Scene #7803: Baba Yetu

Owner	Pose
Kale Hearthward	THE SHRINE OF ADVERSITY (private booth 3A) Kale's managed to get the shrine rental and program license fees expensed as a 'training exercise'. Which, this sort of is, and he has a ready justification for it and he did fill out the paperwork, but... ... It's still entirely based on a video game. "Civilization," says Kale, who's making last adjustments to the program's settings on a holographic tablet-like display. "Kind of ironic, given that we were just meeting with Hiromi yesterday..." The room is in its default 'game mode' state - floors and walls in a test pattern similar to what someone would find if they loaded up most modern game engines (a grid of tiles labeled with XYZ coordinates in base-16). On entering, there's a vague mental sense that people can reach out and 'grasp' a tablet like the one Kale's holding, for easy access to menus and interfaces. "So - the goal is to build a civilization and - well, there's a scoring system and end game goals like building a space colony, but this is a casual match and we might not get that far," he says. "And I'd want to save competitive matches - er, training exercises - for when people are more familiar with how the simulation works." "Okay, to start - everyone needs to pick out two traits, and a name for their civilization - you can change it later." The tablets, if materialized by 'grasping' them in some ambiguous way, display the following options: PICK TWO: AGRICULTURAL COMMERCIAL EXPANSIONIST INDUSTRIOUS MILITARISTIC RELIGIOUS SCIENTIFIC SEAFARING NAME YOUR CIVILIZATION: _____
Staren	Somehow Staren heard about this? She is dressed casually in a black turtleneck, dull-red skirt, and a long white coat sort of cut like the battle labcoat but not actually it. After the explanation she reaches out expectantly and a tablet zips into her hands. SCIENTIFIC is immediately selected, and after some consideration, she eventually settles on INDUSTRIOUS for a second trait. And then she stares at the NAME YOUR CIVILIZATION screen for awhile. ... ... ... "Oh wait, we can change it later?" STAREN'S CIVILIZATION She stops to ask on the radio about if this is co-op or not before hitting CONFIRM. "Oh... you took Industrious too, huh? Hmm..." It needs to be able to be strong on its own. Independent, able to fight back if he double-crosses me. NO! ...If I lose, it's just a damn game, and then he's the one who doublecrossed someone FOR A GAME WIN. ...Right. Staren changes INDUSTRIOUS to AGRICULTURAL and changes the civilization name to LAZLO. "Let's go." She presses CONFIRM.
Kale Hearthward	There are now two views available. People in the sim can switch between them by closing their eyes and expecting to see a certain view once they open them. A lot of the sim seems to run on this sort of control by intention - setting expectations, setting intentions, 'grasping' things - though there's still the tablet control for those who don't want to play with <s>tilt controls</s> mental-intention-controls. One view is the one the players were just in, the square-ish game room, although the default walls have been replaced with a themely 'ancient palace interior' view with flickering torches, and stone tables bearing interactive maps and charts. The other view is on the ground. Staren and Kale are, seperately, in the middle of the wilderness. They're not alone - there's a pair of people with them, ones that look like how they'd expect them to look. (Aesthetics are manually customizable via the tablet if needed.) One is bearing several devices that clearly mark them as some sort of settler - tents, bags, rations, and other sorts of basic necessities that you'd expect. The other is wearing primitive armor and has a crude melee weapon - a warrior. The settler looks at each player, and wordlessly conveys the expression that they should find a spot to start a first city. What do the players look for? And - along with their civilization names, what sort of naming scheme for their cities?
Staren	Staren looks around as the view switches. "Oh, that's a nice effect... Good job, programmers!" She looks around into the Fog of War. She points at the warrior, a battle-scarred anthropomorphic wolf-person: "You! Scout. We need to find a place to start fast." She turns to the settler, a human. They're both vaguely ancient-greek/roman looking in clothing style at this stage, the warrior has a stone spear. "You! We want to start near a body of water if at all possible, at least a river." For this turn and the next, she has the warrior move first, then the settler, scouting different areas. If she finds a large body of water, she settles on the coast immediately. If she doesn't find a large body of water by the end of turn 2, she'll place LAZLO CITY based on secondary criteria.
Kale Hearthward	Kale founds the Eastwind Empire - and his first city is, after some consulting an online dictionary, the Capital City of Susurration. His units are also animal people - wearing leaves, and with swords. He founds his city on a river next to some mountains. Back in the game room view, Kale looks over at the exit door. "I haven't eaten yet - you feel like splitting a pizza?" In the sim view, cities are founded - the animations are tailored so that it's not jarring or looks unnatural, but 'one settler' somehow becomes 'a 1:1 village with a few dozen people in it'. "Actually belay that pizza - Staren, do you have your city set up yet? Go wander inside, I found something in mind." It's not hard to find what Kale's talking about - food. Basic primitive food, likely with only a few ingredients and fewer spices (especially not any sort of domesticated ones) but there's some sort of cultural food available for the players to sample in their villages. Along with that, there's production facilities (well, 'facilities' is abstract) and it's time to decide on what to make and do for the opening phases of the game - what to emphasize, and how to go about it.
Staren	Staren blinks at the way the views switch when Kale asks that. "Ah... sure! As long as it's human-edible I'm fine." She goes back to the ...city? "Woah, THAT'S cool!" She finds some fish onna stick. "'Get fish sssalty, apply burnsss. Floran give five ssstar.'" she quotes to herself. Around her, the 'villagers' are about half human, with a majority of the rest humanOID, but the place is a mix of all kinds of species, like Afterus but even moreso. "So, what'd you get for food?" Alright. Play to strengths... science will mean so much more later, but even small gains might make a big difference now... still. Food is an advantage she can push now. Establish farms. There's no one to TRADE with, yet, so the goal is just to have enough so that none want for food and stores are plentiful for winters. Encourage growth.