"I told you you'd be coming along the next time we went out. This is the next time."
"Dammit all, I just went out last week! I don't wanna hang with ye anyway, ye smell of sweat from head te toe! Is worse than the odour ye get when ye've pissed yer breaches! Rhino plop all 'round!"
"You should've thought of that before you flashed the head Weekendist. He's traumatized now, poor man. Consider this a punishment."
"Who died 'n made you boss?"
"I died. Everyone else made me boss. You included."
"Well, fuck me, then."
Yep. That about sums it up.
Libby managed to convince me to keep the Dauphine rolling until we came across a settlement, and, as luck would have it, that very thing happened this morning. We're now parked roughly three kilometers away from the town of Resupply, a rural community that's maybe fifty homes strong. Even more luckily, it's not one of the Imperium's many walled communities - this place is open, sprawling, and accepting of anybody with money in their wallets.
Libby still isn't quite sure what she needs to get the mechanism up and running again. She says that its 'inconvenience circuit' is the problem, and it requires some kind of mystery material - which she apparently had on hand when she made the thing, so where is it now? - to fix. Libby's uncertain where she might find said material, though she figures a trading post like Resupply will have what she needs.
(My wife's unusually cavalier about all this. I kinda wonder if she's just sick of fixing the Dauphine. Barely been gone for two months and the thing is already trashed. Maybe this is all an excuse so she can have some downtime? Distinctly possible. She hasn't looked so well-rested in months.)
Everyone else in the Dauphine is taking a break after several days of running the Hamster Wheel, so Libby, Fynn, and myself all set out into town to look for materials. Grylock's on the hook for not helping out earlier, so, as I hinted at before, he's along for the ride as well. Very happy about it, too, lemme tell ya. I swear he's getting crankier every day.
Resupply is my first opportunity to look at life in the Imperium, and I gotta say, it's really not that different from the Indy Plains thus far. People get up in the morning, they make their breakfasts, they tend to their fields, they barter and laugh and cry and yadda yadda. Life in Resupply is like life elsewhere, the only significant difference being the presence of the Imperium's blue banners. Every now and then you'll see one waving away atop a building to remind you whose soil you've infiltrated.
(No guards to accompany those banners, luckily. From the sounds of it they move through Resupply once every two weeks. The Imperium's army sure likes to stay on the move.)
My family and I spent the day hunting through the marketplace, checking out the stores and making inquiries as to precious metals which might fix thingamajiggers. Grylock, meanwhile, has been quietly canvassing the town from the shadows. I'm hoping he'll dig up something of use that the locals might not be willing to share with outsiders. You never know.
I'm off. A bit early for writing a diary piece, but my evenings are dominated by Fynn. Crazy kid likes to stay up late, and its mine and Libby's duty to tire him out so he goes to bed on time. He's almost the size of a teen and has the energy levels of an athlete, so... ah... that's more difficult to do than you'd think. (Try changing his diaper and you'll see what I mean. It's already kinda weird that I have to clean the poop of somebody who's almost as tall as me.)
Sincerely,
Dragomir the Wanderer
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