Survival

Survival is wilderness competence: travelling through country nobody maintains, finding or building shelter, finding water, and knowing the wild animals of a region — what they are, what they do, and where they will be. A great many livelihoods develop it, and anyone at all may attempt it untrained on the strength of common sense, though not very well.

Most of its use is folded into overland travel. Beyond that:

Hunting is not a skill of its own but a task drawing on Survival, Tracking and a missile weapon. Stalking is resolved as travel, the kill as an ordinary attack. Sample quarry yields, in food-days:

Spoilage. Fresh meat does not keep. For each food-day carried, roll once per day on a die set by the temperature; a result of 1 means that food-day is lost. For large quantities, the GM may simply apply the equivalent daily percentage.

Taking a full day to salt the meat extends the interval between those rolls by three days per Value Diamond of a Survival or Cookery Success Value test — a two-diamond result turns a daily check into a weekly one.

Trapping. Snares and deadfalls take small game: rabbit, squirrel, mink, sable, fox. Some folk live off the pelts, others only off the meat. A trapping run is a Survival Success Value test made after eight hours, that time covering the setting, laying, checking and clearing of a line across roughly a league square. Each Value Diamond is one food-day of meat. A trapper who chooses to include a Woodworking or Metalcraft Secondary Modifier adds one to the Success Value on any success — better-made traps catch more.

Climbing aid. Setting pitons is Survival work: ten minutes per thirty feet, then a Survival (Climbing) Success Value test whose Value Diamonds each grant +1 SV to every climber who follows the line up.

Weather lore. A character may test Survival to predict the weather for the next four-hour watch, resolved exactly as under Agriculture.