we need to know

[hasapoint]

[Need's Mindvoice is gravelly and contemplative, and seems to come from right between the ears of whoever's listening.]

I've been considering, children, and just so you know - this is a large group to be living off only what can be hunted and foraged within the space we've been given. It won't happen today, it won't happen within the week or moonturn, I think, but available food will run out. If you're thinking we can just switch to farming: no. So I want to think about medium-term survival here.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, if any one of us tries to go too far into the woods we're Fetched back to within some invisible perimeter. I've got a question. 'Chosen Ones' or not, are we bound to the area around the Heartstone, or to each other?

You're welcome to come up with some alternative to 'Chosen Ones', by the way. I know a lot of you are less than pleased about being selected.

Comments

[unsealthecatbox]

[Ange was...pretty much staying to a side of the market when suddenly Need's voice right in her head, disrupting her personal musings and thoughts. Ugh.

...

But seems like an important interruption, hm...]

I doubt we're going to save the world while hiding in an abandoned market near a dying stone. We can't take this place as our base forever.

[Truthfully, she really wants to get done with this as soon as possible so she can return home. Being here for a few days already has her a little antsy. The problem is to know what to do, though]

When I was being pursued by monsters back at that faire, I felt drawn in this direction, but I believe this...invisible perimeter is around us all. If it were around this place then we'd all have been transported close to it right after our arrival to this world, instead of letting us hang out at terrains a good distance away from here for a few hours.

[Ergo, the perimeter is not around this stone, she thinks. She's pretty sure the faire is far away enough for the instant transportation back here to kick in before one even getting close to it -- not that she wants to test that theory]

[credit_not_blame]

I'd say that we're bound to each other. The magical "go this way" tug in my gut pulled me toward the faire first, where other people were. We went to the Heartstone because the summer fairies said that it would keep us safe from the Nightrenders, and presumably those creepy sisters who called us 'Chosen Ones' in the first place.

Plus, the Heartstone doesn't look like it's got the power to keep us here. I don't think this place is going to qualify as 'safe' for much longer.

[hasapoint]

You've got to be able to get away from a base for it to be really useful. That or it's mobile somehow.

Very good. [...Need was already convinced that this was the case but teacher gonna ask leading questions.] I wish we'd had more time there and knew if the perimeter had existed already, but we work with the information we have.

[hasapoint]

Very logical. [Need is not going to say if and how much of that she's thought of herself. As an old teacher she likes a leading question better than dictating what someone should think.]

How might we go about testing this? Even without knowing some fresh direction to go in, we might venture faire-wards to find people to talk to.

[unsealthecatbox]

I suppose finding out everything ourselves and making our way through the world is part of this nonsensical 'save the world' demand we're in right now.

[First time she admits she thinks it's nonsensical. It's not really because of what they're doing, it's more because it's like she got thrown into the deep end of the pool and told to learn specific swimming styles without even knowing how to float. Do they even have a starting point on how to proceed with this goal? Not really]

[steelandtemper]

Statistically, subsistence hunter-gatherer populations are much healthier than subsistence agricultural ones.

[She's trolling helping!]

[hasapoint]

Nothing I haven't seen before, though maybe not on this scale. It'll resolve eventually and we'll know what's happening and what exactly is at stake. But, I can see how it's frustrating for you.

[Trying to figure weird new situations out without a great deal of help is a lot of her life. ...Also, Need usually has supernatural luck powers that mean the answers always do come.]

[hasapoint]

You don't have to tell me that. Either I was a horse-nomad once, or my 'mother' was, depending on how you want to count that. You see a lot more bad teeth among the housemen.

[steelandtemper]

Yeah, excessive carbs, grit in the flour, and no dental care will do that.

[hasapoint]

Sounds about right. Of course, you can't subsist off unmanaged land in any numbers if you can't also travel.

[steelandtemper]

Are people brushing their teeth? Dental infections kill, and unanesthetized extractions are no picnic, either.

[credit_not_blame]

[Stacia's always happy to receive praise. She's also always happy to be consulted regarding potential next steps.]

To confirm whether we're drawn to the Heartstone or to each other, we'd need to get a majority of the group to leave the Heartstone and stick together to see whether the majority are stymied or whether the remainders are teleported or dragged along.

[Stacia frowns thoughtfully.]

Assuming that we're bound together as a group, it would also be valuable to know how many of us count as a main body, and what happens if a straggler is restrained somehow. If we can just teleport people out of kidnapping situations, that would be very handy, less so if we're just going to drag the poor person face-first into a wall.

[hasapoint]

I can kill infections if it comes to that, but prevention's better on everyone. Annnnd... no, I don't think most of them are. Mostly they don't even know how to select a tooth-cleaning stick, and making brushes, that seems like a no.

[hasapoint]

I was thinking of something on a smaller scale - establish the general boundaries, have a majority of the group cluster in one place away from the Heartstone, send one or two people as scouts to the boundary near them and see if they can go farther. But it does seem a good idea to test further as you've described.

So, you think those two women with the masks didn't know about this effect, or could perhaps disrupt it?

[okayimin]

They don't what!

[ Hi, someone who is pre industrial and uses the tooth sticks. ]

Stone, this is what happens when surfacers don't worry enough about things like the Taint.

[hasapoint]

I think they're all just rubbing the film off their teeth with cloth right now. You have to save them. I don't think they'll listen to people who don't have teeth to rot.

[okayimin]

[ There's the muffled sound of Sawbones burying her face in her hands and having a small scream. ]

Pack of blasted duster runts- All right. All right. We need to establish who's got what and who can do what anyway. We might as well start on flat ground and dig down, figure out what folks know how to do.

[hasapoint]

[Need is having a great time.]

It seems many of them are from planes where their needs are provided for differently. I saw a boy talking about butchering and preserving meat as if he didn't expect a lot of others to know how, and only so many of them saying they did too. So they're city people, essentially.

[credit_not_blame]

I really, really hope it's a teleportation thing. I'm currently imagining someone getting dragged off by something speedy and hitting a magical wall and just...splashing.

[Stacia shudders.]

All I'm sure about the women is that they've got some kind of magic that allows them to use silver as a functional material for net-making. They haven't shown up here yet, which would seem to indicate that the Heartstone is protecting us from them -- we certainly didn't do enough damage to them for me to believe we scared them off -- but I'm also not sure that the summer fairies knew the kind of thing that was coming. I only heard them identify the Nightrenders, not the women.

[steelandtemper]

People from industrial societies are used to much greater individual specialization in work. Mechanized agriculture and manufacturing mean things like hunting and gardening become hobbies rather than life skills.

[hasapoint]

I know when I got Fetched it took me and my scabbard and belt right off the person carrying me, and not by damaging either of them. Or him, for that matter. That doesn't mean there can't be a pulled-by-a-leash effect that kicks in at other times, of course.

That's true. I wish I'd been paying more attention. The fairegoers knew about the Nightrenders all right but I didn't pick up on their reactions to the women at all. I suppose I was preoccupied at that time. Here's a tidbit, though - those women had some of the best shields against Mind Gifts I've ever seen. I could only sense them as an absent space.

[hasapoint]

Hell, that stuff was a long time ago, I barely remember. Guess it went better for you people.

But it's like that even in villages without serious industry, to a degree. Not a lot of blacksmiths have to farm, and if there's a butcher around they'll end up handling a lot of that work for the community, even though sorting out entrails and joints is something anyone with a knife and some expertise can manage.

[steelandtemper]

[Innnnnnnnteresting.]

A lot of people around here will never have seen meat that wasn't already cut into portion sizes. I only know how to butcher an animal because I'm carrying copies of the UNSC survival manuals.

[And Mom's a skilled surgeon, so Cortana would probably manage it pretty well.]

[hasapoint]

[Need is so old.]

I hope that includes uses for organs. I know they tend to end up taboo, but that's a lot of food energy and healthful parts going to waste.

[She doesn't actually know words for calories or vitamins.]

[unsealthecatbox]

Your patience in the face of all this is remarkable. I'm jealous.

[Maybe that's what happens when you have lived for so long a couple decades is no big deal to you: you turn into a really patient person]