Category: One Among the Dead

Day 687:

It appears the big wide river has a variety of zombie we don’t get on land. Wet zombies. They look sort of like the regular type, only it’s clear the fish have been “helping” them get rid of all that extra flesh.

It’s really disgusting.

Of benefit, however, is the fact that the sopping wet zombies that walk on the bottom of the river also move very slowly (most likely because water is more dense than air and thus it’s harder, though in this place only the ducken know if that’s the way it really works) so I’ve been able to avoid them so far.

And my arrows (which I’ve been improving the design on slowly) are pretty good through water as long as I aim at the right kind of angle, so I’ve taken more than one of them down while standing on my bridge construction.

Which also sums up how construction is going.

Day 686:

Now that I’ve got this entire square mapped out and my map is full — and the lawn is cut and the river is mined and the ores I found are safely tucked away and the duckens have multiple tenfold again — it’s time to do a little more exploring.

I’ve explored approximately a quarter of a map length to the west in earnest, and most of that was while going after sheep (which I succeeded to do!). So I know there’s some swamp and a mountain in that general direction, but that’s about it. My goal is to build another big rectangular road out of all this wood and then explore within it, safely, or as safely as I can. There’s another dark forest to the west and I have to say getting blown up is getting pretty old, so I expect to be chopping down many trees.

But first, the bridge building. It looks like the river/sea thing to my direct north is way wider than my map can handle, so I’m about to build a whole lot of bridge. Wish me luck!

Day 685:

I spent all day clearing weeds and making it so I could see someone coming from any direction with more warning than before, and it paid off.

Another band of murderers came down the hill threatening me. Shot at  me a few times, fortunately they mostly missed. (And the one that hit kind of bounced off my metal boot.)

So I’m feeling both sore and tired and smug tonight, which beats being just sore and tired.

Day 684:

I’ve cleaned the river out of everything useful I could find… gravel, sand, mud… now it’s just grainy dirt, which is good because that’s what rivers need to be rivers, but I don’t need it to be bricks or arrowheads or sand so it can stay where it is.

I made a scythe, and it’s a bad one. My back is still sore (of course it is!) so cutting the weeds down this way is safer than constantly bending and chopping at them with my sword, but still, not comfy.

One might wonder why I would bother clearing the fields of weeds if I’m the only one here and there’s no homeowner’s association to complain. Well remember the exploding giraffe-corgis? The ones with the green and yellow spots? They blend into high grass and weeds perfectly. This is the only way I can think of to make the area safer.

So as much as I joined mining so that I would never have to mow another lawn… here I am.

Day 683:

Slept over (under?) at the river site again last night. Back still unhappy.

While mining out this part of the vein of ore under the river I managed to mine into the area I’d been in a few days ago… so everything is connected.

I know by now I should probably be used to knocking down a wall only to find one of my own torches hanging nearby…. but it still takes a minute or two to reorient every time it happens. Context is king, as someone said a long time ago, and the context of entering yet another dark damp cave, but this time from the left, is enough to make it look new all over again. This is why we mark x’s on the walls or tie string in specific locations or something to always indicate where we’ve gone before… because one can die in a cave if one never finds the way out again.

But I did find the way out, along with a few more things like a giant underground waterfall and a few dozen zombies and skeletons at the bottom of the waterfall, and a sudden desire to seal up the whole entrance to the cave.

Strangely enough, it was raining when I came out. I say strangely because the river height both in the cave and in the river’s banks seemed unchanged despite the fact that it was absolutely chucking down rain.

Yet another “I wish I had an official scientist of any type” here I guess.

Anyway, I still have some sand and gravel to clean out of the river bank, but I’m done ore mining, at least for now, at least in that cave. I’ve sealed it up with some extra gravel and I’m back to just being soaked and cold all the time tomorrow.