5/18/!*@%XX 1 AME

Things this week have been better than the last, even with the small skirmish we seemed to have earlier in it.

After the whole Bulette/Land-Shark attack at the tail of end last week, most of the town had been on edge. Many of the people on the outer layer of the town definitely more than the inner ones. Due to my role as a town messenger, I was able to see a lot of it since both parties had a lot to say to each other.

A lot of the outer spheres of the town had now heard about the land-shark attack and had been growing weary of going out into the fields, with a lot of them only doing so because they understood that not doing so would just lead to a slower death in the long run. They’re fears weren’t unfounded as the small amount of study that was done on the creature and its point of entry reveled that this thing had been at least 10 feet underground when it decided to attack. While this information hadn’t gotten out to the larger public, someone managed to slip and they believed that the land-shark had been able to sense people walking from 20 meters underground.

At the same time, the people closer to the center of town weren’t as affected by the fear the sudden attack produced yet still held a larger fear of the strange new world that had landed on the town’s door step. With this one creature’s sudden appearance, a whole lot of other and potentially more dangerous monsters were being talked about amongst those of the inner town. I’ve played fair share of fantasy games before this event but even then it was somewhat surprising as to how many monsters and creatures that the inner town would come up with. I could have probably named all of them given enough time but 1) that wouldn’t be very helpful to their own psyche and 2) might make them actually appear in some strange “mention my name and I shall appear” phenomena. Can’t really discount that considering what we’ve seen so far.

This whole situation created a bad tension between the two groups. Both groups wanted more protection and so wanted the police and patrol-man in their area more often. The people on the outer sphere of the town probably had more of an actual need for them than those of the inner sphere so police chief did capitulate to some of their demands but there was a limit to what he wanted to give solely because some of the scouts that had returned had mentioned seeing bird mark larger than normal. While not directly said, many of the police guard think that the police chief believes that a giant bird will attack the center of town and screw up the whole ‘command center’. In my opinion, that fear is overblown but founded on something. Even if most of the fantasy stories aren’t real or have some correlation with where we are today, that could mean that something flying could still get you. The chances of that are small but they do happen.

This action was proven to be a good one as the past Tuesday had a small attack that was blown back quite succinctly. On the south east edge of the town, a small attack had started and quickly pushed back due to the small size and primitive aspect to the attack. I was actually in the area and was able to see it firsthand.

It’s hard not to say it but it was a literal raid made by a small band of green humanoid figures that were slightly larger than the average human. It was an Orc raid. Through and through. And because of the armament the patrol-men had over most of the under 20 Orcs had, it was a quick fight. Only one of the patrol-men was injured. He was injured heavily because the guy took a spear to the shoulder, but when you consider the trade, it was a relatively good one.

The Orcs only had swords, axes and a couple spears. Only one of the spears was straight enough to be actually thrown which was why it was but the rest of the weapons had were of quality enough to work with and not much else. This wasn’t even mentioning armor which is to say that most of them weren’t wearing much metal and mostly consisted of thick hides of animals. And some other creatures. I was able to recognize the Land-Shark hide on some of them which I elected to tell the Mayor and the Police Chief. While they were surprised, it wasn’t much in comparison to the fact that they had been attack by Orcs. This made them both a bit more relieved and more so after an explanation of the event as a whole and their armaments.

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This relief spread through town but in a more muted manner. I think the mayor and the chief were relieved more because it meant that there was something they could actually plan around this time. The Land-Shark was an anomaly. Something we couldn’t exactly plan for normally nor predict in any significant way aside from tracking them, proving difficult by the fact that we can’t track underground. The people were a bit less relieved since to them, it meant that there was something else they had to worry about but not to a fatalistic degree. Many of them thought of this event as less of a reassurance of success but more of a confirmation of survival. A lot of the farmers said that this didn’t mean much different in their eyes since it didn’t change the need for more protection when the bigger things came around.

I’m beginning to lean more with the farmers on this once since we don’t understand too much of the Orc’s way of thinking. If this was a probing party, then it only meant that it proved they need to go full force. If it was just an offshoot, then the others would eventually come around their way and try the same, just in larger numbers. Even if it’s been almost a month ago, I still remember the amount of feet and legs that went past when I hid under the car that one time. If that group was still in area and we hadn’t heard from the scout’s patrol; then they were still a huge threat in my eyes.

Despite these thoughts, people generally took well to the news well and the tension that the Land-Shark’s attack brought out was lessened. Not entirely gone but it was easier to breath at least. This was helped by what is being a ‘miracle of an early harvest’ being made in what is being said to be a fraction of the time this would normally take. From reports, it seems like the harvest of crops was made in a literal 3rd of the normally required time. Many people are definitely skeptical of this strange phenomena but they also knew that this would help greatly in the months to come and so decided not to look into it too greatly.

With all this going on, I hate to be the one to sound ungrateful but it looks as though my job may be obsolete in the coming days. Harris’ talk about the walkie-talkies had been true to the mark as they had been given out to many of the more important members within the town districts for communication reasons. With this being a thing, my job as a town messenger isn’t going to be as important and will basically be used for talking to the farmers at best. Harris told me not worry about it since while the walkie-talkie work a fair distance, it was more about battery life lasting more than anything else. This didn’t really bring my hopes up as it seems as though the town’s power hadn’t gone out as fast as they believed it would. It’s not like everyone’s able to keep the lights on throughout the night but people have been a bit more carefree with the rationing of power within the town. Keeping the batteries of walkie-talkie up wouldn’t be too hard which means that my job’s days are numbered.

I brought this up with Dorian and he mentioned that the patrol-man were looking for new numbers due to the need increasing. The whole town’s understanding of what was going on was settling and it was becoming clear that while people needed to at least be armed themselves, they couldn’t be armed and alert while also expect to be doing their own work and the need for outsourced protection was going to grow larger. I’m not really sure what to think about it myself, mostly because I don’t think I’d make a good one. I want to be of use to the town for as long as they’ll have me and the messenger job did that well since it didn’t rely on me as a person much as it did my legs and general memory. Nothing a bike and a pen an’ notepad can’t fix. Being a patrol-man means that they are going to be relying on me a lot more.

Harris thinks I should do it. I don’t think he means bad, he just think it would be cool for me to be patrol-men and his buddy. Not a bad deal for him at least. I’m probably going to think about this for a bit but it’s going to be a while before I’m an official patrol-men.

Besides this, the town has slowly been falling into a more ‘normal’ state of function. Although hard cash is still something that is hard to really work with at the moment, people have gone back to using it for more luxury items or ingredients for households. Due to the fact that many of us N.Rs don’t actually have money nor have we’ve been effectively getting back so whatever money we had at the start was all we were going to have. At least until whatever situation we are in is better smoothed over. I say this all because Harris managed to gamble himself into a bottle of good Scotch that he shared with us at out weekly poker table. Says that he had a pretty good gambling streak and decided to try his luck with the other mechanics to see how much he could scrounge up. It wasn’t hard to see why he wanted to see if he could stock-pill some cash for later but Dorian and I couldn’t argue with the result and since he had yet to actually go purchase his fix, he’s basically in the clear for now. And the Scotch really made the night. We didn’t finish the bottle but there wasn’t too much left after the night of fun.