Extracts from the diary of a “Unib Kazhezasob” also known as “Unib Lessonboards”
I start this diary far from our arrival in this wretched swamp and only do so because my skepticism about our survival grows.
We arrived to the swamp in 155, when we arrived the place was filled with trees and a brook, none would survive our stay. Geshud Berbisek, our expedition leader declared our mission: “To exploit this land until there’s no distinction between above and below ground.” He appointed a woodcutter, an administrator and a captain of the guard right away from the bunch; I guess that’s why we picked him as the expedition leader, for he could keep the fools from the way by making up jobs on the spot.
After a season of work we had a farm, stills and some workshops areas going and we finally begun the work on the bedrooms while the masons started walling off the site. Unfortunately seven idiots running around a hole in the ground were pretty discrete compared to a huge wall spanning half the field, in autumn we received our first casualty, Moldath the woodcutter had been surprised by a rat-man on the field and stabbed thrice, once in the right arm, other in the shoulder and finally on his chest, piercing the lung. We brought him to a newly excavated room and gave his axe to a migrant.
No one said anything but we understood what was going to happen, if his wounds didn’t killed him the infection would. We had no doctors, no equipment, hell we didn’t even had soap at the time! Geshud assigned him the room he had been brought to rest as his, the first room to be assigned I should note and then put a door on the room: “It’s probably for the best if we give him a little privacy for the moment.”
We tried to continue our daily lives after that with the hope that our wall, once finished would put an end to any other episode of what we had just lived; what we didn’t realize is that our wall would not be finished in that first year.
Not a week after Moldath was hurt, Zunthir Urolerib, the peasant we had given Moldath axe to, was attacked by a gnoll. Since he only had his skull and eyelid damaged we supposed Zuntir was stabbed in the skull through his eye, curiously enough he hadn’t died when we found him. Even more surprising is the fact that after being brought to rest he was up and about in a couple days, with his skull still damaged. A week later Moldath stood from his bed and asked us where the hell was his axe.
After our two battered lumbermen had shrugged off death we reassigned them to a more comfy position, one in the guard, another one in the mine. After that, peace returned to the fortress, rat-men and gnolls would occasionally appear but, drawn to the caravans rather than our void fortress, they’ll be meet with a flurry of bolts or a pissed off guard.
The fortress seemed viable enough, in winter our wall was standing proudly a couple of blocks away from giving us full protection, we were confident, we felt secure for the first time since Moldath’s attack, we were confident the wall would protect us and we were wrong.
It happened in midwinter, as I was still working in the bedrooms an engineer came down to the shaft and started giving me indications to start a mass burial chamber the minute I finished and promised to send me some help at a later time. I told him not to worry, it wasn’t the first time Geshud and I were digging a massive, pointless structure. His face went pale as he told that while I was sleeping Geshud had been attacked. It happened in the meeting area, away from the workshops or the stockpiles. Geshud had been taking a break as, I was, and talking with the townsfolk when the gnoll appeared. He was stabbed multiple times and died of a blow to the head, our militia captain rushed after the gnoll but it escaped through the last hole in our wall, as we spoke, Geshud lied in the floor above ground waiting for burial.
After his burial I asked for his tomb to be engraved or a statue added, the engineer shot me down, we were too close to the necromancers towers and we had no knowledge of how would underground corpses react to it, we had to seal him, asap. Adding insult to injury the bastard then ordered every other tomb I had carved to be smoothed, ordered the excavation of two more rows of tombs, only larger than before to be filled with statues and engravings of statues.
For days I was livid with rage, I’m not sure what would have happened had I not seen Avaloddom, Lovecloisters; aka the sweet pants our militia captain wears; on them was the image of Geshud’s death, one of the witnesses at the hall was tormented by the image, so he crafted this rendition in iron trying to free himself from it and thus giving Geshud’s image live once again, a live which will extend far beyond this banal settlement.
Been a while since I've wanted to do one story about dwarf fortress, so lemme know your opinions.
By the by, this game was played with Ivory's plug in races and modest mod (pretty sure that's why the dwarfs didn't spend their lives after their attacks loitering in the hospital)
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Topic: Certainmirror - Story (Read 1156 times)