Welcome to Gaia! ::

- Continue building Collectors
- Establish more trade, Bogtown very short on useful resources
- Get stolen from, begin formation of some kind of guard
- Start paying guards/workers with not-Possibly-Important stuff, no formal currency but a healthy barter system develops
- Start trading for information also, similarly to stuff - want to know anything and everything Just In Case
- Assasination attempt, fanatic who is obsessed with Grigori but unconnected - let him live, but cut off and keep his hand

Much as things had taken on a life of their own, they evolved on their own as well, with little direct help or intention from Ashoka. The haphazard array of the first handful of huts gradually radiated out with more planning to accomodate the growing number of people - of residents - joined together by a network of raised walkways so that they didn't all have to be in the muck all the time. There were even huts for Things, two to start: one for things that were maybe sort of possibly important and/or conventionally valuable, and a hut for things that were just ordinary, but then the not-important-but-valuable things got their own hut too.

This quasi-organization made it easier once they started trading their Things for Not Important but Necessary Things, like food and better building materials and tools, and all the things that their funny little town in the great big bog needed. To the people outside the swamp, they became not just the Collectors, but Bogtown.

They traded amongst themselves as well, one thing or task for another, with no use for currency in the traditional sense, only for the shiny sorts that could be melted down and made into better, more useful or at least more interesting shapes. It was all going very nicely until someone who came to join them really only came to steal from them. They chased him, and he fell into one of the sucking pits and they let it have him, and she watched. Though she often saw death, she rarely saw it in person. The others all left after awhile, but it didn't bother her.

After that, they hired guards, so they had to stop just melting down the shiny bits to make better shiny bits. Sirpa started making them into different little coins instead, Bogtown coins. Some people liked to use them and some people didn't, and Ashoka didn't want to make them use them, so it was all a little messy for awhile, but finally they all settled and agreed that it was fine to barter if someone liked that better, but they couldn't not take the coins at all. It was still sort of messy, but it mostly worked.

The arguments weren't usually bad, although sometimes someone got pushed into the muck, and once someone did get hurt. That was when they decided that if you hurt someone, maybe you had to leave Bogtown, but since it wasn't a rule then, that first person didn't have to leave, and they were very sorry anyway - here, this is how sorry I am, you can have some of my stuff. So then they talked about it again and decided that if you hurt someone, you should have to pay them, unless maybe it was really bad?

Ashoka was content to make it up as she went along, and whether or not they realized that that was what she was doing, they said nothing against such an approach. They trusted her. They were looking for Important Things, but she was their Important Person. And Callum, he was Important too. He wrote down everything she decided so everyone would know.

(('Shoka solos are as weird as 'Shoka, it would seem.))