On the Friday of the predetermined weekend, I drove Joe Galetti, Buff and myself to the predetermined starting point. We reached it around midnight. The nigth was cool, calm and clear, just as it was supposed to be. We somehow convinced Buff (cute girl from Pocomoke City with an unfortunate nickname, also one of Doc Grogan’s research students) to come along with us. Joe’s girlfriend opted out, stating that she was sure something bad would happen.
The plan was to park my car in front of one of these state forest entrances, just off of a dirt road, and then walk west/south-west until we hit this one creek (labeled as a “river” on the map), where we would rest for a little while and consume our comestables before crossing back. Below is that same map with better markings. The black shows the roads, the east road being the one dirt road, the red being where I parked the car, the blue being the creek and the yellow being the general direction of intended travel. The dotted line also shows a road, Heather Rd., marked on a state map, but of which we couldn’t find any sign during a couple laps in my car in the daytime a few days before.
As we three stepped out of my car, we suited up with all the equipment. Here’s a rundown:
Dick:
- sack, a pillowcase looped and tied around the belt
- 3 bundles of 3 pieces of homemade hardtack, each bundle wrapped up in paper
- hand axe, for weapon variety, hung on the belt
- cloak and dagger
- 3 candles
- 2 torches, the head of each wrapped in a grocery bag
- boots Note: While I layered myself in sweatpants and jeans, I kept my torso layers to 2 t-shirts.
Joe:
- pillowcase sack
- machette, with scabbard
- cloak and dagger, the cloak being one of Bear and Loki’s
- matches
- map contained in a metal scroll case, makeshifted from a cigar case
- bottle of mead, 750 ml, made in Maryland
- gloves
Buff:
- cloak and knife
- staff
- boots
- gloves
I threw this together to represent the party:
All suited up, we noted the moon on our backs, crossed the street and entered the woods.
When I read Buff at first I thought you meant the Buff from Wi-Hi.
And hard tack? Like the stuff they ate in WWI? How on Earth did you make it? And was it good or was it disgusting?
Nice pic too. Though I hope you all were in better health than those characters. 8/36 doesn’t look to good. You’d better be at 36/36 before wandering around woods at nights.
Do any actual pictures of your party exist?
Man, this is great.
m-w.com defines “hardtack” as “a hard saltless cracker or biscuit. Synonymous with “sea biscuit”. I have a home-made (actually from an old Betty Crocker cook book) biscuit recipee that seems about right (especially if made with whole-wheat flour), except for the fact that it contains salt.
Jerky (especially home made) would be another good provision.
I wonder if you can buy or make wineskins in this day and age.
Oops, I added a link that I meant to add. I’ll talk more about it in the finale.
Yeah, I told Buff about Buff.
Values you’re seeing are weight carried/max carry in stones. They’re not even accurate to that game because I had to photoshop that sword onto the Iolo paper doll from the U7: Part 2. Also, the chick is actually wielding a shovel, which I altered, because there are no staves in the game. I think the fact that she’s wearing leather pants as opposed to just pants like the other two and that I photohopped a bag out and that knife in give her that extra weight as well. I was going to put up the charts that show their stats (HP, Str, Dex, Combat Skill) but decided that would be too nerdy.
We took no pictures. Seriously, we went on this thing trying to keep away from any technology that we could, not that anyone would of had cell phone service out there anyway.