Lumbering & Mining

LUMBERING

Wood is the spine of every camp — from the first crude spear to the walls that keep the night out. Equip a Hatchet or, better, an Axe (a Hammer-Axe, Bardiche or Battle Axe will also bite), aim at a standing tree and strike. A bar above it shows how much it has left to give before it topples.

Now and then a blow knocks loose a Wood Scrap or two, but the true haul comes when the tree falls: Wood from every trunk, heavy Wood Logs from the greater ones, prized for the sturdiest builds, and fruit shaken from the sweetfruit trees. Dead, fallen timber — Deadwood Piles, picked over by hand — gives Vegetal Fibers, scraps and sticks instead, with the odd fat Larva for the desperate.

Bare fists knock the odd Wood Scraps loose from a tree or Dead Wood, and pay for them in Work Injuries. A felled tree regrows in time, so a wise camp never strips its own ground bare.

MINING

Stone and iron are torn from the bones of the land. A Pickaxe is the miner's truest tool — it bites deepest, breaking a node in a handful of blows — though Hammers, Sledgehammers, the Anvil Hammer and the hammer-headed Hammer-Axe or Warhammer will serve, slowly. No axe, blade or Shovel will touch rock at all. Whatever you swing, a node gives up the same haul when it breaks — half again as much for a Metallurgist. Bare hands earn only bruised knuckles and a Work Injury.

Strike a node until it breaks:

• Stone outcrops give plentiful Stone, the occasional Large Stone and now and then a Sharp Stone.
• Veins of Iron yield Iron Ore; rarer seams give Gold Nuggets.
• Yellow Sulphur rock and grey Clay banks round out the haul.

Loose Stone Piles need no tool at all: pick them over by hand for Stone and the Sharp Stones that make your first blades.