1 Aprimay 5510 - Dirona's body is discovered in the hallway. She is buried with the other tribesmen. Squidley gets her bionic spine, but muscle parasites still ravage the community.
Pictured: Dirona's fall
2 Apr - the decision is made that the departure can't be put off any more. The pods are beginning to be loaded. Unfortunately, the pods are a washout. They won't even hold half of what needs to go, and they would take days to load. The tribe loads up a regular caravan to depart on foot. The first night on the road, Shegokigo has a heart attack of her own. It is treated.
3 Apr - An electrical storm strikes West Acapulco, but nobody is left there to fight the fires, and they run wild.
Pictured: The fields of West Acapulco are ablaze
4 Apr - Rains arrive and quench most of the fires, but some turrets were destroyed beforehand, and all but 2 of the remaining turrets are cut off from power because the conduit burned. The conduits to the outlying geothermal generators is also severed.
5 Apr - The tribe stops at a friendly town called Fortune Teller's Desert, they buy 3 more alpacas, food, medicine, and sell off some trade goods they brought with them.
Pictured: FT's Desert. West Acapulco is the blue tent at the bottom of the screen
6 Apr - A poisonous mechanoid ship crashes within the walls. There is nobody there to deal with it. The local plant life begins to die off.
7 Apr - Without maintenance, one of the last two geothermal generators still connected to the grid breaks down at West Acapulco. The batteries are quickly drained, and the abandoned settlement is now all but in perpetual blackout.
9 Apr - DocSeverin has a mental break while on the road, and wanders off. Finding him delays travel for a few hours. A flock of man-eating turkeys finds their way to West Acapulco, and find no prey. The Caravan itself is ambushed by manhunting emus. They are slaughtered easily, though DarkAudit accidentally shoots Shego in the leg. While the caravan stops for the night, another group of travellers meets them - and among them are Amy's lover... and Ashburner's WIFE?!
Pictured: Manhunting emu attack
Pictured: Nice to meet you, apparent wife and lover people.
10 Apr - the going slows dramatically as the tribe leaves the temperate zone and moves into the boreal mountains. One can only assume the tundra not much further ahead will be even slower.
Pictured: Leaving the green behind
11 Apr - Cargo pods full of potatoes rain down on West Acapulco. Nobody knows.
12 Apr - The Tribe meets a friendly tribal caravan on the road. They trade newly born piglets for pemmican and herbal medicine.
14 Apr - Snuffles proposes to Emrys, and she accepts. Maybe they'll pass a town with a chapel?
15 Apr - Cargo pods full of Bear meat fall on West Acapulco. It is eaten by hungry dogs. A trade caravan led by Dei's other Grandmother arrives, and finds the town empty.
1 Jugust - Just as summer begins, the tribe marches into the tundra. Good timing.
5 Jug - Pirate sappers arrive at the abandoned settlement at 2 in the morning. They blow open the south wall with explosives, accidentally wounding one of their own. They fight the one functioning turret outside the jail, and generally wreck up the place with grenades. A fire is started in one of the bedrooms, and spreads through the air vents to the adjacent bedrooms. The pirates break into the workshop and start tearing apart the machinery there, set fire to the store room that has all the chemfuel in it, then take whatever they can carry (especially the megascreen TV) and leave. Funnily enough, the pirates suffer 3 casualties to their own carelessness and that one turret. They also bifurcate the power grid in such a way that the most power-draining elements are cut off, and the batteries actually start to recharge gradually, though the southern part of the settlement is now more or less completely and permanently without power.
7 Jug - The tribe stops at the last village before the polar ice cap, a tribal village named Green Desert. They trade more newborn pigs for more food and medicine. Also wood, in case fires need to be built out on the ice sheet. It's now an estimated 20 days' travel to where the ship is supposed to be. Through judicious planning and trading (and animal grazing, though that will end soon), the tribe still has 55 days of food left.
Pictured: Last chance gas
8 Jug - Null and CeltZ become lovers after a night of clumping together for warmth.
10 Jug - Right at the edge of the ice sheet, 13 pirates stop the caravan and demand payment, and to take some of the tribe as slaves! The tribe refuses, and battle ensues. The pirates seem to be losing, when one of them breaks out a doomsday rocket launcher! He fires right into the tribe's defensive formation, and massive damage ensues - Ashburner and Docseverin are instantly killed. Shego loses a leg. The initial group of pirates is driven off at heavy cost, but a second wave arrives and attacks! They are driven off, but Charon passes out from blood loss. Then a herd of maneating deer attack! This is some fucking bullshit if you ask me. Only a couple fighters are still standing, so everyone bands together and tries to defend themselves. It doesn't work. The tribe is overrun by angry, carnivorous deer. Their animals try to defend them as well, but the men and women bleed out one by one. Eventually, Amy staggers to her feet and, in a blood-starved daze, manages to shoot down the last deer.
The caravan manages to piece itself together and tries to make a camp, but Dei, Ashburner, Dave, Docseverin, Charon, and Null are all dead. Pez, Shego, Chaz, Squidley, and Sara can't walk and have to be carried. Pez dies of blood loss. Kags suffers a mental break and goes Berserk because her husband died.
Pictured: The initial confrontation
Pictured: Doomsday
Pictured: Deerpocalypse now
11 Jug - Camp is set up to tend to the wounded. It's a bad situation. The stress becomes too much and Ravenpoe cracks. The others take him down non-lethally.
12 Jug - Kags goes berserk and has to be taken down. She survives, but hurts Squidley fairly seriously. The caravan stops long enough to fabricate and install a peg leg on shego, since the spare bionic leg apparently got lost in the ambush.
Pictured: Picking up the pieces
13 Jug - Chazwozel and CeltZ, consoling each other, become lovers. Amy gets herself shitfaced on beer taken from the dead pirates.
14 Jug - The tribe gets back underway. But things look bleak. There's only 10 days of food left, and the ship is 20 days away... and winter is 15 days away. In desperation, the tribe turns loose most of the animals, keeping only the muffalo and dromedaries to carry all the food, medicine, wood and essentials (in case they have to stop and make a fire out on the ice sheet where no trees grow). It pains many of the tribe to say goodbye to animals they've bonded with over the last 10 years, but it is feared that the choice is to set them loose now, or eat them later - and at this point, what's a little more pain in all this tragedy? As it stands, without all the animals to feed, the food supply now should last 30 days. Of course, if the tribe doesn't make it to the ship a lot faster than that, the dead of winter will set in, and food won't be the problem.
15 Jug - Cargo containers full of wooden prosthetic feet crash just outside the wall of West Acapulco. That night a huge swarm of manhunting alphabeavers also go to the settlement, but find nobody there to hunt.
Pictured: Clogged?
2 Septober - Ravenpoe, in his grief over the loss of his wife Dei, has another psychotic break. It takes half the day to get him calmed down, during which the caravan is immobilized.
4 Sept - It's a long, slow, cold slog across the ice sheet. Still 12 days to go by most estimates, and Kags is showing signs of breaking again.
5 Sept - Sure enough, this afternoon Kags goes berserk, and the caravan has to stop to deal with it. They don't get underway again until 11am the next day.
6 Sept - As sun sinks lower in the sky each day, it grows colder. It now takes longer to travel, and the ETA is revised upwards to 15 days. There is 19 days of food left.
7 Sept - The weather takes an even more drastic turn for the worse. The dromedaries all get frostbite and can't move. It is decided to set up camp, and butcher the dromedaries for meat.
8 Sept - CeltZ has a mental break, and in her sorrow, wanders out into the early morning twilight. Pirate raiders arrive at West Acapulco. Displeased to find it already empty and picked over, they break things and set fires. When they finish their fit of pique, they leave the place to burn down. Kags has another berserk episode and is taken down, which triggers Squidley to do the same.
Pictured: The winter camp
Pictured: West Acapulco burns
9 Sept - Again, Kags goes berserk and attacks squidley, and must be shot. The stress sets off Amy. The medicine is running out. The medics do the best they can anyway, but Amy's wounds become infected. The situation is grim.
10 Sept - Adding insult to injury, Toxic fallout begins raining on the smouldering ruins of West Acapulco, and more pirates arrive. What they hope to accomplish is anyone's guess. They break more stuff and set more fires. Roof collapses ring out across the settlement as loadbearing wooden walls give way.
Pictured: Wintering at the north pole
12 Sept - An escape pod crashes in West Acapulco. Poor bastard.. the occupant dies naked and cold in the toxic rain. Kags goes berserk again.
13 Sept - Ravenpoe loses it and has to be beaten into submission. Winter is almost here... The tribe could conceivably last the winter... if the firewood holds out. AND IF PEOPLE STOPPED GOING BERSERK
1 Dec - Kags goes berserk.
2 Dec - Some basic comforts like tables and beds are attempted, mostly using steel and silver. The most brittle-minded colonists are prioritized, hoping that it will ease their tantrums. The two couples get double beds, so as to boost their spirits further. The tribe has cooked all the meat from the dromedaries who froze to death, so they set to work making meals out of the rice, eggs and corn. One nice thing about the north pole, you can just put food outside and it will never go bad.
3 Dec - Deciding to grab what little joy there is to be had in this precarious life, CeltZ and Chaz decide to get married. Presuming they survive the winter.
4 Dec - Snuffles and Emrys keep everybody up at night with their lovemaking in the communal shelter. It also sets off a chain reaction... Snuffles and Emrys do it, which prompts Chaz and CeltZ to do it, which prompts the first pair to go at it again... and so on. Well, at least SOMETHING life-affirming is going on, and people can always sleep in if they want. Not like there's anything else to do while they wait for spring.
5 Dec - 4 wandering pirates pick over the corpse of West Acapulco. Kags goes berserk again. Medicine is running out.
6 Dec - It's the deepest part of winter, but all the raw food is cooked, and will fit on the muffalos now with room to spare for medicine and fodder, but prety much everything else will have to be left behind. Might as well start marching. The food should last 30 days now, and it might be as few as 11 days to the ship, if the weather holds. Of course, not even a day after breaking camp, Ravenpoe has another episode.
10 Dec - Ravenpoe holds up the caravan again for another snarling fit. At least on the move, the caravan can give him space and let him work it out on his own without hurting anybody or getting hurt, so it is easier on the medical supplies, and provides a couple days of catharsis for the rager.
14 Dec - A few pirate sappers come into the charred husk of West Acapulco to burn some things for laughs. What little there is left to burn, that is. But it starts to rain, so they just grab a couple hundred plasteel from storage and leave.
15 Dec - The ship's coordinates are around 2 days away now, and morale is starting to recover. There's light at the end of the tunnel, finally!
1 Aprimay, 5511 - A single scyther lands early in the morning in a drop pod to attack West Acapulco. But nobody is there. They're hours from salvation. The blood machine breaks a few walls in digital frustration. A year to the day after leaving West Acapulco behind, the survivors of the Halforums Tribe board the promised starship, welcomed by the crew with open arms. It lifts off, and departs for worlds unknown.
Pictured: The ruins of West Acapulco
