10.
Off the main hallway the Hermit begins to mark several walls with caustic ink, a shade fractionated directly from the tar ocean of the Homeland. Before long, a flowing web of hieroglyphics covers over several square feet and is sealed with the burning of a slick of oily blood - the walls immediately begin vacuuming moisture from the air, and a gentle hum of white noise emits from their position as their surfaces coat with water. Besides a torn section of barrel used to pool several gallons of spare water, the room is left untouched in the darkness.

Intrepid slimes scavenge the facility for scrap and return gripping rickety metallic tools, artifacts left rusting where they lay in a burnt warehouse. The leader of the expedition notes that they were guided to the tools from several rooms away by a mesmerizing light. On closer inspection, this turned out to be an open candle, freshly lit and rapidly snuffed out by the horrified commander.

Attention turns to the foreboding tunnel complex leading outward from the deep end of the facility; a direct access point to the hallway leaves your tribe critically vulnerable to whatever is down there.

A few minutes of locationless rumbling causes ripples through the surface of the weeping walls, and the slimes quickly throw up a ramshackle barricade of moldering crates, backed with wooden slats anchored throughout the hallway with nodules of organic glue. An effective stopgap against most humanoids, it is now perpetually manned by two childless slimes with sharp knives.

You may:
>Explore. This will take you to new frontiers, expand your knowledge and uncover resources.
>Fortify. This will expand vital infrastructure, harden your society's holdings and make them more livable.
>Study. This will develop the primitive technology you need to survive - that, or fortify your strange magic.
>Worship. This will create or choose the power that will guide your people.
>Descend. Taking your tools in hand, you will find the root of what troubles you in the tunnels.
>Other. There is always the option for strategic intervention.

Tribe: Twelve slime creatures and twenty pups in various stages of maturation. Several have reached pre-detachment stage and two are already using independent neural nodes.
- The Hermit.
Technology:
- Simple metallic hand tools, amounting to some cast-iron lump hammers, fasteners and serrated knives stamped from cheap metal.
- Shaped remnant of barrel used to collect dripping water.
Infrastructure:
Hollowed Marketplace (subterranean)
- Deep Tunnels (light barricade)
- Trickling Walls
Food: A broken barrel of fermented fruit mash, dragged to base camp by foraging slimes. Your tribe has thinned its food intake; the supply will last for two more days.
Resources: Charred brick and shards of ceramic line the streets above the marketplace, and the structure itself may hold more valuable tools. Wood is plentiful among the disused storerooms but is often rotten beyond repair.
Magic: Dew Point Hieroglyphs
- A set of ritual inscriptions that cause the material they are marked with to rapidly condense water onto its surface, accumulating a thin, permanent membrane of water which can be siphoned for breeding or consumption.
Religion: You do not worship.

Victory Conditions
Palatial Control
Rule by right of blood and arms will be yours if only you can secure the fortress on the hill.
???
???
???

do overripe fruit bear worthwhile seed?

I like the way you think.

EDIT: This agricultural science site suggests yes, although after the fruit have undergone significant fermentation it's a gamble.

17.
With tribal food stocks low and the pups blinking in hunger, you issue the orders for a search for more food in order to solve that issue for now. Every able bodied person in the tribe, aside from you and the two on guard duty, travel off in search of food. You stay behind to look after the barrel. The mashed fruit seems to be changing as it gives off a terrible aroma and starts "growing" some kind of slime sheet on the top. You blinked to it faintly, perhaps it is a new form of slime like yourselves?

But it doesn't respond. It doesn't seem to be aware or even capable of thought, though it does seem to be eating the fruit mash.

Over the next few hours, seven slimes return without finding any food, though you do have a better overall picture of the building. There are four separate wings, which seem to cover different things. One slime said that they found rusted tools of metal in one, while another said they found rotted wooden blocks, cloth and strange coiled metal things that seemed to bounce across the floor when crushed.

The other four return, having gone to one of the wings together. Inside their bodies are dozens of strange items, long bars of a material you have never seen before. It is neither wood, stone, glass or metal by the look of them. The first slime is filled with dozens of these bars and drops them on the floor next to the fruit mash, pushing them from their body and through their skin. They patter as they slide across the floor.

The second is full of assorted fruits and vegetables. Some you have never seen before. One is curved and yellow, another round and spiked with a crown of green. They say that the fruits seem to be growing in there, dozens of fruit trees rising from the ground in boxes to the ceiling and beyond through a skylight.

The third has containers of glass filled with fruit mash. While you cannot see a way to get to the fruit mash, you could probably smash the glass if needed and get to the contents that way, though that risks cutting yourself and destroying the container in the process.

The fourth has something entirely different. They aren't sure if what they are carrying is food and neither are you. They are strange cylinders of metal with faded and rotten images of food on the sides of them, but you see no way to get inside. You shake one and hear the sound of something moving inside when you do so, but you aren't sure what it is.

The fifth slime, however, doesn't return. You get the feeling that something terrible has happened to them, as do the other tribe members, though you are unsure what to do.

You may:
>Explore. Inside the underground area there are still a few areas that you know little of and the surface is almost completely uncharted. Perhaps it would be for the best if you had the exploration be continued?
>Build. The barricades protecting against whatever lurks in the Deep Tunnels are weak and incomplete. Further construction would help strengthen the tribe's defences. There would also almost certainly be time to help make the area more comfortable to your kin by removing some sharp edges from surfaces around your settlement.
>Study. There are many unanswered questions down here, things that could be studied to improve the lot of your tribe. Strange symbols appear on things hanging from the ceiling, on the cylinders and other things. Perhaps it's some kind of...language?
>Worship. The sheer scale of the construction around you and your tribe-kin leaves them amazed in wonder. What kind of hands could've built something so magnificent? The excited youths create stories of giant beings who shaped themselves into the structures as a gift to slimekind. Perhaps they are right? This requires further meditation on.
>Descend. One of your tribe-kin has gone missing only a day after discovering the Deep Tunnels and hearing the deep growls from within. Even now sounds emerge, some deep and disturbing, some higher in pitch and recurring, like a drop of water from a rooftop. Maybe you and your tribe-kin should investigate, to look for the missing member of your family and find answers!
>Other. Or maybe you have something else in mind?

Tribe: Eleven slime creatures and eighteen pups in various stages of maturation. All of them have independent thought centres and have started to split from the parent body, the connections narrowing and becoming thin folds of flesh.
- The Hermit.
Technology:
- Simple metallic hand tools, amounting to some cast-iron lump hammers, fasteners and serrated knives stamped from cheap metal.
- Shaped remnant of barrel used to collect dripping water.
Infrastructure:
Hollowed Marketplace (subterranean)
- Deep Tunnels (light barricade)
- Trickling Walls
- Four halls, not fully searched.
-- Tool hall, contains dozens of rusted metal tools, completely unsuited for use by your kin.
-- Wood hall. The wood has rotted and broken now, though the use of it in the first place puzzles you.
-- Food hall, the place where your tribe-kin found the fruits, the vegetables, the bars and cylinders.
Foods: A broken barrel of fermented fruit mash, dragged to base camp by foraging slimes. Your tribe has thinned its food intake; the supply will last for one more day. It has started to smell and is starting to ooze an odd goo.
-Bars of...something? They were stored in the same place as the other foods, maybe they contain some as well?
-The metal cylinders seem to contain food according to the images on them.
-Large quantity of fruit and vegetables. They require mashing before they can be consumed properly.
Resources: Charred brick and shards of ceramic line the streets above the marketplace, and the structure itself may hold more valuable tools. Wood is plentiful among the disused storerooms but is often rotten beyond repair.
Magic: Dew Point Hieroglyphs
- A set of ritual inscriptions that cause the material they are marked with to rapidly condense water onto its surface, accumulating a thin, permanent membrane of water which can be siphoned for breeding or consumption.
Religion: You do not worship.

Victory Conditions
Palatial Control
Rule by right of blood and arms will be yours if only you can secure the fortress on the hill.
???
???
???