My second day with the Moss Hollow tribe began at dawn with a comprehensive organizational assessment, which the tribe experienced as "that weird new goblin following us everywhere and staring."
I want to be clear that I was not staring. I was observing. There is a meaningful difference, which I will admit is difficult to convey when you are ninety-five centimeters tall and your eyes are naturally very large.
What I found over the course of that day was both illuminating and deeply concerning. I documented everything in my system notes with the focused energy of a man who had found a catastrophically mismanaged department and was trying very hard not to show how alarmed he was.
[ PLAYER NOTES — Moss Hollow Assessment v1.0 ]
CRITICAL (immediate action required):
1. No food preservation. Everything eaten same day.
Starvation risk in any week hunting goes badly.
2. No watch rotation. "Whoever is awake" watches.
Last three nights: 2hrs coverage on avg.
3. No safe-plant documentation. 2 deaths last year from misidentified mushrooms.
HIGH PRIORITY:
4. Fence covers only north approach (17% perimeter).
5. No skill development program for warriors.
6. No territory map. Nobody knows what's 2km east.
7. Children unsupervised near forest edge.
MEDIUM PRIORITY:
8-14. [See attached notes]
OVERALL: This operation is one bad week from collapse.
Fourteen problems on day one. I had seen companies in worse shape — barely — but those companies had budgets and conference rooms and HR departments. I had a loincloth and seventeen skeptical goblins.
I started where I always start: with the thing that would kill everyone fastest if left unaddressed.
Food storage.
◆ ◆ ◆
"You want to build what?" Krag said.
"A storage structure," I said. "For preserved food. Smoked meat, dried mushrooms, pickled roots — things that last more than a day. So that when hunting is bad for a week, nobody goes hungry."
Krag looked at me with the expression of a man encountering a concept so foreign it required full processing time. He was the de facto head of the warriors, which meant getting his buy-in was essential. He wasn't the decision-maker — that was Grunk — but he was the social proof. If Krag nodded, the other warriors followed.
"We eat what we catch," he said finally. "That is how it is done."
"And when you catch nothing?"
"Then we eat less."
"And when you catch nothing for three days?"
A pause. "Then we eat much less."
"And when you catch nothing for a week?"
The pause was longer this time. I could see him loading an answer, finding it wasn't sufficient, and discarding it. He was not a stupid goblin (or was he). He was a goblin who had never been presented with an alternative to how things had always been done.
"We eat much much much le--"
"That happened two winters ago," said a quiet voice.
Mira. She was standing at the edge of the group, arms wrapped around herself in that habitual posture of someone who expected to be told she hadn't spoken. Her green aura flickered faintly around her fingers, the way it always did when she was paying close attention to something.
"Three young ones died," she said. "And Elder Yab hasn't fully recovered."
Krag's jaw tightened. He didn't argue.
I looked at Mira and made a mental note: she remembers. She pays attention. She's the institutional memory of this tribe in the way that quiet people always are — the ones who absorb everything precisely because nobody expects them to say it back.
"The structure doesn't need to be complex," I said. "A pit in the ground, lined with clay, with a weighted cover. For now, that's enough."
"I don't know how to make clay lining," Krag said.
"I do," Mira said, surprising both of us. "The riverbank clay. If you fire it—"
She stopped. Looked at the ground.
"Mira," I said. "How do you know that?"
A long pause. "I just... do. I've always known things like that. Grunk says it's because my magic is nature-type. Things about earth and plants just... come to me."
I Analyzed her quietly.
[ ANALYZE ]
Name : Mira (Goblin, F)
Level : 3
Class : None (latent: Shaman)
Magic : Nature/Earth — unawakened
Potential: S-rank (unverified)
Note : Magic core present but unsealed.
Requires trigger event to activate.
S-rank potential. In a tribe of seventeen, in a camp with no fence on three sides, doing odd jobs because nobody knew what to do with her.
This is the most underutilized resource I have ever encountered in any organization. And I once inherited a team where our best analyst was filing expense reports because his manager didn't understand what analysts did.
"Mira," I said carefully. "Would you be willing to help with the storage project? Your knowledge of earth and materials would be invaluable."
She looked up. The surprise on her face — that someone had asked, specifically, for what she knew — was complicated and genuine and a little hard to look at.
"...Yes," she said. "I can do that."
◆ ◆ ◆
We built the storage pit that afternoon, Mira and I and two reluctant warriors Krag had assigned to help after I'd spent thirty minutes presenting what I called a "resource security framework" and Krag called "a lot of words about a hole in the ground."
It was, objectively, a hole in the ground. Mira shaped the clay lining with hands that glowed faintly green, the earth moving with a smoothness that had nothing to do with her small fingers and everything to do with the magic she was still half-pretending she didn't have. The two warriors watched her with expressions caught between wariness and fascination.
By evening we had a sealed clay-lined pit with a fitted stone cover. The system rewarded me as the final piece clicked into place.
[ SKILL LEVEL UP ]
Crafting (Basic) acquired.
Your understanding of construction techniques has increased.
Structural quality of built items improved by 15%.
[ EXPERIENCE GAINED ]
Teaching bonus applied. x1.4 multiplier active.
Progress to Level 2: 61%
Teaching bonus. Right. The system rewarded me for passing knowledge on. I filed that away as a structural incentive and moved on.
Grunk appeared at sundown to inspect the pit. He stood over it for a long time, face unreadable, tapping his walking stick against the stone cover.
"Where did you learn this?" he asked.
"Another life," I said.
He looked at me. Something shifted in his expression — not warmth, not yet, but the beginning of recalibration. The adjustment a person makes when they realize the thing they categorized as 'minor' might belong in a different column.
"The herbs go in first," he said finally. "Before they dry out any more." He walked away.
That was, I would learn, the closest thing to a compliment Elder Grunk gave.
I helped carry the herbs.