Salem

I was foraging for food and natural ingredients not far from my base, when I came upon a brand new lean-to. The owner wasn't around. Right besides the flimsy construction stood a stump. I walked up to it, opened it, and found, amongst other bits and pieces, an Indian feather. I took the feather and promptly walked away.

A little while afterward, a disappointing realization started to make its way through my mind: my first reaction had been to take the feather, not to leave it where that "noob" had left it. The feather could have been taken (stolen?) by anybody else walking by really, as it laid outside of the lean-to's homesteady influence. I merely took advantage of the situation. Better me than them!
...
But what if I had acted differently?

I started to look for an arrowhead, which I quickly found and used to craft an Indian charm. I then headed back to the camp to leave said charm in the stump, exactly where I'd found the feather earlier.

Of course, another person than the lean-to's rightful owner might get it. I'm fine with that. The likelier possibility is that the naive player will find it. At that moment he or she will have a happy surprise and, contrary to expectations perhaps, realize that leaving things unattended is not recommended in Salem. "Positive reinforcement," you might call it.
One fact is certain: the person will never know who did it or why.

Well ... why not?

These forums are often filled with fascinating stories of murder and betrayal. May this one tale, one of many, a few of which I've been privy to, show that Salem is also about other sorts of random acts.

A final note about that episode: between the time I started to think about my initial reaction and the moment I dropped the charm in the stump, I found three feathers lying around in the surrounding woods and fields.

Woo karma!

Everytime I'm in Boston, I will bring extra food to drop in front of lowbies after they waylay a rabbit or cricket (so slowly it's adorable). Worst part about boxing animals early on is having to regen, I like to help people out with that.

I've also Emergency Evac Team'd a few guys being chased by snakes and left the snake body for em. I imagine that's where all the etterfang's are dropping, since I've murdered hundreds of snakes and never gotten one lol

Anyone who knows be from Haven and Hearth will know I love helping new player and it is even more fun when you help them in secret. Much the same as anox, I found a lean-to a short trek north of my home. I always carry a few Lumberjack Frikadel to keep me topped up when venturing in woodlands so I left one for them in the stump next to their camp fire. They have packed up and moved on since then but I hope they will visit some day.

I fully support all here that just put a little thought into their actions and chose to help, rather then hinder, the new arrivals. After all it costs established players very little to spread a little joy.

I stole someones tanning tub and dropped it in some random guys claim, does that count?

I watched two guys try to jump a Cricket... One of them got KO'd, and I laughed because it was epic. The guy that managed to finally finish off the Cricket was sad, thinking his little buddy was dead or something.

I kept the karmic balance, by running them through the basic 'pattern' to killing crickets efficiently at their level.

I'm no Savage Charm leaving Pilgrim, but I like to help the little guys too. Even if I nearly spit Coffee all over the place when I see things like that happen.

When I walk past new leans where the boxes are outside full of goodies and there's nothing stored in the leanto (and no cliam) I will helpfully put the 2 most valuable boxes inside for them. and then.. maybe take a small payment from any remaining containers. If there's space in their containers before I put them in I''ll sometimes drop in an insp and/or food to fill it up.

hopefully there's a reasonable amount of newbies out there who figured out how to get the boxes back out :S

I did something similar. I found a stump next to a shabby lean-to with inspirationals in it. One happened to be aging driftwood which gave me more skill up than what I had on me and just enough to get the skill I needed. I felt bad though so I replaced it with a singing log I had on hand. I figured they might get excited thinking their aging driftwood "upgraded" to a singing log.

Qukatt wrote:When I walk past new leans where the boxes are outside full of goodies and there's nothing stored in the leanto (and no cliam) I will helpfully put the 2 most valuable boxes inside for them.

And here I was doing this just wondering if they could figure out where their boxes went and why their lean-to looks different...