>>5843210>>5843221The village of your grandfathers has become a small town of its own, a point of order and stability in the roiling ocean of the steppe. You farm the surrounding lands in good times, and take cover with your livestock behind a low earthen rampart in bad.
Whatever comes, the nomads and beastfolk know your people are too useful to slaughter, though the thought of driving you off as slaves occurs often enough, if their threats at the negotiation table are to be believed. A few forges in the town provide them with everything they need but cannot make - cauldrons, armour, toasting forks, spearheads, knife-blades and arrow-points. Where those arrows end up is not your concern.
Your position is immensely precarious. The nomads and other chaotic wilderness-dwellers are impatient, unruly and eminently capable of overpowering you. All that keeps the community alive are the quality of your wares and the quality of your walls.
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Status:
Population: A few hundred men, women and children, all Ustozi humans, pale of skin and dark in hair and eyes.
Structures: A few simple forges, a town of low earthen dwellings and an earthen rampart.
Food: You live on millet, hunted game, a few pigs and a small flock of goats, along with the plentiful beef and horse-meat bought from the nomads. Meagre, especially in winter.
Diplomacy: You trade with the nearby nomads, both humans and beastfolk, though the relationship is far from entirely peaceful.
Military: You have no formal military, only a ragged militia.
Economy: Entirely focused on working iron. Ore is gathered in a nearby swamp and worked in the town, then the goods are sold to the nomads, almost always for food and under threat of violence - a bad deal, and one that keeps you poor.
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It is spring. The frozen streams begin to burst and flow again. Goatherds are busy with new kids. The grass grows anew.
>What will you do?>Build something? (Expand the ramparts, build an outpost at the iron-swamp, better houses, better forges, a temple, a stronghold?)>Elect a leader.>Attempt diplomacy - perhaps a permanent trading agreement with the nearby nomads.>Formalize the militia>Something else? (Write in) 
