Dinner comes from the pantry

People in Groundwork used to eat from whatever was nearby. Now every home has a pantry that holds about two days of food and drink, and people eat and drink only from there. So someone has to keep it full.

That someone is the homemaker. Who gets the job is decided in a fixed order: old people first, because they have the time, then the jobless, then whoever is off shift. Never kids, and never anyone who is grieving. With a bag over the shoulder she walks to the nearest food stall, or to the wagon the camp started with, and brings it home. The food stall is self-serve, costs four planks to build and holds up to twenty of each thing people need.

I should be honest about the video. When I filmed, nobody happened to be out shopping, so the panel “Food stall: homemakers shop here with a bag” points at the stall itself and not at anyone carrying one. The stall is there. The bag will have to wait for another take.

Then there are names. Families now share one surname per family line. If someone marries inside the town, the wife takes the husband’s surname and keeps her own after a comma. That only happens in long games, and the showcase town in the video has no weddings, so what you see is Esther Gray and Raymond Gray, one family, one surname.

While I was at it, every person and worker model got new tools. Anyone carrying a camp’s axe now shows it on their back. There is a tending pose for the farmers and a chopping pose for felling trees, and the axes are the start of tomorrow’s story.