And so I have arrived at this last bastion of dwarfkind. All 26 of us. The place is a disaster... and haunted of course. Twists of architecture baffling in their probably brilliance.
I ask for a summary of our stocks, to which my subjects just shrug and go back to carting various oddments around. ... This is not promising.
So there I am, trying to make sense of the last inventory done of the place, when a ghost pops through the wall and gives me a fright. That's it, first things first, we're memorializing all our dead.
And I totally lose track of what I was doing, so its back to the record book.
Let me describe this record book:
-It is a weighty tome, massing more than a dwarf, and large enough that not even one of our rock tables will support it. Instead it must be read on the floor (and doesn't appear to have been moved since before Swordthunders fell!). Over 3/4 of its remaining pages are full of tiny scrawled text that I strain to read in the torchlight.
-The cover seems to be made out of some kind of leather, although I can't seem to discern the species. It is a strange pale fleshy tone...
-It seems to have suffered significant damage of all sorts. I can see definite evidence of fire, torn pages, and is that acid damage? I shudder to imagine what this book has been through. Whole years of inventory are missing, and many more pages are only half there leading to enigmatic statements like locations without items or items without locations. I can't help but notice that some of these 'misplaced' items are artifacts of our finest craftsmen.
-Some pages appear to have been redacted with heavy charcoal covering up particular lines and phrases. I... ok, I confess, I can't even guess what would have prompted such an action.
-Where both item and location are present, frequently the item is in some bizarre and opaque shorthand, or worse, the referenced location has no discernable place in the geometry of the fortress itself.
In frustration I kick the damned thing, leading to my first injury in Swordthunders: a dislocated toe. Yelling in pain, my cries allow some of my eager subjects to locate me. They have news. The start of spring has been commemorated by the creation of an artifact:
I try to look suitably impressed, but my toe is hurting, and what I really want is a moment to pop my toe back into place, preferably out of earshot so I don't need to do any more screaming in pain while they can hear me.
As long as I have them all there, and one of the masons is done screwing around, I inform them of my decision to memorialize the ghosts. They give me some strange looks like I'm crazy.
Having given up on the book, I ask if we have any magma safe materials for pipes and corkscrews. They gleefully lead me to a stack of screwpumps which are all warm to the touch. Check, no using those safely.
So I ask if we have a forge anywhere. The laughing which follows convinces me that we do not, or at least not so that anyone can find them. Ok, order number 2: build some forges and smelters... At which point I'm informed that we do have abundant access to magma. I point at the warm screwpumps. Yes, I'm aware of that, make it happen. Go.
Ok, now, where to build my throne room. And tomb - in this place i'll probably need the second before i need the first...
(Catching up to my screenshots at the moment, narration takes time. Should get pushed out slowly over the course of the day as i find time).
