Tales from the Mariana Trench: #1 The First Story (Patreon)

The First Story

From the tattered pages of a bound tome, recorded by an unknown individual.

I recall the very moment that we transformed from being a group of scared, voiceless, nameless animals into a society as if it was yesterday. They came from the darkness, four brave, proud women; covered in fresh injuries, baring the flayed skin of a white beast and its fleshy carcass. They brought food, but they also brought with them hope.

Their arrival gave us the strength to look to our protector, the towering pile of glowing, shining lanterns which provided light, hope, inspiration and most of all a strange protection. We felt safe here, and we were safe. Or at least it seemed that way...

With that acknowledgement of our savior, one of our number spoke out, with stumbling words she named herself "Dace" and called the monument the "Lantern Hoard". Struck as if by a fever, by inspiration and drive, she brought together the scattered people and language spread like wildfire between us all. 

In what felt like a matter of moments, we discussed, we debated, we agreed. We would need to hunt the creatures out there for more food, for our survival. We would also need tools, armor, weapons, protection if we were to do so. The four women; Trout, Salmon, Snapper and Porcupine provided the spoils of their kill as raw materials. We organised and constructed places to turn these parts into weapons and crude protection; a skinnery to stitch the hide together for protection, a bone smith to sharpen and shape the claw, and an organ grinder for the meatier parts.

Soon, strange weather began to gather on the horizon, and in the distance bizarre gurgling cries echoed. "Loach" stood and stared into the distance before being struck by another round of inspiration, this storm brought with it rainfall and this could be kept away from us with protection, shelter. He lead several others in the construction of a roofed hut, a hovel, a place to stay safe at night and during these storms.

While this industrious activity took place, Snapper sat and contemplated the meaning of existence, her discussion on this with "Octopus" and "Squid" lead to them falling into a deep chasm of despair and they fled into the darkness. Seeking only sweet oblivion.

Weeping, the rest of us began to discuss what to do when we lost some of our number, but our lamentations and grief were interrupted by a young, bright cry from the edge of the light. Turning we saw Octopus and Squid had returned to the fold! Brought back from their dark path by the accidental discovery of a small bundle, a bundle cradled in Octopus's strong arms. A child, discovered not far from the settlement - a sign of hope and joy. A feral, sharp clawed terror who would become to be known as "Cuttlefish".

With the joy that came from this, our people started to feel more like a community, and the four women; our warriors, our chosen hunters took the armor and single bone sword along with their teeth, fists and sharp stone shards into the darkness. Vowing to not return until they had caught and slain another of those white lions...

So began our first year in the Settlement of Mariana Trench, marked by the fading of a lantern in the hoard.

The Strategy

Trout, Salmon, Snapper and Porcupine face off against Peter the Prologue White Lion

The Prologue Fight was as simple and straightforward as we could have hoped, following the standard tactics of rotating the survivor in front of the White Lion and using Fist & Tooth when in the blind spot worked well as we managed to remove most of the more threatening AI cards, resulting in a relatively tame Peter this time. No-one suffered anything more than a heavy injury throughout the entire fight and we saved all four founding stones. That's pretty normal, and within the goals of 3-4 survivors making it through the fight.

The resource gathering however was not as fortunate:

We only scored a single critical wound and as you can see, this particular Prologue Lion was exceedingly heavy on hide. Now 5 hide is a good haul, but 6 is not what you want. Especially when one other drop is eaten up by an almost completely useless Broken Lantern.

Innovating in lantern years 1 or 2 is a death sentence most of the time, and the innovation situation was compounded further when we arrived at the timeline portion. The Gorm Climate saddled us with the Hovel result, giving us a "free" innovation for the year, but filling the Innovation deck with a huge pile of home innovations, all of which were pretty much useless for the early game. So Innovating because an even worse prospect than normal, and the only benefit? We might be able to generate saviors, woo.

A quick look at the resources made it clear that we needed all three settlement locations open (Skinnery, Organ Grinder, Bone Smith), but we were only going to get marginal benefit from anything other than the skinnery. Which created an interesting situation.

We could afford to build an entire set of rawhide, which was very powerful, but we also had only one bone and one organ. This is one of those situations where the decision is quite tough, we had to choose between:

• Bone Sword + Monster Grease
• Bone Axe and not open the Organ Grinder
• Bone Darts + Monster Grease or Fecal Salve

After some deliberation we went with option 1, not opening the Organ Grinder just felt really bad. We had rolled a great population number and wanted to bolster that population for the early society principle. That worked out well as we hit the 8+ on Augury first try, but it was followed with an immediate 1 on the Intimacy table. 

However, we were saved by the decision to reset all of the strains and other things, because the bookmark from the Ringtail Vixen white box was back in the book and instead of losing two survivors we gained +1. I've written before about how well done that bookmark event is, and here again it has proven its worth. The survivor we gained, Cuttlefish, is also a very well balanced individual, we don't really want to take her out hunting at this stage because she's a hoarder, but in a few years we might use her to train up Fist & Tooth because she comes with Monster Claw Style! There was a bit of confusion (as always) over the wording on this event. We settled on being able to trigger the birth principle, but she was not going to get the stat bonuses from SotF. It didn't feel quite right, but it never does in a game with as fuzzy a set of rules as this one. The game needs a real going through from a technically minded designer to tighten it all up.

And that was that; this prologur was smooth sailing during the showdown fight, but a bit of a roller coaster when we got to the Settlement Phase, we had to make a lot of decisions based on bad circumstances. The resource drops were terrible for weapon options (which makes the first fight in LY1 extra tough - we'll have to rely on tanking and AI control a lot) and the Approaching Storm dumping Hovel's crappy selection of innovations into the deck before we could hit Symposium or Drums really hurts the future. But it could have gone a lot worse!

The LY1 White Lion however, now that is always a heck of a scary proposition. Especially when you have nothing other than 1x Bone Sword and a few Founding Stones to try and hurt it with.

Stats!

Population: 15 

Locations:

• Lantern Hoard
• Skinnery
• Organ Grinder
• Bone Smith

Principles:

• Survival of the Fittest
• Collective Toil

Innovations:

• Hovel

Available Quarries

• White Lion
• Gorm

Known Nemeses:

• None

Notable Milestones:

• First full set of Rawhide Armor