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Yes

4 (14.3%)

No

1 (3.6%)

It was fun for a long time but towards the end it just started to drag

6 (21.4%)

I wish I could have joined in.

17 (60.7%)

Total Members Voted: 28

[wierd]

[Seems so. Weird won't be going until after he's sure Rikod knows how to run the kiln, and do a successful salt-fire glaze operation. After that, its his baby. He can focus on other tasks, like investigating the tower after the initial recon.]

[WillowLuman]

Having nothing much better to do, Oliolli, Lana, and Gizogin piled into his contraption. HugoLuman, after some consideration, settled with scrambling onto the roof. Though the treads sank ever so slightly, it did not seem to impede movement and they set off, saying their farewells to Wierd and the astonished dwarves and passing some equally astonished elves on the way out.

The tank trundled on, passing through the thin woodland, soggy meadows, and open fields on its path Northwestward. Oliolli regaled them with tales of his adventures of yesterday to alleviate the road-trip tedium. It did not go as fast as Gizogin had expected, due either to the extra weight on top or design flaws, and there were scary moments when it seemed it would be caught in the mud or against and obstacle. Nevertheless, they reached the foot of the outmost hill in about half an hour. This hill was enormous, obstructing anything beyond it, but HugoLuman assured the others that there were more hills behind and the tower was on one of them. Sure enough, skirting quickly around the bottom circumference of the big hill, rolling downs appeared before them, and upon the hill just under the big one, stood the tower.

It certainly looked ancient. About 3 fourths of the outside surface was covered in ivy and green. It certainly didn't seem as tall as Oliolli had described, though by the unevenness at the top and the discernible rubble littered about, it might once have been. They stopped the tank and got out. Oliolli walked over and brushed some of the ivy off one of the chunks of debris. Underneath, the masonry was encrusted by lichen, but he could see 2 holes it the clear patch where something dark red poked through. Steel bars must once have poked through there, having eroded and snapped off by now.

[Mrhappyface]

Mrhappyface thought of what he missed as he plunged through the icy waters. He missed having his assistants and the dirt and soot of the furnaces. He missed the forumites, even Wierd with his almost fetishistic obsession with scientific terminology and various homemade crafts. But he was also sad as he realized that he wouldn't really be able to walk amongst them as equals. After all, he became something more than mortal.

He emerged from what seemed like a brackish pool of water. As he blinked his eyes to this world's sun, he could recognize the familiar shape of the fort in the distance. Half crawling and swimming through the muck, he pulled himself out of the pond and started trudging back. Hopefully they won't blame too many of their problems on him for this short visit. But even if he died, he'd just return straight to heaven. Oh well.

[WillowLuman]

Mrhappyface thought of what he missed as he plunged through the icy waters. He missed having his assistants and the dirt and soot of the furnaces. He missed the forumites, even Wierd with his almost fetishistic obsession with scientific terminology and various homemade crafts. But he was also sad as he realized that he wouldn't really be able to walk amongst them as equals. After all, he became something more than mortal.

He emerged from what seemed like a brackish pool of water. As he blinked his eyes to this world's sun, he could recognize the familiar shape of the fort in the distance. Half crawling and swimming through the muck, he pulled himself out of the pond and started trudging back. Hopefully they won't blame too many of their problems on him for this short visit. But even if he died, he'd just return straight to heaven. Oh well.

Oh, they are going to murder you.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Mrhappyface thought of what he missed as he plunged through the icy waters. He missed having his assistants and the dirt and soot of the furnaces. He missed the forumites, even Wierd with his almost fetishistic obsession with scientific terminology and various homemade crafts. But he was also sad as he realized that he wouldn't really be able to walk amongst them as equals. After all, he became something more than mortal.

He emerged from what seemed like a brackish pool of water. As he blinked his eyes to this world's sun, he could recognize the familiar shape of the fort in the distance. Half crawling and swimming through the muck, he pulled himself out of the pond and started trudging back. Hopefully they won't blame too many of their problems on him for this short visit. But even if he died, he'd just return straight to heaven. Oh well.

Oh, they are going to murder you.

Multiple times.

[Corai]

Mrhappyface thought of what he missed as he plunged through the icy waters. He missed having his assistants and the dirt and soot of the furnaces. He missed the forumites, even Wierd with his almost fetishistic obsession with scientific terminology and various homemade crafts. But he was also sad as he realized that he wouldn't really be able to walk amongst them as equals. After all, he became something more than mortal.

He emerged from what seemed like a brackish pool of water. As he blinked his eyes to this world's sun, he could recognize the familiar shape of the fort in the distance. Half crawling and swimming through the muck, he pulled himself out of the pond and started trudging back. Hopefully they won't blame too many of their problems on him for this short visit. But even if he died, he'd just return straight to heaven. Oh well.

Oh, they are going to murder you.

Multiple times.

With fire.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Mrhappyface thought of what he missed as he plunged through the icy waters. He missed having his assistants and the dirt and soot of the furnaces. He missed the forumites, even Wierd with his almost fetishistic obsession with scientific terminology and various homemade crafts. But he was also sad as he realized that he wouldn't really be able to walk amongst them as equals. After all, he became something more than mortal.

He emerged from what seemed like a brackish pool of water. As he blinked his eyes to this world's sun, he could recognize the familiar shape of the fort in the distance. Half crawling and swimming through the muck, he pulled himself out of the pond and started trudging back. Hopefully they won't blame too many of their problems on him for this short visit. But even if he died, he'd just return straight to heaven. Oh well.

Oh, they are going to murder you.

Multiple times.

With fire. everything they can think of.

fixed.

[Eric Blank]

I call first dibs.

[Oliolli]

I call first dibs.

wierd probably doesn't care.

[WillowLuman]

Oh, I don't know about that. Anyway, I'll continue the story in a bit.

[WillowLuman]

The explorers looked around for an entrance to the tower. There was a large, partially collapsed gateway near where they had parked, probably once housing 12-foot tall doors, but now with no sign of doors anywhere. Inside, it was fairly dim, with light slanting down through twisted, corroded beams about 70 feet up where the tower had broken. It had a strange layout on the inside: The cylindrical structure of the tower curved around an inner cylinder; the wedge-shaped rooms were partitioned amongst the ring of space between the inner and outer walls. Or at least, had once been: The walls and floors of most of the rooms lay on the bottom of the tower, a mess of twisted steel girders and concrete.

Curiously, someone had constructed narrow ramps going up and around the wedges of surviving floor, and roofs and walls on some of these platforms, all out of rubble, wood, and masonry. It seemed to go about halfway up, terminating in a wooden roof going around most of the ring about 40 feet up that blocked most of the sunlight.

Gizogin swept his gaze slowly around the huge space. "Let's split up. Hugo, those ramps seem too risky for a patient in your size and condition, so you and Oliolli look around down here. Lana and I will check upstairs."

[wierd]

[oh yes... finally, an opportunity to patch things up with Eric! ...Sorta...]

"So, ye really use'd te be a hooman?.. Really?" asked Rikod, for what seemed the third time, and just as incredulously as the first.

"Not just me: Eric, Hugo, Happyface, Gizogin--but he still is... All the 'weirdos' here at the fort. It's just like I told you. One day, we were minding our own business, plunked down for a quick game, fell asleep at the keyboard and BAM. I was here.. at the old fort."

Wierd was unsure about telling him all this, but he felt the man deserved to know. He had just about had enough with keeping secrets. The topic had come up naturally after explaining what a "school" was, since no such thing of any type existed anywhere on this world, and Rikod was actually fairly sharp, if less than spectacularly educated. It would have been really awkward creating a BS cover story; the truth was sufficiently unbelievable as it was.

"I know ye already done said one'st, but are ye really serious about sayin' our world's jus' a big, made-up place, created on some mechanical thinkin' machine?"

"I dont know for Certain, but this world bears a more than superficial resemblance to it, yeah." he affirmed cautiously. "But that game was never as profoundly fleshed out as this place is. Look-- See the shadows under the trees? Not in the game." He shruged. "Also, 'electronic' thinking machine, not mechanical."

"Ye should really be more careful o' who ye be tellin stoof like dis ta!" laughed the dwarf. "They's enough stories aboot ye strange folks a'ready!.. But ye big arsed kiln looks te be serviceable, and I aint never heard o' the like. Strange as ye stories is, I like ye." He laughed again. "Ye shared ye booze with meh!"

Rikod was probably right. The talk in the dining hall weeks ago hadn't really gone well, and it seemed every time he let some nugget of arcane knowledge drop out of his fat mouth, it caused a stir. Sometimes it was beneficial though. Rikod here, picking up some new firing tricks-- Udib, learning that limestone and calcite are practically the same thing----- Udib! He needed to check on Udib! Jeeze, how could he forget about something like that!? Later-- he had his hands full at the moment.

Wierd smiled anyway. At least it wasn't raining, and they had gotten what they came for: the reaction tank had been rinsed out after being drunk dry, and was now packed to the top with dry salt from the ocean, and they had traveled most of the way back. Part of him felt that the only reason Rikod was willing to entertain the fantastic notions he spouted, was because of the fantastic proofs he could provide, even if something as benign as boiling saltwater to get the salt out was one of them.

"I don't intend on just blabbing it to everyone!..." he chortled. "But I don't like lying to good people, even when the truth sounds too crazy to believe. Trust me, I wouldn't believe it either, if it weren't for the daily reminders every morning."

"Whatya mean?"

"Well... Dwarves and humans.... are........'different'." he put gently, then leaned in closer. "I dont think I will ever get used to all the hair."

Rikod about suffocated himself with roars of laughter, sucking several deep breaths only to lose them the same way before calming down enough to talk. "So, izit true den?" he asked, gently ribbing him with his elbow.

"Is what true?"

"About de ladies?"

Wierd was confused. "Is what true about the ladies?"

"Well, dey say---" Rikod started, before Wierd shushed him.

"Hold that thought!..."

There, trudging up the path and covered in wet silt... Was Mr. Happyface.

"It cant be...." wierd breathed quietly. "He was missing after the quake..."

"Who was?" whispered Rikod.  Wierd pointed ahead, and the dwarf nodded. " Hes de bloke as what made em' cyberwhatsits, right?"

"The very same..." he whispered back. "Wait here..."

Rikod made a plaintive gesture and a confused expression, but wierd strode ahead of him, confidently and nonchalantly up behind the sloshing dwarf.

"Excuse me." wierd said loudly behind the impossible dwarf, causing him to turn around. Mr Happyface had the most stupid grin on his face to see him, and it worried him.  He cut straight to the chase dripping with mock-pleasantry. "Where were you when the fortress fell in?"

"What? I uh.... was uh...."

"That's what I thought." 

That was all he needed. Anyone who had been in the collapse would have responded immediately with something like 'trying not to get crushed', or 'shittin muh pants', or some similarly quick reply. His stamming to come up with a cover story was all the proof he needed. Without hesitation, he made a quick jab of his fist into happy face's solar-plexus, with a little extra punch: He let a restrained snap of lightning loose from the fist at the exact same time, rendering the double-crossing, portal making bastard unconscious like getting sucker punched with a taser gun.

"WHAT'D YE DO DAT FOR!?" shouted Rikod, running up to close the gap between them. "Thats assault!"

"He's the bastard that caused the earthquake." wierd scowled.

Rikod's eyes went wide, then narrowed to tiny slits as his face colored almost purple. "Aye..."

After tying the filthy dwarf's hands behind his back, Wierd hoisted him up over his shoulders, and marched him straight to the fortress excavation site. There was no other place in the fortress where Eric could possibly be, despite what the dwarves outside had said earlier.

Eric would WANT to see this.



[OK eric! your ball!]

[Oliolli]

Things were slow, but progressing.  After winning a debate about the nature of reality with the metalsmith by exposing a buffer overflow condition concerning the happiness of another fortress member in the foundry by smashing the foot of a miserable dwarf, punching him in the face, and forcefeeding him water until the cumulative subtractions caused him to suddenly, and inexplicably become euphorically ecstatic, he managed to pressure his debate partner into turning one of the 5 super rare and precious bars of platinum they had in the whole fortress into a several sections of fine platinum mesh.  You simply couldn't make nitric acid in suitable yeilds without it.

Rikod hasn't heard of this incident, then?

[wierd]

that was 4 disasters ago! the dwarves involved are probably all dead! LOL!

[Gizogin]

[I couldn't participate yesterday because I was partying.  Yes, all day.  I'll have access to an actual computer again tonight, so I'll be able to do stuff again.

As for what I'll do, did wierd tell X how mrhappyface was responsible for the collapse?

EDIT: I should mention that X has no drive for revenge.  He can't hold a grudge.  He can, however, seek justice and ensure that wrongdoers are punished in accordance with the law, and with his own sense of justice.  Since this is DF, and happyface killed around twenty dwarves, his sentence will be anywhere from life in prison (a bit tricky, since we don't have a prison) to 1,000 hammer strikes or death.  If X decides that the punishment isn't severe enough, well, DF has no concept of criminal negligence.  After all, he has to be responsible for the entire hospital.  Who could blame him if he were to accidentally allow one little prisoner to starve?]