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  1. #1
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    Althanas Plays - Kingdom Death: Monster [Mature]


    Kingdom Death: Monster is a survival-horror campaign game which focuses on a group of survivors who wake up in a lightless word filled with horrible monsters and their struggle to build a settlement of people that will be able to survive in this world. Along the way survivors will be born and survivors will die. Your settlement will grow in technology as you innovate and will gear up using parts of the monsters that you kill so that you can go out and hunt bigger monsters. Powerful and deadly adversaries will show up to challenge your settlement and you will have to either give in to your fear and bow before them or rise up and give your lives to fight them back.

    It is my very favorite game.

    Kingdom Death is a tabletop game for 1 - 4 players. I also have a really well-scripted version on the Tabletop Simulator program from Steam that I play on my computer. I plan on playing a basic version of the campaign for Althanas and writing my progress down in this thread. Note that this game does deal with some mature topics at times and is very violent. Please feel free to chime in and ask questions in the thread.
    "I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me." - Call of Cthulhu

    David vs. Goliath: History's first recorded critical hit.

  2. #2
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    Level completed: 62%,
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    Prologue


    Once upon a time, there was a place of carved stone faces. A man with a lantern lay sleeping a dreamless sleep. The man knew nothing.

    One day, the man woke up. He rubbed the dried ink caked over his eyes and opened them. Around him, he saw other people stirring, and beyond, a horizon of unbroken darkness.

    A woman approached the man with the lantern. Her soft hand reached out to him. They had no words. They were a mystery to each other.

    Suddenly a monster emerged from the darkness. Its eyes wild with hunger. It attacked.

    The people were no match for the monster. It tore their flesh and crushed their bones between its teeth. Some, it devoured whole.

    Overcome with terror and grief, the man with the lantern collapsed to the ground. Cold stone noses pushed into his side. There was no escape.

    But the man did not want to die. Desperately grasping at the cold stone faces, he felt a crack, and tore at it with all his might. A piece of stone came free. It was sharp and deadly.

    The man with the lantern scrambled to his feet, his weapon clenched in his fist. He took a deep breath and roared into the darkness.

    Somewhere in the place of stone faces, nameless men stand together. They have nothing but a need to survive and a lantern to light their struggle.
    "I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me." - Call of Cthulhu

    David vs. Goliath: History's first recorded critical hit.

  3. #3
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    The game begins with a showdown against the prologue White Lion. There are four survivors, 2 male and 2 female, who are equipped only with loin cloth armor and sharp chunks of rock called Founding Stones.

    The first thing to do is to name my survivors. I suppose I could leave them nameless, but giving the survivors a name gives them a point of survival. I named my men Krahl and Derro and the women Sierra and Jaqueline.

    Setup for the prologue fight puts the White Lion in the center of the board with the survivors 6 spaces away from it. I concentrate all the survivors on one side, hoping to gang up and overwhelm the lion before it can kill anyone.

    The prologue lion always goes first and its first move is always to move forward and claw at a survivor. Since all of the survivors are in front of the lion and at an equal distance, I get to choose who the lion attacks. In a game with more than one person playing the role of monster controller gets passed around and choosing to attack your own character gives you a point of insanity, which is brain armor. The lion moves to attack Krahl and rolls two d10 to hit. The lion hits on a 2+. It's annoyingly more powerful than the survivors. Krahl is, unsurprisingly, hit twice and the location die shows that he's hit in the chest and the groin. Fortunately he is wearing his trusty loin cloth with gives him 1 armor in the groin, so he only takes a light wound to the chest at this time. The armor over his groin is gone now.

    I open up my counterattack by having Derro throw his Founding Stone at the lion. Normally Founding Stones are melee weapons, but they can also be thrown once and do an auto-crit on the location they hit. This is a one time use, however, so Derro is left without a weapon. But the prologue lion's hit location deck always has his Strange Hand on top and a crit at this location allows the person who crit to spend a survival to tear the hand off and gain +1 permanent strength for being so awesome. Derro's crit with the Founding Stone means that he spends his survival and is now at 1 strength.

    Krahl runs around the lion to get in its blind spot so the lion is easier to hit. He hits the lion once but fails to wound and the lion reacts by turning around to attack him. Krahl is hit two times and is knocked down by taking a second wound to the chest. It's not looking to good for Krahl.

    Then Sierra steps up behind the lion and hits twice. She pulls the Fuzzy Groin and the Gut hit locations. Then, in a display of showing who the boss is, Sierra rolls two 10's making both of those hits critical. The critical hit on the Groin tears the lion's testicles right off and Sierra gets to keep them as a resource. Wow! But it also pisses the lion off and he now gets +1 damage on all his rolls and will only attack Sierra until she dies. Not so good. The crit to the gut causes the lion to vomit all over Sierra and she gets another basic resource from the sludge and +3 insanity because it's awesome. That's what the card says.

    Sierra is on a timeline now, so Jaqueline moves up and attacks, not able to get into the monster's blind spot. She gets one hit and wounds. The lion is down 4 wounds from it's initial 9. Not a bad first turn.

    Then the lion draws Terrifying Roar. No one has any courage at this point in the game, so everyone takes a point of brain damage from the roar (yay insanity) and flees 6 squares directly away. That's not good. The lion has a move of 6 but my survivors only move 5. Looks like it'll take an extra turn for most of them to get back. Then the lion targets "the furthest survivor in range" to make an attack against but says "screw that, this one chick tore my dick off. Let's kill her instead," and targets Sierra. In a great die roll, one of the lion's two attacks is a 1 so Sierra is only hit once. I use her survival to dodge the hit and she is now out of survival but gets to fight another round.

    The way everyone ran and the lion chased, only Sierra and Jaqueline can make it back this turn. Sierra runs around to the lion's blind spot and misses twice. No bueno. But Jaqueline helps by running up and slashing the lion for another point of damage. 5 down, 4 to go.

    Here's where it get's rough. The lion turns and pulls a massive attack that knocks Sierra down, breaks her armor and goes through to do a serious injury. Rolling low on the injury table here will kill her. But I rolled decent and she takes 2 blooding tokens and a penalty to accuracy for the rest of the fight. The lion's attack also gave her a bleeding token so she's up to 3 now. At 5 she bleeds out. And she also can't afford to get hit any more. And she's knocked down and doesn't get to fight this turn. The other three survivors rush up to the lion to try to save Sierra but after a lot of misses, only two wounds are put on the lion.

    The lion reshuffles his AI deck and draws out claw again. He rolls and hits Sierra twice but these attacks are only 2 damage each and she hasn't taken damage to most of her locations. He hits her in the body and the feet, which are untouched so now both go to heavy damage. Sierra is pretty full of damage at this point though with 4 locations heavily damaged. The survivors need to take out the lion.

    Sierra stands up and attacks but misses twice. Derro rushes in and without a weapon has to use his fists and teeth. He misses. Krahl slashes with his Founding Stone and gets one hit, which ends up as a wound. Finally, Jaqueline steps into the lion's blind spot and gets two hits, both of which end up wounding!

    The prologue lion dies and Sierra is safe.

    I get my regular and lion resources to start my pool of crafting materials and the survivors move towards a strange light in the distance, looking for safety.
    "I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me." - Call of Cthulhu

    David vs. Goliath: History's first recorded critical hit.

  4. #4
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    Year 1: Settlement Phase

    The four survivors gather together and I get to do The First Day event, which will start my settlement. The survivors stumble upon a massive pile of lantern softly glowing in the darkness, around which other survivors are huddled in fear. Instinctively they sense that this is a safe place and decide to settle here. I roll the die to see how many survivors I find huddled around the lantern horde and get an 8, the max. That gives me 10 + the returning survivors population for a total of 14 survivors.

    I have to decide their genders now, but can hold off on naming them until I need them. There is only one real differences between gender in Kingdom Death aside from some events target men or women specifically. The big difference is that when rolling for Intimacy to have children, the female will die on a 1 - 3 where the male will only die on a 1. That means that more females are likely to die in my settlement so I should have numbers weighted in their favor. Of the fourteen, I decide that six are male and eight are female.

    The First Day event is over so I progress down the settlement track. Four survivors returned from the hunt so I gain four endeavor. Then we proceed to timeline events and Returning Survivors event happens. One of the survivors at the lantern horde approaches and utters the first words to us. That gives us the Language innovation and starts the innovation deck for the settlement. It also teaches the survivors how to speak so I can now use the Encourage survival action during hunts. I choose a woman from the settlement pool of survivors to issue the first words.

    I name the survivor Pella and she gains +1 courage for stepping forward to speak. After the innovation deck is built, Pella sits in front of the lantern horde to meditate on it and gains +1 understanding. She has to miss the next hunt, but that's ok because I want to take my initial survivors out again so they can gain a second Hunt XP and level up. Pella names the settlement Stonevale because this is an Althanas-related play through and also because it seems flavorful for the game setting.

    Now it is time for the development phase. I spend three of my endeavor right away to build the three locations that I can from the Lantern Horde, giving me the Bonesmith, the Organ Grinder, and the Skinnery. That leaves me with 1 endeavor which I can use to either do an Augury in the hopes that I can get an Intimacy roll, or to spend the endeavor along with 1 bone, 1 hide, and 1 organ to Innovate and gain a new technology. I decide to go with innovation.

    The innovation deck currently has six techs in them and when I innovate I shuffle and draw two of them. I get to pick one of them and put the other back. From the innovation I draw, there will be other techs unlocked and added to the deck. I draw Inner Lantern and Drums. Drums allows me to spend endeavor during the settlement phase with the hopes of removing disorders from a survivor while Inner Lantern gives me the Surge survival action, which allows me to spend survival during hunts to take a second action during the turn. I decide to go with Inner Lantern so that I have more options during a fight. I put drums back in the innovation deck along with the new inner lantern tech cards.

    Now it's time to see what I can build at my new buildings using the resources I got from the first lion.

    Alright the first thing to do is to get some weapons. I go to the bonesmith and buy a bone axe for the cost of a bone and an organ. Then I buy a set of bone dart so that I have a ranged attack. That uses all my bones so now let's look at armor. I have enough hide for a rawhide head and chest piece, which when combined with either the axe or the darts gives me some extra perks. Equipment in this game has different colored affinities and some items will give you bonuses if set right in your gear inventory and if you have the right affinities. With the rawhide headband, rawhide chest, and a bone dart I get +1 evasion, making it harder for the monster to hit me, and I gain the ability to look at the monster's two two AI cards and rearrange them meaning I know what action the monster will take on its turn. Finally, I spend an organ at the organ grinder to make some monster grease, which gives a survivor +1 evasion because he's slippery. That leaves me with one White Fur hide from the lion, but I'm going to save that in my supply until I come back from the next hunt.

    Finally, before I go out on the next hunt I need to decide who gets what gear. Most gear can be switched between survivors during the settlement phase as is needed. And even if a survivor dies their gear comes back to the settlement. Even if ALL survivors die the gear comes back. Thank the lanterns for that small mercy. I decide to give the rawhide gear, monster grease, and axe all-in-one to Sierra because she was awesome in the first fight and I've grown fond of her. Stacking the items like that also gives her more chance for survival. Sierra is officially the tank now. That also means I can take her Founding Stone and give it to Derro, which with his extra strength means he'll have a better chance of wounding the next Lion.

    Which is good because it's time for the next hunt and this time it's a full Level 1 White Lion.
    Last edited by Revenant; 11-18-2017 at 02:05 PM.
    "I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me." - Call of Cthulhu

    David vs. Goliath: History's first recorded critical hit.

  5. #5
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    EXP: 113,151, Level: 14
    Level completed: 62%, EXP required for next Level: 5,849
    Level completed: 62%,
    EXP required for next Level: 5,849


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    Year 1: Hunt Phase

    Hunting the monster can sometimes be as dangerous as actually fighting the monster. In the hunt phase the hunt board is set up according to the monster's level. Low level monsters are closer to the settlement and need less encounters to reach. Higher level monsters live farther away and there are a lot of things that can happen to unlucky survivors during their hunt.

    Since our survivors are hunting a level 1 White Lion there are three event spaces setup between the survivors and the lion. Two of those are lion hunt event cards and one is a random table hunt event. When a lion event is reached we flip over the card and read what happens. When a random table event is revealed, roll a d100 and check the corresponding event for the details.

    Krahl steps out first, becoming the event revealer forthe first event, which is a lion event. It is Lion in Heat and the survivors huddle together as horrible sounds come from the darkness. Super scary. All survivors take one brain damage. Since only Sierra has any insanity to shield her brain, everyone but Sierra is starting off with a brain injury. Could be bad. This is where is pays to have multiple players so you can pass around that monster controller token and gain that extra insanity.

    Jacqueline goes next and reveals the second lion event, Aromatic Breeze. The wind shifts and blows the survivors' scent to the lion who moves closer to them. If it moves onto them the lion ambushes the survivors and they lose their first turn. Fortunately there is still the random hunt event between the survivors and the lion so no ambush yet. Aromatic Breeze says to roll a random hunt event anyways if you're not ambushed so I roll the d100 and get The Sword and the Statue.

    A statue twice as tall as any man sits before a great anvil with a hammer in each of its six hands. Transfixed, the survivors watch the statue beat a red-hot sword that lies across the anvil.

    Each survivor can choose whether or not they want to attempt to grab the sword off the anvil. If they do so they get +1 courage and make a roll, adding their Hunt XP to the die. Sadly, though the rare sword would be incredibly powerful at this level, no one is really experienced enough to feasible grab it. The best I could hope for at this time would be to not lose an arm to the crushing hammer blows of the statue. No survivors risk it and we move on, hoping to be able to find the statue and the sword once we've gained some experience.

    Moving on takes us to the White Lion token, which means the hunt is over and we start the showdown.
    "I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me." - Call of Cthulhu

    David vs. Goliath: History's first recorded critical hit.

  6. #6
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    EXP: 113,151, Level: 14
    Level completed: 62%, EXP required for next Level: 5,849
    Level completed: 62%,
    EXP required for next Level: 5,849


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    Year 1: Showdown with White Lion - Level 1

    So the level 1 lion is tougher and has more wounds than the prologue lion, which will make this tough. But on the plus side there is now terrain that I can use to help me out. All lions have Tall Grass terrain on their showdown. Tall grass gives me +2 evasion if I'm standing in it, making me harder to hit. Also I can use an action to hide in the grass and be marked as not a threat for the lion's next attack. Useful for channeling the lion somewhere else.

    I also draw two extra terrain cards and both are Acanthus Plants. Acanthus plants come with two plants per card, so I have four plants on the board. Acanthus are healing plants and if I spend an action to harvest it and roll high enough I can get a fresh acanthus resource that I can use to heal during the fight or to turn into dried acanthus at the organ grinder. Pretty useful stuff. Hopefully I get some.

    I park Sierra in some tall grass directly in front of the lion to act as bait. With her extra evasion from the gear and the grass she's got the best chance of survival. Everyone else takes a ready position to try to get into the lion's blind spot or in Krahl's case to throw a dart.

    First turn and the lion goes first. He draws a power swat which is strong but only has a speed of 1 so he only rolls one die. With the extra evasion the lion needs a 6+ on a d10 to hit. He rolls a 6. Damn. The hit does two damage and if I can roll a spot where she has armor I can tough it our. Roll the foot. No armor. Damn again. To keep Sierra from taking a heavy wound and being knocked over I have to spend the one survival she got back to dodge, leaving her with nothing. Survival doesn't naturally come back so you need events and gear to restore it, stuff like dried acanthus. Hopefully I can get some.

    Sierra activates next and attacks. She hits twice with the axe, one hit being in the lion's groin! Not this again. But she fails to wound both times. Yay? Krahl throws his dart and misses. Derro moves into the blind spot and hits twice. His first wound is a failure and the monster roars at him but I roll low and Derro doesn't panic. His second hit is a wound though. First blood on the lion. Only 10 more to go. Finally Jaqueline moves up and hits twice. Her first hit is also a fail to wound but the second is a crit on the beast's knee. It shatters, dropping the lion to only 5 movement. He's now just as fast as my survivors.

    The lion starts the second turn, only slightly wounded. The lion pulls grasp and tries to grab Sierra, who is still taunting him from in front of his face. He only rolls 1 die for the attack but if he hits he grabs her and runs away from everyone, doing extra damage. This time it's a 4. No hit thanks to the tall grass.

    Jacqueline starts off and gets a hit and a miss. This hit turns into a wound and she moves away to allow someone else to get in the lion's blind spot. Derro, also in the blind spot rolls his attack and hits only once. It's the lion's Strange Hand again. If only I could roll a crit on this. Roll a 10!?! Well there we go. Derro spends a survival and for the second time tears a lion's hand off. Derro the lion hand ripper-offer. And now he's +2 permanent strength. Damn that was lucky. But that also means that Derro is out of survival now, so he stays in the monster's blind spot so that he won't be an easy target. Krahl moves into the tall grass for some defense and misses with his dart. Good job, Krahl. Sierra has to decide if she wants to move into the blind spot and attack, stay in front to keep tanking and attack, or grab that acanthus. Since the lion still has over half its wound left she decides to tough it out and attack. Sierra's a tough broad. She hits and wounds, dropping the lion to half its AI cards.

    Third turn and the lion draws Ground Fighting. This is a lucky break. It means the lion flops over and tries to snatch anyone nearby. If I spend an action while next to the cat, it will do a super attack against me before I can make the attack. Ground fighting only goes away once the lion has killed someone or until it takes a wound. This is why I brought those darts. Also, the lion won't draw any more action cards until Ground Fighting is discarded. That means I'm free to run around and grab those four Acanthus plants now. Taking advantage of the rules for the win.

    Jacqueline grabs at the acanthus next to her but find nothing. Remove that plant. Sierra moves out of the lion's zone of death and searches the plant next to her. She finds something tasty and gains 1 survival back. Nice. Krahl the winner moves over and searches a plant to find nothing inside because he's Krahl. I'm sensing a pattern here. And finally Derro runs over to hit plant and rolls an 8! He manages to harvest a fresh acanthus. Derro seems to have taken all of Krahl's good rolls. I'm ok with this.

    Next round and I reposition myself. The lion continues to wiggle on the ground, taunting me.

    Fifth turn and Krahl throws a dart. Miss. Lion wiggles.

    Sixth turn and Krahl throws a dart. Miss. Lion wiggles.

    Seventh turn and Krahl throws a dart. Miss. Lion wiggles.

    I'd like to point out that the darts have an accuracy of 7+, meaning I need to roll a seven or better to hit with them. Still, 2 out of those 3 rolls were 1's. Krahl needs to spend some time at the Stonevale Pub's dart board.

    Eighth turn and Krahl throws a dart. Sigh. Miss.

    Ninth turn and Krahl throws a dart. 7! A hit! Darts may not be accurate but they do have a +3 to strength, same as the axe. This hit is a wound. Everything's comin' up Krahl. Derro finally gets to attack from the blind spot and gets a hit, which turns into a wound. The end is closing in for the lion. Next, Sierra attacks from the blind spot with her axe and gets two hits. But she draws the lion's trap card!

    Every monster has a trap hard in their hit deck. Drawing it cancels all hits from the attack, causes the monster to attack back in some fashion, and reshuffles the hit location deck. It is possible to shuffle from a trap and draw a trap card. I've done it more than once, it sucks.

    The trap makes Sierra DOOMED, which means she can't spend that precious survival she just got. Despite her extra evasion, the lion hits both times and both of them land on the body. Sierra has to take both hits but she has her armor on the chest and ends up with only a light wound. Sierra finishes her turn by scampering back to the tall grass. That leaves Jacqueline, who moves up next to the lion and hits it twice. Both hits fail to wound and one reaction causes the lion to attack back at her. Both of those hit and Jacqueline takes a wound to her arms and legs.

    Finally the lion gets to go again. I reshuffle the AI deck and draw Power Swat. Jacqueline is the target because the lion had turned to face her during its counter-attack. It hits and does heavy damage to Jacqueline's chest, knocking her down. It also knocks her back 6 squares because it was a power swat. Poor Jacqueline.

    For the survivors, Krahl throws his dart and misses. Big surprise. Jacqueline is down and I could encourage her, but she is too far away to reach the lion after the power swat. Derro instead moves up and attacks, hitting once. It is a wound but the lion has a reaction and runs away after the wound, taking him away from Derro. Sierra chases it down and gets two hits but fails to wound after the first and the lion's triumphant roar knocks her over and does some brain damage. No more insanity for Sierra. That also means her second hit is wasted since you can't wound a monster when you're huddling on the ground in fear.

    Monster's turn and he draws grasp, which will target the closes knocked down survivor. Both Sierra and Jacqueline are knocked down but Sierra is right next to him while Jacqueline is still one square away. Sierra it is. He rolls a 1 and misses her. Then both women stand up since they were knocked down last turn.

    Sierra moves back around to the blind spot and rolls one hit, which wounds. Jacqueline moves up to the other position in the blind spot and attacks, hitting once and rolling a 10 to wound. Crit! On the beast's femur she breaks another leg, gaining a white lion resource and dropping the lion's movement again. Jacqueline hates legs. And the resource I get from the lion is ... heh ... the testicles. Women, am I right? That also means the lion is down to just 1 wound. Derro moves up and hits twice and finally finishes off this lion.

    In the aftermath, the survivor's gain resources and a Hunt XP, which puts them all at 2 xp. This means that they get their first Age milestone and can now start learning weapon proficiency.

    To age, I pick a survivor and roll 2d10 then add them together and see what the chart says. Krahl goes first and gains a fighting art. It's the most likely thing to get during age 1. He draws the vengance fighting art which says that he gets stronger and a bunch of survival back if someone else dies in a fight. That's ... thanks Krahl for being such a huge help.

    Sierra ages next and also gets a random fighting art. She gains tough, making her harder to kill. How appropriate for my tank girl. Derro gets a fighting art as well and draws Monster Claw Fighting Style. This gives him accuracy, strength, and extra crit damage when he fights unarmed. With his +2 strength already I think we've got our unarmed fighter here. Finally Jacqueline, who also gains a fighting art (seriously there's like an 80% chance that you get a fighting art your first age) and also draws Monster Claw Style. Huh. Ok then.

    With spoils in tow, the four survivors set back to return to Stonevale.
    "I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me." - Call of Cthulhu

    David vs. Goliath: History's first recorded critical hit.

  7. #7
    Senior Member

    EXP: 113,151, Level: 14
    Level completed: 62%, EXP required for next Level: 5,849
    Level completed: 62%,
    EXP required for next Level: 5,849


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    William Arcus
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    Year 2: Settlement Phase

    Alright, our intrepid survivors are returning to Stonevale with their hard earned resources. First though we need a settlement event. A quick shuffle of the deck and I draw Hunt Reenactment. This one could go either way. I have to choose the settlement's favorite survivor to play the part of the hunter. Sierra takes that role. Then the least favorite survivor to play the part of the monster. Krahl, get your worthless ass over here. I roll on the table and score decently enough that neither player dies or suffers a wound and everyone is filled with determination. All departing survivors will max their survival this year. That's great news for Sierra and Derro, who are still a little behind.

    Since no one died in the last hunt there is nothing to update for the death count. Now it is time to move onto updating the timeline. Year 2 has a timeline event, Endless Screams. Time to pull that out.

    A scream pierces the silence around the settlement. As the noise fades, a chorus of horror rises up in answer.

    The settlement erupts into chaos trying to comprehend the source of the terrible wail. I can now hunt the Screaming Antelope and it's time to nominate a survivor to be the voice of reason. Let's nominate Krahl, since he's no good for anything else. So Krahl steps up and gains +1 courage and tries to calm everyone down. I roll a 2 and Krahl panics and tries to run away in terror. Before he can run off into the darkness to die he trips and falls, breaking his face. He loses that courage he got and gains the Broken Jaw severe head injury. With broken jaw he can no longer consume any consumables and he cannot encourage because his jaw is wired up so he can't speak. Way to go, brave Krahl. Way to go.

    So now we get to develop. First things first, let's innovate. We have four endeavor because four survivors came back alive. I spend one of those plus a bone, hide, and organ from the hunt. I draw two innovations from the deck and get drums and scarification. Not really a fan of either but I pick drums since it unlocks better stuff. Stonevale now knows how to make drums.

    Since we have three endeavor still and there isn't much to use it on, I decide to augury in the hopes that the settlement can have an Intimacy event. The first augury roll is 5 which gives the revealer 1 survival back. So is the second. But the third roll is a 9, which results in Intimacy! Time to make make a baby.

    To do Intimacy, I need to pick a willing male and a willing female who both have genitalia. Here's where our survivor pool comes into play since I don't want our awesome Sierra to die in childbirth. I got some help from jdd in chat and he picked the names Joseph and Naomi for our two survivors. Joseph and Naomi get intimate and jdd rolls a 10 for the result, which is ... twins! The first birth in the settlement is twins. jdd is a lucky guy.

    So a couple things happen now because we got lucky. First is that we had our first baby, which means we have to do the New Life event to decide how we want to raise our children. Do we want to raise them With Affection, sheltering them from the darkness or do we want to raise them Without Mercy to be hard and strong in this deadly world? We're going to choose With Affection because it allows us to roll twice and take the highest when doing Intimacy in the future. A lot more likely that we'll get more babies. I roll on the event table for raising the kids with affection and the newborn survivors both gain +2 understanding and the Strategist fighting art.

    Second, because we jumped over 15 population there is another Principle event that we need to resolve. This time, the Principle is Society and we need to determine if the settlement will toil against or accept the darkness. Collective Toil gives the settlement more endeavor after each hunt for every 10 survivors the settlement has. Accept Darkness makes it so that serious brain trauma can't kill a survivor when they get too much brain damage. Having Affection for the settlement means that we'll likely have a larger population so Collective Toil seems to be the way to go. Stonevale chooses Collective Toil. We roll on the chart for taking collective toil and I roll a 5 which gives up to 4 survivors +5 survival up to the settlement limit. Since the settlement's survival limit is still only 2, that isn't that helpful. But Collective Toil will have a good chance of giving us more stuff to do in a few years so we can make that up.

    Finally it is time to get new equipment. I'm going to use the hide that we got to finish Sierra's hide armor set. Having a full set of armor not only gives Sierra armor in all hit locations but it also gives an extra armor bonus to all locations and a special ability where a roll of 6+ after spending survival gains that survival back. Sierra is in a good place to hunt that next monster. I also spend the Cat's Eye that we got from the last White Lion to buy a Cat's Eye Circlet piece of jewelry. This allows the user to look at the monster's top three hit location cards and to rearrange them, making it easier to avoid traps or other unwanted hit locations. Finally, I get one more thing of monster grease for another survivor.

    And that's it for the Year 2 settlement phase. Our 4 survivors gear up and get ready to hunt their next monster.
    "I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me." - Call of Cthulhu

    David vs. Goliath: History's first recorded critical hit.

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