[center][b]Ards[/b][/center]


[b]X) Other[/b]

[hider=Sleds sleds sleds.]

With each passing day that the scouts sent south were gone, the people grew more worried and Danr seemed like more of a fool for his dogmatic assertion that they were fine. At last, after a week had gone by since they should have reasonably come back, the chieftain grew tired of it. Taking enough food for several days as well as weapons and shields, a small search party was sent out. The armed search party was small, but they took ten wolves with them as well as the dog sled. With the sled they would travel much faster than the lumberjacks would have been able to, so they expected to be back within a fortnight. The wolves would hopefully prove useful by catching the scent of the scouts and tracking them down, as well as keeping this scouting party safe from any danger that might have befallen the missing one.

With the village's only dog sled being used for that, the builders got to work on several more. Without more wolves they would be unable to make use of more than two or three sleds at once, but it would be nice to have spares. Having several sleds would also mean that the mine could step up production, being able to send metals back more frequently. It was good to begin stockpiling ion and copper, but Danr wondered why there had been no shipment of tin. The miners had said that they had struck tin, after all.[/hider]

[b]I) Diplomatic Action[/b]

[hider=Giant, blue skraelings!]

Horik sat by the bonfire, gripping his felling axe. A cold eddy of wind kissed his neck, and the fire sputtered. With a grunt, the lumberjack stood and split a few more pieces of firewood before throwing them onto the dying bonfire. Horik and the dozen or so other lumberjacks and scouts had stopped for the better part of the day to rest and warm themselves around a fire, and a great fire they had made! Its smoke rose up in a great pillar that could be seen from miles away, and the scent of the meat that they had roasted over the fire for a meal must have had every wolf in miles slavering. Still, they had bows and axes, so the scouts weren't afraid of any wolves in the tundra.

It would seem that wolves were not the only things in these parts, though. No doubt that the Cewri child had seen the smoke on the horizon, as there wasn't much else that he could have seen in these parts with Njor being a few days' travel to the east. Yet regardless of how they had found the Ards, the Cewri scouts had found them. Horik heard rustling and the snap of a twig in the distance. He casually leaned to the side to look around the trunk of the tree that he had been leaning against. In the distance perhaps a hundred yards away, he saw them. All of them stood at least a head taller than some of the tallest men he'd ever seen. Their skin was as blue as the frostbitten flesh of corpses in the snow. They walked on two legs and wore clothes. It took a moment for all of this to register in the bewildered man's mind, before he bellowed out in alarm, "SKRAELINGS!"

The cry was echoed by at least five others, as they too had looked up in alarm and noticed the same thing. Jumping to their feet, the Ards' first instinct was to reach for weapons. For most of the dozen or so men that meant grabbing their lumber axes, but a few had bows that they had brought to hunt for food. They had not expected an actual fight though, so they had no shields or armor.

The men quickly formed a line, standing shoulder to shoulder with weapons raised, staring down the skraelings that stood a few hundred feet away. The younger ones nervously looked toward Horik, who stood in the middle of the line. He was the oldest of them, and in his time he had used an axe to cut down more than lumber. After a few moments of panicked though, Horik realized that perhaps these skraelings were not enemies. He lowered his felling axe, but its wooden haft remained in his hand held by a death grip. The others lowed their weapons as well.

Slowly, Horik began walking towards these strange skraelings. As he drew closer, the initial shock returned as he realized just how big the blue-skins were. They were like trees! Eyes darted towards Horik's face as he softly chuckled. [i]"Luckily, my axe is good at cutting down trees,"[/i] Horik had thought to himself.[/hider]

[b]F) Improve Resources[/b]

[hider=Cotton]
Danr wandered around the hilly taigas of the land that was now his home. Leadership was taking his toll on him now, as he thought to himself about the search party that he had just sent after the lumberjacks. Perhaps he had been wrong to dismiss the concerns of his people? By insisting that they were in no danger and delayed sending help, had he condemned them to die?

He sat down upon a hill and banished the thoughts of self-pity from the sanctum of his mind. His hand reaching down to the ground at his side, it sank into snow and then got snagged by something. There was some sort of plant buried beneath a thin layer of snow, and the plant has wispy, cloud-like tufts of snow coming out of bulbs. Or, at least Danr had thought it was snow! The stuff would fibrous and soft, yet warm and insulative. Pulling at the tundra cotton, he found many tiny seeds inside of the fibrous tufts. While the winter meant that finding more of these rare plants beneath the snow would be impossible, Danr brought the seeds back to the farmers. Next planting season, they would till new fields for cotton and grow it alongside the cabbage, rye, and barley. Using spinning wheels as if it was wool, Danr hoped that his people would have a new source of fabric for cloth and rope.[/hider]

[hider=Summary:]
-Danr wonders why the miners said they saw copper, tin, and iron, yet he only received the copper and iron.
-Cotton will now be grown.
-Work begins on several more dogsleds.
-The current dogsled was temporarily used to take a small search party (consisting of armed warriors and ten wolves) out looking for the missing scouts and lumberjacks that went south
-The Cewri were encountered by one of the scout/lumberjack bands
[/hider]