Many things can be hiding in the darkness beyond the Lantern Hoard. Things great and terrifying. Things beyond any ken and comprehension.

Luckily our survivors managed to safely reach their home, the spoils of the last hunt in tow. With one more hunt before the Butcher would stalk us in our own home for the first time, we he hurriedly started working.
We gained the 4 endeavors he had earned and drew a Settlement Event: The Plant and the Stone. It was a bit early for that one, but 1 survival and insanity would of course still be helpful, so I won’t ever complain drawing it.

Onwards to the Develop step! We recorded the Omen and checked for what we could build. At this point, we were also 1 child away from gaining another Principle.

With the resources we got we were able to make a Frogdog Mask and Frogdog Suit as well as the Spiked Buckler – slow and steady progress.

It was also time to innovate, so I drew 2 cards and.. we got a choice between Inner Lantern and Face Painting. Again, no Symposium to make this process easier. Even worse, flashbacks of a SotF campaign without Face Painting began haunting me. Having access to Surge would also be nice but, and I still don’t know if this was the right call, but I pressured myself into picking Face Painting after a solid 10 minutes of debate back and forth. This was a surprisingly difficult choice.
But we would make use of our newest innovation immediately at least, as I activated the Founder’s Eye ability once (which is supposedly the upcoming errata, not being able to stack the +1 bonus anymore) as we used the Love Juice on Beni and Lana. They rolled a 5 and a 9, so a 6 and 10 respectively, and another child – Hermes – was born.
As we hit 15 population we Accept the Darkness. Sadly, we only got +10 insanity on 4 people though (Lucille, Lana, Beni and Hawk).

With 2 more endeavors left, I augured once with Lana and we got another intimacy trigger. Sure.
Double 6’s – Honey is born. We have loads of people to work with at this point and it is nice not to have to worry about Armored Strangers in a few years as well.
We finished our Settlement Phase by collecting some more Stone Noses.

Oh and – I almost forgot again – I drew that First Seed Pattern: Piercing Claws from the Black Knight. It’s going to be a bit until those might become relevant.

For the time being, I assembled the Hunting Party for the year. That Frogdog needed hunting.
Lana (frogdog bits, spiked buckler)
Hermes (bone dagger)
Hawk (rawhide bits, bone club)
Calys (rawhide set, bone blade)

The Hooded Knight would soon be upon us as well, and I picked Calys for this hunt in an attempt at curating a survivor for the event. Usually she is somewhat of a legacy character of mine, typically founding the Axtolotl-clan for Axe Mastery, but as they seemed to be struggling – without the family weapon available and such – I decided to mix things up.

We instantly stumbled upon a Flesh Monolith (Basic HE83) and Hermes felt the need to investigate. Thankfully all hunters quickly realized the abomination they were faced with and upon suffering brain damage they fled from the grizzly sight.
As we approached the Frogdog we found us suddenly surrounded by stone faces with Belching Mouths. Lana lingered a little and to my discontent I found out the frogdog mask would not help with this sort of gas and she lost all her insanity in the miasma gaining the Honorable disorder. Curious.
The last leg of our journey then saw us finding the Portcullis (Basic HE99) but with no key in hand we could do little but move around it and so stumble upon Clean Water (Basic HE23). All hunters gained 1 survival and a courage for drinking from unknown spring as we were already upon the beast.

As the stink of the Monster Grease increased the closer we got to the Frogdog, the meaty monster revealed itself with a mighty leap, it drew Snatch and Squash and started the fight by jumping over Calys, snatching up Hermes.

The first round of Survivor attacks saw Calys missing both her attacks, Hawk and Lana dashing onto nearby Mammoth Leaves and jumping in, though the spiked buckler proved too unreliable to hit. Hawk however wounded twice, spread stink to 3 of them and loved it enough to want more – gained Eproctophilia (D). I did not feel the need to spend survival to stand up Hermes just yet.

8 (7) cards remaining, the Frogdog drew Confusion. All adjacent threats took brain damage and it knocked down Lana as well. Great. It then leapt to another leaf and took Calys with it.

Hawk dashed onto the leaf in front of him and jumped in again. With that, all his survival was already gone. He swung.. and drew the trap. Nice! The dog missed most though, merely grazing Hawk’s leg.
I picked up Calys with Hermes and she wounded twice from the Heinous Origin, discarding the fart.

6 (5) cards remaining, the Frogdog retaliated with a Dripping Backhand towards Calys. It missed, loading up another fart before jumping away with Hawk.

Encouraged, Hawk stood up and swung again, dealing another wound before Calys and Hermes follow suit. Calys wounded once from the Heinous Origin and Hermes even critically hit the monster’s fingernail, knocking it down and discarding the mood! With no more reflex on another hit, confidence was high and Hermes wounded again!

2 cards remaining, the Frogdog got up and tried to hit another Dripping Backhand, but Calys dodged the single hit to the head.

With no more jumps to worry about for the moment, Lana moved in and the spiked buckler actually hit.. and even wounded thanks to barbed 2 (+2 STR to the attack on a perfect hit)! This however spread more of the stank and Lana also liked it.. hrm.
Would Hawk be able to finish this now? Only 1 hit, so no. But he wounded. Reliable as always. Calys and Hermes both missed afterwards.

Just one more wound to go, the Frogdog mobilized whatever reserves it had left and lashed out against Lana. It scored 2 hits even, but head and waist would not become an issue any time soon.

One more attack from Hawk and the monster falls. Frogdog down!

This time both Lana (Backstabber FA) and Hawk (+1ACC) aged up and we even got a good start to the Shield Specialization.

The resource draw also looked promising. Not quite knowing what I was missing, I though I might have gotten exactly what I needed for the missing 2 pieces of the set.
Well, know. Spoiler here: I did not.
We also only got 1 bone. It seems to be feast or famine with the resource types in this settlement. Looking at the 2 love juice as well..

Thank you very much for your time and don’t go crazy on Frogdog-stink,
Amathul