Jerk.
Anyway.
We now have access to an iron mine.
Long story short, Falacrine got raided/is dead, the chief said "Iron mine's up for grabs", I PMed him, went down, woo the mine's ours.
We're partnered up with some Falacrine survivors that Falacrine's former chief vouched for. They had actually built a ram along the palisade to the mine, but Cafall and I put a new palisade around that ram because we thought some random person walked by and figured they'd take the mine themselves. Misunderstading, but we just let them have a copy of the key and everything's better. They are nice guys.
They were also sort-of allied with some Polish guys NE of the mine to whom we've also allowed access (but no key). Both the former chief and the survivors expressed their ifs about the Polish, but the survivors still trust them enough and we trust them as well. If it gets us killed, oh well~
Then there are these German guys. One of them in newbie gear on a fishing boat (guessing it was an alt) approached me at the mine, saying they had scoped out the place and hoped to gain access but then whoops we got the mine first. He started listing things he could offer, building brick walls, trading pearls, high q mulberry items, etc. Also mentioned that he could bring down a "village champion" to help protect the mine which made me pretty uneasy. He seemed nice enough, though, but yesterday the Polish dude told me that some Germans threatened to attack him, and I had not mentioned the Germans to him yet. Dun dun duuuuun.
Gonna see how this all rolls on out.