Fragments of the Past
| Fragments of the Past | |
|---|---|
| Type | Special Order |
| Board | Special Orders board |
| Giver | Gunther |
| Time Limit | 7 days |
| Repeatable | No |
Gunther is studying old bone and asks the valley for a hundred pieces of it, dropped off at the museum counter. It is the heaviest gathering job on the town board, since the pile has to be built from scratch inside a single week. The payment is good and the Bone Mill recipe behind it turns the same bone into fertiliser for the rest of the run. Access to the island dig site changes this order from a grind into an afternoon's work, so the timing of the notice matters more than its contents. It runs once only, which makes it worth taking the first week a farm can realistically fill it.
The board reads: Calling all amateur paleontologists! I need 100 pieces of bone for my studies. Please drop them off at the museum counter! -Gunther
Requirements
Every piece has to be found after the notice is accepted. A chest of fossils put aside for the museum counts for nothing at the counter, and that is the rule that ruins most first attempts.
The list of what counts is broad. Ordinary Bone Fragments make up the bulk of it, but whole fossils and skeletal pieces qualify as well, from a Fossilized Skull or a Prehistoric Rib down to a Mummified Frog, a Snake Vertebrae or a Trilobite. Each of them counts as one piece towards the hundred, so handing over a rare fossil moves the tally no further than a single fragment does. The sensible approach is to feed fragments into the box and keep the fossils for the museum shelves, where they are worth far more.
Supply decides the week. Skeletons on the floors just above the bottom of The Mines drop fragments two or three at a time, and walking back out to the lift and down again rebuilds the floor for another pass. Bone Nodes at the dig site on Ginger Island are the fastest source of all, since each node breaks into a handful at once. Lava Lurks in the Volcano Dungeon drop them, crates and barrels in the Skull Cavern hold them, panning in the rivers turns them up, and artifact spots across the valley and the island hide both fragments and whole fossils. A dog kept thoroughly spoiled will even bring one home.
The drop-off is a box in the Museum, so the final trip is into town during Gunther's opening hours.
The order asks for one of these, and the board picks which.
| Item | Image | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Bone Fragment | 
|
100 |
Rewards
The gold is among the better fees on the board for a single week of work. The Bone Mill is the part that keeps paying. Five Bone Fragments, or any one of the bone items on Gunther's list, go in and a fertiliser comes out some hours later. The output is drawn at random from four kinds: a batch of Quality Fertilizer, a smaller batch of Speed-Gro, a batch of Tree Fertilizer or a few packs of Deluxe Speed-Gro, and now and then the machine doubles whatever it produced.
That matters most to a farm that plants at scale. Quality Fertilizer bought by the packet eats into the season's profit, while a bank of mills fed with mine leftovers covers a whole field for nothing. Deluxe Speed-Gro is the standout result, since it is otherwise crafted from Oak Resin and hard to make in quantity. Tree Fertilizer solves the slow business of growing saplings on poor soil.
Because the notice does not return, the recipe arrives once and the mill becomes the permanent use for every bone the farm digs up afterwards.
Finishing the order pays out all of this.
| Reward | Image |
|---|---|
| 3,500g | - |
| Bone Mill recipe | 
|
Strategy
Open the island dig site before taking this order if at all possible. A day of breaking bone nodes with a decent pickaxe, helped along by a few bombs, puts a serious dent in the hundred, and the same trip collects fossils for the museum on the side.
Without the island, the mines are the answer. Ride the lift to the deepest unlocked floor above the bottom, clear the skeletons, leave, and come straight back down. A sword with reach and a stack of cooked food make that loop fast, and the fragments pile up alongside gems and ore rather than instead of them.
The order fails in two ways. The first is the stockpile trap already described, where a week is spent shipping bones found earlier. The second is simple arithmetic: a hundred pieces in seven days is beyond a farm with no island access, no mine lift and an early pickaxe, and taking the notice in that state only burns the one attempt. Anything handed over before the clock runs out is not lost, since it waits in the lost and found at the Mayor's house.
Notes
Bone Fragments have a crowded diary beyond this order. Fifty of them go into a Thorns Ring, fifty more into an Ostrich Incubator, ten into a Skull Brazier, and the Island Trader swaps them for Taro Tuber and for the Banana Pudding recipe. Ten are one of the accepted options for the remixed adventurer's bundle in the Boiler Room.
Almost everyone in town dislikes a gift of bone, so the surplus belongs in the mill rather than in a wrapped parcel.
Tailoring has a use for them too. Spooling one alongside a length of Cloth produces a Skeleton Shirt, and the dye pots read bone as a yellow dye.
All Special Orders
Every special order from both boards, with who posts it and how long it runs.