LONG BLOG
Tales from the RimWorld Episode 2
Welcome back! At the end of the last episode, the ragtag group calling themselves Destructoid in their settlement, Also Cocks, was reeling after a chance encounter with a mad boomrat as night began to fall. The food has run out. Dangus is locked in her room (yep, Dangus in this world is a woman, I had to go back and edit the last episode) while Zombz is recovering from his wounds. Morpho and Jinx had lain down to get some well deserved rest.
Day 8
The respite does not last long. They are awakened by some sounds outside. Morpho and Jinx head out to investigate the noise, and it is two pirates from the group known as The Notorious Worms! One is wielding a spear, and the other has a bandolier of grenades across his chest. Knowing that Zombz is hurt, and Dangus is unreliable due to the stress, Jinx and Morpho quickly rush the one with the grenade. Between Jinx’s mace strikes and Morpho firing over his shoulder, the grenade armed pirate goes down fast. In the process, Jinx takes a nasty spear wound in his side. After seeing his comrade fall, the other pirate turns to run, only to be beaten down before he can get anywhere. Morpho helps Jinx to his bed, and begins to tend to his wound.
As day breaks, Dangus stops sulking and comes out of her room, to hear something crashing through the trees in the forest to the north. A large group of alphabeavers has moved in, determined to chew their way through the trees in the area. Not wanting to have the valuable resources wasted by beavers, the decision is made to kill the pack of animals. There should also be plenty of beaver meat as well!
Despite the earlier injuries from the boomrat attack, Zombz is still the only one that has a much skill with ranged weapons. Since there is such a large number of them, he decides to try hunting with the frag grenades scavenged from the dead pirate the night before. He heads north as the day begins to rapidly heat up, lobbing grenades indiscriminately about, blasting beavers, turkeys, and raccoons to pieces.
In the ridiculous heat, nobody seems interested in gathering up the mountain of meat that Zombz has just created. Dangus is hot, and decides she’s had enough, locking herself back inside her bedroom. Morpho takes refuge in the food cooler to avoid overheating. After blasting everything around him with grenades, Zombz has also had enough of the heat, starvation, and his wounds, and goes berserk, storming angrily around the settlement. Thankfully no one else is outside to run into his murderous rage.
Once Zombz stomps off into the woods, Morpho comes out to check on their prisoner, only to find that he has died. The heat, sickness, and lack of food was just too much for him to handle, so Morpho dragged his corpse outside the boundaries of the settlement. Nobody was much in the mood to dig a grave for a random person who was trying to kill their new friend Jinx.
At sundown Dangus comes back out, and she heads off with Morpho to begin dragging the beaver, turkey, and raccoon corpses back to the settlement. They are so hungry that Morpho even attempts to feed a raw beaver to the recovering Jinx, giving him food poisoning in the process.
Days 9 and 10
After a sleepless, angry night, the exhausted Zombz gets it back together and passes out in his bed. Things are much cooler on this day, making everyone much happier. Morpho cooks a big breakfast of beaver for all, and things are starting to look up.
The next day the group works together to get the trees cleared around the wind turbine, ensuring that they should have full power through the night every day at this point. Feeling much better, Jinx even throws a party at the end of the day, not that there really is anything to do other than play horseshoes at a stake placed outside the bedrooms.
Days 11 and 12
The 11th day starts with a massive lightning storm outside, which luckily does not cause any damage to the structures of the settlement. A pair of alpacas wander nearby, making the group think to try their hand at farming them. The wool could come in handy when the fall and winter come. Morpho uses her animal skills, and successfully tames them.
Jinx and Dangus build a large barn and enclosure area to keep them safe from predators. If any other useful animals come along, it might be prudent to take them in as well, especially with food being as unreliable as it has been. This becomes an even better idea, when Zombz checks on the crops to find a blight has wiped out half of the potatoes and cotton being grown.
Day 13
It was time to harvest what remained of the cotton and potatoes, which was still a good amount for the settlement. The potatoes were cooked up into meals that would last longer, and Dangus got to work on creating a few jackets that could help deal with the cold of the upcoming seasons.
Day 14
An escape pod crashed to the ground nearby, and the survivor was badly injured. She was dragged back to a bed, and Morpho assessed the situation. It looked like a badly infected right arm, and it seemed like the best option was for Morpho to put her medical skills to the test and amputate it. The surgery was a resounding failure, and the crash survivor died in the process. This prompted the discussion amongst the group of getting a sick bay set up with some more sterile conditions to make medical procedures such as these safer in the future. Dangus and Jinx came up with some plans on adapting a building that was already nearby the settlement when they crashed.
Day 15
The group received a transmission (not sure how, since I'm pretty sure they don't have a radio) from a friendly AI that was on the original ship that had crashed. An area was being set up to launch any survivors from the crash into space and get them off this world. Unfortunately, it would require a very long journey to reach it. This group can barely keep Dangus from locking herself in her room, let alone making a trek a quarter of the way around the planet.
Also Cocks is the blue settlement in the northwest. The launch area is the little purple flag in the southeast.
Day 16
Jinx and Dangus were able to complete the sick bay. There have been lots of injuries since the very beginning, so it’s nice to have a dedicated location for everyone to get better (and hopefully to have better luck with any surgeries that need to be performed).
Day 17
In the early hours of the morning, everyone was awakened by the sound of the solar panels and turbine being smashed. More Notorious Worms pirates had come, possibly as revenge for their comrades being killed days earlier. This time, it was a group of three, all armed with various firearms, and they were damaging the electrical infrastructure.
All four of the settlers grabbed their weapons and readied themselves for battle, and set up in front of the storeroom. One of the invaders came straight at the group, while another came around the other side of the building to try to flank the defenders.
The group gets stuck in.
Zombz and Morpho took up positions in the middle with their guns, with Jinx and Dangus on either side to fight in melee. Being this close together would enable the two wielding guns to fire past their melee armed counterparts without having to worry about friendly fire. The two currently attacking were armed with a machine pistol and an assault rifle. Everyone in the group sustained injuries, with Jinx and Dangus taking the brunt of the damage. However, as they concentrated on one at a time, they soon killed their enemies. The last of the pirates was armed with a sniper rifle, but ended up being a poor shot with it. Coupled with a slow rate of fire, he didn’t have a chance against the four defending their home.
Victory!
It was a good thing they now had a sick bay, because Jinx and Dangus needed to be bandaged up from multiple gunshot wounds. For now, Morpho and Zombz’s minor wounds could wait while they tended to the settlement and patching up their friends. The third bed would soon be filled, however, as Zombz watched another escape pod crash to the planet’s surface to the north as day broke. He quickly ran to see what he could do, and dragged the bleeding survivor back to where he could receive medical attention. The man called himself hlarge.
Hlarge spent his childhood days as a video gamer on a midworld, and eventually turned to drugs to enhance his reality. When he grew up, he prostituted himself to fund his drug habits (yes, this is the game created description for him). To escape this lifestyle, he joined the military and learned to fight. He was too smart for this role, however, and disagreed with many of his superiors’ decisions, leading to his dishonorable discharge.
He's great at shooting and melee combat, and his intelligence gives him great research ability. He’s also a solid cook, and has a passion for medicine and animals, although not quite as talented as Morpho in these regards. His skills will be a good fit in this group.
The current look of Also Cocks
It had been a very stressful day for the slowly growing group, but they were feeling optimistic about their chances. They had a decent amount of food, and they were able to get some extra weapons and clothing from their slain attackers, even if they were of poor quality. If Destructoid could keep things going the way they were, maybe they might even get to put a caravan together and leave this world for good.
Tales from the RimWorld Episode 3
LOOK WHO CAME:
