Burk Reborn

The story of Boneyard settlement has continued with one full lantern year. And what a year it was.

Year six hunt was chosen to be Flower Knight, and hunting part consisted of Candice, Frampt, Jessie and... Burk.

Misadventures during hunt phase apparently were not enough. Acid rains were melting the faces off from survivors, Flesh Monolith was around scaring our miserable humans (not Burk, then), perhaps later causing Candice to get overloaded with grief in leg-breaking lengths.

To show his commitment to the future of the hunt, Burk tore off his waist cloth at forest gates. What a hero.

I have considered Flower Knight to be somewhat of an easy opponent. Well, not "easy" in the sense of just running through while reading a book. In my mind it has been nicely balanced in how it seems to drain all the resources survivors have without actually killing off anyone that easily. In this fight that all changed.

Burk manages to land Clawhead Arrow on the Knight, and Frampt had his trusty spear doing damage quite reliably. Sounds good so far, but he was the only one doing anything at all for the most part of this fight.

Early in the game Jessie had her spine broken, so she didn't have much else to do than use bandages.

Candice, while scoring hits well enough with her bare hands, just could not deal any damage. She would have scored wounds on 4+, and criticals on 7+. She rolled 1 or 2 for wounds, and this continued on and on until the very end of the game. Bad luck on her attacks was ridiculous - eventually she was scoring critical wounds on 3+, and yet did not manage a single wound.

When she started inflicting critical wounds on 2+, she started to get the job done.

A demoralizing prospect for the whole settlement was when Burk died to a major artery cut. He was the self-titled hope and future of settlement - now dead. Settlement lost Twilight Sword and Ancient Lantern as well. But then we did not know it was Burk's plan all along, something that he saw inevitable to happen...

Frampt also had his spine broken. Soon after Burk died, Candice received the Performance Anxiety disorder. It was the consequence Burk's spirit aiding her during the fight, I suppose. And she sure needed it, because after Frampt had his back wrecked, winning the fight relied pretty much (literally) on her hands.

There were some amazing moves on Flower Knights part, fairly epic. Especially when survivors somehow managed to not die to them. First, Flower Knight drags everyone into the Fairy Ring with trap card. Next happens this attack, that gains extra speed from survivors inside the ring, and every survivor who is damaged, gets knockback. First drag in, then punching everyone out again. This might have been some frustration on Knight's part, as it had been trying to drag somebody in multiple times during the fight with this attack that makes Flower Knight move outside of the ring - failing every time.

Frampt dies to bleeding tokens. There's only Jessie with her broken back and deaf Candice with broken arm and broken leg.

Survivors are victorious, but at what cost?

Settlement event was Silk Storm, so at least there was some respite.

There's three Love Juices in the settlement storage, and we had only four survivors alive. One with Performance Anxiety disorder, no less.

Samuel and Mal-Mal start to breed like rabbits - and very first result was a lantern 10 and a lantern 10.

Wow.

A savior with Survival of the Fittest principle.

Savior of Caratosis, the Avatar of Burk had entered the settlement. In the moment of direst of need. A spark of hope. But what kind of hope?

Remaining Love Juices give one extra population per potion, and both require a once-per-lifetime roll to be used. But while it is still no a healthy population, matters are no longer critical.

What to do when things go badly, but are not critical? Fight the Manhunter, of course.

That's where we'll be heading next.

Wish Boneyard some luck.