Chapter 3: He Will Walk the Earth
Knowing that fertile fields lay just to the north of their current camp, wise Chief Lorax moved his people a bit closer to the lands of the North Wind. The longhouses were built and there was much rejoicing:
To the Lands-Where-Father-Sun-Wakes, more of the great thunder beasts were found. Plans were made to find a way to tame such mighty creatures, but first the Wise Men called upon the tribe to erect a great circle of stone, which would both give our tribe a symbol to rally upon in times of great need as well as preserve for our children the ways of reading the Sky for signs and portents. To that end much of the Wise men of the village were ordered to spend their days studying and learning more of the nature of the spirits, even as our mighty Warriors continued to search the lands and Cahokia trained a new generation of foragers. Their curiosity was rewarded when a friendly village celebrated their visit with many valuable gifts:
Our Wise men had soon learned that spirits reside in every rock, tree, and thing that walks on the Earth and that these spirits can help mankind if you call upon their powers by name. This knowledge proved immediately useful; for years our people had valued a certain type of stone found in the nearby flatlands, but now they knew its name: Marble. We would learn it secrets, whatever they may be, and thus our people took their first step towards Masonry. Our Warrior once more was welcomed by a friendly tribe, whose people told him of a great village not far from our own. Our Warrior set off to meet these people and learn of their ways. At the same time, the forest spread to the fork in Cahokia river. The city celebrated the auspicious event by finishing their Worker and starting on what we would call the Stonehenge:
Soon our Warriors found that we shared the lands with other peoples. They were invited to smoke the pipes of peace with us at the sacred fire, but then we remembered that we had forgotten to invent tobacco. Instead we offered them a drink from our sacred river. They found the water to be cold and clean, and surely left impressed at our considerable prowess in the field of throwing rather lame parties:
Isabella in particular impressed us with her delegation, who whispered of their great All-father Yahweh:
Our knowledge soon grew with mastery over the mysteries of stone and its use as a building material. Our Workers set off to plant the fields and dig for the precious marble. Our tribe soon learned other skills - Mining, Hunting, Wheel and Archery. While work on the Stonehenge continued, it was interrupted for a few turns in order to train a Scout - our Warrior was recovering from his battle with a mighty pack of Wolves, and much of the lands to the North were a mystery to us. This slight diversion did not prevent us from completing our task to fully master the mysteries of the stars:
To celebrate this event it was declared that all settlements, current and future, would erect mighty Totem Poles to mark the great occasion. Nubile young women bedecked only in marble beads leaped and sang around Cahokia's campfires throughout the night, and the village elders celebrated with mouthfuls of sacred river water, brought to the village in the mouths of young apprentices. One elder, drunk on river water, actually suggested that we could replace the human jars with ones made of clay, but the sensible members of the tribe instead spent the night talking of plans to tame the beasts which roamed our nearby plains. After the revelry died away, Chief Lorax, his head filled with such thoughts, retired to his Palace to think on this and other things.
Thus ends our first big round. For the next round my plans are to settle a few more cities and start working on a proper defense - Tokugawa and Isabella both make me nervous, especially if Korea or Greece founds a religion - wouldn't want to get tangled up in a Holy War without a proper army. To that end tech wise I think we need to grab Bronze Working soon, but before that I want to round out my technologies with Pottery and Animal Husbandry. I'd also like to think about the Oracle since we have Marble - it could give us an early lead towards Longbows if we managed to pop Monarchy, and considering that our Continent appears to be on the smaller side when it comes to size, we might even manage to take over our continent with a well-timed aggressive longbows rush. Another potential route we can go is to take out Greece with our Dog Soldiers - if I know Pericles he will try to spam Phalanxes, which if I'm not mistaken are cannon fodder for our UU. Then again, Korea and Greece tend to be great tech partners, so maybe making enemies out of them isn't worth it. Tokugawa should probably also be nipped in the bud, but he seems to be a bit too far away for us to properly surprise him early on. What do you all think? (To Be Continued Next Post)
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