Summer rolled in with concern. Artifacts were brought in by a massive band of treasure hunters, but their numbers were many and it was unknown how feircly they would fight against the fortress - a wrong move could lead to the slaughter fo the fortress, leaving the residents unable to act despite the numerous goods. However, they also brought news from the front lines, from many sources.
[I legitimately was simultaneously filled with greed and filled with ire because I had no way of separating the ones with the artifacts to slaughter them. I also tried just targeting those individuals, and understandably the whole group became hostile, so i rolled back on that and sicced the militia on some zombie wombats instead.]
Evidently the humans up north had launched multiple offensives under the command of an elf by the name of Famime, though none of the travelers talking about the war stuck around to see how the battle went, and understandably so.****
It had finally happened. Bad luck on a kill. Litast had requested the militia help her slay a surviving elephant that hadn't yet left the area. "It'll be easy!" she said. "You guys have killed a like... Twenty-four of the beasts between the nine of you." This was true, and so the militia marched out, surrounded the bolt-pegged animal, and put it down. They departed, not really thinking much about where they had killed it when Litast arrived and began getting the hitches ready before she went to get some towing animals.
As she finished tying the knots, she heard a nearby war dog growl. She grabbed her weapon, mistakenly assuming the dog's barking was due to a zombie owl, which was known to be in the area. As she scanned the skys however, she heard something rustle, grown, and get up behind her. And down below, they heard it.
The trumpeting.
It is a sound all dwarves in the jungle fear. The distant strangled trumpeting of a dead creature. A dead elephant. One that had decided to defy death and return to haunt dwarf kind once more.
Litast was far from armed for this, as she panicked and fired a single bolt into its shoulder, doing virtually nothing. When it limped at shockingly quick speed at her and grappled her with its trunk, she bashed it again and again. Hers was no elephant bone or featherwood crossbow, intended to be as unencumbering as possible so a soldier could load and fire as quickly as possible. No, she had a sturdy steel arm, but it just wasn't meant for this. The she felt her right knee collapse, and she was quickly swung up, and in a wide arch, smashed into the ground, hard enough to crack bones. The pain was breif at least, as the ebast smashed her head before one of the dogs she had trained leapt at it, meeting its head as well to the tusks.
When Multi realized he was short a hunter when he was assembling them to go after a herd of unicorns, he immediately sent word to the militia, who went to where they last saw her. Asob, Vucar, and Nidor found her remains, and engaged the beast that took her. Asob attacked first, her initial assault ripping through the flesh and skin on the front of the beast as it lumbered along towards her and missed the heavy swing of its tusks at her. However, it still had enough oomph to charge forward, swiping its trunk upwards and sending the macedwarf flying!
She hit the ground with a rattle of chain and clank of bronze plates, and though she might be joining Litast, when Vucar lept in, swinging his sword like a bludgeon at the zombified monster! With a mighty smash, there was a sound of cracking bones, but it wasn't enough and the elephant swatted him as it turned his way, while Nidor had ducked around it and managed to get underneath, where he began hacking at its legs like a dwarf possessed! one leg, then the next... And to his horror it didn't topple and tried to stomp him, though this didn't seem to perterb the monk much as he dodged the attack and chopped into a third leg, finally sending it sideways.
He quickly followed up by clambering onto the brutish being, wildly chopping at its head, drawing great arcs of blood and snagged muscle with every hack! But this still failed to silence the beast, and it grappled and threw him a short distance, though thankfully like with Asob, he was no worse for wear as his armor tanked the force of the impact. And speaking of Asob, it was she who would bring vengeance! She got to her feet and charged the beast, screeching like a banshee and flail swainging like a tiny meteor on a chain! She hopped its trunk, and as she swung mid-air, the spikedhead came crashing down!
She then proceeded to bounce off the zombie'es head and tumble into Vucar, but the result was still what mattered: The beast was dead. Again.****
Inod was getting worse. It seemed every day Nish needed to console him, to the point where she placed a mandate against him and his wife to take time off work and to stay well away from the temporary body field. It seemed that the tipping point that pushed Inod into depressive episodes was having the misfortune of actually seeing Litast get pounded into mulch while hauling in a mangled mountain goat zombie. The constant booze shortages didn't help matters in the slightest. Still the timely arrival of the human caravan that summer with a breeding pair of guineafowl helped, and Nish had several gypsum items placed in his room to hopefully brighten his spirits.
He seemed to be slowly getting better, but constant emotional episodes over the death of his nephew and seeing Litast die were doing their harm to his psyche.****
The traders were shocked. Simply shocked. on this trip, they had brought tens of thousands of sovereigns in ore, stone, preserved meats, fish, and the like. Steel armor, ammunition. And they had still managed to not only make almost 40,000 in profits on this single stop, but even things they had charged extorionate prices for they met by orders of magnitude. They even sent a single box laden in the finiest carvings of bone they had seen, and various lesser metal trinkets, valued at some 20,000, as a tribute to the homeland.
"Why would you give us this much?" One trader asked. "This is insane, not that I'm complaining."
"Because." Nish said with a smile. "We have designs that require the world know our wealth, and even if we lack metals to mine here, we have vast quantities of other valuable goods to sell!"
She didn't tell them the part where it was meant to entice enemy forces to the area, even if that was a little over a year away.****
Things went well as autumn rolled through. Migrants arrived, most notably among them being another warrior monk, and Teshil Acoturot, a known prophet. What drew them here was anyone's guess. There was also Likot, who was described by both his wife and fellow travelers as perhaps one of the most vulgar dwarves to ever walk the earth, and his bravery and sense of duty lead to him happily taking up a dual-wielded set of arms: A cleaver and a meat hook, as befitting his role as a butcher, and Kaos' Nephew who took up a flail of silver, a emtal he treasured greatly. The Prophet, these two dwarves, and a number of other "Prospects" for the militia were inducted swiftly.
Urist's forge burned as orders for new weapons and suits of bronze were placed, while Kaos went over her work space: A spare anvil, racks for storing armor, a chest for materials. She held in her arms six bars of bismuth bronze, intending to warm up on simple pendants that marked dwarves as militiamen who would soo be launching punitive strikes to assist the humans. She looked to the box of steel ingots sitting nearby, and smiled. Just enough for a single full suit. She then thought about the lack of weapon traps, and then the lack of another smith. Then she looked to her steel ingots.
She liked scythes, this much was certain, Perhaps she could be allowed access to whatever copper could be made, that she could train in the art, as well as learn to make mechanisms (or rather, relearnt he task, as it had been weeks since she had assisted in that duty,) so the fortress could be protected by dozens of whirling blades of copper? She'd have to talk to Nish about it, but for now, she set to work.****
"Multi, this needs to stop." Came a slightly muffled voice from Multi's doorway.
"What needs to stop?" Multi didn't pay the intruder to his home any real mind. Engravers had been coming and going all day to smooth his kids' rooms, apparently out of a desire to look at something other than an empty nobleman's house and courtyard.
"You and all your godsdamned hunters!" Vucar said, holding up two fingers. "This is the second hunter in the past three months who was killed because of this carelessness!"
"Ain't my fault soldier boy." Multi said as he restringed his crossbow. "I don't tell'em what to hunt. Nor where fer that matter. I just make sure they all remember to fill their quivers 'fore we head out."
"That doesn't matter. Everyone else says that you're the head ranger, that makes those deaths your fault."
Multi didn't say anything as he drew the string back and shot a shoddy practice bolt into the wall, the featherwood snapping into splinters and leaving a noticeable divot in the wall. He mumbled something about getting the string just tight enough to prick elephant skin. "How's 'bout you, Vuc? That mean the fightin' dorfs you're gonna be leadin in a year will be on yer head?"
"How did you-"
"Sea bandits out east got a sayin' Colonel. Loose lips sink ships."
After a full, awkward minute of silence, Vucar grumbled. "You keep running your idiots out into the bush. But leave the killing to us." Vuar grabbed the door as he turned around. "We don't leave intact bodies behind like you retards."
Vucar slammed the door at that, and once the stomping of metal was gone, Multi just looked down the sight he had attached to his crossbow, making sure it was on straight. "Hook, line, n' sinker." He said with a chuckle before standing up, grabbing a quiver of bolts, and heading out to meet with the other hunters.****
He'd been heading in after a solo drill to kill time before dinner. The sun was low in the sky, when he heard a horrible sound above and behind him. An angry growling, throaty howl. Like someone butchering the sound of a rimtar while performing A Capella.
He looked up as he snapped open the straps that passed as a scabbard and made himself ready, only to have to throw up something akin to a block and a strike in one as the beast leapt at him! The guard of his sword dug into the armpit of the foul monster and he wrenched it over with a mighty heave!
The beast hit the ground, and he ripped back towards himself, his typically dwarven build keeping him well planted for the move. The effort resulted in a very unwelcome (for the werelizard anyway,) amputation of its entire right arm. It snapped at him and swiped its claws, but he simply backed off, mainly to avoid the dreaded bite-and-latch, which his drill masters made abundantly clear would almost always do worse to him and his fellow soldiers. When it tried again, he managed a sidestep and slashed upwards, cutting the monster's chest open with a spray of blood! His weapon came round and rested the blade on his shoulder while ducking a claw swipe, and laid into the monster with a vicious gut punch!
The beast stumbled back and hissed at him before coming again, and this time he had designs on removing the threat of a bite. He gripped his sword-hilt tight and swung the pommel as hard as he could, as it was the part both closest and best suited to battlefield dentistry. And so the pommel hit, and thanks to his dwarvenly might, there was a loud crunch from the impact! While it would have been debilitating on its own, the blow followed though like a freight train and - much to Vucar's surprise and horror due to the sheer brutality - there was a terrible, wet tearing sound. The werelizard's head popped off.
Or more accurately, he had bashed it in the face so hard he had torn off its head. As the head flew off with the majority of its neck attached, he stood there and blinked.
"How the fuck did I do that!?"****
Winter came quietly, for the most part. However, Inod continued to deteriorate, and now there were assaults and disorderly conduct levied against him. Nish started putting up posters, looking for dwarves who held the the law in at least baseline regard. She knew arresting him would simply make his situation worse, but every time he appeared to improve noticeably, he would have an emotional episode, bringing him right back down. In truth, she was plotting a murder. She would have him arrested and locked in the lower level of the unfinished prison, and left to die. Prisoners died all the time due to the negligence of orderlies, so nobody would question his demise under such conditions.
There was also the opening of a museum, and the creation of an artifact, which was going to be given to Lorbam as his badge of office, similar to Vucar and the gauntlet Urist had created. A band of elven mercenaries had also arrived, but fearing them to be spies and not mere mercenaries, they were slaughtered by the militia with ruthless efficiency. Tombs were built one after another, and those treasure hunters who were unburied were finally interred, the graves having swallowed up a fair stretch of ground. Few zombies had entered the area, leaving the militia to dispatch the occasional big game for the sake of the hunters' safety, but the soldiers knew what was coming in a year.
The most important operation in the kingdom's history.
And there's a delayed update!
Suffered a few casualties this time around, all due to the hunters killing shit on the mountainside using metal bolts from the human caravan with throat shots. I really wish hunters would avoid evil ground like the plague if it causes reanimation. We've also got some new artifacts, a library (which I had to swiftly fill with tables and chairs because everyone instantly stopped using the tavern to eat in and bitched about a lack of tables or chairs, depending on what had been installed at the time.)
We've also had Vucar go One-Bash-Dorf on a werebeast, killed a bunch of elves, opened a library, and greatly expanded the necropolis. We also basically bribed the shit out of the caravan to bring increasing amounts of shit next year with a truly monstrous profit margin as well as easily hitting the monarch offering threshold. Once I start stirring up shit we should be seen as a massive and very easy target, just a matter of the militia not losing anyone during the initial operations.
Inod's also basically spinning his wheels on the stress front, because every time his stress goes down, he "relives being shocked by the death of somebody" even though at this point it happened over a year ago, by which time most people will have gotten over the death of an extended family member (a nephew at that, who he likely didn't know all that well since they lived in different places accordign to legends viewer.) At least enough to where they don't randomly flip out with PTSD-like symptoms. I mean fuck's sake, the Militia isn't all that badly stressed and they've had to fight zombies, elephants, a zombie elephant, and two of the best fighters in the militia saw one of their friends die. He's assaulted three people, presumably found stuff to throw around, and yelled at Nish every other week for six months, and every time his stress goes from 26k to 25-24k, he has an episode and it puts him right back to 26k. So at this point I'm writing him off as a lost cause. The kind of sheltered life he must've had to survive until coming here is truly staggering to think about.
Also, I noticed an interesting bit of synergy with hunters and the militia. The hunters will still go out and recover bodies and drop them off at the butchery if you order the militia to take their would-be prey. And yes, I did imply Multi, by not being in an actual position of authority, skirted responsibility and basically has the militia doing his job for him. Seems like something he'd do.
Enjoy! I'll try to get another one up in a day or two.