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« on: February 27, 2013, 08:00:35 pm »
Udib scratches his beard, stretches his arms and walks out of his office after many months of study. For some reason the jobs queue has gone empty, so he decides to go investigate what are the dwarves doing, and update the inventory on the way.
He wanders around, taking notes while the the dwarves come and go. Works have continued in parts of the fortress Udib rarely visits, and a constant stream of haulers carry water buckets to somewhere else. He can't even start to figure what the dwarves are doing -- they groan something about pump stacks and power plants. Udib wonders if these former peasants can even read their own blueprints.
Walking through the madness, he crosses paths with several ghosts pitifully wandering around. Every season the fortress looks more and more terrifying.
"By Kodor, this fortress is chilly with all the draft coming from the caves. I could use some wine. Now, where did these dwarves hide the cellar this time?"
Udib's search quickly becomes frustrating. Every barrel he peeks into seems to be full of unicorn and emu meals and... plump helmets. Dozens of plump helmets, hundreds of plump helmets, plump helmets everywhere!
He pulls his hair and stops a brewer carrying empty buckets. The brewer stares at him with a very bad case of eye circles.
"Brewer! The wine! It's gone!"
"He's chasing me... my dead son! I can't stop, I have to go!"
"I... the wine... where it is? By Ilon, there's a thousand stones of plump helmets! Where is the wine!"
"The last overseer needed water. We are all hauling water. Water! My son! I must store these buckets..."
The brewer runs away, Udib whimpers, and starts to search hopelessly among the random stockpiles, careful not to have his fingers bitten off by one of the caged zombies. Finally, he finds one last shot of rancid wine inside a gray langur leather waterskin laying around. That's all there is!
And then, of course, he's interrupted by the news of the resignation of the previous overseer. With a vague hope that there may be better wine at the meeting, he drops the waterskin and heads to the hall.
The veterans are quickly gathered to sit down in a council. The candidates walk around the cascade in the center of the hall and are interviewed by the mayor. The mugs are all full of water, but Udib doesn't even notice it. His eyes can't move away from one of the candidates --there's something strangely familiar about him.
Later on, he finds the strange dwarf had been elected for the position of overseer. The prisoner necromancer laughs randomly at him as he drags his thirsty, worried feet back to his tiny office.
