her back. Khan almost brought Maskinnen to a hospital bed, but she too died.

Two deaths. Almost a dozen colonists near death. This was truly our most disastrous situation yet. Even our muffalo couldn't escape the crossfire. It too succumbed to its injuries.

On the 14th, prisoner Monkey succumbed to psychotic babbling. Later on in the morning, a still injured White was hunted and killed by another bear. White was far outside of camp, there was nothing we could do, no way to save him. The only thing I could do was send Khan out to prevent the bear from eating White alive. We killed the stupid bear, but White died of brain damage brought on by oxygen deprivation when the bear slit his throat. Poor White. Poor, poor faithful White.

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[The_Hat]

Fourteenth Season: Jugust 5503

With Rubber promising him affection, Beamer was convinced to join the colony on the 1st. Romance was in the air in the prison, as Hanfy wooed Fox by telling her a story about core worlds. The opposite effect was occurring in our colony. Von Schild and Kaleun were none too pleased about missing their date, and their relationship was in breakdown mode. Kaleun told Von Schild that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. That was too much for Von Schild, a neurotic who was only in it for the lovin'. With three others witnessing, Von Schild dumped Kaleun in the recreation room.

On the 3rd, we opened another large space capsule. Tina, hobbling on one leg after Rubber had destroyed her other leg in the recent prison incident, did the honors. The occupant, Jules, wasn't agreeable to coming with us, and was killed by our wildpod.

I queued up a prosthetic workbench so that I could have someone craft a peg leg for Tina. Biz also was still a one-legged gimp since the incident with the gallatross last season. Given that she was the architect of her own suffering, Tina crafted her own peg leg, and Von Schild abruptly became depressive and suicidal over lack of recreation and resorted to slitting his wrists in his room. Or he would have had he made it to his room, but his first small nick sent him into hysterics, and he collapsed on the ground outside, requiring rescue. Jen took her time on saving him, even eating a simple meal in front of him while Von Schild winced in agony. While hauling Von Schild to a medical bed, she passed Mushinto, and made a comment to him about stubbornness.

I had Khan and the wildpod kill another giant spider on the 4th. Later on in the day, Jen encouraged prisoner Hanfy to ask about making bow ties. That was all Hanfy needed to hear, and he signed up with us on the spot. Biz was the first to receive a new peg leg installation, courtesy of Sullivan. Tina's procedure came later in the day.

Another refugee chase event a bit later on the 4th. Wade was Eva's mother. Old, decrepit and slow afoot, she was afflicted with a bad back and an anxiety condition. She didn't make it far. A vatgrown Orion Corp soldier named Ticktum chased her down and blew her brains out all over the forest floor before we could intervene. Wade, our newest colonist, was already beyond saving.

Ticktum's attack coincided with a visitor departure. Maya was an aged colonist from Ithoum who fared no better. She had a set of cataracts, and stumbling around barely able to see, her ear was shot off. Ticktum helped herself to a pile of 500 silver Maya had dropped and was off. We rescued Maya, and interred Wade in the funeral room.

Hanfy, stricken by methadone withdrawal, went into crazy overeating mode on the 5th. Von Schild got Maya to a hospital bed, but she died from catastrophic injuries to her foot and the side of her head before he could treat her. We began digging out an extension to our housing, as the recent flood of new colonists is fast overwhelming our existing accommodations. Unfortunately, I failed to leave enough supports in the new freezer, and there was a cave collapse. Luckily, no one was injured.

Rubber successfully recruited Agatha over to our side by describing finding friends and promising love. Hanfy went berserk in the freezer and had to be restrained from eating all of the food by McConnell. Jen successfully recruited Fox, leaving Rynyk as the final holdout.

On the 6th, Rynyk attempted to escape her confines. Sustaining heavy fire from Sullivan and Khan, she retreated into the empty room adjacent to the prison cell and attempted to mine her way out. Sullivan and Khan got to her before she could dig herself an opening, and Rynyk was recaptured.

On the 7th, a Mintcraft game console was built for our already stuffed recreation room at our new arcade construction table.

By now, we had more colonists than we did colonist rooms. We had several individuals sleeping in our crappy barracks, and it was pissing people off. Kaleun was playing Mintcraft when she suddenly became jealous of Mushinto's room on the 10th. Colin became absorbed by paranoid babbling. Greedy for an impressive bedroom, Tina followed their lead. She immediately found Eva outside and laughed at her father's leg hair. Tina was insulting everyone. She derided Fox's honor, comparing her to a turtle. The insulting spree finally ended when she collapsed in our future sickbay.

On the 11th, we had a ship part crash event. Shuddering to think about what might be hiding within, I had colonists set up defenses nearby, two rows adjacent to each other to give the mechs two things to think about. Hanfy continued to freak out over his methadone withdrawal, but went to bed before Mushinto could sink his knife into his belly to deter him from pigging out on food again.

The battle with the mechs began at 1h on the 12th. Only smaller mechs this time. Also this time, I had the foresight to bring our wildpod into the action. I just shouldn't have had him positioned so close to a soldier who was carrying a flamethrower. Wildpod 1 was struck with friendly fire. He burned like kindling, perishing due to burns before I could undraft someone to put him out. On the other side of the field, Gustav was injured by a close quarters scyther. McConnell was injured by enemy fire, and Von Schild characteristically dropped to the ground from minor injuries.

I had our southern line fall back to lead the remaining enemy to our gunners in the east. One final flamethrower volley finished the last of the enemies. Gustav, McConnell, Khan and Von Schild were all injured, but the greatest blow by far was the loss of our wildpod. Wildpod 1, you will be missed.

While being tended by Xina, McConnell flirted with the doctor by comparing her to a lovely aurora. Xina was wooed, and our two chefs are now spanking each other. Which is good for us, because it frees up another colonist room. And we need more colonist rooms. We are having mental breaks all around. Sullivan and Rubber began obsessively cleaning, Eva broke over her mother's death, and Colin began pigging out. Mushinto attempted to woo Gustav (in spite of his marriage to Dawn) while both were picking rocks in the quarry, but Gustav gave a minimal response.

Another raider incident on the 15th. Only two raiders. They came down in drop pods on the far side of the map. Not together, so they couldn't coordinate. This would help us, which was good, because the raiders were well-equipped. Unfortunately for Baldassario, she reached our line of defenses first and was immediately dropped. Her compadre decided to head for the hills.   

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[The_Hat]

Fifteenth Season: Septober 5503

On the 1st of the month, Biz rejected Khan's marriage proposal, which wasn't really surprising given Biz's poor opinion of his girlfriend's creepy breathing habit. Rynyk was successfully recruited by Rubber, and Von Schild immediately gave her a proper welcome by making a contemptuous remark about her brother's honesty. Von Schild was on a roll, subtly scorning the jawline of Dave (a visitor) and laughing at Xina's way of thinking. Jen tried to talk some sense into him, but Von Schild only snickered at her broad-mindedness.

All the toxic talk was put on hold for a stretch on the 3rd when we were invaded by tribals. I had my colonists amass at the fortifications to properly greet them, but the little bastards were sappers, and ended up bypassing our defenses altogether. Everyone scrambled to defend the north wall and made it there just in time.

Three raiders were dead before they really knew what hit them, but a fourth managed to sneak through an open doorway undetected. Emily took one look at Peza and ran for her life as Monkey, a gunner who was late to the action, moved into position to help her. The mass of raiders closed the gap on my defending (but unprotected) colonists. A few managed to get close enough to injure Kaleun. They paid dearly for the effort as they were now in range of our flamethrowers and MRG-5's. Two more invaders dropped dead, but we were taking injuries; Rynyk, Val and Hanfy were all hurt. Monkey was downed in a one-on-one fist fight with Peza.

The last six tribals fled in terror. Only five of them survived. The idiot Peza was terrified, but the door she had previously walked through had shut and locked behind her. She could only bang on the door futilely as Dawn, who is not a fighter, nevertheless happened by her and picked up Monkey's dropped firearm. Peza was sprayed in the back with a litany of bullets, and dropped dead. Kaleun collapsed in the aftermath of the fighting and was near death. One of the raiders' arrows had penetrated her heart, and she had not long to live. Sullivan used the last of her medical bag to stabilize her, and managed to rush her to intensive care. Kaleun would survive.

The MVP of the battle was easily Bolla, who got three insta-kills courtesy of his laser sniper rifle. Dawn hurried to patch up the break in our wall.

On the 4th, we rescued Sebastian, a crashed spacer who was also, as I would discover later, a go-juice addict. I made preparations to break down our ugly barracks, as I couldn't stand the look and positioning of it.

We received another raid on the 5th. They were chasing a refugee, Justin, who is the husband of Sullivan. 21 hostile tribals were making for our battlefields, and it was just then that I was notified of a 5-candidate race to replace Eva as our mayor.

It was a typical fight. The attackers were forced to rush into range of our firing line in single file and were mostly picked off from the outset. McConnell and Gustav were the only colonists injured. Afterward, we picked up two prisoners in Dog (who had lost her leg) and Partridge. Meanwhile, an arctic lion appeared somewhere on the map, and a notification informed me that it was stalking one of my colonists. The timing was opportune. Most everyone except for Fox (the night shift) was getting ready for bed. Later, I head gunfire, and quickly realized that ninja lion was on the battlefield getting picked apart by my turrets. The ninja lion was downed with a permanent gunshot injury to the brain right as the sun was getting ready to rise, and I sent Val to finish it off.

On the 6th, Partridge developed an infection in her left second toe. I had Sebastian lop off the offending appendage rather than waste useful medicine. Hanfy, mental breaking due to methadone withdrawal, created a stir when he attempted to smash some of the beds I had filled the halls with to supplement tired colonists lacking a room. Mushinto raced forth to deal with the problem. Gustav, Khan, Kaleun and Von Schild assisted him in beating Hanfy stupid. Hanfy's instability was a problem, and I decided to medicate him on ambrosia until such time that he could overcome his addiction.

On the 7th, Partridge started slitting her wrists in the cell she was sharing with Dog. A self tamed meadow ave joined the colony on the 8th, and Eva started to throw a tantrum but was calmed by Khan. Hanfy had overcome his methadone addiction by the 9th.

Whilst cooking simple meals on the 10th, McConnell suddenly had a heart attack. I feared that we would lose him as we lost Pacheco some years ago. A heart attack is no laughing matter. Luckily, Von Schild managed to successfully treat him with a 65% rating on his first attempt. Yay, Von Schild, you neurotic wimp.

The colonists amassed to vote in the election late on the 10th. Politics always bring colonists together, and the abrasive McConnell, happy to be alive after his brush with death, openly insulted Emily's plant growing skills. Dawn, receiving nine votes, won the election, and good riddance. Eva was a whiny, histrionic leader if any there ever was, and definitely unsuited for the task. We'll see if Dawn does any better.

Von Schild was still in distress over the circumstances of his earlier breakup with Kaleun. On the 11th, he began binging on ambrosia to cope. By the 12th, he had developed an addiction to the drug. Speaking of marriages, McConnell proposed one to Xina, who happily accepted. Dog joined our colony on the 14th, and then an event happened that would have serious repercussions to the colony.

Val, one of our most reliable shooters, hunters and base defenders, had a mental break at 12h of the 14th. The man we originally found half naked in the wilderness opted to become one with nature and binge-hunt. This did not go well for Val at all. At 18h, Val angered a pair of meadow aves. He killed one of the birds, but received a near fatal pecking from the other. Rynyk had to rush out to kill the offending meadow ave, and there simply was not enough time to do that and rescue Val, who perished from his wounds late on the 14th. This constitutes our fifth colonist death. Six, if you count Pablo (no one counts Pablo; he made his choice).

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