We stayed in Baldwin for a couple of days, getting the town leaders situated and left the Mercenary that was against the previous mayor but couldn’t decent due to the whole head splodey thing. So they were not defenseless, being we freed their previous protector and he returned to exploring the multiverse.

Ted’s Tentacle cow poisoning past but Ryan decided to try his hand at mushroom collecting, and failed.

We decided to continue west towards Ludington, to find it had long since disappeared into history, only spotting a couple of remnants of building stone work.  We continued onto the lake Michigan to see it in it’s no polluted glory from prehistory.  Ted attempted spear fishing, and failed spectacularly much to the amusement of an otter whom laughed at him, after a brief conversation the otter offered to teach Ted how to make a proper spear and fish with it, during this time I successfully bow fished us some lunch.  This was good as Tim worked up an appetite learning that he is in fact fast enough to run on water, and vibrate fast enough to use friction to start fires.  Through experimenting with my electric field I learned I can generate a spot defense field.  Also I started to figure out how to do EM propulsion of small objects Not damaging yet.

The talking otter didn’t have a name so WE named him Otto the otter, after leaving we did a little more hunting and fishing,  Tim bagged an elk, and thanking the spirits for the kill.  Bringing the Elk back we dressed it and cooked a dinner, thought it would be a waste of a lot of meat, so we built an impromptu smoker and smoked some fish and the remaining meat, for trade.  Ironhound presently smells like a jerky store.

Otto returned and transformed into an indigenous person, this took me and Ted by surprise, causing Ted to have a minor existential crisis for a couple minutes, as Otto turned out to be a “Skin Walker” Tim had to explain to him that not all skin walkers were evil creature portrayed in media.   We told Otto about the tribe location in Clare, Otto told that there a couple of other “Skin Walkers” in the area.  Letting us know that while that area was good hunting it was best to ask before just taking.

We stayed there a couple days for the meat to get a real good smoke, and Que’d up training arc.  Ted learned that when he is THINGED he doesn’t need to breathe. 

We then traveled further north to Manistee, finding it in pretty much the same.  After some exploring we found the salt mines, and collected a couple hundred pounds for trade.   We then continued north to Crystal lake, where we found another small settlement, did a little trading of salt and smoked meat for some baskets and vegetables.  Warned not to continue north as there was an active Rift that had a village around it.

Well we had to check it out, found Lake Town, old Traverse city.  Lake Town turned out to be a walled Village with about 100 yards outside the walls cleared, The point had been pulled away by the rift resulting a several small islands between the shore and the rift.  These islands were connected by foot bridges.

We parked Ironhound at the edge of the cleared area visible to the sentries on the walls, The Mayor Emily Clark, with Deputy Mayor/ Head of security (Indigenous) Kale Stormfang came out to meet us.  We discussed trade with the town, Traded information about the areas we have had mapped out and they had mapped out and updated the respective cartographies.

Emily told us they had a copper mine, (3hr walk towards Kalkaska) and offered copper for trade but we needed to take care of a slight problem, Some dissenters led by Janice Shaw, had taken over the mine and were holding it hostage. The Shaw family was disgruntled by the murder of Janice’s daughter (by bear attack) in her bed.  While we were talking about the mine issues Iron Hound sensed another Archie Bot.  We went into the town and tried to figure out who the bot was, just after we entered the bot vanished.  With more talking found out no one had left the town.

We decided to go get Janice’s side of the events. We drove up to the mine and scaring a poor guard. We told him to get over the speaker Janice, which he did leaving a slight wet trail.  Janice met us at the entrance to the mine with the rest of her extended family. We discussed what happened to her daughter, got more information about the town and founding families, which Janice’s family was part of. We also got some history of strange events from her that Emily didn’t share, such as a fishing boat and crew that disappeared, 6 months before her daughters’ murder, 6 months before our arrival.  She also told us about a rumored “Sea Hag” that had been sighted.

 Team redshirt then had a bit of a convo about Archie and his using chaos to learn more about the sentient organic beings.  We determined that Archie might want to up the game, if we return stability to the town.  We convinced Janice to go back to the town, as by claiming there was something that was stirring chaos to see what it would bring, and with her clans return it would lure out the culprit in her daughters murder.  Janice and clan agreed to the town, and give up control of the mine.

After returning to Lake Town we had meeting with Emily, Kale and Janice, stated our theory and we decided we were going to stake out the town, for strangeness, and Emily would be a likely target of escalation.  As Emily’s house was just off the lake, and the Sensed Archie bot we believed disappeared into the lake.  Set watch there,  Ted was outside, within an hour of Sunset Ted saw and Ukt Water Serpent coming out of the lake.  Iron Hound notified us that the Archie signal appeared at the same time.

Iron Hound arrived in bot form, just after scaring the crap out of everyone else involved in the fight.  Seeing the Tail, we discussed if Archie had upped his game in the realm or bio-organic bots, or discussed the possibility, that the Archie bot was one of the fishermen that might have been eaten by the Ukt and the inorganics where just stuck inside the Ukt.

Notes-

• Make salvage run to lansing area
• Steel millsCoast line/ mt pleasant windfarms – generators – magnents copper wireing.
• Breweries
• Power plants – generators/ boilers non- corrosive
• MSU cyclotron – heavy magnets
• Hospitals – MRIs X-rays Imaging equipment.
• Drone view to horizon 500’-27.4mile   1000”-38.74