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The first time I killed someone was around my second week into the game when my eve mother Teresa told me (her daughter Jen) to protect the thriving jungle village she had so carefully raised. She gave me her knife right before she died, and I took it upon myself to look out for troublemakers. I lived this life normally while raising a family, farming, and giving advice/orders to new people in our growing village. Eventually people started recognizing me as the village leader as I grew older and one day, my niece ran up to me and warned me that some twin boys who were recently born were just eating all the berries, and were asking around where materials for a bow could be found. At first I wanted to dismiss it and give the twins a chance, but a gut feeling told me to immediately look around the village. I did so and after running around the village outskirts, I was disappointed to find one of the boys near two half made bows and some half made arrows. With only the safety of the village in mind at that time, I immediately ran up next to the boy and with some minor hesitation and sweaty hands, stabbed the little gremlin before he could talk or run away. After a bit of shock and pause, his last words were the N word before he expired. His twin brother came back shortly and after seeing me stand over his bloody corpse with knife in hand, he ran into the northern part of the jungle before I could act, and he eventually died of starvation at the age of 16.

The village was fine after that, but to this day I could never forget the mixed feelings of disgust, satisfaction, and numbness over the first murder I had ever caused.

The second time I killed someone was when I was born as a cook's second son in San-Cal city. My big brother and I were given knives and were being trained to succeed our mother's job after she died. Around the time I was in my teens, we were learning how to make bread when a griefer suddenly ran into the kitchen and shot my mother with a bow for no reason. At first my brother and I were in shock and panicking over how to save our mother. But, when that griefer started running away and saying "Hahahaha", I pulled out my own knife and ran towards him in in blind fury. I almost messed it up when I threw my knife on the ground by accident, but managed to pick it up before stabbing him and watching him die. Unfortunately, some people who heard the commotion ran into the kitchen and saw me near two bloody corpses with a bloody knife in my hand. Without hesitation, one of them cursed me before the other pulled out a knife and stabbed me. The last thing I heard as I was dying was my brother berating the two idiots about how they had mistakenly killed the wrong person.

This time when I killed someone, I only felt sorrow for my mother, regret, and only the smallest amount of satisfaction.

After that, I lived went onto live many lives without killing anyone while trying out and learning everything the game had to offer. From composting, shepherding, and smithing, to masonry, fishing, and even flower gardening, I was really having a fun time experiencing the things I never tried out. My favorite activity was hunting wolves and bears (especially when protecting towns), since the danger and reward involved made the activity quite fun. But after an endless cycle of doing the same things over and over again, I started to get.....bored. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was getting bored and dissatisfied as the number of new things for me to try slowly ran out. The amount of fun I got from doing things I used to enjoy doing slowly dwindled.

Around this time, I started paying less attention towards what I was doing and instead, observed the interactions of the people around me. Unlike me who tried to live many honest lives as much as I could, other people were having their own fun establishing religions, making royal families, and in some instances....causing conflict within villages. In this one particular medium town where I was the town's only smith, I was slaving away making tools, gathering the iron ore myself, and running seeing what people needed replaced. I was particularly annoyed when people were repeatedly taking  or misplacing my flat rocks, adobe, and hammer despite my protests. It eroded my patience enough that when I was in my 30's, a distraught blonde mother came alone to my smithy and asked me to make her a knife so that she could avenge her son's murder in the farming fields.  Normally I wouldn't have accepted her request, but my patience had worn thin enough with the town's people that I did so and watched her kill some woman before she was mobbed to death by the townspeople. Somehow, I didn't feel bad about this at all. In fact, I was entertained enough from this and decided to use the town's remaining sizable amount of iron to make a bunch of knives. I planted the knives around town (more than 10), and eventually in my old age I got to watch with growing glee as a young griefer started a chain of murders in town by killing a woman before someone killed him and so on and so fourth with the knives I had made.

Over time, watching people's reactions as they were murdered by griefers or something else triggered something in me. I liked the fresh experience of watching people die, and their shock and fear when confronted with impending death. It was enough to blow away the boredom I was feeling, so I slowly started dabbling more with getting people killed. Rather than killing people with my own hands though, I looked for ways to make people die through other means. SOME of my more memorable indirect murders included:

1) Luring bears into a settlement I was just born into as a baby. I really liked doing this multiple times. In one particular small camp I was born into, the small family of 4 there had just finished growing a field of carrots for the first time. Unfortunately, they chose to live really close to some badlands with three bear dens next to each other. When I was born there, I allowed my mother to feed me before running off towards those dens. I activated all three dens, and lured the angry hungry bears straight into the camp. I'll never forget the moment when those bears smashed into the camp like a tidal wave over a sand castle, and ripped apart my unaware mother into pieces. My uncle was shocked and screamed his head off, but only managed to run a few steps before a bear skipped over some items and chewed his face off. As for my siblings well....they were stupid enough to run towards my mom while she was being eaten as if they wanted to try and do something about it.  Those poor suckers never had a chance. Unfortunately, people are smarter with bear safety nowadays when a bear comes into town.

2) Falsely accusing an unliked person in town of being a murderer/griefer and watching the townspeople mob them. Oddly enough, this worked more times than it should've. My favorite time of doing this was when the stone god religious was popular. The useless and weird priests were an easy target.

3) Consuming the majority of the town's food through either useless eating, feeding, or hiding the stuff, and then watching the elderly and children starve.

4) Breaking the town's tools and smithing/cooking facilities, draining the town's wells, and watching some people die from starvation while they futilely looked for supplies.

Then I started getting a little too blood crazy as my goal shifted from watching people suffer, to wanting people to die. Before I knew it, I had become the thing I had formerly hated. Some of my memorable attempts included:

1) When I was born as an eve, I immediately made a bow, ate a varied diet, and stayed in a temperature agreeable area. Then I waited for my children to be born. As soon as they were born, I shot them and cried out "BLOOOOOOOD!" or "FOR THE BLOOD GOD!". Because they were babies, they were helpless and couldn't curse me, and I could watch them die in confusion or numb acceptance. I did this until I was too old to bear any more children. This was pretty fun after my old methods got boring.

2) When I was born in a fledgling village that had a smithy, and grew old enough to wield a bow/knife, I'd go over to my female siblings and tell them "When you grow old enough, I will kill either you or your child. You choose who lives.". Most of the time, they would try and run or tattle, but I'd would eventually hunt them down and kill them. On rare occasions, they'd offer their son to me and I would accept their sacrifice before leaving them alone. I did this to my mothers as well. Even to my children. Interesting enough for a life or two, but not fun enough.

3) Hunting down children that went out of the village to explore/search for supplies. Again, they were easy targets and couldn't curse me. I preferred hunting down children since they couldn't hurt me when I caught them by surprise, but also had at least a small way to resist (running away). I like prey that can resist a little. One time, I found a child near a nosaj and stabbed him to death on the spot. I activated the nosaj, and went back into town pretending to mind my own business. When the mother of that child started looking for that child and eventually found the nosaj and their corpse, she also killed someone who happened to be near that nosaj thinking they were the murderer. That was fun to watch.

4) Snowballing moms who had just birthed a baby and picked them up. Usually the baby would die from starvation as I continuously pelted the mother with snowballs (or even the babies themselves), but if I was lucky enough then the mother would die as well. A very clean method of murder if you plan it out right.

By no means were these the best or efficient ways to kill people. I just wanted to derive enjoyment from what I did to stave off boredom. I think that killing people in the game is a beautiful thing, since a loved one or a person can have so many attachments before abruptly seeing it all end. No two deaths are ever quite the same, and no two circumstances that bring about a murder are ever quite the same. It's always fresh and ever changing enough (especially people's reactions) that I'd like to keep doing it again. Killing animals never gave me the right satisfaction, which is why I mostly left them alone in settlements. Human lives are cheap and expendable. But, I try not to aim to collapse a settlement alllllll the time. It would be no fun if there was no prey left to feed on. I think as long as this game doesn't provide enough new or convenient low/mid tech content to entertain me, I'll continue to partake in the delicacy of murder from time to time. I don't think what I do is meaningless, since it teaches people to be wary enough of others. Does it the ruin the game for others? Perhaps. Do I care? I think it's half and half for me.

How do you guys feel about murder, or when you kill people?