User blog:NoBanana/The Castle

Preparation
I joined the server, with a huge amount of time on my hands. I was stationed at central mainland, a large castle sitting proud at the oil spill. They were clearly very powerful and strong, as they seemed to have roughly 6 members and had omitted the use of tribe chat, so they didn't have anything to fear. I began to collect trees to make a couple buildings, they seemed like a good place to join as an assassin, but I was soon greeted by a player who was headed from the area and was going towards the cows, but had decided to change route to talk to me. They had bento armour and a mithril sword, which they kept drawn to look intimidating. Their intentions seemed unclear, although I assumed they had just decided to go show off. NoBanana: Hello there! Roboking23: get out my way NoBanana: I'm not in your way. Feel free to walk past me whenever you feel like it. Roboking23 slashes at me with his sword, although aims for the torso and not the head, leaving me with about 1/3 of my health Roboking23: i said go away NoBanana: Why do you want me to leave? My question was left unanswered however, as his sword soon fell again and my body shattered into many bricks. I respawned at paradise, but with a new intention in mind. Kill the tribe.

The free trip to paradise island gave me quick access to wheat, and I quickly made a forge at rockma and stormed through to steel. I had made a golden jug, flint and steel, three crossbows (currently with a bolt each) and a steel sword (for smithing training). At that very moment, I found one of the tribe members, clad in mithril. He was killing rockma for their hide, and from what the chat was saying, he was also going to get bento too, so they could make more mithril armour. I obviously wasn't having any of that. He suspected nothing, so when I fired all three crossbows at him, two hit their mark without an issue, the last being locked in a state of reloading. I knew I had little time, so I rushed in with my sword, putting him at almost no health. With his mithril on the line, he ran, but he didn't get far before my crossbow finished reloading and I got a third bolt in him. He fell to the floor, and ran back to the tribe. The war had started now. It was all a matter of time before we got a victor.

I had obviously not got enough bolts to ward off a battalion, so I headed to spire before they launched an attack on my last known coordinates so I could make more bolts. I also stopped at flax island to collect some flax, and when I got there and finished setting up the forge so that it blocked the entrance, I could already see the leaked chat of the tribe indicating they were in a similar position to me, we both wanted each other dead, not for revenge or safety, but for the sake of using the stuff we had obtained. I made 20 bolts, and divided them between my crossbows, then headed to lynx island for some underwater fur, the oil spill for oil, and bento island to collect bento hides. I made the quiver, and sailed to mainland. At this point I could see a war sloop headed to rockma island, and I hid in the forest nearest spring so they didn't spot me, and when they docked, I foraged the entire forest and ran to deathwater cave, making myself a lantern and some ladders for easy navigation. As the Mainland tribe started their complete eradication of everyone on rockma, I entered the cave, and emptied it of its contents, crafting the woven vest inside. I applied both sets of armour, readied my stats, and set my hotbar. This was it.

The Attack
I ran towards the castle, the residents were all getting off the war sloop, acting all disappointed and sad. I placed the ladder from a distance, nobody noticing the small structure from the inside of the stone walls, and once I got there, I climbed up and began to shoot. The quiver meant I was offloading a bolt every two seconds, although in reality it was much quicker because I shot them at irregular intervals, therefore killing people in quicker succession. First I shot down the ones in bento armour, taking one or two shots each, they were the easiest targets, leaving the two with reinforced mithril armour, the blacksmith and leader (from what I could tell from chat at least). They were both rather close at this point, and I backed off the wall, letting my weapons reload while they took a detour around the wall to the main entrance.

The blacksmith had a mithril javelin, and it took me by surprise, landing a perfect headshot, and focusing my attacks on him, firing three bolts, two headshots and a miss. I ran at him with my sword, and a well timed jump to dodge his blow made me the victor of that battle. By this point I was dangerously close to the leader, and she swung her spear desperately at me, just out of range, but I knew that wouldn't last. I changed direction, at which point my crossbows came back, and I fired yet another volley of bolts. They saw it coming however, and I only got a headshot and a hit on the torso that time round. They thrusted their spear at me, and almost killed me, so I drew my steel sword and hit them on the head. We were both on one hit, and they had the next weapon. A purple sword materialised into their hand, and it would have been the end of me, if it were not for the sudden change in direction I made at just the right point to avoid their attack, and hit them in the torso to end the match. I stood next to my newly abandoned castle with almost no health left, and many many bolts less rich. But they were the true losers of this game. Three of them left immediately, one started accusing me of hacking, and the two remaining (blacksmith and leader) had a deep conversation before the leader had to accept that their partner no longer felt safe and was going to go into a hiding place, most likely atop desert mountain until the ordeal was over.

The Aftermath
I stood atop the conquered castle, looking around for anything I could steal. All I could find in the end was a granary full of beef, which I took for future events. I was about to leave when I noticed the leader standing behind me, unarmed and unarmoured. BlueSky: So Banana. You won. We're defeated. I take a handful of steps back and draw my crossbow. NoBanana: I know your type. I'm not going to let anyone stab me in the back while I'm not looking. BlueSky: I cant kill you. Nobody can. You're completely unstoppable, and I've accepted that. I'm here for one reason. BlueSky: Why did you attack us? Why did you destroy what took so long to build? This triggered something deep inside my conscience, a feeling suppressed during battles and raids. My usual response to this is to answer truthfully, I always had a valid answer, but I suddenly realised I didn't. Nobody had directly disobeyed me, nobody had taken my stuff, in fact the only possible reason would be that someone had killed me during their trip to murder some cows; and on reflection, even that was me being somewhat stubborn. What I had done was wrong. And that just killed me inside. NoBanana: You're right. I'm sorry. I know that wont put anything back, but I'm sorry for what I did. There was a long pause, until Blue replied: BlueSky: I did wrong too. I raided tribes, ordered the killing of people. You too. This war would never have started if I hadn't told Robo to clear mainland of players. I'm not sure what I was thinking by then. BlueSky: Maybe with you as a friend we could re-build. Logo [The Blacksmith] may come back now, although the rest of the tribe certainly isn't going to rejoin. NoBanana: I'll help. I created this mess, I'm going to clean it up. BlueSky: Thanks.

And we kept our word. Logo returned, and after a bit of hesitation, was finally convinced I was friendly, and the village slowly came back to life. The buildings had all been transferred through both Logo and Blue, preventing them from being destroyed when the builder left, and although it was tough, food was sorted out, although I was warned not to eat the beef I had taken as it was poisoned. Both myself and Blue were both ridden with guilt, myself because I had attacked almost unprovoked, Blue because they had suddenly been reminded of what death actually meant.

Rebuilding
The entire tribe vowed to never attack without full confidence it would do the server as a whole good, and we set about collecting enough mithril to get the tools back. With a guard clearly capable of fending off any raider, they decided it best to split up, Logo collected the desert mithril while Blue got the Spire mithril, I stayed at home at guarded the base (funnily enough, nobody came anywhere near). Once they got back, the collective mithril obtained from all three veins was enough to create mithril armour and weaponry for everyone, I declined armour (deciding the woven vest more important) and so my mithril was put towards triple mithril pickaxes, and a hatchet for tree removal and close range combat. After a quick bit of storing and sorting, I improved my hotbar, and decided it time for recruitment. I still had plenty of steel, and Logo never had any shortage of bento leather owing to the mass murder they had done earlier. After giving a load of my steel to logo for tools (we decided it smartest not to give out mithril weaponry and gear in case someone went slightly insane), I did a bit of my practiced tribal growth tactics and we quickly found ourselves with a multitude of players.

The first to arrive was xXKingWaspXx (who we all abbreviated to Wasp), and although he hadn't been on the server for a while, he was more than happy to take the role of farmer and save us from the torment of eating beef, which gives you bad karma for abusing the bad hunger balancing. We armed him with a mithril sickle from some of the spare mithril, as he claimed to have been playing 303 for a long time, almost a year (and they way he acted implied he was being truthful in this), so we deemed him unlikely to die and lose it, the rest of his tools being a basic steel set (sword, pickaxe, axe and bento armour). He took this all gladly and got to work, doing a good job until he left, the food table (and eventually storage room too) was always kept well stocked.

The second guy to arrive hadn't quite grasped the concept of not using a million numbers after your name, so I cant remember his exact username, although we all shortened his name to "Boom". He, after a bit of wandering around, settled as the miner, and often went out on big adventures to collect exotic ores. We didn't see him much, but when he came back it was always a treat (especially for Logo, who now had a load of new ores to craft with). Over time, he constructed his own set of mithril stuff, and could probably have survived on his own should he have wanted to, but he decided not to as by that point we were great friends.

Lastly we had a shipbuilder who we called "Ice". He joined a while after everyone else, and we were about to turn him down until suddenly the boats disappeared because the ten minutes were up on the old shipbuilder's temporary save. He quickly found a new job (we liked our boats), and eventually doubled up as an architect after he finished creating a war sloop, by which point we would never need another boat again.

The Bento Tribe
While I was out mining to collect some more iron and gold from the nearby cave (more for satisfaction than anything else), I noticed a disturbance in chat, mainly revolving around Boom, as a miner of a tribe that had settled on bento, consisting of four players, had decided to go to the same mithril location as boom, resulting in a quick scuffle and boom finding themself with a translucent blue hamster ball around them and standing atop canyon. Boom was clearly very displeased by this, but myself, Blue, and Logo all decided to wait for a while and see what they did next. None of us wanted another attack.

This was a mistake however, as soon we found all four players of the bento tribe charging at us, clad in mithril, the leader wielding a bluesteel sword. They stopped about fifty studs away from the castle and stated: Bento Leader: This castle is now property of the Shadow Clan! Hand it over or we will kill you all! I climb to the top of the castle wall and make the executive decision of trying to stall. NoBanana: That's a pretty tough question actually. Do you guys mind waiting there for a bit while we make our minds up? Bento Leader: Make your mind up now or we kill you. NoBanana: Ok, let's put it another way. The obviously preferable result for you is that we surrender and hand over the castle, correct? Bento Leader: We don't mind. NoBanana: I can see through that lie. Anyway, if you give us a couple minutes if your time, you could save half an hour fighting us over the castle because we decided the better option to surrender. It's win-win, no? Bento Leader: Fine. You have two minutes. Go.

Having bought some time for the tribe, I called a meeting and we discussed it. The three members of the tribe that had not gone through the original ordeal all said we should just go and own their faces, and Blue and Logo both were unsure, give up the castle or start a war. The others had little power in the decision, and so I had to choose. I was fully aware as well as the rest of the tribe that we would win the battle. However, I was also agreeing on that a war would be bad for everyone involved. The Bento Leader yelled over the wall: Bento Leader: Thirty Seconds! And so I had to make a choice. I stored my pickaxes, took my crossbows, and climbed back onto the wall. NoBanana: We fight. Bento Leader: You'll be regretting that one, mark my words.

And so commenced the most epic battle I have seen to date in Survival 303.

The bento tribe simultaneously drew their swords, and my tribe followed me up the wall. As it happened, the bento tribe also had an archer, armed with a Yewbeam bow. Their mistake however was to load it with stone arrows. With my tribe charging at the invaders with swords drawn, I strafed to get a better view of the Yewbeam Bow wielder, and began shooting. I was at a long distance, so only one of my shots hit their mark, and the Yewbeam bow turned their gaze and fired, but missed. I charged at the archer, crossbows firing in quick succession. The armour of the enemy archer was depleting, but so was mine. As I got closer and closer, we eventually came to the conclusion of about 120 health left on the archer and 90 for me, and we both drew our melee weapons. A strafe to the right meant I avoided the blow of the mithril sword, and landed in a torso shot of my own, dealing around half their health. My weapon reloaded faster, and I slashed again, this time missing, before the sword of the archer fell down and hit my torso due to a badly timed jumping dodge. In a moment of desperation, I fired all three crossbows at the weaving maniac, and by pure chance, one hit its mark. The archer was dead, and the melee of the tribes began.

At this point, the bento tribe had only three members left, and in that respect we outdid them, but what we didn't have was javelins. The tribe all grabbed theirs and threw them at the approaching force, killing one member and wounding another. As Ice started to find their way back, I launched a ranged assult of my own, landing two bolts onto the back of the head of the tribe leader. Then the swords clashed, mithril hit mithril and blood was drawn. My crossbows were still reloading, and although I charged towards the tribe as fast as I could, I couldn't engage in the melee combat, so I instead took a stationary position to improve my aim and began firing at the bento invaders. The bento leader had a bluesteel sword, and therefore was a main target, so the weakened king died at the sword of Blue, and Logo and Boom engaged another member. Finally my crossbows finished reloading, and I fired three bolts at the second to last attacker, finally landing a perfect score and killing the member instantly, much to the relief of Wasp, who had taken substantial damage by that point. At last, Boom and Logo overpowered the last member, and we all met, on little health, outside the castle walls.

Ice returned on a spare catamaran, and we ate and drank and enjoyed our victory. We considered sending an attack force of our own to finish the bento tribe, but decided against it, and we continued to grow, never killing, never raiding. The bento tribe was reduced to a single member, the tribe leader, who I successfully pacified through reasoning and convinced them to become more peaceful, and we all lived happily ever after.

The End.