????? POV

"Brought th' greenhorn like ya said Boss!" (Terris)

"Good. Now then, freshy, how ya gonna make up f'r the loss of that group we were gonna snatch and sell off?" ('The Boss')

"Well, they ain't coulda gone far right, so we just gotta find 'em again and snatch 'em right? An' it'd make sense to go the direction they'd sent out that big hunt party right? So's we should go west from where we spotted em and we should fine 'em again...I think?" ('Greenhorn')

"So ya ain't completely brain dead then. Good. Terris, grab one of th' one's we've got already, slap a collar on 'em and make them act like a translator fer ya. Hmmm...we ain't wantin' t' have t' hunt 'em down again, so take an empty slave wagon, an' that beast t' pull it, yanno th' one. Oh, an' greenhorn, if ya screw this up, yer gonna be on th' beasts menu. Ya get me?" ('The Boss')

"Yeah....I uh...I getcha boss"

Vahlu POV

Preparing for a bit of roaming was always something before, but now its...honestly alot less stressful. The little Poppit ridding on my back and shoulder while holding my emergency food sack in it's mandibles. Tucking my sandboard under my arm as I leave my tent, I'm quickly spotted by some of the other hunters who quickly grab their kits with nods toward me.

"You don't have to go if you don't want to, yanno." (Vahlu)

"We don't have too, but all of us are gettin' a bit...antsy without something to do and bein' cooped up in camp like this. Yanno how it goes!" (hunts-skink)

"Fair enough. I figured we'd roam out toward the old campsite a bit.. Check and make sure we didn't forget anything important at the old campsite, not that I think we did, and then on the way back just swing around a bit from the path, like this." (Vahlu)

Drawing two circles in the sand, one bigger than the other, I'd then draw a line from the big circle to the little circle. From there an upward ark from the small circle back to the big one.

"This route will get us to the old spot quickly to do that quick check, then let us look for other things of interest on the way back. Any complaints?" (Vahlu)

"I got one their Vahlu. What if we did an ark in to the old place too, get even more ground covered, and, not take the same path back that we took out here in the first place. Last thing we want is for a new greater sand runner to be out there after Poppit made a snack of one. They usually avoid our numbers but, better to be cautious." (veteran hunts-skink)

"Good call out, wasn't even thinkin' on those things, and while Poppit had eaten one so easily before, that was...before. Let's put it like that. A'right then, make sure ya got your own Poppit with ya, Curator seems keen on keeping us safe, they are light, and, if they help out, some things that might have been a problem to deal with might not be." (Vahlu)

Waiting for confirmations from the others and seeing the little sandtraps crawling up onto their partners, even as the older hunts folk with me suppress their reflexive shudders, we'd quickly wrap up our preparations. That's when that familiar presence naggles in the back of my head.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"By the by Vahlu, if you run into any serious problems, don't be afraid to call for help. There are some...tricks...I may be able to pull out of my proverbial hat t' help out. No guarantees on all of them, but if it's serious, no tricks, I'll just use the tried and true method of the people I was of before. Throw a rock, and, if that doesn't work, it just means you didn't throw a big enough rock! Jokes aside, I'm only a mental shout of help away, and you know I'm not afraid to get my 'hands' dirty." (Curator)

"Got it. A'right you guys, lets head out, I want to be back before sun down!" (Vahlu)

With a chorus of 'got its' and slight cheers, the band of hunters heads out. Lead by Vahlu, the eight person team would head out, following the planned route, as best the could anyway!

Vaslo POV

While my brother is preparing for his excursion outside Curator's domain, I'm getting a crash course on the 'needs' as it were. Babe listens in 'ceiling' of his core chamber, and Vekla sits beside me, also eager to learn more of what Curator knows.

"So, what I'm going to cover first is what my people called the 'rule of 3s'. Really useful way to order things by importance in various situations. First of these rules is '3 minutes without air' this means if you were to fall into the water of the oasis and be fully under it, or get buried deep in the sand, we'd have about three minutes to get you out to keep you from death." (Curator)

"Sorry to interrupt but...what's a minute?" (Vekla)

I'm so glad that the sh...Vekla is here, he asked before I could and that saves me the embarrassment of not knowing something Curator seems to think is basic knowledge.

"Okay...that's...a good question. So, if we say this world has the same length of a full day, one day would be twenty four hours. Each hour, would be comprised of sixty minutes. So it's a...fairly...short unit of time, not much at all. When I say a full day I mean sun at the highest point in the sky to that same time after it's set and risen again. This little explanation here? You could fit it, once, maybe twice in a minute." (Curator)

"Oh, so, very short amount of time. Gotcha, and I can see why that'd make it the highest priority since it'd kill you the fastest." (Vekla)

"Exactly. These rules are all about 'not dying' but still make for good fundamentals to check against before trying to thrive instead of just survive. Next on the list is three hours of exposure. This means you should do something about getting out of the elements to an extent within three hours, or if we go based on the sun, the same time it'd take to go from highest point in the sky to halfway to sunset. That's about 3 hours, now, imagine what would happen to you, without any shelter, or shade, if you were under the sun for that entire time? It...might not be as hard on yall with scales but those without scales would potentially perish in that time. From over heating, or dehydration. A better way to think on it would be, outside after the moon is to the highest point for that same amount of time. You'd probably be dead if you didn't burrow into the sand, or, have a tent to help hold the warmth in through the night." (Curator)

Nodding along with what he says, that makes perfect sense, nights are dangerous for that reason, it gets so cold, one can feel their flesh getting hard and stiff if exposed to it for too long. There don't seem to be any questions there from anyone.

"Next rule, the third rule of threes, is three days without water. Most things can't survive from being properly hydrated, for more than three days, there are exceptions to this, but as a general rule, creatures usually need some form of liquid intake every three days to not risk drying out to the point that their organs start to shut down. With right now, water is a reliable resource for you all so that's not really an issue currently, the big thing will be to ensure that folks do their uh...business, from cleaning to...letting out waste...decently far away, and, in a way that, should we suddenly get rain, it won't be washed into the oasis and contaminate it. In more crass terms: don't piss or shit in the place your water flows up from." (Curator)

"Makes sense, and we did set up the waste pit in a way so that our camp is between it, and the oasis, so that should be fine" (Vaslo)

"Good, good. Next is 3 weeks without food. While going that long without eating isn't pleasant, it's possible, but, makes one susceptible to something called 'refeeding syndrome' that's actually why on our first meeting I was so...insistent that you eat slowly Vekla. I didn't want you to eat so fast that it shocked your system and made your internals decide they'd rather just not anymore, in the simplest way to put it. It's much more complicated than that, but, either way, it'd lead to death in most cases." (Curator)

Looking over to Vekla I can see the big gulp he reflexively takes before nodding.

"Thanks for...keeping that in mind when we first met. I didn't even know something like that could happen." (Vekla)

"I'm glad you did also, otherwise many of us may have just...stuffed our faces on those tasty leaves and killed half the clan!" (Vaslo)

"I'm just glad you all listened to me on that. Now onto the current state of things, for now, we've all those bases covered to an extent, the only thing that needs more notable work is food. We've got more of the leaves, but, unless we get more of those plants growing it's a limited resource, and from there we're back to the situation of you all needing to hunt down everything and hope it's enough. That's actually why Vahlu is heading out again already, he's not ONLY hunting, but also keeping an eye out for plants and other things to bring back. Who knows, maybe there are other critters out there that could be brought back for raising to later be butchered like cattle." (Curator)

"That is...sadly the state of things isn't it? We are needing just a bit more to get truly stable to then work on improving other things, like making better shelters and such. Yes?" (Vaslo)

"Exactly! Like I said, it's a good foundation to build on. Take my chamber here, and the sandstone it's built from and atop. I didn't set this just on the sand, that'd make it shift and move, it extends DEEP into the sands, so that it won't move, anchored down deep. Stable, and a strong foundation to have things upon." (Curator)