Star(t) Quest

...Hmmm….Well....

...That's…. Not a good sign.
Based on the black swirls gathering around the moon, it’ll only come down to a matter of time until everything goes dark again; and that’s definitely not somewhere you want to be.

“Cool.”....

You should really be getting back to preparing for when it finally comes.

So, what to do first?

>Pick up your axe and chop some frozen firewood, that's good against darkness

Get back indoors where you will be safe. Don't forget to close and lock all openings to the outside.

Get your stuff. Maybe chop up some firewood if you can afford the time to. Otherwise, just go indoors and figure out what other affairs you need to sort out before it's too late.

Investigate magic stick in hair

Check resources, light fires

Put a new sun up in the sky. A better one.

>grab the rope and make sure to tie your door closed when it becomes Dork Mode Time Time. Also grab it because knot rope of any kind is Generally Good To Have.

>Pick up your axe and chop some frozen firewood, that's good against darkness

Right, you probably should get some wood. It’s the whole point of you coming out this far from the hideout. You’ve already gone and looted through the majority of the inner town earlier for wood and found…. Nothing. You’ve already taken everything useful including wood the first time around, and as much as you didn’t want to admit it; the fifth or sixth time check isn’t going to yield anything new.

So here you are, begrudgingly about a two hour walk from the hideout on the outskirts of town with a sort of dull axe and a couple meters of rope….

Wait.

Check resources, light fires

“Who said that!?”

That was most definitely other people’s voices and right in your ear, almost rattling in your head. But there’s no one here, not for miles.

It’s finally happened isn’t it?

You’ve finally lost it, off the deep end. After however long it’s been since the last time everything went dark there hasn’t been anyone around, you’ve finally started to make up some imaginary voices in your head to start talking to you inste -

Investigate magic stick in hair

“It’s not a stick!”

At least you don’t think it is, it sprouted from your skull so you can only guess it’s more bone then stick. …But is it magic? Is it doing something? You can’t really see it from the angle you’re stuck with…. It’s not bad is it? Ellis had these stick? Bone things? They didn’t really seem to do anything to him, if anything they actually made him look really cool and mysterious and….

…. Make you officially crazy. Already you’re rambling to unknown voices in your head and shouting out into thin air.

Put a new sun up in the sky. A better one.

A sun. So the voices believe in folktales. You personally don’t believe in them but Ellis did; sometimes the way he describes things from old folktales…they would sound real. But that’s all it was.

Get your stuff. Maybe chop up some firewood if you can afford the time to. Otherwise, just go indoors and figure out what other affairs you need to sort out before it's too late.

Well at least these voices have some good reasoning to them, maybe getting distracted and staring at the black swirls for too long is what causing all this crazy. You better to get out of the sight of the thing; besides yes, your best chance of finding wood would probably be inside the thing made of wood.

Didn’t mean to do that but you’re pretty sure that means no one lives here anymore.

Now where to start?

Yo, is that Abandoned Shack Pie on the table? Gotta eat that!

>Fix the door so you don't freeze to death

YOOOOO PIE.


Also wtf happened why is the moon evil... and how can you hear us? Is this one of those meta thingies?

Supplies are relatively plentiful. The occupant is absent. The table is set, the meal untouched. Disconcerting.
They must have left in a hurry. Hopefully they left in a hurry.

Check the cabinets for unwanted occupants first, than search upstairs.
If nobody/nothing is found, then examine what appears to be a note on the table.
After that, grab what supples can be carried, while sorting other supplies to be readily taken on a return trip.

Go up the ladder! Bound to be a Useful Thing there.
Also, is that a red rug thing over there? Better grab it.

Blankets. Fire poker, weapon? Possibly a sharper axe there.

Consider if this place is going to be secure enough to rest in. If there's no resources left in the immediate vicinity of "home", having a waypoint like this would be useful.

Is the door supposed to do that? And where are the gables of your house, young man or woman? Where do you sleep?

Check bags, also see if there's something you can wrap the (presumed) pie so as to better take along for the ride.

Either way, save going up the ladder for last. Maybe focus on finding a whetstone or something close enough to it to get your axe re-sharpened, provided the one lying there isn't sharper. Also, maybe consider chopping up the door for extra wood? Your choice, though.

Yo, is that Abandoned Shack Pie on the table? Gotta eat that!

Free food is always good food. And you are absolutely taking a bite of that delicious abandon shack pie this very instant. Drop your junk and get to snacking.

To your mild disappointment it’s not pie or even a turnover of delicious filling. It’s a loaf of some pretty hard bread; judging from how you could mentally feel your teeth cracking and the shard of bread going down, its probably been sitting out in the cold for a while.

Supplies are relatively plentiful. The occupant is absent. The table is set, the meal untouched. Disconcerting.
They must have left in a hurry. Hopefully they left in a hurry.

Check the cabinets for unwanted occupants first, than search upstairs.
If nobody/nothing is found, then examine what appears to be a note on the table.
After that, grab what supples can be carried, while sorting other supplies to be readily taken on a return trip.

Oh, right. First things first, you probably should have checked if anyone was still around before trying to eat their food….

Oh cool there some sticks of charcoal in here and a fist full of small colourful smooth stones. The brown sac has a wooden mallet and chisel inside. 

The axe over in the corner looks to be in way better shape than the one you brought; for now, while you’re looking around you put the new axe down next to your axe and rope pile. The hammer on the floor is a rare find compared to axes around here and if you remember your stockpile inventory back at the hideout right you’re pretty sure you don’t have a hammer there, but when you tried to bring it over to the pile, it turns out to be way heavier then you expected.

There are some books on the shelf and you will admit that you are not really a reading type and with a bit of skimming you’re already pretty confused, you bitterly remark that if you had better reading skills you could at least make an educated guess to if this book or its topics could be useful or not.

Blankets not eaten away by dry rot is rare and are always a must especially during the longest parts of the darkness so as bulky as they are, it’s for sure getting looted. 

Right below the shelves, the sliding cabinet door has been left open enough for you to grab the edge and slide it fully open. It takes a bit but the smell really hits you, you smelt it faintly walking in but you originally thought it was just from the house being old and musty, you thought wrong. It smells like someone throw up in here and then it manages to be so bad that not even the cold wanted to go near it and it just started to stew in its own essence. You can see a bunch of bottles filled with some liquid in here and whatever it is, is already making your eyes water, you manage to pull one the closet bottle out before your gag reflects kicked in but you aren’t willing to touch anything else in this cabinet.

You finish your rounds on the ground floor and make your way to the ladder leading up to a loft area of the cabin but at the mention of a note, the paper under the plates does catch you eye.

…Oh…Looks more like someone was drawing a nice picture then making an important note…. You side it back under the plate to hold it down from the wind and make your way up the ladder.

It looks like one big sleeping area up here, it does look like whoever was here was living a pretty comfy life for someone on the outskirts of the town but they don’t seem to be around anymore or at least right now.

Is the door supposed to do that? And where are the gables of your house, young man or woman? Where do you sleep?

You’re not quite sure what's going on, if these voices are part of some deep fall into insanity or something, but shouldn’t they already know everything about you? At the very least know the basic facts about you. You mentally reconfirm that you do in fact identify as a boy.

From up on the loft you do notice that hey yeah, a part of the wall is missing, it could be like the door and just the place is falling apart from lack of general care, but you think if this is where the owners slept maybe it was intentional, its sort of nice seeing the stars while still blocking the moon from this angle.

Blankets. Fire poker, weapon? Possibly a sharper axe there.

Consider if this place is going to be secure enough to rest in. If there's no resources left in the immediate vicinity of "home", having a waypoint like this would be useful.

A power rest before heading back does sound nice, it’s going to be you on another two-hour long track back this time haul back extra weight to the hideout, and if you stick to the loft if anyone comes in through the door you would be at a height advantage. But there is the constant presence of the black swirl just outside looming over you, the rotations before the darkness comes are getting increasingly shorter which leads you to your other option.

Making this place into a sort of mini base; it’s not particularly secure especially with its current structure, aka the gaping hole window up there. Location wise is not the greatest either, being the only standing structure on a flat terrain for miles but being on the edge might provide some advantage being closer to the sea, something you can’t do from your hideout located in the center of town and in the case of if you ever get stranded away from your main base and the darkness suddenly strikes you can hold up here if you happen to be nearby. But you it will take time and more resources to really buckle this place down if you want this to be a long term thing.

There’s also all the things you didn’t immediately shove into your bag that you have currently just left lying around, potentially useful but would either be impractical to carry in said bag, or hazardous to hold on its own. If you could figure out a way to carry them, you could take them with you.

In BagShow

Wood Log x 6
Charcoal Stick x 3
Colourful Stone x 8
Wooden Mallet
Chisel
Blanket x 2

Well, could you just tie them up with rope and drag them behind you?

Oh! Or nail together a little sled and slide the heavy stuff along.

Stash the chisel in the bag you found it, along with anything else that fits in there.

I agree with Whim that lashing two logs together and resting anything additionally useful (Mallet, heavy hammer, colorful stones) on top and dragging it back to base is a good course of action.