Back to the shop
May. 21st, 2008 08:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerBy ten o'clock I was climbing the walls. In any new mission, starting out is always the second worst part. The enemy invariably has a huge numerical and technological advantage--they're fielding vast armies, sometimes with trebuchets, while you're still trying to find wood--and the trick is not stumbling into, or being stumbled into by, one of said armies while you're working out where you are and what you've got.
In this case the enemy city was right between my lot and the place I had to get the consignment of clothes to. I was either going to have to get big enough to take them on and win, or find a sneaky way to get past them. Either way the odds of success were noticeably lessened if I couldn't keep my guys alive to start with. I had whacked a wooden palisade around the village, but I'd missed a bit, so when the band of red-clad ruffians appeared out of the fog they quickly found the gap, swarmed through it and started wellying away at my embryonic settlement. If they succeeded in destroying it, that could mean there wouldn't be enough surplus stock at day's end to make a delivery. Two days without new stock would put a crimp in business.
Fortunately, one of the things I had started with was a couple of companies of bowmen, and between them and my knight I managed to repel the invaders and repair the damage. Plugging the gap in the palisade was more difficult--I eventually had to build it outwards and back in, making my neat oval look like a speech bubble--but now I was fairly sure the next lot would have to spend their ammunition wrecking the palisade before they could get at the goods inside. And by the time they showed up, I would hopefully have found enough stone to make a proper wall, and enough iron to have a proper army of my own.
Meanwhile, my knight had happened upon some sheep peacefully grazing in an unclaimed area, and a neutral village had offered to sell us some chickens if we supplied them three dozen raw fish. I had a fisherman already plying his trade just outside the palisade. It was just a question of stopping my lot eating them all till I had enough to send, which meant boosting the supply of other food. Which I had to do anyway, to ensure there'd be enough left over at the end of the day to send to us.
When Liliana said hi behind me I nearly hit the roof. She offered to spell me while I had lunch, but I was in the zone now and I wanted to get things established, so I said no thanks. I had a sandwich and a bottle of water with me, both from the shop of course. I promoted the knight to sheriff, and took the opportunity while the villagers were celebrating to unwrap the food and start on it.
Seriously, you have never tasted anything like that sandwich. It was beyond delicious. The butter, the ham and the bread were all from the game. My tastebuds were doing the same as the little people on the screen. I remember when I first started I had some thoughts about taking some of the stuff and getting it analysed. I mean, how did we even know it was compatible with our biology?
One bite convinced me. This stuff filled food-shaped holes in my mind that I'd forgotten even existed. It was the Platonic ideal of food. The water tasted the way you remember water tasting when you were a child and had gone for hours without a drink. It wasn't addictive--I'd spent a week living on ordinary, polluted, over-processed food to make sure, if you can call that living--but once you tasted it there was no comparison. You realised just how many years you'd spent being slightly disappointed, thinking "oh well," settling for what was available because it would fill you up and probably wouldn't kill you that quickly.
How was it the shop wasn't stormed by insatiable mobs and stripped clean every morning? I wondered that myself sometimes. The prices were one thing, set just high enough to make people who hadn't tried the stuff think twice about splashing out. There were strict limits on how many of a given item we could sell to the same person. The packaging, with that royal blue background, looked just strange and foreign enough to put off people who were put off by the strange and foreign. Somehow we managed to sell just enough to keep ourselves going and stay under the radar.
The sandwich was gone, no more than a blissful memory, and I had twenty-eight raw fish sitting in my warehouse, along with fourteen bags of wool. Time to get weaving, as they used to say. I found a couple of spare bits of land and planted two weaver's shacks. The ground went flat and level, and two little bods emerged from the warehouse pulling handcarts full of wood, made their way to the designated spots and began to build. Soon two little looms were clacking away, as you could hear if you zoomed in close enough, and garments were hanging on the rails in front. I clicked on the button to add an extra floor to each shop. Meanwhile, my knight had narrowly escaped an encounter with some bandits and had found and claimed a territory with a source of iron. Defending myself would not be a problem for much longer.
By closing time there were thirty-four woolly jumpers in the warehouse, and the chicken farms were well established, thus increasing my settlement's reputation and ensuring tomorrow's delivery. Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula had walked past my desk twice, and the second time he'd grinned and patted me on the shoulder. And I still hadn't got around to looking at his feet.
In this case the enemy city was right between my lot and the place I had to get the consignment of clothes to. I was either going to have to get big enough to take them on and win, or find a sneaky way to get past them. Either way the odds of success were noticeably lessened if I couldn't keep my guys alive to start with. I had whacked a wooden palisade around the village, but I'd missed a bit, so when the band of red-clad ruffians appeared out of the fog they quickly found the gap, swarmed through it and started wellying away at my embryonic settlement. If they succeeded in destroying it, that could mean there wouldn't be enough surplus stock at day's end to make a delivery. Two days without new stock would put a crimp in business.
Fortunately, one of the things I had started with was a couple of companies of bowmen, and between them and my knight I managed to repel the invaders and repair the damage. Plugging the gap in the palisade was more difficult--I eventually had to build it outwards and back in, making my neat oval look like a speech bubble--but now I was fairly sure the next lot would have to spend their ammunition wrecking the palisade before they could get at the goods inside. And by the time they showed up, I would hopefully have found enough stone to make a proper wall, and enough iron to have a proper army of my own.
Meanwhile, my knight had happened upon some sheep peacefully grazing in an unclaimed area, and a neutral village had offered to sell us some chickens if we supplied them three dozen raw fish. I had a fisherman already plying his trade just outside the palisade. It was just a question of stopping my lot eating them all till I had enough to send, which meant boosting the supply of other food. Which I had to do anyway, to ensure there'd be enough left over at the end of the day to send to us.
When Liliana said hi behind me I nearly hit the roof. She offered to spell me while I had lunch, but I was in the zone now and I wanted to get things established, so I said no thanks. I had a sandwich and a bottle of water with me, both from the shop of course. I promoted the knight to sheriff, and took the opportunity while the villagers were celebrating to unwrap the food and start on it.
Seriously, you have never tasted anything like that sandwich. It was beyond delicious. The butter, the ham and the bread were all from the game. My tastebuds were doing the same as the little people on the screen. I remember when I first started I had some thoughts about taking some of the stuff and getting it analysed. I mean, how did we even know it was compatible with our biology?
One bite convinced me. This stuff filled food-shaped holes in my mind that I'd forgotten even existed. It was the Platonic ideal of food. The water tasted the way you remember water tasting when you were a child and had gone for hours without a drink. It wasn't addictive--I'd spent a week living on ordinary, polluted, over-processed food to make sure, if you can call that living--but once you tasted it there was no comparison. You realised just how many years you'd spent being slightly disappointed, thinking "oh well," settling for what was available because it would fill you up and probably wouldn't kill you that quickly.
How was it the shop wasn't stormed by insatiable mobs and stripped clean every morning? I wondered that myself sometimes. The prices were one thing, set just high enough to make people who hadn't tried the stuff think twice about splashing out. There were strict limits on how many of a given item we could sell to the same person. The packaging, with that royal blue background, looked just strange and foreign enough to put off people who were put off by the strange and foreign. Somehow we managed to sell just enough to keep ourselves going and stay under the radar.
The sandwich was gone, no more than a blissful memory, and I had twenty-eight raw fish sitting in my warehouse, along with fourteen bags of wool. Time to get weaving, as they used to say. I found a couple of spare bits of land and planted two weaver's shacks. The ground went flat and level, and two little bods emerged from the warehouse pulling handcarts full of wood, made their way to the designated spots and began to build. Soon two little looms were clacking away, as you could hear if you zoomed in close enough, and garments were hanging on the rails in front. I clicked on the button to add an extra floor to each shop. Meanwhile, my knight had narrowly escaped an encounter with some bandits and had found and claimed a territory with a source of iron. Defending myself would not be a problem for much longer.
By closing time there were thirty-four woolly jumpers in the warehouse, and the chicken farms were well established, thus increasing my settlement's reputation and ensuring tomorrow's delivery. Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula had walked past my desk twice, and the second time he'd grinned and patted me on the shoulder. And I still hadn't got around to looking at his feet.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 01:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 01:15 pm (UTC)MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE! Please.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 02:31 pm (UTC)(stares at her stomach as it growls at her)
Dangit, you made me hungry.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-22 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-22 03:27 pm (UTC)