Cart Firmly Before the Horse

Remember the nursery rhyme? For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe...

I drift out of the vivid mountain meadow conjured within a flu-generated dream and blink myself awake toward a first cup of coffee (today: Yuban with a hint of Gevalia's creme brulee). The dream danced with detail which tagged along from sleep to waking, a continuation of one from a few days ago, which means it's one of those resolution-type-of-dreams that often lead to a breakthrough in the game design.

-=-

I'm crouched in a meadow near the forest's edge, about midway up the slope of a thickly eroded mountain range, surrounded by an array of tiny blue flowers which peek through the knee-high grasses. The flowers sparkle in the thin pre-dawn chill. I crawl through the grasses, following a small trampled path. Remnants of snow cling to my knees and the toes of my boots as I make my way as slowly and as silently as my *pull-cart* will allow. I search for a moment, hands digging through the trample, until I locate the beginning of my *trapline*, a length of rope along which I have pulled loops to signal the location of a nearby trap hidden off the trail.

As the meadow steepens, I remove the shoulder sling which secures the cart behind me, and loop it around a stump to keep it from sliding away downhill. I glance at the contents: *pelts* toward the front, several still damp and uncleansed. *Bones and teeth* toward the back scattered across a canvas layer to dry. I must hurry before dawn breaks, to locate the night's catches, before day brings heat and the chance of ruining a highly marketable hide.

Every few feet I find the loop knot in the rope line I am following, and reach through the grass wall, brushing the curtain aside to check the *trap* nearby. I replace the broken ones and reset the empty sprung ones, baiting each with a chum of gamey meat and sinew. Most of the traps are empty, sprung, as is usually the case, by the packs of wolves which rule this mountainland west of New Linden, a clever lot.

I crawl upward and through a thorny divide of howe berries, their brambles lurking beneath the pressed grass of the path and ripping the knees of my leggings, tearing at my jerkin and through my gloves. I mutter and remove my left glove, tending a rather deep puncture with the juice of one of the howe berries from the ground. It's a common curative found at this altitude, I recall, as the blue juice soothes the wound and makes me a bit giddy. The effect diminishes and I move onward to the next trap.

Success! An nearly dead wolf lays to one side of the trap pulled free from its grassy camouflage, its left hind leg secured in the iron jaws. I invoke a small frost shield, thanking Chrona for its protection, and end the wolf's dwindling life with a silent thanks to Astria. The renegade beast's jaws clip furiously at my arm as I slit its throat and give its lifeblood back to the ground.

Drawing my *skinning knife* from its sheath, I kneel next to the cooling corpse and slice through the belly from neck to tail, careful to preserve the pelt. It takes much less time to do this than it did when I started collecting pelts, for my studies in skinning have advanced, as has my knowledge of pelts themselves. Within a very short time, I have stripped away and folded the wolf's hide, retrieved its teeth and sinew, and begin to carry what I shall *trade* back down the steep grassy incline to the waiting cart.

I return to the trap and reset it, loading it with stacks of the still-warm flesh, reknot the trap line at the path and straighten out the guides before moving on -

-=-

Player-pullable cart, pelt, bones and teeth, trapline, traps, baiting, skinning knife, trade, material-based training - I'd seen the bits and pieces before, but not in sequence, not in action. I store the components of the dream away as I stare at the coffee pot's slow slumping and steaming chugs toward a drinkable cuppa joe.

Chatterbox, the younger of our two cats, mutters at my ankle, teeth sinking into the lace of my slipper. Her tail language translates to "an empty food dish coinciding with rising sun equals feed me before I chew off the toe of your slipper and further demolish this leather lace in my teeth which shall in no way diminish my desire for food or attention but signal my growing impatience with you my human wielder of can opener technology' - cats aren't big on punctuation.

I grin and comply. The coffee will wait - the cat will not, nor will the pelts in the cart.

Now to sketch the dream onto paper, determine the importance of the components in terms of the game, second-guess the befores and the afters, and add a dab of paint to the trade/econ module's design picture.

I should add that I've never set a trap or hunted like that in my life...