Mark woke early again and made the rounds checking his traps. At the second trap he found another hare and gathered it. Making his way to the next stand of trees, his first three traps had nothing, but the fourth trap had something new.
[Brush Grouse Level 1]Defeated
LootGrouse MeatGrouse FeathersSmall Bones
◈ ◈ ◈
Mark was happy to have the feathers and some different kinds of food; he was worried that his current traps would not get anything but hares. He would soon need to find more locations for traps because of the expanding group they now had. Mark then headed back toward the outpost; on the way, he stopped at the orchard. Fiona was there checking each tree. She shared with Mark she was worried about transplant shock and was watching each one for any kind of issues.
They both walked back together. On the way, Fiona offered to cook again today and said that for breakfast they were going to have some type of mush she was making out of some stuff she found in the swamp. She promised him that it would taste amazing, so Mark would just have to trust her. Malcolm and Callum were sitting at the table chatting when they got back.
During breakfast they all went through their plans for the day. Fiona was going to gather more food and resources like reeds to make materials and also start making and setting traps in the marsh. She planned to visit new areas each time out to map out what was out there and see if she could find anything rare or interesting.
Malcolm said he thought the focus today needed to be caring for the horses; they now had two and needed to take care of them, as they were valuable assets. He suggested a water trough, a food trough, and making a fenced-in area for them so they could range a little without having to be tied up.
Callum said his focus was on building things. He agreed to spend the morning with Malcolm making troughs out of some of their wood and start fencing a small area for the horses; he figured half a day at most for that. After that, he wanted to make some camp items and suggested Mark should help with that, as he wanted to teach Mark how to make boards and some more things like the workbench and sawhorse, and enjoyed Mark’s help last night on things.
Mark decided if Callum were going to be busy this morning, then he would take his horse and explore some, as he wanted to see what was around them. He decided he would go southeast of the marsh and see what was there. He promised to be back by lunchtime and then help Callum.
Mark finished up eating and got the horse some water and brushed it down and saddled it and headed south, following the stream. He could see by the map that the marsh waters draining into the stream ended just past the stand of trees they had harvested lumber from yesterday, so stopping just past the stand of trees, he headed almost west, fording the stream, which was shallow, and onto the ground on the other side.
While traveling, he passed two stands of trees on the other side of the stream just downstream from their village. Because of the stream, it would not be practical to harvest them for lumber, as they would have to drag it across and upstream, doing damage to it, but it could be a good location for more traps, especially when starting to add more people and having more mouths to feed.
He continued heading south, staying east of the marsh area on the solid, drier ground. He did cross another stream, continuing along the edge of the swamp; he sadly found nothing that really stood out to him in his travels, but he spent the entire amount of time he had to spend, so he headed back. In a couple more days he could again go explore, but he had items he wanted to make and things they needed to make back at camp.
When Mark came back into camp, there was one trough that looked to be finished and another almost done. Mark was surprised how they made it. They had taken a five-foot log about 18 inches in diameter and laid it on two smaller logs to keep it up off the ground, and then using a tool that looked like a sideways axe, Malcolm was hacking out the center, hollowing it out. Callum was giving directions, so Mark was sure this was some carpenter trick he knew. When finished, he pulled out a large curved blade with handles on each end and smoothed out the rough areas inside. The troughs were both side by side.
Callum then pulled out a wooden bucket, handing it to Malcolm, and pointed toward the stream. When Mark was finally close enough to talk, he dismounted and pulled off the saddle and walked over to Callum.
Callum said, “Malcolm is going to continue with the fencing. I taught him a simple method to start working on it. He will need to go cut more wood, but this time looking for skinnier trees rather than these bigger ones that we really want to build with.”
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Mark said, "Okay, what first for us?"
Callum said, “First we need to make some sawhorses so we can get this lumber up off the ground, and then we will rip it into boards. Follow me and we can pick a tree or two to use to make our sawhorses.”
Mark then followed Callum around, and they built two sawhorses. They were basically two A-frames with a U-shaped cup at the top for the logs to rest in. They were made from some of the sturdier logs to hold the weight. They then rolled the logs enough away from each other that they could cut them into 8, 10, and 12 foot lengths using the two-man saw. During one of their water breaks, Mark could see Malcolm making a second pile of logs. These were much skinnier in diameter, not all straight, but Callum had explained that for what they were doing, it did not matter if they were completely straight.
When Mark and Callum finally had all the logs cut into lengths, they took the first eight-foot log and, using some tricks Callum showed Mark, leveled it up onto the sawhorses. He then explained how they were going to rip the logs, which Mark thought was a weird way to say it. What they did was take the two-man saw down the length of the top of the log, cutting off the rounded edge. They stacked it to the side, and Callum pointed out they would use almost everything, and what they did not use for building, they would add to the fire when it dried out.
Next, Callum pulled out two tools, which they used to stab into the log and rotate it on their sawhorses. Once they had the flat part on the bottom, they again cut the top rounded edge off. They again rotated the log, but this time only a quarter of the way, and did the same on each of the remaining two sides. Next, they started cutting one-inch slabs of the log; they went layer by layer until the log was gone and the next one started, and the process continued.
By mid-afternoon they had two-thirds of the trees cut up. Callum could see that the other pile of trees was starting to pile up, having almost twenty of the skinnier ones, as they were faster to cut and trim and haul for Malcolm. Callum took Mark and the two-man saw and started cutting these smaller trees into ten- to twelve-foot lengths and stacked them in two piles depending on the length, which mostly depended on how tall the tree was, which he ended up getting the most of.
They had all the trees cut into lengths and the odd-length ones stacked to the side. They then started hauling them out and laying them generally where the fence needed to go. After the pile Malcolm had made was all cut up, they went back to finish cutting the wood until the pile was gone. When they finally finished, Mark noticed that the fence was slowly coming together. He found out from Callum it was called a zigzag fence and was easy to make, as they did not need any nails.
After Callum’s nail mention, Mark took him over to show him all the metal fittings and materials that Forgeworks had made him take with him. They took up a lot of room and added a tremendous amount of weight, but when Callum saw what he had, he was delighted, as he did not think they could build some of the finer things he wanted without nails, hinges, and such. Callum pointed out some of the items and commented those were for wagon wheels to give them strength. He talked about many uses of the items. Most went over Mark's head, but he was glad he remembered to share them.
By the time the day had come to an end, they had two-thirds of the fence up and a trough for food and water, and they had cut more than a dozen trees into usable logs. Mark was exhausted and ready for bed. They were just eating dinner when they saw a rider coming in from the northeast. Mark opened his map to check and realized that the map showed a line from a discovered area at the camp northeast of them down to Twin Streams, following the west bank of the river to their north and east. He could now see that the river started near the northern border of the zone, ran south through it, and then merged with another waterway before heading southeast as far as the slowly revealing map showed.
When the rider finally got close enough, they found out it was a woman, and she dismounted and tied up her horse by the water trough so it could drink and eat and then walked over to the table. She looked around at the four of them sitting there and, finally not finding a spot to sit down, just stood there looking at them.
Mark said, "Hello, nice to see another person looking at the map. It looks like you came from the outpost northeast of here. Is that correct?”
“Hello, my name is Abigail. Yes, I came from Green Hollow; that's the village name. I have joined up with them but will act as a scout and most likely help with communication between our two groups. They right now have four people total. Our group consists of a Pathfinder, that's me, sort of a scout class; we also have a Warden named Damon, a Survivalist named Aaron, and a Camp Cook named Cassidy.”
Mark said, “Oh, nice. I have met Cassidy. We walked through the gate together out of Beaver Crossing; she is from the zone south of where I came from.”
Malcolm said, “I also met Cassidy in Beaver Crossing, but I'm not from there."
Fiona said, “Since the boys are not so good at introducing themselves, that's Mark; he is a Frontier Steward, which I have no clue what that is. The other guy is Malcolm; he is a Quartermaster.” Pointing to Callum. “That’s Callum; he is a carpenter. He made that pile of boards and sawdust mess over there, and my name is Fiona; I am a Herbalist.”
They ended up talking for the next hour about their general supplies and plans. Fiona shared that Cassidy had a pregnant goat that would give birth any day now. They also had her horse; Damon had a donkey as well as Aaron, who came with a donkey. The donkeys were male and female. They discussed the general strengths and weaknesses of the group and also discussed that there were at least two more missing people in the zone.
None of their classes overlapped, which was interesting. They each had their own specialization, which would make future trade between them ideal. When Abigail left, they had not started any structures, but they had plans to build the needed items to upgrade to the next level of outpost, which included the needed cooking and storage access and defensive measures.
When they had finished exchanging information, Abigail said her plans were to sleep in Twin Streams overnight and follow their stream north to figure out where it goes and if it connects to the eastern river at all upstream. She said she would return within a couple of days.