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 Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 6:55 am
A mountainous area on the outside of New York. Pine trees and uneven treacherous terrain as far as the eye can see. Weathe here is unpredictable and violent. This expanse covers a large part of the northeastern portion of North America. Tread softly for you trespassing in someone's home.
Current territory owner: Sons of b***h
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Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 8:06 pm
 The sun beat down benevolently from overhead. A gentle breeze sent waves through the grass. Peace was disturbed. It hadn't been this nice out in weeks. The weather in the mountains was usually violent, which meant that today was the day she had to travel. It wasn't that the cave she'd been inhabiting was particularly bad or anything, but she was worried the butchered swan carcass might start attracting scavengers soon. They always seemed to come after her leftovers, even when she made sure to cover her tracks. It was like they could track her down by smell, or something.
Well, anyway, she munched on the last drumstick in her possession as she sought out a nice, flat rock to help her dig a hidey hole in the side of the mountain. After almost an hour of wandering across the mountain, she came upon a nice rock that looked up for the task. It was broad, flat, and had a nice weight to it. It was kind of sparkly under all the dirt and grime, but she didn't care much about that; she just hauled it to a nice, vertical piece of land and started digging.
And digging. And digging. And digging. And then also some digging. And then a quick trip to the creek for water, followed by more digging. Eventually she went and gathered some fallen trees to use as supports for the entrance to her cave, then kept digging.
Excavational Progress: 31%.
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Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 8:44 pm
Now this was more like it. Over the past hour, the temperature had dropped ten degrees and now it was windy and rainy. Not only that, but the wind was blowing the rain directly toward where she had been working! She had to protect her progress, and that meant covering it up with some foliage. Trees seemed to do alright in the rain, and she'd never heard one complain about the weather, so she grabbed a bundle of branches and dragged it back to the hole she'd made in the side of the mountain. Once those branches were in place and secured so their leaves blocked the rain, she picked up her digging rock and started shoveling her way deeper into the mountainside. All things considered, she made great progress while the rain continued to pour outside, and had a nice mound of mud building up in front of the entrance just from the earth she was moving. It made sense that she was booking it through all this raw earth and rock; she'd dug at least 42 of these holes so far, spanning from near the city to a few weeks' walk west, not accounting for variation in the north-south axis. If nothing else, she was getting good at digging holes. She'd even figured out how to make little moats near the entrance so that water didn't come in when it rained, and how to prop up the branches just right so they kept the inside dry.
It was getting late before she realized it. The sun went down while she was digging, leaving her with a hole that wasn't quite large enough to sleep in comfortably. She really didn't want to risk a cave-in just because she hit a wall while sleeping, but it was still pouring rain outside. She decided to finish off the swan drumstick while trying to think up a plan.
Excavational Progress: 98%.
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Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 9:00 pm
Well, she'd really done it this time. The cave she'd been digging might just make it into the top 40% of all the ones she'd ever made. She could stretch out in every direction if a fire wasn't going. Oh yeah, she'd made a fire pit. Of course, all the tinder was wet because of the rain, but that was of little consequence; the night was a fairly warm one and it was decently dry in her cave for the time being, so she didn't need the extra warmth. At some point it had stopped raining and become merely windy. She laid out near the entrance to her hole, head resting on her arms, and settled in to sleep. It was late, after all.
Then it happened. A sudden strike, like a bolt from a clear sky, hit her square on the back of the head. It was horrible. It left a strange substance oozing slowly down the side of her head, a dark, sticky, viscous liquid. She couldn't believe it. She had to be dreaming. Without stopping to look toward the source of this horrible phenomenon, she retreated into her hole, where she knew she would be safe. What had she been thinking, sleeping out there where mud could just fall on her like that?! It had just rained!
Excavational Progress: 161%.
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Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 10:54 pm
It appeared the nice weather of the previous night was mostly just a fluke. Sometime while Peace was asleep, the skies had opened up and a torrential deluge of water had starting sloughing down the mountain. The entrance to her cave thankfully had some rock under all the dirt, but even so there was now a sizable mound of mud where it had once been. Thunderclaps shook the mountain as Peace stared out into the outside world, looking for something to eat. For about an hour or so the only creatures she spotted were some small mice seeking refuge under a shrub. Later on, a black bear lumbered through the area, just close enough that she could see it but not hear it. It lingered a bit too long for comfort, but ultimately carried on its way. Then, sometime around midmorning, a deer walked into view.
The creature was clearly spooked by the storm, but looked as though it had tired itself out already. It stopped to catch its breath under a nearby tree, giving Peace the chance to strike when it looked away. Slowly, over the course of several minutes, she geared up to attack. When she moved, she moved with conviction. The deer never heard her coming thanks to the torrential downpour. She felled it in three punches: the first to the back of its head to stun it and allow her to grab it for leverage, and the other two to the creature's neck. It went down without much of a fight, suffice it to say. Following this, she retrieved a knife from her pack and gutted the deer before its innards could taint the meat. She would eat well that night, but if she couldn't get a fire going, she'd have to settle for canned food.
Finding dry firewood in this deluge was practically a sisyphean task, an undertaking that she figured would not go very well. In fact, it took her hours before she finally found something usable, and even that was on accident: soaked to the bone and frustrated, she had punched a tree. It made a nice crack and fell over. Never before had she considered the uses of dead trees, but this day she was grateful. The inside was decently dry, so she dragged it back to her cave--once again thanking the gods that there had been some rock support for its entrance--and began splitting it while the deer drained under a tree outside. Building a fire took a long time, and more than once she'd had to retreat from the cave just because of the smoke coming off of some of the wetter pieces, but eventually she got a fire going that was large enough she could just throw any old log she found on and it would eventually catch. After that, it was merely a matter of preparing the meat and then roasting it. She'd have food for days if she needed it, but dragging the carcass around wasn't a good idea unless she planned to attract animals, so realistically she only had until the weather broke and she moved on. Still, she roasted a fair amount of meat, and it was pretty delicious compared to that swan she'd eaten the previous day.
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Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 12:07 am
The next day was significantly less terrible. The rain stopped overnight and eventually the seemingly endless cloud cover started to break up, allowing patches of bright blue to peer down onto the mountains. It couldn't last, though. Peace knew that. It was just a matter of time before the rain came back, or maybe even hail this time. Still, as she extracted herself and her few belongings--now including a wad of roasted venison that she'd wrapped in a couple of large leaves and tied shut using some sinew--she couldn't help but take a moment survey the landscape. She could see the city in the distance, but mostly it was just wilderness for miles. As inviting as the latter was, though, she set out toward the city. She was just sad she couldn't take the nice digging rock with her, since it had gotten lost somewhere near the cave entrance during the mudslide.
She made good time, and despite the sweltering heat she kept quite cool. There was a stiff but cool breeze coming out of the north with just enough strength to reach her even within the forests. As she came down off the mountain, she started to follow a river that seemed to be flowing in roughly the direction she wanted to go, and at around lunchtime stopped for a short rest on its bank. She refilled her canteen and cleaned both herself and her clothes, then munched on part of the meat chunk while her clothes baked dry on a boulder.
Freshly cleaned and clothed, she made her way steadily toward the city. But then her ears picked up a sound that belonged not to her ilk nor the creatures of the wilderness, but to a person who clearly wasn't used to walking through the wilderness quietly. She slowly approached the source of the sound, stalking the trespasser like a hunter following their quarry. There she espied, crashing through the underbrush near a lake, a young man bearing a black duffel bag of clearly superior make to the rest of his clothing. He seemed a bit panicked, but that didn't really matter since he was scaring away all the game in the area and disturbing the quiet. She followed him until he stopped to catch his breath on a tree, then grabbed his shoulder from behind. He screamed. And flailed. And hit her. She just threw him to the ground and sat on him until he tired himself out and started whimpering about not wanting to go back, that he was sorry and wouldn't do it again, and so on and so forth, but he clearly wasn't in any shape to navigate back to civilization. He was a clear city slicker if ever she'd seen one, all weak and skinny as a bean pole.
Well, long story short, she ended up binding his hands and leading him back to the city on a leash. She wouldn't have minded if he'd just kept quiet on the way, but dealing with his pleading and occasional attempts to flee wore on her. She considered knocking him out, but carrying his unconscious body would have tired her out even faster than his personality. She'd only planned on heading far enough away to set up camp and hunt in a new area, but now she had to make the trip all the way to the city just to make sure this bozo was somewhere he couldn't bother her.
For a full day he remained in an absolute panic, babbling about how he'd stolen something or other (she didn't recognize the word he used), how he'd had a colleague transport him out to the forest to evade the cops, and how he would really, really like to walk without being on the leash, but she was having none of it. The second day he was quiet, only opening his mouth to rehydrate and to eat. The third day he started trying to make small-talk, to no avail. The fourth day, they arrived at an outpost close enough to the city that she could turn him in to the authorities. They were rather thankful initially, but grew less and less so when she remained silent in the face of their questions. It took almost three hours before one of them asked if she could speak, to which she shook her head "no". Then they gave her a pen and paper and asked her to write her responses. She wrote "Peace" repeatedly in rather poor handwriting. Eventually they gave up and just confirmed the man's explanation of events with her, paid her, and sent her on her way.
Naomi Tenkou Completed "Common Criminal Bounty". Cash reward rolled in next post, because I forgot.
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Ergo War generated a random number between
25 and 75 ...
52!
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Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 12:12 am
((Forgot to generate cash reward for the last post.))
As she strolled away, Peace leafed through the wad of cash she'd gotten and counted it out. She was pretty bad at math, but knew that she now had enough money for a burger or two. The very thought made her mouth water, so she headed toward the city, with all its bright lights, noisy vehicles, and throngs of people. It was going to be an ordeal, certainly, but the burgers would be worth it. They always made her feel whole again.
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Ergo War generated a random number between
25 and 75 ...
64!
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Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 10:28 pm
A gentle breeze rustled the grass. Birds chirped in the trees. The cries of cicadas echoed across the landscape. Peace, in all of her infinite wisdom and demonstrably finite intellect, had found herself staring down another criminal who'd decided to flee into her territory rather than deal with the consequences of their actions. This time it was a teenage girl who'd decided to live life on the lam after assaulting someone. Of course, this was all by her own admission; in reality, Peace felt less threatened by this low-class criminal than she had by the deer she'd executed and slaughtered with her bare hands. This girl still had a pristine manicure and cell phone battery. Her arms were no bigger than twigs. The two of them weren't even two hundred feet into the forest when they encountered each other.
Peace had had enough of all these people running away from their problems into the wilderness. An argument could be made that that was her shtick, but she dismissed that thought out of hand, since she didn't really have any problems in civilization. She needed to make a statement. She needed to warn people that this land was hers, but short of putting up a giant fence or a wall that would take forever to build, she didn't have many options. She wasn't about to go ask the civilized folk for help and couldn't very well make a sign, but she'd come up with something.
The girl tried hitting and scratching at her fruitlessly as Peace carried her to the nearest police station. When they arrived, the villainous scoundrel thought to gain the upper hand by undoing Peace's shirt. In response, her captor dropped her to the ground, sat on her lap facing her, planted both feet on her hands, grabbed her head with both hands, and glared into her eyes silently until she broke. Then, just as quietly as before, Peace righted her shirt and dumped the girl in the hands of the authorities, now quite fed up with civilization. She watched as the girl confessed her sins to the fuzz, then took her reward and walked right back into the forest. She needed a nice hole to sleep in.
Common Criminal Bounty: Complete.
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Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 10:51 pm
It was another standard day. Thunderstorms were absolutely drenching everything in sight, of course, and Peace was without shelter. Luckily, her new poncho was coming in handy right off the bat; as soon as she put it on, she understood the appeal of such things, as she felt for the first time that she could keep working while it rained. This poncho was one of the greatest purchases she had ever made, she was pretty certain, so at least two good things had come out of her visit to the city (the other being the burger).
Oh, but the shovel was a thing of glory too. It carved through the mud on the mountainside, exposing the rock underneath almost effortlessly. She had decided how she would mark her territory in a way that none could dispute, and now she just had to work on it. She wasn't great with letters, but there were four she knew really well and she was determined to put them to good use. With the assistance of the rain, she carved a vertical line down a section of the mountain, turning it into a river only ten feet across and no more than an inch deep.
Letter 'P' Completion: 51%.
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Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 11:07 pm
The rain eventually let up and gave way to a breezy, cloudy day. The humidity practically made the place a swamp, but Peace persevered. Her cause was a noble one, one shared by her ancestors hundreds of years ago: she was staking her claim on a territory larger than she had any right to claim, and was doing it in a muscle-headed and barbaric way. She hung up her poncho and backpack on a nearby tree as soon as the rain let up, not wanting them to get in the way while she worked. She also stopped to rehydrate just based on principle, but despite that break she was still starting to feel exhausted from this mammoth undertaking. After getting through only the first line of the next letter, she had to stop herself and find someplace to sleep.
The energy she'd gotten from the burger was leaving her following all she'd gone through that day, and she wasn't sure if she'd be able to work in the morning if she didn't find food first. While she searched for a fairly dry location to set up camp, she dug a few small pit traps. These were hardly the sort of thing she'd usually employ, but if she was lucky, she'd catch something small. She eventually set up camp next to a fallen tree, using the poncho as semi-waterproof bedding and constructing a roof from woven sticks and leaves.
Letter 'P' Completion: 100%.
Letter 'E' Completion: 15%.
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Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 11:21 pm
Peace awoke the next morning to bitterly cold temperatures, heavy fog, and the sound of some sort of bird creature flailing wildly in a pit trap. It took her only seconds to spot which one--it was the only one that had caved in--and then seconds again to rescue the creature and snap its neck. It appeared to be some sort of quail, but since she had never actually seen one before, she wasn't too sure it wasn't just a chicken or duck. Regardless, she prepared the bird swiftly, used her hatchet to cut some dry firewood, and then set about cooking parts of it. She started with a thigh but was still tremendously hungry afterward, so she ate the other thigh too. She put its feathers in her temporary shelter and buried the rest of the bird in the coals from her fire after it died down, letting it roast slowly while she went about her business.
After a quick trip to the river to refill her canteen and wash the dirt and blood off, the stamina dynamo known as Peace got right back to work digging out that second letter. By the time lunch rolled around, she was almost 40% of the way through her planned excavation.
Letter 'P' Completion: 100%.
Letter 'E' Completion: 95%.
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Ergo War generated a random number between
10 and 100 ...
11!
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Posted: Thu May 11, 2017 1:35 pm
The afternoon consisted mostly of gathering twigs and other materials while foraging for fruit and berries. Peace had learned the hard way quite a long time ago that fruits and vegetables were a very important part of one's diet. So far she'd found an armload of apples that were in reasonable enough shape to be eaten and had transported a few armfuls of long grasses and branches back to her campsite.
That was when she heard it. A tree fell in the direction of the city. It was still green, too, so it had to have been due to human interference. In short, someone was chopping down Peace's trees and hadn't even asked to do so beforehand. She had to have a word with them. Hopefully that one word was them saying "Sorry", because she wasn't bringing much to the table other than a very stern expression. She made her way briskly toward the fallen tree and found a surprisingly well-dressed man chopping wood. He spotted her fairly quickly and asked if he could help, if she was lost, and a few other questions, none of which earned him anything other than an annoyed expression and a pointed glance toward the fallen tree.
Well, this fellow was quite perceptive and determined rather quickly that either Peace couldn't or wouldn't talk to him verbally, so he stated his reasons plainly without being asked: his master, he explained, had requested someone get firewood a specific type of tree, so the man was here chopping it. But, he complained, the axe handle hurt his fingers and he was worried he would get blisters, so he asked if Peace would be willing to do the work for him. He nodded understandingly when she rubbed her fingers together in the universal sign for "give me money" and produced a small wad of cash with which he promised to pay her. She didn't have much use for money, certainly, but if these city slickers got word that coming out to her neck of the woods meant paying money, maybe they'd keep away.
The wood he was chopping was very tough to chop, but the only problems it was giving Peace physically were related to fatigue. And then the ax handle broke, leaving her with the head and a well-polished stick. Without waiting more than the time it took to toss the handle aside, Peace put the ax head on the next log and punched it. Though it hurt a bit, it did get the job done. After splitting about a score logs that way, her knuckles were starting to get bruised, but the butler-type who was paying her was looking seriously impressed. He paid her and carted the wood off, after which she went and let her hands cool in the water of a nearby creek.
Shake Your Money Maker: Complete.
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Ergo War generated a random number between
10 and 50 ...
23!
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Posted: Thu May 11, 2017 2:29 pm
Peace thought that as the day turned to evening she would be able to enjoy herself a bit more, but that was apparently not the case. Right on the edge of the forest near the city was a small group of three gang member types who were smoking cigarettes like it was their last day on earth. While they weren't being particularly noisy, she figured the animals would probably stay away if they smelled something so distinctly human--and plus they were making her nervous, since they might decide to amble on into the forest--so she descended once again from her mountain campsite and approached the gaggle of vagabonds with as annoyed an expression as she could muster.
They looked at her when she stepped out into the evening light from between the trees, then started catcalling her and generally being obnoxious in her general direction. It seemed they wanted to "have some fun" with her, in their own words, but Peace hadn't brought any of her games and probably wouldn't have risked them smelling like tobacco just by being near these people. She liked her games, after all, and didn't want to sully them in any way.
Eventually these well-meaning individuals started approaching her with their lit cigarettes and she started backing up. In protest, she pointed at one of the malodorous rods and motioned for it to be extinguished, a request to which they acquiesced surprisingly readily. It seemed these barbarians could be reasoned with. She nodded approvingly, a gesture which they seemed to take as an agreement for some sort of physical engagement. They drew close and started to reach toward her, ignoring her silent but firm protests, until eventually they forced her hand. Into their sternums, that is. She held back considerably against these chummy fellows, but nevertheless she knocked all but one of them over and winded all of them. While they collected themselves, she found a dry-looking log and grabbed it. When the hooligans had turned their attention back toward her, she held up the log in one hand, then split it clean in two with a punch from the other. They seemed to get the message and left while she scooped their expended cigarette butts into a hole. She also found a wallet with some cash in it, and rather than being a good samaritan and handing it over to the police, she elected to keep the cash and bury the rest with the cigarette butts. People needed to pick up their garbage.
Satisfied with chasing those members of the civilized world off of her turf, Peace grabbed a few large branches from the tree felled by the man earlier and headed back toward camp. She set the foliage up as a roof over her camp and pinned them in place with a couple of large stones, then retrieved the quail she'd had roasting in the coals all day. It was delicious.
Scum Removal: Complete.
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Posted: Thu May 11, 2017 7:39 pm
And now, on this most lovely of days, Peace was back to digging trenches in the mountain. On the plus side, it wasn't raining and she'd slept fairly well next to the warm fire the previous night. On the minus side, it was now below freezing out with a twenty mile per hour wind threatening to blast her off the face of the planet. On another plus side, the wind didn't hit her much if she hunkered down in the trenches, and the dirt was still quite warm from the recent heat. Peace never was much of one for cold, windy days, but she definitely was not dressed for this weather and her poncho--while it did a good job of breaking the wind--was absolutely terrible for insulation.
The day had actually started off fine. It was at least somewhat warm, and she'd managed to finish off the second letter in her monumental undertaking and even started a third. The breeze was cold, certainly, but nothing could have prepared her for the violent cold snap that took place around lunchtime. With only fruit to munch on, Peace was left sincerely regretting eating all of her roasted bird the day previous. To keep warm in the arctic gales she had built up a roaring fire near her camp, then built up a dirt wall around the entire area using some large stones and a sizable portion of the dirt she'd excavated thus far. It did a fantastic job of blocking the wind, though she wished she had had the foresight to make the wall when the ground was still wet since it was slowly being eroded by the wind. She managed to slow that process somewhat using a layer of branches taken from the ground nearby, but it was a stopgap measure at best. If only she'd excavated a nice cave in advance, she could have been completely shielded from this terrible weather. Such is hindsight.
Letter 'P' Completion: 100%.
Letter 'E' Completion: 100%.
Letter 'A' Completion: 43%.
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Posted: Thu May 11, 2017 8:05 pm
It wasn't much, but Peace had managed to capture a rabbit. She had been hoping to find something a bit larger so she could wear its skin, but the knot of hunger in her stomach had told her politely but firmly to catch the critter immediately. She complied, of course, and was cooking the meat over a roaring campfire, hunched down so that the wind blowing over the rapidly degrading dirt wall didn't get to her. This was the second day of bitter cold that she'd endured, and she dearly hoped it would be the last. She didn't have a home sturdy or well-insulated enough to endure this weather long-term, and her clothes were doing her no favors.
When she could no longer duck under the wind streaming over the wall, Peace elected to start digging downward, using the dirt she pulled up that way to restore it. This process was very slow, taking the better part of a morning to fully excavate the area under her camp and safely transfer the contents downward. After that, she had an idea for a slightly more durable roofing solution: wood. It was less likely to blow away and she could use any cuts she messed up for firewood. Hatchet in hand, she made numerous trips into the forest farther down the mountain, spending several hours to fell a tree with numerous trips back to her campfire to warm up. It was bitter, unforgiving work. Her limbs felt like lead when she was done chopping the trunk down to manageable pieces, but it was all worth it when she settled in under that little wood roof over her pit and warmed herself by the fire. She still had to occasionally pop out to chop a few new pieces of firewood, but eventually she had enough of a stack built up that she was confident she could make it through the night. The rabbit meat warm in her belly and the fire staving off the cold, she drifted off to sleep.
Letter 'P' Completion: 100%.
Letter 'E' Completion: 100%.
Letter 'A' Completion: 43%.
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