Akituh, Snapping Turtle Man
Nobody shot down the plan to fish, I thought for sure someone would. Nobody else showed any interest in helping though, meaning they all probably just don't care. No matter, Scourge will be more than enough help. He still looks at me with hostility every time I see him, but then again, it seems that he's doing that to everyone. Except his cat, who I've been told is named Whitestripe. I've tried to pet him once or twice, but before I even get close Scourge tries to punch and claw me. It doesn't really impact me that much so I should quite stalling and get out onto the ice. I need to remember to make sure that Scourge doesn't try to drown me over a misunderstanding of some kind.
Well, that fishing trip could have gone better. Scourge didn't try to drown me or use me as bait, but I severely overestimated our combined fishing skills. Scourge did some diving, he saw fish but wasn't able to catch any "Fizzzzh too fazzt, try for zhellfizzzh now". He stayed down for quite a while for that one, while I stayed on the surface to see I could catch any of the 'too fazzt' fish with a pole and line. While doing so I noticed Ineth trying to spy on me from behind some ice, he was snarling with his axe at the ready. Either he wants me dead too, or he was ready to hack any milkfish we pulled up to pieces. I was about to yell over and ask what he was doing and explain some things to him about milkfish when scourge popped up through the hole and plopped a bag of coins onto the ice. "No luck with the shellfish?" I asked, I was a bit disappointed. I really do love the taste of mussels and a steady supply would have been great. "buried, but lotzz of debris, mozztly trazzh, but found thozzze" he said with a huff inbetween each phrase, probably both in anger and in an attempt to get more air into his lungs. "well its still a great find, means there's a lot more potential treasures for us to find later" I said as I pulled out a coin, noting they did infact have a skull on one side and a tower on the other. Seems the people who lived here liked to stick to their theme. I suddenly felt a lot more resistance on my line. I pulled it out in hopes I had caught something edible, only to have a pair of soaked leather underwear fly out of the hole and smack me in the face. "izzz zat, leather underwear?" Scourge asked, seemingly confused as to why such a thing would exist this far north. "It appears so, why don't we take a break and give it a try another day" I said, still in a positive mood after finding there was loot to be salvaged out of this see. He just shrugged and started walking back to the fort. He left the coins, so I took them to see if he wanted them or if I could add them to the pile of stuff Urist had been finding. I wasn't quite sure what to do with the underwear though.
The fort was bustling more than usual upon my return, it seems a caravan had come through. I also noticed the gremlin had gathered a few people to start building an entrance. I say entrance, but after walking by and hearing his plans for lava and green glass serrated disks I'd say 'deathtrap' would be a better word to describe it. But even with its proposed deadly function, he had quite the eye for architecture. The black of the obsidian floor and white of the flux stone pillars made it look more like a statue garden than an entrance. Hopefully one day we can get a good stone worker up here, I always enjoyed seeing the unorthodox, and often brutally grotesque, carvings and statues the dwarves create. I noticed an animal person among the caravan, most likely a migrant. The expedition leader came up through the entrance to begin negotiating with the caravan. In the midst of this he gave the animal person a rundown of the fort, confirming his planned residency. I wonder if the caravan will accept these coins we pulled out of the ocean, they seemed to be accepting the bone carvings Urist had started making. I was amused to see that most of them were either of female peach faced love birds, quinoa grain, or both. As they were being brought up it seemed to me that the merchants were looking through the crowd trying to find out who the bone carver was so they could ask him why they had carved these. Thinking about Urist's love hate relationship with peach faced love birds I noticed that the new migrant was in fact a peach faced love bird man. If it had been a peach faced lovebird woman I would've bet my shell that he would've have been all over her, but I'm not sure what he's going to make out of a peach faced lovebird man. I decided I might as well warn him that he might have a potential admirer.
He was just finishing up his discussion with the expedition leader when he noticed me, giving a loud shrieking squack that I recognized from my years of being around peach faced love birds, because of Urist, as a hello of some sort. I've noted previously that they are very social birds, and just from how enthusiastically he was approaching me I could tell the man varieties shared this trait. I just hope he doesn't get territorial with Urist, Peach faced lovebirds tend to do that to him. "HEEELLLOOO" he cawed again, even though he was only mere feet away from me. "hello to you too" I winced "My name is Akituh, Snapping Turtle Man, what's yours?". "MY NAME'S GOMMO SUNSHINE, IT'S A PLEASURE TO BE HERE AT GREMLIN FORT I was really hoping that he'd get a little quieter once he calmed down. "well, Gommo, make yourself at home, the entrance is over there, we could probably set you up with a...""OH, BEFORE I RUN OFF TO MEET EVERYONE ELSE, I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW, THERE'S A CHANCE I MIGHT HAVE BEEN INFECTED BY A WERE-MAMMOTH he interjected. "uhhh... okay? Just try not to get everyone killed on the full moon. And before you run off, just know there's another bird in the fortress, a grey parrot named Urist. He's mostly sentient and has had a rough past with Peach faced love birds, so try to be nice to him." I said, as I noticed Urist glaring across the tundra at us from the stairs that lead into the fort. Gommo didn't notice the glare and waved vigorously at Urist. Urist kinda did a half wave back and flew back into the fort. Gommo elbowed me, gave me a wink, and said in the quietest tone I had heard him use uet "don't worry, I know my way with birds" he said, almost sensually. He then chased Urist back inside. "YOU KNOW HE'S A GUY RIGHT!?" I yelled fearing that he had the wrong idea. "I DO NOW!" Gommo yelled back, still running as enthusiastically as he did when he started.
Well, at least he tries to be nice and hasn't tried to kill me yet, more than I can say for most of the people here. Not that I can really blame them, you gotta be tough to live this far north. I noticed the expedition leader had been paying attention to the exchange, so I tried to get some worth while information out of him "Did you happen to find out his profession?". After the last incident it seemed that he starting making an effort to stay sober, well, as sober as a dwarf can be without going insane "Almost, he said something about being a doctor, I tried to ask him for specifics but was too busy asking about all the 'new friends' he was going to meet. Then he saw you and ran off. As long as we got someone who knows how to apply a bandage it's fine by me". I started to turn away to make sure he wasn't going to hurt himself in his excitement, but was stopped "before you go, I was thinking we should elect a mayor soon. Can I count on your vote?". "Isn't it a bit early to elect a mayor, what do we have, 12 people? Isn't a mayor usually elected at 50?" I wasn't all that opposed to having a mayor, as long as he didn't mandate diamond thrones for himself every month "Yeah, but I've been thinking, we probably aren't going to get a whole lot of people up here. So we should probably lower the population goals for such positions respectively." Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the gremlin perk up and drop the pillar piece he had been holding on the troll's foot, causing him to roar in pain. "Looks like we might need a doctor here after all. Sure you seem like you'll do fine as mayor, one of the most level headed ones here if you don't mind me saying. Just don't let that one cloud you judgement." I said, gesturing to the female that was causing him to so frequently hit the kegs. "Don't worry about it, I'll be fine" he said, not taking his eyes off of the female I had gestured to, showing me that he probably wouldn't be fine. Oh well, best choice I had for a mayor.
I walked back towards the fortress, but was stopped by the gremlin "I would just like to remind everyone of the name of our fortress and what it logically entails should the question arise of elevating one of our citizens to the nobility.
Also, let me know if you guys find any more leather underwear; I bet I could rig up some kind of slingshot battery to fling rocks at our foes..." he said, as he started jotting down what i could only assume was some new whimsical contraption. "You can have the next one, I'm keeping this one as a trophy. And I'm not entirely on board with electing a mayor yet, but if we do I'm voting for him" I said, gesturing back to the expedition leader. He looked a bit disgruntled at that, but suddenly a look of revelation crossed his face and he went back to scribbling. Hopefully I didn't just stir up a nest of bees, I don't need him setting up weapons traps in my den because I said I didn't want to vote for him. Speaking of den, I still didn't really know what I was going to do with this pair of underwear once I got there.
I figured something would come to me once I got there so I started making my way there. As I went I could hear more of that shrieking caw for hello throughout the halls, anyone who didn't know that that was a peach faced love bird man saying hello probably thought that the fort was being invaded by banshees. I arrived at my den without finding Urist to ask him what he thought of the new migrant, but I did find that he had dropped off a letter for me that had arrived with the caravan. It was from my horseshoe crab woman friend saying that she would be delighted to join GremlinFort and would try her best to be on the next caravan up. I was too tired to read all of it, so for now I just skimmed it, hopefully to read it in full later. It was mostly her telling me what she's been up to for the past year or so since I last saw her at that human fishing village, one thing that did stand out was news that she had adopted a Puffin during her travels. She said she didn't think that she would be able to teach it to speak, but thought I might be able to get it to say a few words. I regret to say that she specified that it was female and that she didn't want Urist making any moves. I don't think he'd even be into a sea bird, but up here you get desperate without the presence of women, so I was going to have to come up with some plan. She said the name was going to be a suprise... blah blah blah... I was too tired from fishing to care and collapsed into my nest. In doing so an old bronze nail fell out of the ceiling above me and bounced off my shell onto the ground. Perfect! I nailed it into the side of the wall and hung up my new pair of leather underwear on it, the first of many keepsakes I hoped to find up here!
Akituh, Snapping Turtle Man
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Topic: The Outpost: Illustrated Community Game (Read 62076 times)