Maybe they were using a false name? Though only vampires do that iirc so probably not. You could probably try looking at the history of the fort itself in legends, and try cross referencing from there. That might make it easier to find them if its just a matter of having too many entries to look through. Or maybe you already tried that.
In any event, can you explain what happened with Lord Lubbie or would it be too spoilery?
Spoilers but it's coming. I swear it's coming. It's just frustrating because this episode is going to be long and then summer's going to be a bit short and then fall is going to be utterly wonky.
Edit: Look, here's the rest of it.
Part Three: A Legitmate First-From the Overseer log of Icehold, still Spring of 258-
So we’ve got three like official military squads now. The Golden Onslaughts are assigned to keep the peace under Captain Creepypants. He’s got Bembul, serial grave robber, acting as his second in command because the guy seems to have it together, more or less. Gwolfski and that idiot Shorast bring the number of peacekeepers all the way up to four. Then there’s The Brains of Copper under Sanctume, so named because the squads made up of the last two “sane” military dwarves, Shofet and the motherfucking Eye Stabber, plus a random mason named Nidilap that Sanctume drafted. Then there’s The Humor of Urns, which is Neblime, because I wasn’t about to try taking that crossbow off him and no one else was volunteering to give it a go either. Dude’s become pretty weird since he lost his tongue, but he’s also the only guy who can really shoot worth a damn in this place. I ordered him a full set of steel armor because if and when a dragon decides to pop up he’s fucking facing it alone the best we’ve got. Besides, you never know when a bunch of crundles might need reminding of their place in Armok’s grand shitting scheme.Other than that there’s the civilian core, which I bloody forgot I was in. We didn’t have any leather workers in this place so I suggested to Mosus that she give it a go; it’ll be like her own little handicraft rehabilitation center, shit works in regular prison. Leather armor isn’t exactly the most but I figure it’s better than walking in a couple of holes held together by string, which is the situation most of us are in. The goblins left us a heap of mail shirts when they had the motherfucking good grace to expire all over our front entrance. I figure there’s no harm in wearing those too, waste not want not.
I’ve had all farming stopped until further notice because we’ve got other fish to fry right now. Well actually we don’t have other fish, some fish would be awesome, what we have got is plenty of helmet snake eggs and rat brains to keep us going for now. Plus there’s enough booze to last even the buggers here a month or so.
(OOC: Full disclosure, I was pretty sick while playing Spring in Icehold so I didn't take a lot of screenshots. Some of these shots are substituted from later in the year. Like this one, all the fish shown here was in the hands of human merchants at the time this shot was taken.)
The only other news I’ve got is that I adopted two of the war dogs. I didn’t mean to. I was out getting ready to have the front entrance shut up and taking a last look at the Armok forgotten wasteland outside when I saw the Professor off in the distance underneath a heap of dogs. Motherfucker was spewing forth puke like he was a cherub in the center of a fountain. I hauled him down to our shitty little hospital, could barely fit in there with all the gods damned dogs, but Black Pat was nowhere in evidence. The Professor said it didn’t matter, that he just needed to rest. I asked him what the fuck he thought he was up to out there and he didn’t want to say. I thought it was another nutty experiment but eventually he admitted he’d been after a pair of gloves. Apparently you need gloves in order to science properly, they prevent contamination or something. I told him he didn’t need any shitty goblin gloves, that I’d order him up a pair just as soon as we were done the sock order. Then I asked what his dogs were named and he got all irate and said they weren’t his dogs they were part of an experiment that had gone wrong. I told him they might as well be his dogs so he should just give up and name ‘em, that’s when he gave me two of them. So now I’ve got Bomrek and Rimtar to keep me company. I’m not complaining, it’s nice to have a couple of dogs around when it gets cold at night.
-D.
~~~
The goblin bodies had to be dumped; there was no two ways about it, not with a necromancer tower right next door. Sanctume contemplated this as he finished his survey of the ice sheet surrounding the fortress. Defenses had been set up some time ago but constant battering by monsters and invaders had left them in disrepair. Action would need to be taken there as well. He wandered back from the edge of the “moat” and spotted a figure slumped in the snow. After only a moment’s hesitation, he jogged over to see if he could help.
Sanctume recognized the dwarf instantly. She was a former squad mate of his, Eral, more colloquially known as The Head Smasher. She was sitting in the snow engaged in the thousand mile stare of a dwarf that has slipped into depression in that deep way dwarves have of becoming almost one with the stone from which they were born when under tremendous pressure. He regarded her for a long moment trying to decide what to do. Tradition dictated that dwarves in this state should be left in peace to recover or pass away based on their own will, but the idea of leaving a comrade out in the snow dug at the commander. He would bring her inside, he decided at last, and see that she at least had something to eat and a warm drink. He turned back towards the gate.
DeMarco had said she’d planned to seal the entrance, but he hadn’t expected her to do it so quickly or without warning. Sanctume regarded the solid ice wall for a long moment and then wandered back to Eral. He knelt beside her, opened his flask and tipped some of the liquor into her lax mouth, which the dwarf reflexively swallowed. He would stay by her until someone inside Icehold realized they were missing and sent help. They wouldn’t appoint him commander of the militia only to leave him to freeze to death before serving his first full month.
Surely they wouldn’t.
(OOC: Okay, so what happened here was pretty stupid. I saw that Sanctume and Eral had gotten outside somehow after the way had been sealed and so I'd assumed they'd done it by the outside staircase somehow. You know the one that's for emptying out the moat pit? They were out there for like a month before I remembered that the moat pit doesn't give access to the actual fort and they'd just somehow been out there when I had the gates shut. Woops. Sanctume spent the whole time trying to take care of Eral and as soon as the way was open he carried her to the infirmary himself. It was sort of touching.)
~~~
“There’s a gremlin running around the caverns messing with our cage traps!”
DeMarco was going over the stockpiles in the cavern dining room. She looked up at Nidilap, the newest militia recruit, feeling somewhat dazed. Counting had never been one of her stronger skills.
“What?”
“A kid spotted a gremlin the caverns! I heard her shouting about it,” insisted Nidilap.
“What kid? We don’t have any little kids around here.”
“She’s-” Nidilap turned around and blinked. “She was right behind me when I came to find you.”
“Forget about it, it’s more important to get the squads together and stop the gremlin,” said DeMarco. “Go tell Sanctume you’ve got a job.”
“Alright sir, where’s the commander?”
“How should I fucking know? Look, just go chase down the thing yourself. It’s your fucking job.”
Nidilap saluted and left for the caverns, though he never located either the goblin or the mysterious child who had warned him of its presence.
(OOC: I don't know how little Onul got out of The Place but it worked out rather well for me in the end. She's back in there now at least.)
~~~
A lone dwarf made her way down a long narrow staircase in a forgotten back tunnel of Icehold. She came to a hallway with a row of disused craft workshops which she bypassed without so much as a glance. The end of the hall looked like a dead end, only the slightly lighter color of the stone indicating that this was a more recent construction. She checked over her shoulder out of long habit and then knocked on the wall.
“Who’s there?” grunted a muffled voice.
“Black Pat, little Onul said big Onul needed help.”
“Where’s Miss Honeymoon?”
“Busy, we’ve got a new Overseer out here and she’s got everyone running around like monkeys trying to catch their own tails, moving things so they’re set up just the way she likes ‘em. If you need something you’re stuck with me, ‘fraid to say.”
There was a long silence. “How do I know I can trust your story?” demanded the voice, which squeaked mid sentence.
“Open this bloody wall Kogan or I’ll have words with your father.”
The wall slid a foot or so forward and Kogan Whipspeakers peeped out through the crack. Upon seeing his pale bloodless face and hollowed out cheeks, Black Pat swallowed back the scolding she’d been planning to deliver. Whatever was happening was of greater concern than she’d imagined.
“You look awful boy, what’s gone wrong down here?”
Kogan folded his arms and leveled his patented glare at her. Black Pat, who had spent far too many years married to a master of bullshit intimidation, barely took notice. Finally, the boy stepped back and answered, “What hasn’t gone wrong? You should speak to Onul.”
The Place was far less noisy than it had been on her last trip down. The kids still seemed cheerful, which was a blessed relief after the last couple of months in the outer fortress, but they were sluggish. Instead of running around playing their games, they were lying sprawled across the chairs and tables in the dining area or sitting on the stairs. None of them took any notice of the outside adult entering their domain. Kogan led Black Pat through the silent main room to where Onul was slumped over a loom.
“Pat, what are you doing here?” asked Onul, peering up at the two of them through reddened eyes.
“I sent little Onul to find help,” confessed Kogan. “I know you said not to let them out but I had to. This is a mess.”
“I’m on the boy’s side with this one,” said Black Pat. “You need a drink and a rest, my girl, that’s a medical opinion.”
“I’m fine,” protested Onul. “Everything is fine; it’s just that I can’t keep up. I thought I could farm enough food and make clothing for everyone but… even with Kogan’s help I’m not keeping up, and I don’t know what I did with the seeds… and…”
“Hey take it easy,” said Kogan. “Everyone in here knows you work super hard, it’s not your fault.”
“It’s not anyone’s fault, unless it’s everyone’s fault,” said Black Pat. She looked around at all the pinched hungry faces in the tight little space. “Obviously we didn’t think this all the way through before we did it.”
“We did everything…” started Onul.
Black Pat held up a hand to forestall her. “I know, we were had a tight schedule trying to get it all done before someone took over for the Professor, and good thing too. The last thing we want is that Urkad down here.”
Onul jumped up, making a shushing gesture. “Urkad’s daughter,” she hissed and pointed. Black Pat glanced over her shoulder and saw a tiny figure sitting on the lip of the well watching them.
“Oh right, yeah, but my point still stands. Anyway, we rushed it and now we’ve hit trouble. But we can still fix things I think.” Black Pat saw the horror suffuse Onul’s expression and hurried to reassure her. “I’ll find us trustworthy people to help; this place will stay a secret. Everyone’s busy but I can snag us one or two workers when no one’s looking. How about that Lord Lubbie? The idea of helping kids will make him happy and his girlfriend’s a miner, she can help us expand the storerooms a bit. Our other miner’s Difio and he’s got even less to say than his tongue-less son. I think we can trust them with this, and I’ll keep stopping by of course.”
“Lubbie has a girlfriend?” asked Onul, distracted from everything else by this bit of improbable news.
Black Pat burst out laughing. “I know, right?”
~~~
Nobody was coming for them.
Sanctume had come to accept this with a certain degree of disappointment but no real surprise. So far he’d been able to keep himself and Eral alive out of the supplies in his pack but there was no escaping the fact that the Head Smasher was in serious need of medical attention. He’d spent a great deal of time inspecting the interior of the moat but there was no way he could safely drag the inert dwarf down those slippery ice stairs into the more sheltered area. Instead, he built a windbreak around her. At last, resigned, he went to have another look over the wall that was sealing them out. Before anything else, Sanctume was a dwarf. He found a likely looking weak spot in the ice and began to patiently chip away at it with his mace.
~~~
“And that’s where we stand. Can you help us out and keep it quiet?” Black Pat asked Udil. She’d called the miner into the scant infirmary and closed to the door behind them, but she still kept her voice down.
“Of course Pat,” answered Udil, matching her tone to Black Pat’s. “You know we’d be happy to do everything we can for the poor children.”
Black Pat nodded, satisfied. She trusted Udil, a trust that had been earned gradually over the course of the last eight years. It was obvious what had attracted someone like Lubbie to her, that wasn’t the mystery of their relationship. Sometimes it crossed Pat’s mind to wonder how the helpful, cheerful dwarf in front of her had come to be exiled to a haunted glacier, but she’d never found the desire to actually ask. There were few things left in life that Black Pat truly feared, but disappointment was one of them. Maybe it was better to accept people for whom and what they were at the present moment and not what they had done, especially in a place like this.
“Can you make that-” Black Pat hastily bit back the first adjective that had come to mind in association with “Lord” Lubbie and substituted in another, “-that boyfriend of yours understand?”
Udil chuckled. “Sometimes I have to repeat myself a few times but I always get through-”
“Pat!”
The two dwarves exchanged a look and Udil slid off the bed nearest to the door and out of the way just before it was kicked open. Sanctume strode into the room. He had a dwarf slumped over his shoulder, frost scattered across his armor and icicles hanging from his beard. Without another word, he dropped his unconscious burden onto one of the beds and then turned to face them. They stared at the spectacle before them, rendered speechless.
“My companion and I could use some assistance, if either of you ladies would be so gracious,” he said.
~~~
Three floors down from the infirmary, Urkad, formerly a business dwarf, now demoted to woodcutter, piled bits of mushroom tree into the stockpile and cursed. There were spores encrusted across the length of her leather armor and more on her boots. The whole outfit was permanently stained and she was unlikely to ever get another, especially now that she’d lost all of her connections with that worthless smuggler’s unprecedented rise to power.
Urkad had gotten the scoop on that particular lazy bellyacher from one of her informants back during her own time in the Mountainhome. The kid’s family had been running a forge in the lower quarter for generations. They’d stuck strictly to reclamation work and thus she hadn’t considered them direct rivals. People would bring them certain treasures they had found but couldn’t, safely, unload anywhere and the furnace operator would melt them down and the jeweler would rescue and resell any gems or ornamentation, all for a nominal fee. What no one had known, until the kid made her dimwitted misstep, was that the heart of Erush’s forge, reputed to be capable of melting otherwise indestructible materials, had been actual dragon fire. At some time in the distant past, an ancestor had tamed one of the damned things and chained it up under the forge. All to the good, until the beast had laid eggs and the little twit had snuck them out of the forge and sold them to her dimwitted friends as souvenirs. To be fair, who would have guessed that the things would be viable? Anyway, most of a burrow had gone up one night and the surviving customers had immediately fingered the girl. The authorities had seized the entire family and convicted them all in a single trial. Urkad remembered that the story had made her laugh the first time she’d heard it.
How had a kid who lacked the brains Armok gave a troglodyte managed to take Icehold from her? The answer was simple, really. There was only one Queen Bee in this hive, as Urkad had long suspected, and the smuggler’s appointment as Overseer was entirely her doing. The clerk had gotten jealous, knowing that Urkad’s growing power base had threatened her own, so she’d engineered Urkad’s downfall and replaced her with an easily controllable idiot. She had put two and two together after her banishment to the caverns. The question now was: what was she going to do about it?
As things stood, she had precious few options. The Queen Bee’s drones were everywhere and Urkad wasn’t certain whom she could trust. Not Ablel, he was just a kid. Not Shorast either, he was too stupid. These thoughts twisted in her mind as she made her way back towards the stairs that would take her back down to the bloody caverns when she ran smack into another dwarf.
This wasn’t that uncommon, even though there were only a few dwarves left in Icehold these days the stairs were quite narrow. What was unusual was the exchange that followed.
“My deepest apologies,” said Lord Lubbie. He took off his cap and nodded to her.
“Not you,” groaned Urkad. This response lacked some of her usual subtly but it had been a long day and she had no patience for dealing with Icehold’s resident bleeding heart.
“You seem to be in some difficulty madam, may I be of any assistance?” pursued Lubbie, attracted to her weariness like a shark to blood.
Many years ago, when the idea of Icehold had first been bandied about in the halls of the elite as a solution to King Vucar’s… unique set of difficulties, Lord Lubbie had been the most persistent and outspoken opponent of the plan. You could not simply discard dwarves like rubbish, he’d insisted. Every sentient being had purpose and the potential to contribute to the Infinite World; the failure to discover and fulfill that potential was a failure on the part of the society and not the individual alone. Princess Limul, who had once watched her sisters kill a tamed songbird and then share its eyeballs between themselves as a mid-afternoon snack, had insisted that some potential was best spent far away from civilization where at least any damage it did could be directed at the enemies of dwarf kind. Limul’s eventual coronation had rendered all arguments to the contrary moot.
He hadn’t surrendered though. Lord Lubbie, looked down upon by others of rank and privilege as a pitiful fool, was so devoted to his ideals that he had consigned himself to exile for them. If Icehold were going to exist then it would exist as a living monument to his philosophies. It would be an oasis in a frozen desert, proof of what those society had shunned were capable of when given even half a chance. And to a perhaps surprising extent, Icehold was just that. Lord Lubbie had taken to laboring like a common field hand and from his sweat and effort the soil of the caverns had borne fruit. The exiles faced many problems, but hunger was no longer among them. And if there were many deaths there were also many births, the children flourishing hidden away in their own small stronghold. Even he, who had always considered himself married to his cause, had found love, life and even a kind of beauty here in these distant halls.
That didn’t mean that the dwarves of Icehold were happy. Lord Lubbie would have been a fool indeed to believe that. The best of them put their pasts behind them and focused on the future with a grim species of determination that allowed for little in the way of diversion or creativity. Many of the rest stewed in bitter resentment, going about tasks when ordered to and shirking all duties, both personal and communal, when not under direct threat of punishment. And a few, Lubbie thought of the so-called Professor whom he always avoided whenever possible, had gone past all normal coping mechanisms into something far worse. The dwarf in front of him hadn’t gone that far yet. Here was someone who could still be helped.
“What are you looking at?” demanded Urkad, growing a bit wary. Staring, in Icehold, was usually a harbinger of trouble.
“My apologies again, I was wondering if you would like to come discuss your troubles with me over a glass of dwarven wine.”
“No.” Urkad attempted to push past him but he simply followed her.
“Why not? Talking things over might make you feel better and it’s not as though you have anything to lose by it.”
Urkad stopped, and sighed. He had a point. If she were going to start fighting her way back into the center of Icehold’s power structure, she might as well start with the fortress idiot and work her way up from there. As a plan it had at least one benefit going for it, no one would predict it.
~~~
Eral woke up in the hospital. She was annoyed by this. She had lost everything to Icehold, her husband, her children, and the last thing she’d wanted was to wake up inside of it once more. In fact, she hadn’t really wanted to wake up again at all. And yet, here she was. Life had taught the Head Smasher only one method for coping with difficulty, and she employed it now.
Ablel, the young Enforcer, had the misfortune to be rounding the corner heading for the pig tail stockpile when a red blur burst out of the hospital and came pelting for the stairs. Something hit him upside the head and he fell down the steps. Later, he would be discovered and carried to the same hospital where Black Pat would sew up his cuts and splint his broken arm. He would have no memory of the incident that caused his injuries.
Meanwhile, Eral continued down the stairs seeking something, anything, that would make this sense of being stretched inside her soul end. It was unbearable. If it would ease or snap then everything would be over and good, but it wouldn’t and nothing was good. Nothing could ever be good, not here, not now.
She entered the room of an old comrade.
Nobody saw.
~~~
There were moments when Mistem questioned his decision to spare the dwarves of Icehold from Vesh’s will. The deity’s plans for the fortress were likely inevitable, but he’d chosen not to be the instrument of them. Waking up after receiving an elbow to the jaw and finding Adil (pyromaniac) straddling him in his bed, Mistem questioned that choice. While fighting off grogginess and trying to make words out of Adil’s frantic babbling, Mistem took a quiet moment to question every choice he had ever made over the course of his entire life.
“Dog tallow what?” asked Mistem.
“Someone threw a piece of dog tallow and it killed a dog!” gasped Adil.
“And…?”
“And then they started coming for me! So I ran in here and locked the door. Mistem, you have to believe me!”
(OOC: Mistem's in the bed but dwarves constantly flash in this place so it doesn't show. Adil did spend most of the time huddled on top of the poor fellow.)
“I do believe you,” said Mistem. He sighed and tried to shift Adil off him but the other dwarf was clinging to his shirt. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know.” Adil was still panting hard and gulping between words. “I just ran, Mistem. I just ran!”
~~~
The Head Smasher had run out of tempting moving targets. The last one had disappeared behind a door that had closed with a definitive click. She looked from side to side and saw someone stirring in the dining room. She once again raised her fists and ran in that direction.
Zaneg was on break. She was in no mood for conversation, or indeed, any interaction that involved other twitchy citizenry of Icehold. She thumped her bronze axe down on the floor and turned to face the dwarf approaching her.
“What the hell do you want Eral?”
The Head Smasher froze in her tracks. The prey wasn’t running. It was staring- no glaring at her and its axe was shining in the light. Something that had been pulled loose inside Eral’s head seemed to thump back into place.
“N-nothing Zaneg!”
Zaneg snorted. “Good.”
Eral quickly turned and left the dining room. She looked down at the blood on her hands, her brain suddenly ticking over into double time. A wash, that’s what she needed, and then maybe a pair of socks. Fresh socks would make all of this look better, she was sure of it.
~~~
“Don’t open the door!” Adil all but shrieked.
Mistem turned and looked at her. “I can’t do anything from inside here.”
Adil chewed on her fingers, eyes darting back and forth while she considered this point. She then dove under the bed and pulled down the blankets. “Alright! Go ahead!”
Mistem heaved another mighty sigh and readied himself. He unfastened the deadbolt and flung the door open and saw… nothing. The hall was devoid of all signs of life. He stuck his head out and peered around but still, nothing. Not so much as a drip of blood. He shrugged and closed the door again.
“Are they coming?” squeaked Adil.
“I don’t think so,” answered Mistem. He wondered if it was too late to go back to bed.
~~~
Onul sat watching Black Pat working in the fields. She’d tried to help but the founding mother of Icehold hadn’t allowed it. She had to admit, sitting down felt pretty good. She could almost hear her feet sighing in relief. The older dwarf wasn’t much for chit chat but the silence felt companionable with her in it. Both of them looked up at the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs. Lord Lubbie arrived carrying the expected plump helmets and behind him…
“Oh no…” Black Pat seemed to breathe the words. She dropped the seeds she’d been working with and ran to block the way, for what little good it would do now. “What is she doing here?”
Urkad ignored the question and looked around, almost overwhelmed by the sight of so many children after so long in the main fortress.
“Pat…” said Lubbie, using his most placating tone. “Urkad and I have had a long talk and she says she’s ready to start working out her differences and I thought-”
“Thought!” shouted Black Pat. “Did someone do some thinking around here? I’m amazed. Lubbie! You know you’re only supposed to come up here with Udil. We agreed that this place has to be a secret. Get her out of here now!”
“Pat, the children…” started Onul but Black Pat simply waved a dismissive hand at her.
“Out, Lubbie, get out now!”
“You’re not listening to me,” protested Lord Lubbie. “The two of us talked and-”
“Not listening! You’re the one who won’t listen. You broke a promise, Lubbie, a promise to me and to your girlfriend and to all the-”
“Mommy!”
Three of the adult dwarves all paused and looked in unison as a small figure pushed her way through the crowded sitting room and flung herself at the Urkad, who knelt down and engulfed the little one in her arms. The silence suddenly became tense and awkward, broken only by the sound of snuffling coming from within Urkad’s embrace.
“I told her she could bring food for her daughter,” announced Lord Lubbie as he tried, and failed, not to look self-righteous.
“I thought she was gone,” Urkad spoke for the first time. She looked up and all could see that there were tears running down her cheeks. “I thought she was gone and there was nothing I could do about it. You should have told me! Why did you all run around behind my back and never mention that Lokem was alive this whole time?”
For a long moment and seemed like no one was going to have an answer. Then Onul stepped forward. “We built this place to be a stronghold to protect the children and we kept it a secret for the same reason. That’s why we sealed it off and we’ve… tried to keep it separate from the rest of the fortress. You were Overseer; you must know how risky it is out there.”
Urkad nodded, freeing a hand from her daughter in order to wipe at her eyes. “I think I understand, even if I don’t necessarily agree with your reasoning. If a monster came up out of the caverns it could wipe out all of Icehold in a day, or less.”
Black Pat, who had served as a medic for many years and had seen hardened criminals blubbering under all kinds of circumstances, was a great deal less impressed by Urkad’s tears then the other two were. “I’m more worried about the monsters that live in here with us.” Especially the one sitting in front of me now, she thought but did not add. “Whatever your personal opinion is, this place has got to stay a secret or we’ve got a major problem.”
Urkad met her eyes and yes, underneath the shining wetness, Black Pat could see the familiar shrewd expression and was troubled.
“I give you my word as a leg- … I give you my word as mother that I won’t tell anyone about what you’re doing up here, just so long as you let me keep seeing my daughter.”
“I don’t see how anyone could argue with that,” said Lord Lubbie.
“Not unless we want to deal with disposing of the body in front of a bunch of damn kids,” growled Black Pat not quite under breath.
“Thank you Urkad,” added Onul, quickly. “And I’m sorry if we hurt you. I was so busy trying to get the kids away from the Professor that I didn’t think what it might do to the parents. A lot of dwarves in Icehold don’t seem to care much about family.”
“Well I’m not one of them,” replied Urkad, “and now you know that.”
“Right, and you can keep coming up here while we’re making repairs,” agreed Onul.
“There’s a lot of work to be,” added Lord Lubbie. “The more hands the merrier!”
Black Pat drew Onul away back towards the mushroom farm, leaving Urkad to introduce her daughter to her new friend. “This is a disaster. We have to work fast and get this place sealed up again,” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” answered Onul. “Maybe Lubbie’s right. We didn’t really treat her fairly.”
“Phaw.” Black Pat snorted. “I suppose there’s a first time for everything, but I’m not so sure this is one of them.”
(OOC: I considered ignoring this moment, since I had opened up The Place without going through and modifying labors or creating new burrows to keep people out. Except when I saw this happen, almost the moment I took the wall down, it really did make me jump. Also, the only people I've seen spend time in the place have been Black Pat, Difio, Lord Lubbie, Urkad, and a few appearances by Honeymoon and Lubbie's girlfriend (both bringing treats for the kiddies). I think it's because statistically at this point most of the useful adult dwarves are characters in one way or another, and the main characters in the story are also the most vital in actual game play.
Anyway, I had no idea this would be so hard to write! I know I blamed Lubbie but actually his motivations make perfect sense. He came to Icehold to help wayward dwarves back onto the true path of righteousness. The real difficulty was trying to write a scene where Urkad put up with the guy for more than five seconds that sounded halfway plausible. Even now, I'm not sure I trust her motivations.)
~~~
DeMarco had spent the first part of her break getting thoroughly hammered with The Professor around the gem window dining table. That bit of dubious fun accomplished, she’d decided to finish off her vacation nursing her hangover in the Icehold cemetery while visiting with what was left of her family. It was actually the nicest room in the fortress. The coffins were well made and it was peaceful, removed as it was from the daily struggles of life on the glacier. She left feeling oddly refreshed and more at peace with herself than she had since her appointment as Overseer.
That was until Rimtar ran off. This was just as DeMarco had been heading back to working, meaning to meet with the others and check on the progress of clothing production. She might have just let him go, if she hadn’t seen him pushing open the door of somebody’s bedroom. Groaning to herself, she ran after the wayward canine.
“No Rimtar! You can’t just go… into… other people’s… rooms…” The scolding deflated as she took in the scene in front of her, mainly the dead body lying on the bed in a vast pool of congealing blood.
(OOC: Again, flashing, argh. I spent forever trying to get one of DeMarco in the actual room with the dead body but they just wouldn't show up. This was the closest I ever got. In retrospect, I should have just captured the purple "Dumed The Loose Cannon Has Been Found Dead" announcement. Yes, DeMarco was the one who found the body... or maybe it was Rimtar... but she went in there.)
said a voice in her head.
You don’t know that it was murder, coldblooded sneaking murder done in perfect secret so that no one knows who, among all the murderers living here, has decided to get back in the game. After all, he might have bashed in his own skull, you never know.Something heavy and hair brushed up against the back of DeMarco’s legs. If she’d had any breath left she would have screamed. Instead, she just squeaked like a mouse whose tail has been stepped on and looked down.
“Oh, Mafol,” she gasped.
The boar seemed to almost smile up at her. He’d taken to following her around after the day she’d rescued him from the butcher’s block. Seeing him was a relief, until she realized that she was going to have to get all these animals out of the room before one of them disturbed the crime scene by snacking on the evidence.
“Rimtar! Come here now!” She grabbed the pig by the ear and the dog by the tail and pulled until they were all moving back into the main caverns. Once they were out of the horrible little room, DeMarco began to feel like she could breathe again. She took several steps away and sucked in air, trying to clear her head. She ought to be running to tell Captain Deus what she’d found but…
A dwarf passed them on the way to the food stockpiles. DeMarco looked into her hollow staring eyes and recognized her, vaguely, as one of the military dwarves she’d fired. Dimly, DeMarco noticed that she was wearing four pairs of socks and carrying another, there were also no less than three loincloths strung about her waist but no trousers or shoes. The moment seemed to go on forever, the ex-soldier staring at her even after she’d passed by. Then the other dwarf was gone and she was alone with Rimtar and Mafol again.
“This place is about to pop like a Golden Wowser with a chest cold,” she told the pig and the dog. “We have to keep… our discovery to ourselves guys, at least for now. If this gets out… now…” She shook her head. “Well, at least I know I can trust you two to keep quiet.”
That was a relief at least, because DeMarco wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to trust any of the dwarves living in Icehold ever again.
(OOC: There aren't dragon species in DF yet really, so I borrowed some.
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Topic: Icehold, the Dwarven Prison: Overseers desperately needed! (Read 37596 times)