It was the first day of our new glorious embarkment, we began with much supplies and careless for anything else.
We spent hours designing and laying out our tunnels that were to be built. The surrounding wilderness seemed quite nice,
there were no dreadfull creatures such as Kea, there were many troglodytes just waiting for the perfect time to ambush and
a nearby pasture filled with a few horses. Or so that is what I wished they were doing.
The next morning we began consturction of our new underground fortress. We planned to dig out 20 stories down to
begin with. As we were digging through the massive amounts of Basalt that seemed to go on forever we dug straight into a
cavern. The floor of this cavern was very muddy and good for farming. Little did we know we were about to unlesh hell upon
our small dwarvish feet. I ignored this cavern at first for we had no proper use of the gems and minerals of the cavern
just yet. As we neared floor 20 we struck an amazing second cavern.
I did some exploring here to find there were a band of viscious Crundles lying wake ready to charge towards my
initial seven dwarves. I was completely unprepared for this as we only have one copper battleaxe and barely anything to
protect our bodies with. I had to call an emergency meeting to create our first and only battalion of all able body
dwarves. This were all seven (including myself) dwarves, now we were fit and hoped to survive the attack by staying and
fighting in groups. As we dug into the 18th floor into this cavern we heard them, plotting their next move on us.
As we chipped away the last bit of rock blockading us from the Crundles and safety we heard one of our dwarves
being attacked! But by what? It was a troll! we were being ambushed by this Troll along with twelve Troglodytes and the
eight Crundles which then threw my dwarves into panic. Right of the bat our miner Unib Godenlular was struck down by the
Troll. This crippled my workforce deeply, he was my most proficient miner we had. The Troll got in a few hits on Mebzuth,
our craftsdwarf, before the alarms were sounded. Quickly me and the remaining five dwarves threw away what we were
carrying and tackled the viscous troll ankles first. The battle was suprisingly short and the troll didn't last long, he
was no longer a threat to our settlement as now we had bigger things to worry about.
As soon as the troll fell to his knees the crundles came in a swarm and began harassing all of us. They began to
run from the ferocity of us few dwarven wrestlers after a good smack or two, but only to go no where, we finally began
cornering them off one by one, the troglodytes were not making this an any easier task for us. The crundles were not
posing anywhere near as a big of a threat as the troglodytes were, and none of them had any loot on them besides their
corpses. After taking out the remaining crundles that is when we began losing more men to the troglodytes then I had
expected. They came in a heard swarming and surrounding Shem Adilirtir and Mr. KnowItAll Rutodedem, our head of
intelligence. They put on a brave fight killing off three troglodytes before finally being struck down. This caused me
much hardship as well as the other remaining three dwarves, especially Lorbam, our head farmer. He began throwing Tantrums
as well as Mosus Ralatham...
Shortly afterwards when we were losing hope we recieved a grand reinforcement of migrants which gave my dwarves
the confidence they needed to know this was not yet the end of their journey as it so seemed in the first month of their
embarkment. As the migrants rushed to the aid it was too late for Lorbam as he was finally struck down by the viscous
troglodytes. Although the migrant wave only brought with it three more dwarves this gave us the push we needed to force
the remaining troglodytes out of our new found territory. During all of this it was hard to believe that I myself and our
militia commander kogan barely survived the intense onslaught brought on by our foolishness for gold and minerals. The new
migrants; Mezbuth (Craftsdwarf), Mosus (Mason), and Onol (Fish Dissector) seemed to like it here at their new home. Now
with the threat of being attacked was gone we could begin reconstucting our battle-torn fortress and cleaning up all the
dead bodies that piled up during the fighting.
During the next few weeks our dwarves were throwing tantrums wanting more alcohol and better sleeping areas which
were soon to come. We began working on our workshops making pots for our alcohol and beds for our tired battle-worn
dwarves. All of a sudden out of no where a honey badger and a giant bat flew straight for me and dealt me a swift blow
which I was then struck down. Onol then took my place as expedition leader.
That was what our expedition Leader went through in his early days of embarkment, with him gone we began to lose
hope once more, we knew inside ourselves that this giant bat posed no big threat but our leader was wounded greatly from
the troglodyte attack which caused him to be weak and that gave the giant bat his chance to strike him down. We did not
give up, we stopped working right away and picked up our fists and charged towards this bat. the bat posed little threat
as we struck it down quickly and headed face first into the honey badger. We took it out swiftly with no casualties.
We were hoping all was good now and that we could get back to work and finally make this fortress liveable. When
we got back to work we discovered miasma forming in our lower levels due to a rotten troglodyte corpse which we quickly
removed from the area. Lucky for us final four dwarves that have not yet perished, the remains of our fellow dwarves made
our lives a bit easier as wee took their extra clothing and other items to be put to good use.
Just as we thought the remaining few troglodytes returned shortly after seeking revenge, but this time we were on
alert and were ready for them. We drove back the intial few losing kogan our militia commander. We were panicking with
only us three remaining. We knew though that we would prevail during this fight. When this wave of troglodytes was over
with we quickly hit the workshops making beds and barrels so we could brew some drinks to maintain our sanity. While we
began working what seemed to be a miracle happened, we had another wave of migrants! This brought us new hope with the
previous harsh dangers out of the way. As though it were a rather small migrant wave consisting of three dwarves we were
grateful that we were no longer alone. Their names were Id (carpenter), Rith (Craftsdwarf), and Rakust (Militia
Commander). With the gain of a new population we started to thrive, we began to hunt and gather fish and grow many plump
helmets now that we were not under threat of being killed by the wild animals and monsters.
Mr. KnowItAll wasn't ready to leave us just yet, he began to haunt us which terrified my dwarves. We had no idea
on how to stop the haunting so we hoped for the best that building a burial site for him would end the haunting. As we
were building Mr. KnowItAll's burial grounds Id was off gathering cave spider silk, which in turn got him webbed in a cave
spider's trap. While all this was going on a trade caravan happened to come visit and we had no trade depot so that was a
loss. As well was Id, he bleed to death, but we got the damn spider who caused his death. You know what made our situation
even better? Two blind cave ogres were wondering around but we have not discovered them just yet. We had another problem
on our hands...A dirty kobold thief has come to try and steal our precious valueables. Well, long story short we scared
him away and began the fight with the blind ogres. This for sure was the end for my dwarves fortress. We were all brave,
ready for anything, so then...we charged down the stairwells into the vast caverns to pick a fight with the cave trolls. I
knew this was then end because right off the bat Mebzuth died from a vast hit to the skull denting in his head and his
limbs were cut open, he soon perished before the rest of us got to the fight. Our animals were even risking their lives
fighting the ogres, we lost our Poult and all 6 of our war dogs and some wild camels were killed by these horrific blind
ogres. Each of them had their set of heavy battle scars. Mosus was also lost in the first attack on the ogres, we finally
managed to kill one ogre but lost a third dwarf, onol, after dealing the fatal blow to one of the ogres. Rakust, our new
migrant, broke his leg in the cavern and had been struggling for quite some time. It had just turned winter and our half
built fortress was filled with miasma. we only had two remaining dwarves at this time. Rakust and Rith were the only two
barely surviving dwarves at this point and with winter here their lives just became harder. About a week later Rakust
finally died of starvation because he had been stuck in the cavern for so long. Rith, I'm afraid was our last remaining
dwarf. Although he still thought Rakust was with him, he was utterly alone. Stray puppies and war dogs began showing up
dead. Rith to soon wounded up finding himself dead, killed from a troglodyte lost in the cavern while he was looking for
his buddy Rakust.
We had almost lasted a full year before we all perished.
By: SorrowsBlade (J. Royster)
Author
Topic: Story - Deadly Caverns (Read 769 times)