The Many Lives of Blevins Pointe

[DeltaV]

I had a particularly riveting playthrough on tough Kassandra earlier today, so I figured I'd share a shortened version of the events here:

Everything started out normal enough; I built a prison, a common room with a table and a food dispenser and comms and such, got techs researched, and set up defenses. I ended up with six people; The leader of the group, the entrepreneur Blevins, whom the colony had been named after, two farm oafs, a settler, a shipwright and an assassin.

Everything went well until a huge group of raiders arrived. While our men outpaced them technologically as far as weapons went, we were outnumbered at least 2:1. Everyone fought as well as they could, but everyone was incapacitated one by one until, eventually, everyone was on the ground and only Blevins, who had gone down first, was actually healing.

Time passed as health points gradually ticked down and the raiders torched the place. Eventually the raiders got bored, and I watched my colony, fully ready for the 'All your colonists are dead' notice to appear, as all but one person was bleeding out and that one person was about to starve.

However.

Blevins woke up. He woke up, he stood up, and he started getting people, their health at measly ones and twos, to their beds. He got two people, the settler Le and the assassin McCormick to their beds before he finally gave in and ran to get food.

By the time he finished eating, McCormick had starved. Blevins managed to get food to Le, and began the long, difficult task that repairing the place would entail with only two men, one of whom was still bedridden.

Gradually, though, things recovered. Random events yielded more and more new colonists, and Kassandra seemed to have given me a break as only small groups of three or four assaulted Blevins Pointe. Le made a full recovery and began working full-time as our resident farmer. Blevins acquired a sniper rifle, which he used with great satisfaction as he picked off bandits and the occasional squirrel.

And then, of course, deja vu hit. It was a simple raid, perhaps nine raiders against my seven and one turret, with somewhat even technology. However, they quickly proved that my defenses weren't all they were cracked up to be, as the raiders cleverly managed to completely skip around the various bits of debris I'd put mines at and hid behind the ones I hadn't noticed.

Things took a sharp turn downhill. First, a raider with molotov cocktails got close enough to start throwing, and the entire northern line was up in flames before he was gunned down. Mack, another entrepreneur, went down and didn't get back up as the fire devoured his remains.

At this point, I tried to pull back, but my colonists were shot down one by one trying to pull each other to salvation. I ended up with three people, including Blevins, recuperating in bed. Frey, our scientist, had been killed lugging Le, who was bleeding out on the ground for the second time, to his bed.

But, of course, fate had its way, and once again Blevins, who had again gone down first, managed to wake up in time to save Le, as well as a farm oaf, Leonard. I set Blevins to doing nothing but caring, and he somehow managed to get everyone food before they starved, and then went about repairing the colony again as the raiders disappeared off the map, scared off by a battery explosion that had killed one of the people and sent them running.

In the end, I had five people still left standing, the same five that would be with me until the colony's eventual demise, about a cycle later. Up until that point, time was spent mostly attempting to rebuild a geothermal generator practically on the other side of the map.

Then, of course, the bane of so many colonies' existence, the reason I had chosen Kassandra instead of Cassandra, appeared: The Sniper Squad. They had stepped it up a bit; five men with M-24s, one with grenades, one with an uzi and one with a pistol. Blevins spooked them as I frantically tried to get him away from where they had spawned and the battle was on.

Everyone fought bravely once more, but we hadn't even had time to rebuild the turrets. Still, I felt confident that-

Blevins was killed by a stray sniper bullet.

No incapacitation, no time to drag him back to his bed as had happened two times before, just one moment standing there with upwards of half his health and the next, dead on the ground.

Things went downhill further from here. After sustaining two more casualties, Le and Leonard, the only survivors, decided their time would be better spent putting out fires on a power cable a mile away than putting out the fire that was tearing apart the colony. By the time I realized what was happening and got them back, half the colony had been burnt to a crisp, including the batteries and poor Blevins' body. I didn't have enough metals to rebuild batteries.

At this point, I pretty much gave up, sad as I am to say it. I probably could've done something to save the colony, but my ~3,000 food was tantalizingly stored in an inaccessible stockpile, the hydroponics setup had been destroyed, and BLEVINS WAS DEAD. My colonists resigned themselves to their fate, walking slowly into the armory and building a couple of blasting charges. You can probably guess how it went from there.

Anyways, that's the end of that story. It ended up being longer than I thought it would when I started writing it, but hey, that's life. Hope you all enjoyed it.

[lewisd]

*clap* *clap* *clap*

Bravo Sir, excellent story.

[Sergei]

Very nice!