Hunting Party

Goldenblade has invited her new friend Atif to go hunting, per their discussion yesterday. She's never hunted before, nor has she used this style of bow before. She's used shortbows back in summer camp sixty years ago, but ... that was sixty years ago. She guesses she doesn't need to use her actual skill, though, she found out last night that the character has skills far beyond what she as a player had. For instance, it seems to know about hunting, checking for tracks and signs of animals passing. She's not after big game today, this is more of an experiment than a meat gathering expedition, though if meat can be gathered, so much the better.

She met a few others yesterday, when she was out shopping for a bow, and invited them out hunting as well. The bow she was sold was a stout longbow, taller in the upper half than the lower half, but with an even, heavy draw. She carries it at her side for the moment, with a quiver of long arrows at her hip.

    And the olive-skinned salamander with the collection of red scales that is Atif is duly following along behind Goldenblade. The tall dragon-kin might not have much experience in hunting, personally, but at least he's good enough with moving around quiet. More or less stalking right behind the woman, to avoid making the kind of noise that would spook any game away.

    "This shouldn't be as complicated as Outside at least, right...?" Murmurs Atif in a low tone, tail briefly perking up during that sentence. "I mean, it's designed to be grinded out, anyway, so you know..."

    Uta walks in from a path in the opposite direction, wearing a double-breasted black winter coat that covers her from neck to the feet, a conical cloth hat with a festive pattern, and an expression of disappointment. "...so that is not what they meant when they invited me to join their party?", she asks distractedly to nobody in particular, which means she's probably talking to someone over the chimlinks. The latter hypothesis would be confirmed by how she seems to be ignoring her surroundings...

Goldenblade looks back over her shoulder to Atif, and admits, "I'm never sure when I've got to know how to do a thing, and when I can use a the game controls. It feels like I'm really doing a thing, so ...." She shrugs. She stalks forward, following the indistinct game trails. She's not great at it, but with some effort, she's managing to follow something. Or someone.

She peers as she spots Uta talking, and since we're not actually stalking anything just at the moment, she'll call out, "Hello!" She's got a heavy wool cloak on over her mail, but it's gray, and somewhat easy to see in the surroundings. Someone's going to have to explain the chimlinks to her at some point, she just assumes Uta's talking to herself.

    "Hey, it's okay," Atif assures with a wide, sunny smile offered to Goldenblade. "I'm sure we'll figure it out! Together!" He nods decisively with this declaration, as if that alone makes it FACT.

    He perks up from his slightly-lowered posture when Goldenblade calls out towards Uta, and his green eyes sweeep on over to the Spriggan, and...

    "Uta!!" The red-head calls out, hand lifting up high and waving in all-to-excited motions.

    Uta perks up at the sound of a familiar voice. "ATIF!" She exclaims, and after murmuring a quick, "Sorry, talk to you later!" into the chimlinks, she runs towards the duo. "Hi! What are you doing here with- "

    Screech to a halt. A flick of her hand, a little navigation through the option, and the 'inspect' functionality is selected. "...Goldenblade", is that right? Pleased to meet you. I'm Uta." She offers a polite bow to the newcomer. Luckily her hat is secured with a piece of string tied to her chin, so it does not fall off.

Goldenblade nods slowly to Atif, "Yeah, we'll figure it out one way or another, I imagine. I mean, it's why we're here, to work out the hunting thing." When Atif calls out to Uta, she ohs, "You two know each other? That's cool. I'm still meeting everyone, and it's hard to keep them straight in my head." She looks guilty at that.

To Uta, she bows, and replies, "It's nice to meet you, too, Uta. You know Atif already, it seems?" She looks between them, then goes on, "We're doing a bit of hunting. Mainly as practice, but hoping that we can get some meat drops that we can cook. I'm not much good now, but I'm hoping to get better."

    "Yeah, yeah! I know Uta!" Atif confirms cheerfully with a rapid nodding of his head, bouncing lightly on his scaled feet before gesturing to the spriggan herself. "She's a sweetheart!"

    With that said, he takes a small step up to bring himself standing besides Goldenblade rather than a bit behind her, hands clasping behind his back while he leans over slightly. "Hey, I like your hat. Were you going to go meet up with someone?"

There's been someone else int eh forest who didn't expect to hear anyone else out there. Well, she wasn't alone Uther and Morri were somewhere nearby the trio were out gathering. Gwen homes in on the voices of which two she thinks she knows and she'll come out of the tree line with a big grin on her face.

"Uta! Atif! Ah, Goldenblade we meet at last!"

She looks Goldeenblade over pondering outfits and armour ideas for her.

    Uta looks down, away, and blushes in embarrassment at Atif's words, "...Hats are a very important accessory in society. It is one of the primary ways to display status in online games, and it is socially expected that one will do their part in society to ensure that the hats are-" she mumbles. And finally sighs. "...ok, yeah, yeah, fine I was going to meet someone and I misunderstood what 'joining a party' meant." She raises a finger. "But the part about the hats being considered an important part of social interaction in multiplayer games is totally true. I've heard it from other adventurers!"

    "Yes, Atif and I have met. Last time it was on Valentine's day, right? Ah, the memories. I remember that as if it was yesterday..."

    ...It was two days earlier?

    "Hi Gwen!", Uta waves back. "Hey, Gwen. How's things?" Turning to the newly met redhead, she continues, "And don't worry, Goldenblade, you are living proof that I am still meeting people myself, and I also have trouble keeping all of them straight in my head. Oh, speaking of hunting -- can I help you? I am a complete disaster at that, but I can punch things, kick things, hit things with a stick, heal people, and sing a little song as I do all that. I think I can still be of use?"

    She points to her hat. "Plus, I'm all set to join a party..."

Goldenblade ahhhs to Atif, nodding slowly at his characterization of Uta, and she turns her smile on her. "Ah, it's good to meet you!" she says. "Any friend of Atif's is a friend of mine." She's trying to make friends in the game, anyhow.

When Gwen pops out, she looks completely clueless. "Uh .... do I know you?" she asks, confused. "But, er, it's nice to meet you?" Well, she doesn't need to introduce herself to Gwen, who apparently knows her, and Uta does too, now, and Atif's set, so introductions are out of the way. To Uta, she says, "By all means join us, I'm still mostly clueless about the hunting thing, but I've been eating vendor food since I started here, and I only just had cooked food the other night. And to get more, I guess we need to get the ingredients, right?"

    Atif tilts his head slightly to the side curiously while he listens to Uta ramble on about the entire concept of hats. And... after a few seconds, he pads his way right up over to Uta and...

    "It's fine, friend Uta," he tells the spriggan while his hand goes to pat her shoulder. He might have thought to pat her head, first, but that would have disturbed the hat. "You can come join us for hunting, if you want? And after we get some meat we can have *that* kind of party, too!" He smiles wide at this idea, briefly revealing teeth that are... well, slightly sharper than a regular humans. Freakin' salamanders. It doesn't make him look any less friendly, though.

    

    His tail twitches up when he hears someone else's voice, and his eyes go tracking towards the source of it, and... "Oh. Hey! Gwen!" He lifts a hand to wave to her, too. .. Right before he coughs quietly and looks away for a moment. For some reason. ...Alright?

    "Oh, that's Gwen," he offers to GOldenblade, then, seeming to sense her confusion. Somehow, he's quickly reappeared at the other redhead's side just like that, too. "She's... kind of a 'de facto' big shot at our guild, so she's probably heard of you through there. She'd apparently heard about me, too, before she ever even met me."

Gwen :seems to be in a good mood.

"Oh would you all like a tank?"

She looks over Goldenblade for a moment.

"We're in the same guild I saw your name on the memeber list. Well that's why our guild exist to help people like you."

She looks to Atif.

"Yes I am that Gwen and I'm not even ranked as an officer."

She actually flails for a moment, if only Jazz could be here to see this.

"I just check the guild list Atif so what are we hunting?"

    Uta swipes her menu open again and taps at various options. "Let's make this official... I'll send you a friend request, so we can keep in touch better, like, communicate over chimlinks and such, okay?" A friend request is sent, and Uta closes her menu. "Ingredients are indeed necessary, and there never are enough. I don't think I've ever cooked food myself, but I've figured out that you can game the system and get vendors to give you food whose taste matches its appearance and texture. You just have to order soggy crackers."

    Uta replies to Atif with an "Okay!" and a big smile. "I'd be glad to join. I mean, I'm not one to say 'no' to /that/ kind of party. And, hey, maybe we can have a party /while/ hunting. My weapon of choice is a stick, so, uh... if we hit animals with a stick, it's technically a moving target pinata?" "She's definitely big," she comments, nudging her head towards Gwen.

    Speaking of Gwen, Uta turns towards her and asks, "...we have armored vehicles in this world? Or did you mean, like, a large container for water?"

Goldenblade ohs as Atif explains about Gwen being an important person at the Guild. "De facto?" she says aloud to herself. "How do you become a de facto big shot? Did circumstances conspire to increase her importance without any official status gain?" She tries to work out how that might have happened.

Snapping back after a moment in space, she bows as Gwen introduces herself, and a pretty good bow, like one you'd give your boss at work. "Ah, I'm sorry, yes, I'm Goldenblade, I'm still figuring things out." As if that wasn't obvious, too. She smiles at being helped, and says, "Thank you, ma'am. I guess I do need a lot of help." She looks around, and follows on to Uta's question with, "You've got a tank here someplace? That'd really help out and no mistake; even an old Sherman would probably do pretty well here. This is all so strange." The swipe and friend request is met with a puzzled expression, and she says, "I don't think I understood about any of that. We've met and we're friends? Is this like trading business cards?" She nods about the soggy crackers, though. "Too true."

    For whatever reason, At if seemed... distracted. But when Gwen calls out his name, he perks up to looking briefly to the woman again. "...Hm? Oh. No, yeah. I know, I know..." He mumbles, before flashing a quick smile.

    "The stick is just fine for fighting too!" He assures Uta with another rapid nod. "You know. Like a quarterstaff! Or maybe just a staff, if it has magic in it...? Does it? Oooh, that'd be cool!"

    He springs upright completely again after the brief addressing of Uta to give... a mildly amused look at GOldenblade. "...Not that kind of tank." He elects to let someone else (most likely Gwen) explain that one, though.

Gwen says "Yeah it's good to keep people on your friend list as we can only friend someone when they are in the line of sight. If I didn't have my father and Att on my friends list? The rescue from Ezzo might have gone bad."

Gwen pauses opens her inventory and pulls out what appears to be a small basket of sandwiches.

"ham sandwiches anyone?"

Yes she's offering food.

"Swords here with a shield when I'm tanking."

"Tank the term for people like me who stand up front and take all the abuse so people like you and Jazz don't get carved up by monsters. Sorry no Abrams here I'm afraid."

"Because the guild's leader are busy with a lot of alliance matters at the moment."

She pauses for a moment

"A Sherman is a heavily armed tractor but damn if it didn't do it's job back in it's time."

"That's a good way to look at the friends list Goldenblade."

For all anyone knows Gwen is planning some kind of tank girl armorset...now.

    Uta is already sinking her teeth into the sandwich, tears of joy streaming along her cheeks. "...it tastes real..." she whimpers.

    "I'm still figuring things out myself, never really played a game before and joined just in time for the Apocalypse...", she admits to Goldenblade, "...but in this swim-or-sink kind of world, one has to learning quickly. Still, yes. Need a lot of help myself."

    Atif gets a "My stick /totally/ has magic in it. Or maybe I have it and it just goes through the stick? Not sure. Point is, it goes zing. Bling. Zap. Woosh. Blorple. And other magical sound effects. It also lights up. You should see it. It's amazing."

Goldenblade ehs to Atif? Not that kind of tank? "Well, a modern tank would certainly be much better than an old antique," she agrees completely, actually imagining something like an Abrams plowing through monsters and wasting bosses with the main gun. She looks disappointed as Gwen lets her down. But she nods about trading business cards,

"All right, then. Er, what should I do? To trade you mine?"

She nods to Uta about figuring things out. "Same here, though I've only sort of just started playing. I mean I've been here since the thing happened, but I got caught up with helping the refugees. Building shelters and such." Gwen's food is accepted gratefully, and she takes a big bite and chews beatifically, with eyes closed.

    "... I don't know if we even *could* make tanks like that in here..." Murmurs Atif akwardly with a few sharp, scaley fingers scratching lightly at the skin of his cheek. He's only informed about the subject well enough to know what those *are*, but not at all enough to know if they would be feasible here.

    There's an immediate perking up from the offer of sandwiches, and he's quick to pad up to Gwen, tail swaying from side to side, and take on of the offered sammiches. "Thank you SO MUCH!" He offers, full of cheer and joy...

    ...And proceeds to shove the entire sandwich whole into his mouth. THere's only a brief bit of chewing before he swallows it completely.

    ...Well.. He clearly has an appetite.

Gwen will sit back and let people eat the food, heck she has one of her own food. She seems to being enjoying it herself." 5R
She pauses for a moment and will open the friend request with Goldenscale.

"Speaking of shelter The guild needs to build a HQ somewhere and we do have quite a few people with maid as a job." She grins at this as an idea forms in her head.

    "No, see, when you get the... pop-up? From the menu? And you tap on accept? It's pretty much automatic and we are both added to each other's friend list OH GOODNESS I'M TEACHING SOMEONE HOW TO USE THE GAME. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THIS WORLD?!" she exclaims in mild panic, but after a little bit of hyperventilation, she calms down again. "Keep calm, keep calm Uta... this day has come. It is a thing. Do not make a big scene out of it." She clears her throat. "Anyway, when you accept it, friendship is automatically established both ways. Easy peasy and Bob's your uncle." A confident nod in the direction of Atif. "That said, we must definitely talk with someone with the Construction skill about building actual tanks, actually. That would be usedul indeed." And back to Goldenblade. "And don't worry about having been busy building shelters -- I've been tending to poisoned or otherwise sick people and working on projects myself, everyone has been busy."

    "...that's a very nice thing to do, Gwen. Taking damage for Jazz and I... thanks for that. I owe you one."

Goldenblade ehs to Afif about making tanks here. "Well, they don't even have engines here yet, they'd need that first. Or else, I dunno," she speculates, "A dragon with heavy plate armor all over seems like it'd be almost the same idea. Do you even /have/ dragons here? Can they be hired?" She makes short work of her sandwich in the mean time.

As Gwen mentions Guild HQ, she says, "Well, I'm a bricklayer by trade. Retired now, and the bricks you have here are kind of second rate. You don't really mix the clay well, I think, or maybe you don't really fire them right?" If there are people with maid as a job, they won't need her for that. She's a builder in any event, and says, "But I'd be happy to help you with any building you want to do."

She'll carefully and slowly follow Uta's instructions to complete the friend request, and it's done.

"You want to build tanks?" she wonders. "I mean, I've got construction skill, but you'd need the engine, that'd be a huge deal. Armor's probably easy. But then someone has to invent gunpowder for the main gun....."

Gwen says "You are learning Uta." She thinks for a moment on the Tanks

"That's going to take a while to even get there if we vewn even do something like that in our new home. Still I been thinking we need to get the Guild a guild hall somewhere and the Alliance also needst to spread out. I may end up talking to the Alliance higher ups about this."

She looks to Uta.

"I enjoy getting up close and personal with my foes anway.

"We'd need an engineer who knows how an engine works."

"Or we could just have it pulled by Grunties, you know," replies Uta. "Middle ages tanks. Leonardo da Vinci made some pretty interesting drawings about those..."

Goldenblade doesn't know enough about tanks and engines to really comment. She knows a bit about construction, but not much about cars. She will think as much as she can about the suggestions for tanks, but unless they involve bricks, it will have to be done by someone else."