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.