[center][b]Ards[/b][/center]

[b]F) Improve Resources / G) Prospect further[/b]

[hider=And you thought I was joking about the bees.]

Arni crept silently through the pine wood with a hunting bow in hand. Beside him were his two brothers, also carrying bows. With the new fishing raft and farms hunting was not so necessary anymore, yet the occasional hare or stag was still welcomed by the village. Besides, the hunting kept the archers' aim true, or so the chieftain reasoned.

After some time with little success, the three hunters came across one of the traps set to capture wolves, the dried meat that was its bait seemingly attracting every fly in miles, or so they thought from the buzzing. Upon nearing it, they were surprised to see no flies. There were some other strange insects, black and yellow, noisily flying around and ignoring the meat. Deciding to rest for a while, the brothers sat. Arni noticed something strange hanging in a nearby tree. Some sort of white husk, near where the black and yellow flies were. Bored, the three hunters backed a fair ways away and took turns shooting their arrows at it. Both of Arni's brothers missed, and then it was his turn. He squinted, nocked his arrow, drew the string back, and released it all in one fluid movement. In one equally fluid movement, the arrow whistled through the air and struck the strange object in the tree. The white husk fell to the ground and burst, a cloud of the black and yellow flies swarming out of it. Before the confused hunters could even react, the bees were upon them stinging like wild.

The three instantly took off running, screaming through the wood like savages. Covered in stings, it felt like an hour that Arni had ran before the last of the bugs gave up chase after him. Every inch of his exposed skin covered in painful red stings, the disgruntled boy realized that he and his two brothers had all ran off in different directions. Not sure where they would have gone, he found himself trudging back the way he had came, jumping at the slightest sound of buzzing now that he was wary of the strange flies.

The three eventually found each other in the same clearing by the wolf trap where they had shot their arrows. The bees having left by now, the trio went to examine the husk that they had shot. Why had it been full of the insects and why had the wretched things been so angered? Upon nearing the husk, they observed some sort of strange fluid seeping out of the husk. Arni poked it, and the sticky fluid stuck to his finger. Holding it to his tongue, it smelled sweet. Carefully he licked a drop off of his finger. The stuff was delicious! The trio brought back the entire husk full of honeycombs to the village to show the others. Upon cracking it open, they saw some sort of larvae inside some of the honey combs, though they seemed different from ordinary maggots. Perhaps they were the babies of the yellow bugs? Maybe they could be raised as livestock to make more of the sweet juice? After some debate the three deemed it a good idea to try putting the honeycombs full of honey into a wooden box and leaving that box outside. With any luck, the trio would stumble upon some of the secrets of beekeeping and manage to create a reliable source of honey, beeswax, and sticky propolis.[/hider]
[hider=New Orders]
No later than a few weeks after the last scouting expedition, Danr was already organizing more. Now that his worries of hostile skraelings were put to rest and his tribe knew about the nearby terrain, it was time to begin looking for ways to exploit this rich new land. When the scouts had spoken of foothills and a great mountain to the southwest, several of the men that had been smiths or miners in the old lands had expressed interest in searching for metals. Now, they would have just the chance to do that. New tools were needed badly and the Ards would not devolve to cave-folk carrying stone utensils. They would need to mine metal and create a proper smithy. But before that could be done, ores were needed, so Danr arranged for a band of miners to trek out to the mountains and bring back what they found in caves and such, but also look for ideal sites to set up a more permanent mine.

Equally pressing was the need for more lumber to expand Njor. The woods nearby were small and would not provide enough to make the chieftain's ambitions come to fruition, and besides, the small forests made good places to hunt and forage. In any case, felling trees and then dragging them a few miles back to the village was back breaking work and required too many hands. The only real solution in Danr's eyes was to set up a logging camp elsewhere, near to a river or the ocean, and tie the logs together. Then, using oars or even sails, the lumberjacks could sail the huge rafts right to the fishing piers by Njor, where they could be broken apart and the individual logs put to use. More lumberjacks and explorers would travel down the coastline in both directions from Njor, looking for an ideal spot to build a logging camp as their chief envisioned.[/hider]

[b]Summary:[/b]
[hider]
-Still awaiting Chenzor's word on how the wolf capture and training is going
-Arni and his brothers discovered bees and their products, and are now trying to begin beekeeping. Wax and propolis added as resources and honey as both a resource and food, though currently the honey and wax must be gathered from wild beehives
-Prospectors and miners went towards the nearby mountain in search of metal ores. They plan on bringing back as much as they can carry, but are also looking for a good spot for a more permanent mine.
-More scouts (and with them some lumberjacks) were sent out to follow the coastline to the south and the one to the north and west. The scouts are looking for larger forests near the coast or rivers, so that the logs can be tied into rafts and floated back to Njor.
[/hider]