Just to accelerate the timetable, I'm dwarf all of the requests as current dwarfs and hand-wave it off as a mgrant wave. After all, it's a penal colony, there isn't a schedule for arrivals
It begins.---
Have arrived in fortress. Wondered about accomodations - I'm theoretically here voluntarily. Thankfully I won't have to find myself an empty cell - I can take a room abandoned by the guards.
Well, perhaps not thankfully. Many of the guards are dead. Most of those who remain have shifted their allegiance to the locals. Makes sense, they're as much prisoners of this place as the criminals. The desert is a more efficient guard than a dwarf ever could be.
It seems that the baron was recently killed. It was declared suicide be animal. Cause is irrelevant; fortress is currently in a state of functional anarchy. It has no nominal leader, and the dwarfs seek to fulfill their own objectives.
Order is kept, it seems, by the balance of power between a few gangs. These gangs prevent criminal activity that would be detrimental to the fortress, although it would be foolish to think this is out of altruism. Currently, the most powerful faction in Steelhold appears to be a cult of demon-worshippers lead by some masked prophet. Troubling.
My continued survival would best be served by avoiding gang conflict. One dwarf, Asmoth, seems to be particularly respected here. I must seek to ingratiate myself with her; such an association would allow me to eschew factional politics and sell my services to the highest bidder.
Except the highest bidder must bid some assurance of my continued survival. There's something twisted in one of the furniture stockpiles - I haven't dared investigate, but the Thaumometer doesn't lie. And the Masked Dwarf is mining adamantine at a steady rate - given his/hers/its? stated objectives, we might soon come face to face with the masters of our local prophet. I have no intention of doing so. I prefer my higher powers uninvolved in mortal affairs.
So, I must speak with the masked dwarf. If I can get them to agree to allow me to design a complex in which we will "welcome" their masters to the caverns, I can implement certain defenses. No matter how many I can kill or contain, however, the masked dwarf will have to be removed from power if they continue to seek to unleash the hordes. Hopefully none of this will be necessary, and the masked dwarf won't unleash hell.
In the worst case scenario, however, I need to find another leader who can seize control of the fortress from the cultists and offer them what support I can. I hear stories of a dwarf called Rhaken who led the dwarfs in the caverns during Lenehan's "illness" as they call it here.
And as always, none of these plans can be allowed to become common knowledge. My plans might be uncovered through thaumaturgical means, but there is no avoiding that. I must play politics to the point where my murder would be too great of an inconvenience.
I need a workshop, access to the stockpiles and blackmail material. I must survive, regardless of the cost. They didn't send me here for my moral restraint.
And I wanted to avoid playing politics. I'll need some guarantee of my personal safety here, with so little law and order. I will construct a weapon immediately. And I must collect samples of this alchemical agent lying around here. Something that can alter the structure of a creature will be useful. And applying it will be easy if you don't expect the subject to survive...
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Topic: The Insidious Sons of Steelhold -- Revival Succession Fortress (Read 271542 times)