Meet William. He is a Terra Child.

His brain chemistry, and to a lesser extent his body, was modified by the gasses released in a
terraforming operation. He grew up to be a medieval farm oaf; he knows the value of a strong back and a hard day’s work. He
crash landed in the middle of this forest with two young women.

The ship blew! Only 3 survived the crash; William, Winnie, and Freya. We immediately set to repurposing the shell of an old
building, and getting a wall up. The area we hope to claim includes 4 geothermal vents; hopefully we can put those to good use.

A woman wandered into our area and was attacked by a hostile spindlecrab. We rescued her, and after a little convincing she
agreed to join our colony. She claims to have been a military commisar, and helps us lay out a proper firing lane to defend our
walls. I worry it may all burn down because we’ve built it out of wood.
The defenses seem pretty solid to my untrained eye, but they haven’t really been tested yet. A rampaging boar was easily put down
before it even reached my shotgun’s effective kill range. We’ve built a hydroponics shack, in preperation for the tables that Freya is
designing. She says they may double our yield!

The hydroponics are going well, but we only have a few tables set up so far. We need to try to establish contact with passing ships;
there are some resources we just don’t have here. We’re also all getting a little sick of cramming into this one room, so we’ve laid
out a set of rooms right up against the gates. If we contact someone less than friendly, at least we’ll be near our guns.
Once we finally had our own bedrooms, the last step was to move the cooking and kitchen supplies out of the old steel shack. A
small dining hall, a respectable freezer, and a kitchen adjoining the bedrooms. We’ve got a surplus of food, which is wonderful. I
hope it lasts.

While we were hauling the food supplies into the larger and much more organized freezer by the wall, a woman named Snipe
crashed into the planet a handful of steps outside our front door. We brought her in and rendered what aid we could; the woman is
on a hair trigger, but the simple wood carvings she whittles are charming enough. Maybe we can have her work on some sculptures
in the future, to brighten up the colony.
Pirates laid siege to our colony! Fortunately, Snipe is an artist with more than the stone sculpture she started; she picked off three
pirates, and forced the remaining others to flee. However, they did get off a single shell from their incendiary launcher, and they had
tried to set up shop rather poorly. I don’t think the next time will be as easily repelled by a single artist with a shotgun. We need
stone walls. We were able to persuade Hendrix, the surviving wounded pirate, to help us rebuild. She claims to have been a
commisar as well, though Kramer never met her.

Mechanoids attacked! Two scythers dropped from the sky, and landed directly in the center of our powered sentry killzone. They
cut half of us off, out mining some exposed steel, but were cleaned up by the automated defenses well before we got there. We
continue work converting the wooden walls to marble. William is so happy with the hydroponics lab finally being fully stocked.
We stripped the old metal shack down today, for spare parts. It was cathartic. We aren’t hiding in a shack here anymore, this is our
home. Aside from the last few crops we need to harvest, we won’t need to even linger in that area anymore, with the finished
medical bay. Our hydroponics are going full strength, and we were able to sell off our first shipment of goods. We used the profit to
buy Lauren her freedom from a passing slaver; she claims to have been a school teacher, before luck dealt her a bad hand.

It’s a new year! We’ve got the majority of the walls switched to stone. A pack of Rimdogs wandered into the killzone… we’ve got
meat for days. Once the walls are finished, Kramer says she can figure out how to brew up some of the native Hops… we may be
able to finally get a brewery started! We’ve also started up a field of devilweave.. the stuff takes forever to grow, but it’s a great use
for the otherwise useless lake near our trading bay.
We were attacked! A tribe of neolithic natives threw themselves at our automated defenses. We may never know why, but several
survived, and we only took a handful of minor injuries. The walls are looking pretty sturdy now!

We now have our second man in the colony, Circa. He was one of the tribesmen who attacked us, but he was easy enough to
educate and bring to our side. One of his companions, Gnu, tried to pick a fight with Snipe. Snipe died to infection from the injuries
she suffered… and Gnu didn’t survive the medical procedures after his behavior. One remaining tribesman in our makeshift
prison… we’re arguing amongst ourselves on if we should sell him to a passing slaver, or release him in the hopes of appeasing his
fellow tribesmen.
Another stray escape pod crashed in the mountains nearby… Oxanna seems like a likeable enough woman, and she’s a surgeon!
We’ve nearly finished upgrading the hydroponics bay, and more of our less-than-friendly neighbors stopped by. The defenses held
well. We really owe Kramer for the setup. Power demands continue to grow; we’re running power from the fourth vent now.

We bought a teacher from a passing slaver! Food surplus has given us reason to expand the freezer! Most of the walls are
converted to stone; the hydroponics bay is nearly fully upgraded and expanded, and we’re about to start building the brewery and
it’s own hops-growing facility… and we’re under siege! Neil was out hunting when she stumbled across a group of pirates! They’ve
started shelling the colony, and it’s a good thing we got most of it rebuilt in stone; the wood walls that they hit crumpled like paper. I
may be a bit excitable at this point.
Expanded the kitchen to accommodate two breweries. One of the besieging pirates was persuaded to join our cause, and
immediately wounded Hendrix in a hunting accident. He’s lost his right hand, but we may have enough silver to buy him something
bionic to replace it.

Kramer’s headwound forced our hand.. she collapsed from starvation, wandering in the fields fifty feet from the kitchens. We traded
her to a passing trade barge for Spiffy, a housewife with a green thumb. We’ve finished converting the walls to marble; now it’s just a
matter of getting together the resources to get our own ship built. We may just use it to ship out Konik Brewery Special, instead of
leave the planet, though!
Two tribesman survived an assault on our kill chamber; what does it say that we hardly even think of it as a major event when 20
humans throw their lives away trying to kill us? We’ve starting to clear space for another housing wing for the colony, and Oxana
thinks she can probably get the ship up and running if we can just get enough steel and an AI core from somewhere.. hopefully the
brewing earns us the income we hope for, so we can buy what we can’t scavenge. Some kind of psychic wave drove all the turtles
on the planet mad, and one was so ferocious that it bit the entire leg off Crica, one of our new tribesmen.

We don’t feel pressured for any survival needs at this point; we’re safe, secure, and as long as the power holds out, we’ve got food
and textiles to sell. We’ve started carving stone off the edges of the valley for building material; it isn’t as easy as just scooping up
the stones on the ground and carving them to shape, but we’ve already pretty much exhausted that resource.
We’ve started construction on the ship! The extra housing unit has been finished, and we expanded the freezer to accomodate a
larger stockpile, because bulk goods trade ships seem rather infrequent on this side of the galaxy. We’ve recruited a few more
raiders, and all of the auxiliary walls away from our front have been reinforced as 2-thick stone walls as well. We may actually be
safe here, so long as Neil and Lauren are able to keep up their counter-siege exploits! The two of them picked off 8 men from a
siege, and the remaining 4 were gunned down by sentry guns in a charge against William and his gladius, when they chased the
girls down.
We’ve begun mining the nearby mountainside for steel. We struck a pocket almost immediately. Most of the material has been
used to set up a second hydroponics bay; we haven’t had a surplus of vegetables since we started the hops in the main hydro bay.
This should give us a bit more offworld trade value, and help us get a bit better stockpile set up.

Kramer’s defense held up against the largest raid we’ve ever faced. Only one injury, and he was caught outside the walls.

As we continue to grow, we need more housing space. Dug out a chunk of the mountain; finally used up our surplus of meat over
the winter, and the second hydroponics bay had potatoes growing on time to keep us from starving. Spring should bring plenty of
food in, and then we’ll be able to sell the surplus. We’ve got everything but the AI core for the ship together, but it looks like we’ll
need a lot more pods than originally planned if all of us are to leave the colony together.

We’ve nearly finished a new wing of housing, and the mountain mining has been very profitable. We’ve struck an additional pocket
of plasteel, which is great! The ship is ready to launch as soon as we can get our hands on an AI core. We’re slowly getting bionic
replacements for the various wounded colonists; Gumpy is the only exception. We blew a hole in his brain, so he’s comfortably
awaiting liftoff in prime seating; the first cryopod.
Is this the end? We bought an AI chip from a passing exotics goods trader, in exchange for most our hand-stitched critter-hide
clothing and a small museum worth of bad sculpture. We don’t have enough pods to get everyone off the planet yet, but we’ve got
the materials to make it happen. Just have to hope nothing drastic happens before then!

The colony continues to grow! We’ve converted several more of our hostile neighbors. Work on extending the ship has begun, and
we have such a surplus of spare equipment that we set up a second trading bay. Next on the list is getting more hydroponics
established, because we’ve got too many mouths to feed to keep our hops growing in the two bays we’ve got now. There is also a
little grumbling that we’re no longer serving lavish meals; William’s cooking has spoiled some of the more tightly-wound colonists.
Pheobe finally pulled out the big guns… Ship Part Alpha, and it dropped right outside our killbox. Even when she throws a heavy
punch, she pulls it for me. As this colony wraps up, I definintely want to bump up the difficulty. Smoothing out the walls between the
cooler and hydroponics expansion; I want to set up an additional hydroponics bay here for hops exclusively.

We survived! The ship nearly drove half our colonists mad, and it came down to a desperate shootout with the mechs in our killbox
after they wiped out the security guns during a protracted shelling from our new mortars, but we managed to repel the raid and take
out the ship part! We’ve got an AI part to sell now, if we want to..