Aprimay 3, 5503 - A passing combat supply caravan has a uranium spear for sale for the jaw-dropping price of seven thousand silver. It is bought anyway, because we can smelt it to get some of the uranium back and we need every ounce we can scrounge up. Holy shit! It smelts for 225 uranium! NICE!
Pictured: SEVEN THOUSAND SILVER?! That's more than a good suit of power armor and the matching helmet! Better be worth it. Turns out, it is!
Apr 5 - Ten Man-eating polar bears attack! A careful and well-planned defense sees them off, with only moderate wounds to the defenders, and surprisingly little friendly fire. At Emry's insistence, one of the surviving downed polar bears is taken and healed in an attempt to tame. It is locked in a spare bedroom while it is "tamed"
Pictured: Polar Pounding
Apr 7 - A boomalope goes mad. The Turrets in the killbox take care of the animal, but the colonists have to deal with the fire afterwards. Null and Klew manage to set themselves on fire while trying to extinguish part of the blaze.
Pictured: BOOM
Apr 8 - Charon, Frank, Gas, SpecialKO, Longshank and Terrik are sent to check out another possible mineral source. An ancient danger is in the area. Inside is a mechanoid centipede! It blasts down Terrik. After the monstrosity is destroyed, Gas does his best to stabilize Terrik so he can be sent back home to recouperate. That night, Cargo pods full of neutroaleaf crash through the roof of Dave's room.
Pictured: Finishing off the centipede, with Terrik seriously injured (SpecialKO is standing over him)
Pictured: "Special delivery for Dave DeLong?" Dave's not home man... luckily. *CRASH*
Apr 9 - Terrik has stabilized enough to move, so he is sent back home in a pod to recover, along with a shitton of Jade. After that, the cryptosleep caskets are opened. Six hostile spacers with guns emerge, and attack! They are killed with only some wounds received. After that, a few days are spent breaking everything down for parts and mining the huge amounts of local steel (Cheesy is sent to help with that), and the spoils are sent home in pods, consisting of a huge amount of Jade, Steel, and a little gold.
Apr 12 - With a few payments of silver, peace is brokered with the hostile Bagabi of the Cliff tribe. They will no longer attempt to raid the colony.
Apr 13 - With the summer heat moving in, the colony swaps out their parkas for dusters. The last of the expedition to the mineral node returns.
Apr 14 - Cog's mother arrives as part of a slaver caravan. Well, at least she's not one of the slaves. The last year's worth of puppies are sold off to the caravan at a huge discount. Less mouths to feed. After that, a Pleasure Cruiser in orbit makes contact. The colony sells them all their statuary and other assorted odds and ends, and buys a whole lot of chocolate. That ought to boost some moods around here. DarkAudit insults Ravenpoe, and a brief fight ensues, with Poe getting a little more banged up than DA.
Pictured: Cog's mom and company
Pictured: DarkAudit v. Ravenpoe
Apr 15 - A flock of man-hunting... turkeys. 16 aggressive turkeys enter the area. This feels less of a threat and more of a "did somebody order a party platter" situation. I don't even bother waking up all the militia, I just let the night owls handle it (along with the turrets of the killbox). Well, as it turns out, the turkeys don't go to the killbox, they attack the departing slaver caravan, killing several tribals. This sours relations between the tribe and the colony, but a quick 1500 silver payoff smooths things over. Wasabi and DarkAudit get into a fight in the kitchen. What is with him these days?!
Picture: We are threatened by our food
Pictured: DA v. Wasabi
Pictured: The social standings as of the end of Aprimay, 5503.
Note that pretty much everybody now has an armored vest on under their duster, except Jun, who has opted for a surgical smock that increases her already-impressive medical capabilities.
The Polar bear is still not tamed, but is happy to sit in its climate controlled bedroom with wall-to-wall carpet and be fed by would-be tamers every day.
The ship is coming along slowly. Its primary systems are now all functional, and it has enough cryptosleep caskets for 13 people. Now that uranium is coming in, we're chewing through steel like nobody's business (it's 500 steel per casket, which, yes, is a lot - one tile of steel to be mined is generally 30-35 steel). Fortunately, steel is easier to come by than uranium... though we'll still need lots of uranium. But the outlook is a lot less bleak than it was a year ago.