Mark woke early with two things on his mind. First, he needed to help the new family adjust to their new reality. Then he needed to look over his new class and decide what to do with it.
Dale was already up cooking when he came out to the fire. They greeted each other, and Mark sat down at the table and brought up his new class screen.
Current Active Growth Opportunities:
Expand maintained pathwaysImprove settlement infrastructureIncrease regional connectivitySupport settlement specializationStabilize frontier territory◈ ◈ ◈
He had already planned to expand the pathways. They had made many trails over the last month but not many true paths. He would also need to check the next outpost upgrade and think about infrastructure. Cave Camp had asked him to manage their outpost, and the group there had focused almost entirely on cave runs.
Settlement specialization piqued his interest. Lakeside had fishing, its smokehouse and preserved meats, chickens, and goats. Forest’s Rest had several interests but no real specialization. Lastly, what did stabilizing the frontier mean? Would he be finding new people or putting out metaphorical fires? Before he could think further, Finn came out of his a-frame.
Mark told him to pull up a chair and eat some breakfast and said that when his parents were up, they could talk in more detail. While they were waiting, Ava got up and gave a puzzling look at the new person and told Mark that yesterday she had tracked an Irontusk Boar and that she was going to find and kill it today. She grabbed some food from Dale for herself and Bramble and left camp.
Tom joined the group a little after Ava left, looked at the new guy, and said, “Hello, do we have another visitor from Lakeside?”
Mark replied, “No. Finn and his parents arrived yesterday. I rescued them south of here after receiving an alert from my new class.”
“You leveled up and got your class. Congrats. I am getting really close to leveling; it will most likely be today.”
The camp seemed to have made enough noise, and Elias and Mara joined them at the table for breakfast.
Mark, Dale, and Tom introduced themselves. Mark told the family about the other outpost members and Cora, who was frequently around. He also showed them the settlement interface and map so they would know where they were and which paths were safe.
The family then introduced themselves. Elias, the father, was a farmer until yesterday. He was a row crop farmer on a really large farm. They also raised animals for personal use, like pigs and chickens. He told them he enjoyed fixing things around his farm when not doing the actual farm work.
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Mara, the wife and mother, took care of the home, including food preservation from her garden and dairy work from her milk cows, along with cooking. Finn, their son, was preparing to go to college soon but, when home, helped around the farm, doing fencing, animal handling, helping his mother in the garden, and other general labor around the farm.
Mark, Dale, and Tom explained to them the rough time they each had in their first month in this world. They wanted to share what they knew to make the new family’s life easier and help them adjust more quickly than they had without help.
They explained classes, inventory, and leveling. The entire family was still Level 1, but work that improved the outpost could earn them XP, as could fighting if they chose to do it.
The family was extremely overwhelmed with this information but was extremely grateful for their rescue. Last night they had reached the point where they might not have survived without Mark’s timely rescue.
Dale then spoke to them about classes and explained his Survival Chef class. He explained that formal classes are not offered until Level 8 but that their actions between now and then would influence the choices of class they could take.
It was late afternoon by the time all of the discussions had ended and Mark was about to take them around to see the things in the general vicinity when Ava came back into camp. She had a huge smile on her face, and her arms were full.
In her arms were three baby pigs. Mark identified one and found it was an Irontusk Boar piglet. Then, to his surprise, Bramble walked up and dropped another one on the ground at Ava’s feet. He did not look happy about having to carry the thing back.
Ava told them about her hunt. It had taken hours to track the boar down and corner it. She killed the large Irontusk Boar. While looting it, she had heard the little piglets squealing. She told them how her bird wanted to eat them and she had to convince it to back off.
Ava said, “Mark, they were just so, so cute. I could not kill them or leave them to die.”
Dale spoke up. “Those things are murder pigs. One chased me a few days back. They are anything but cute.”
Ava replied, “They are just babies and so cute. I used my Beast Tamer class and was able to calm them and make them stop running around. I am keeping them, and you can’t stop me.”
Tom just started laughing at the situation. Finn and Elias just looked at the piglets in fascination. Then Mara spoke up. “They are just babies. They were taken so little; they have the potential to be domesticated breeding stock. We had pigs on our farm. They were great for disposing of the trash and leftover slop, and oh, you can never turn down bacon.”
Ava replied in disgust. “You’re not eating my babies.”
Finn then replied with a smirk. “No, we won’t eat the babies; we will let them grow up first.”
Ava looked at Finn. “Who is this guy anyway? He is not going to be eating my babies.”
That caused a round of laughter. Then the family began listing what the piglets needed: food if they were not yet eating solids, a strong pen, and shelter from the weather.
Mark just smiled. Even though those things were dangerous, they gave the new family a direction and purpose that had already pulled them out of their funk of having been dumped in an unknown world. This would give them a reason to level up by building the pen and then taking care of them. The first real hurdle of his day had been solved.
Ava agreed to watch the murder pigs, as Dale called them, until the family and Mark could gather the wood and other items they would need to build the pen and shelter for them.