They start off, and to shut “The Blood Son” up they accept him as their leader.
First off he chooses brickmaker as career path for its high score and decent money and trail guide otherwise idiot trail guide always picks dumb paths. Skills in blaksmithing, animals, botany, and cooking, so we should be good with food. It is our lack of medicine and river skills I am worried about.
We leave in April 1st, and the snow is still out. 12 oxen and Bat Cow will be our animals, and I am sure to buy a fishing pole and lots of salt. Later I pick up a chain from a blacksmith. Knowing I am very annoying I buy quite a few cheap fun stuff like checkers, candles, and cheap instruments. That should keep morale up. We start (and stay all game) on 10 hour days, and two meals a day.
We make quick time with no sight seeing to get over those rivers before the freeze is gone, and success. The first problem is my poor 13 cows are tired. I make the pampered humans get out and help.
We barely made it over the safe Vermillion River, so our lack of skills there might be a problem.
Played cards with Mr. Tillman today while nooning near St. Joseph Road Junction. I suspect he cheats.
One month in, and we are in Nebraska. Only Jason and Tim have shown any issues at all so far.
After that Carrie keeps getting us through every river except for one small one, where we only lose a little replaceable food. The only real issue is Tim keeps feeling “poor.” Then rub some dirt on those bruises. We are over a thousand miles away.
That is then the way for a while. We keep finding dangerous rivers, and Carrie keeps getting us over them, Jason fixes every wagon issue, we restock when needed by buying a balanced diet and Tim feels “bad.” Morale is always great, so I guess my investments there paid off like my chain investment, which helps us get up every hill. We are apparently great at finding wild raspberries.
We get through the thick hills without any incidents other than Tim misreading our map.
On June 10th, one of our oxen steps in a hole. 2 days of rest for this poor animal.
Right before the dry part of the trail everybody feels great. Except for Tim of course. Wuss.
We get bad water before the desert, so no way are we taking that shortcut. We have plenty of food, so we take the longcut.
We rest at the green river nearly halfway through. Nobody is really doing well, but on the bright side only Tim is doing bad. Unfortunatly the rest makes it even worse. For the second time Carrie tips us over, but again it is very small losses. Tim even somehow lived despite his awful health.
4 days after reaching the 1000 mile marker Tim is dying. We rush to Fort Bridger, but he dies a few miles from it. We give him a proper burial and continue on. He died from… I have no idea what killed him.
We get to fort and buy veggies to prevent scurvy in the future. After a rest for the second half all of us but Jason are in perfect health.
Considering Tim just died everybody is very happy. Hmm. Did Dr. Brown have an ulterior motive? I ask a guy who says “Are you sure it was an accident?”
We celebrate the fourth of July and then we run into a big thunderstorm. I am not afraid of thunder! We continue!
After that Dick catches a cold (in the middle of July) and starts to die, and we run out of water. Come on Dick, you are not dying on me.
With Dick dying I make the choice to rush to water as fast as we can. After resting him he is still hurt, and The Thomas River is even worse. Bracing for the worst we caulk it, and Carrie somehow got us over no problem.
We rest at Soda Springs, and Dick feels better. Then one day later he is near death, and a Davey Crocket wannabe suggests leaving him, as he has no shot. With Dick and now Stephanie both on the verge of dying I choose to ditch rest and rush for Fort Hall as fast as we can, and neither of them die. With the water supply there, all our health is restored.
After that we get to the snake river, and we start fishing, since this place is full of giant wish weighing more than Carrie [I kid you not, the 50lb+ fish are smaller than the 2lb ones]. Jason gets cholera so with our now hundreds of pounds of salted fish we switch to 3 meals a day the rest of the trail. We get to some nice places on the river to rest up and save Jason.
Unfortunately our favorite river became a new obstacle when we had to cross it amidst terrible conditions. I am now regretting not getting any river skills… Or Carrie just caulks us over it again.
So September just started, and we are in Idaho. Plenty of food, great health, great timing. This has been a great trip so far. The only problem is our wagon wheel breaks, but Jason and Dick repair it good as new. [Does the game hate Time. Everything got so much better as soon as he died].
After that is a month of travelling where the only issue was a single ox hurting its foot, and we doctored him up perfectly too. I picked some really hardy oxen. Even Bat Cow is still alive.
On October 2nd we were just a few miles and one hill left. Surely everything will go… the wagon tips over. Okay nothing bad… It tips over again and crushes Carrie to death. Bad way for our MVP to go.
Literally 2 days after she dies we are there and just pay some guy to finish Carrie’s job of piloting the wagon.
So the Robins overall dominated the trail. Great morale the whole time, great with food, hard to kill, made it through almost every river nearly perfectly, and they beat the default high score. It really helped that the food supply stayed so good (something I invested almost all skills into), since it let us rest as much as we wanted and beat winter. And if it was not for Carrie just dying at the end it would have been over 20,000 points.
If you have any suggested themes, give them, and I will try to do them.