Spring 303
Excerpt from
Visions of the Abyss: The Early Years of Bloodyhells by Iyathi "Archereon" Awemedinade:
The situation in
Nashonshash upon my arrival was one of near total despair. Flame, the dwarf who had opened up the hatch cover for us, was apparently one of two surviving dwarves left in the fortress, the other being Zuglarkun Rigathuson a young miner who looked to be barely out of his teens. There had until very recently been a third, the mayor of the settlement, but he had disappeared into the night shortly after the arrival of spring, seemingly favoring his chances with the husks over staying put in the ruins of the settlement. The rest of the population had perished in a desperate battle against one of the great titans of the wild, which had been warped by cursed fog into an unstoppable monstrosity. With no means of slaying the creature, it had been lured into a hastily dug labyrinth, and sealed away. Sure enough, from the re-purposed dining room the survivors were using as a base, I could hear the sound of claws scratching stone emanating from the far wall of an adjacent corridor. In its rampage, the beast had inflicted terrible damage upon the fortress, and, other than the small, and apparently recently dug passageway to the surface, the upper levels of the settlement were lost, with the reanimated corpses of the fortress's livestock blocking access to the fortress's great stockpiles, as well as the farms. We were in no danger of starving immediately however, as the dining room had an enormous pantry, stocked with enough food to last through the year with just the five of us. Initially I was incredulous of this claim, since surely the food would spoil long before we were in danger of running out, but apparently, dwarven preservation techniques are indeed every bit as miraculous as the stories claim. While it would be many months before we regained access to fresh food, I never became ill from my meals, nor did the food lose its taste over time.
As I stood out like a sore thumb, it wasn't long before the dwarves of Nashonshash asked of my purpose so far away from the elven homelands. While Spish and NCommander seemed cordial enough, I had the distinct impression that the other two were itching for an excuse to lynch me. Moreover, I was fairly certain that, even should I complete my task and return home whole, the Queen would quickly think of another errand for me that would prove to be even deadlier, and with the mayor gone, there was no figure of authority to officially receive the message. Thus, I claimed to have been exiled from the elven kingdoms, and seeking my fortune in dwarven lands. Though I personally do not approve of the wanton clear cutting of forestry that dwarves and humans indulge in, without the magic of the shapers, they have no means of harvested appreciable quantities of wood otherwise.
But I digress. The most pressing issue facing the fortress was, surprisingly enough, not the numerous undead stalking the halls of the upper fortress, which had been sealed off behind a pair of sturdy rock doors, but rather the rather alarming rate at which water was flooding the lower levels of the fortresses. Both Flame and Zuglarkun insisted they had nothing to do with it, and bickered endlessly, even as the water rose to their waists. The source of this flooding was a mishandled irrigation project of some sorts, perhaps intended for agriculture closer to the fortress's heart, which had apparently been drawing water from the local aquifer. A second breach, consisting of a shaft dug upwards into the aquifer from what appeared to be a cell block, also contributed to the flooding, but was in an area with enough drainage for Spish and myself to plug the gap after only a few days of struggle against the current.
The breach closer to the stairwell was of far greater concern; at no point in time was the water low enough for someone to work effectively. In the end, it was NCommander who came up with a solution; use a pump. This required an expedition into the caverns however, as our chosen holdout was cutoff from the fortresses wood stockpile. Seemingly looking to rid themselves of me, Flame and Zuglarkun immediately volunteered me for the task. Both seemed surprised when, several hours layer, I returned with a armful of logs harvested from one of the great mushrooms found in the deep. While I took little joy in destroying such a magnificent specimen, I understand the concept of necessity. With the pump in place and NCommander cranking it faster than I would've thought possible, the water level near the breach quickly dropped, and it was a relatively simple matter to plug the gap. This was the first of many challenges that we would face in my first year at Bloodyhells, and, as was often the case, overcoming it came at a great cost. The lowest levels of the fortress, situated just above the vast seas of magma that form the bedrock of the world, were completely flooded, and without them, there was no means of making new tools. For the better part of a day, the survivors of Nashonshash debated the best strategy to drain the forges, a conversation that I was, at best, on the periphery of. After several hours of pouring over the maps of the fortress while the others retraced the same arguments for what must have been the tenth time, inspiration struck; not far from the former tavern we had taken up as a temporary home, there was a pillar of stone that passed through all three cavern layers uninterrupted. So I suggested that, with our limited manpower, instead of spending years draining the water from the stairwell into the deep, we simply excavate a new one, something NCommander asserted could be done within the month. He turned out to be exaggerating, but only slightly; by the end of the first week of Felsite, the initial shaft was complete.
While we now had access to magma as a source of heat, one of the essential components of a forge, an anvil, was missing. According to Flame, there was at least one leftover in the fortress's main stockpiles, well beyond the part of the fortress considered secure. While it obviously been preferable to equip ourselves before venturing into the unknown, without a working forge that wouldn't be an option. After fashioning crude shields for ourselves out of wood, Flame and I departed on an expedition to the upper fortress to recover the missing anvil, while Spish, Zulgarkun, and NCommander left to begin digging out a new foundry area in the depths. While the obvious path towards the stockpiles would be to travel through the set of stone doors near the top the main staircase, the sound of something—or rather several somethings—scratching at the door persuaded us to take the long way around, down the tunnel to the west of the tavern. We walked for about an hour in virtual silence, passing through winding tunnels, down a series of hastily dug ramps and over a shallow chasm carved from the rock for reasons unknown and up a winding staircase. Most of this journey was made in complete darkness, and though elves can see well enough in the dark, it was very clear I was at a disadvantage compared to Flame. Finally, we came to a partially flooded storeroom. Debris was scattered all over the floor, and the water rose to Flame's knees and my calves, so the the process of searching the room was long, involved, and freezing cold. After more than half an hour and the third sweep through the room, we could take it no longer, and left the water, taking refuge in a damp, but comparatively warm stairwell on the western side of the room.
"I don't think it's here, unless its somewhere behind that hideous statue." I said, referring to an artfully made orthoclase statue depicting a visibly diseased dwarf, seemingly a leper, embracing a robed, skeletal figure, blocking the entrance to one of the stockpile's side rooms.
"Most pieces of Tarem are like that." said Flame. "What else would you expect from the dwarven god of death and disease?" she continued. "Oh, and also suicide." she added.
"I'm not sure why people would venerate such a being in the first place, certainly not people like Spish and Zuglarkun; they both seem to be reasonably well adjusted." I replied.
"There's two schools of thoughts regarding worship of Tarem; the first being that offerings and prayers to him help stave of death and disease, and helps ensure a good place in the next life. He doesn't like to talk about it, but Zuglar's lost pretty much everyone he cared about to this place. He came here with a wife, a baby boy, and his parents. He's the only one left at this point."
"Oh." was the only reply I could muster.
"Yeah, I'm getting a bit sick of this philosophical whatchamacallit it, so can we get on with the search?" She asked. I nodded, despite being rather curious about the
other school of thought regarding worship of the dwarven death god. Fairly certain that the missing anvil was not behind the statue of Tarem, we proceeded up the stairwell, and found ourselves in what Flame identified as the main level of the fortress, specifically the livestock area.
"But where are the livestock?" I asked, though I already suspected the answer.
A sarcastic quipe from Flame was cut off by the soft clattering of light, webbed feet. Five nearly skeletal ducks clambered out of a small pond, seemingly roused by the sound of our conversation. While I initially thought very little of the threat the creatures posed, it proved extremely difficult for either of us to actually land a blow, something which was not true of our opponents, who left a score of bruises and minor gashes all over my body, and I came perilously close to collapsing from exhaustion, at which point the creatures would've been free to peck my eyes out. Still, our vastly superior strength triumphed in the end, and while several of the corpses stirred, without numbers on their side, they were easily dispatched. While I would've liked nothing more than to lie down and rest at that point, the odds were good that something far more menacing was prowling these halls, so we set to work searching for the anvil almost immediately. We found it half buried in mud and heavily rusted, not far from the stairwell. We dragged it part of the way back, through the flooded storeroom to avoid further rusting, and headed back to relay the good news.
For the remainder of the month, I was hard at work carting ingots down to the forge area for future use. The others set to work excavating the beginnings of a living area, and eating area, some bedrooms, and a few extra rooms to be used for storage. The decision to move down to the lower levels was one motivated firstly by the exhausting walk down to the new forges, and secondly by a desire to be as far away from the surface as possible. So we dug, deeply and greedily, setting the stages for the start of a new chapter in the history of Nashonshash.
((note, it seems as if certain small undead body parts, ie heads are sometimes bugged in such a way that makes them invincible; if faced with such an enemy, I've found you can force dwarves to withdraw from a fight by switching to an alert which restricts them to a burrow they are not currently in, and deactivating the squad if they're a militia dwarf; that makes them run back to the burrow if possible. Use cage traps and drop them into lava to get rid of them for good, or alternatively use them for training.))
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Topic: Bloodyhells - Succession: Battlefailed #5 (42.06) (Read 133961 times)