Chapter 1: Forging a FortressAvuz dug.
He knew there would be caverns eventually—there's always caverns, of course. The problem was finding where they were.
First passed layers of gabbro. Then passed layers of diorite which turned into quartzite, and then, finally, phyllite. Then, finally, the wall crumbled before his pick, revealing a small mossy passage that evolved into an expansive network of caves.
"Caverns!" Avuz hollered up the stairs, and almost instantly the rest of the party jumped into action.
Ice boulders were hauled into place, mostly securing it from outside intrusion of the unruly and potentially dangerous creatures that dwell in the caverns. An encounter with the wrong wildlife could be lethal, not to mention the possibility that any skirmish—even a victorious one—could result in the start of a zombie apocalypse inside the caverns that, for now, were too important to be overrun.
Avuz continued his downward descent while the others built, searching for the other resource that would help them survive: magma. His rhythmic mining grew fainter as the staircase grew longer.
Up in the caves, Alath hunted plants and eyed the shadows.
Alath saw the shadows flicker, and nervously tugged at the dimple cups at her feet. Suddenly, a long arm reached out from the darkness and narrowly missed Alath as she recoiled by pure instinct.
A skirmish began, with the Reacher grabbing for Alath and Alath doing her best to keep the monster at bay with her bare fists.
Avuz, still digging down in the deeps, heard the clamor and came running, pick in hand. The result was devastating. For the Reacher, fortunately.
After a subsequent re-animation and rapid de-animation, the Reacher finally lay still. Avuz and Alath looked at each other, breathing heavily, and silently went back to their tasks, both nursing nothing but a few bruises between them. Instead of continuing the downward descent, Avuz realized it was more important to begin securing a portion of the caverns for safe farming and eventually woodcutting: while the Reacher had been easily handled, there existed far more dangerous creatures than that in the depths of the caverns.
To start the process of securing the caverns, Avuz began digging a chamber just off of a large open space. The small room seemed mostly irrelevant to the goal of security at first, at least until both the shortage of usable workspace near the caverns and lack of stone for construction (and everything else) were noted.
Avuz heard a scratching sound; something scampered behind him, definitely not a dwarf.
He turned around and grabbed the creature by the throat, crushing its windpipe.
"Damn rat!" He angrily cursed. It could've been something much more dangerous, and...
He quickly realized his mistake. The now freshly reanimated rat bit at his ankles, causing him to drop his pickaxe in alarm. Avuz retaliated with swift yet ineffective punches while the rat scratched and bit, doing little other than inflicting light cuts. The two traded blows for a while...
Until Avuz finally got a lucky hit, caving in the abomination's skull.
Avuz shakedly grabbed his pickaxe—which had lain out of reach during the battle—and began digging again, wincing with each pickstrike. There was still work to be done, after all.
A butcher's shop was set up once again to let the dwarves serve the dual purpose of ensuring no more reanimation occurs and getting more food.
Id quickly labored to skin and process the still rather fresh rat corpse, and, to her relief, it did not rise again.
Much to her dismay, however, a particular Reacher corpse
also had to be butchered. This one looked a lot less mutilated aside from the complete lack of a head, unfortunately.
Nonetheless, Id hauled it to the workshop and started hewing flesh.
Suddenly, she cried out! "Agh!"
The long arms of the decapitated reacher grabbed towards a victim once more, and Id fled the workshop on swift feet. The reacher, brutalized and headless, slowly shambled after her.
Both Kosoth and Avuz heard the clamor and ran towards the scene.
And, after Avuz's collection of minor injuries was sufficiently expanded (and Kosoth's started), the reanimated reacher fell down and lay still. The body was safely dragged to the butchery this time and started its mandatory term as a food source.
Kosoth was idling up in the now unused room above the aquifer breach, taking a well deserved rest. Digging was handled by Avuz, food was being gathered by Alath, no zombies needed killing, no stone blocks were ready for placement and for once, she had a break.
After a few minutes in the almost silent calm, listening to her breath and mulling over recent events, she heard a faint, uncoordinated crunch of footsteps in the snow above her. Probably just another zombie yeti, she thought. Nothing to be afraid of, so as long as she kept quiet. She kept listening, more closely now, and... there was more than one pair of feet! Kosoth quietly yet urgently stood up from her resting place and walked over to the aquifer breach, where small gaps in the hastily chiseled ice roof beamed bright sunlight and cold air down below.
Peering through the gaps, she squinted in the sunlight. A glimpse of rotting flesh. That could mean anything here, but the footsteps... She knew what was there. She rushed down the long staircase back to the stone part of the outpost.
Zon worked stone slowly and methodically,
A panicked stamping of feet followed a rushed declaration. "There's zombies outside!" Kosoth loudly, abruptly, and
Zon was quick to retort. "What're you interrupting me for about that? There's always zomibies outside, you nitwit!"
"Not those kind! And not the husk things, either! These were necromancer zombies, an-" she replied, but was cut short by Zon again.
"Pah, there's no way they've found us! How would you even tell a necromancer zombie from a normal one, anyway?"
"Well, fr' starters, the one I saw was a dwarf. And I could tell they were necromancer zombies cause' they had metal boots. Normal zombie's don't never have metal armor." Kosoth bluntly replied.
Zon recoiled from the revelation. "A dwarf?! No way there's been another dwarf alive for a thousand years! Are you sure you saw them all right? How decomposed was the poor soul? What would a necromancer even be doing all the way out here? Do you know if they found us or not?"
Kosoth was somewhat taken aback by the rapid questions. A few of the others - Besmar, Id, and Sarvesh, had overheard the loud exchange and arrived on the scene out of curiosity.
After a brief mental recovery from the barrage, Kosoth noted, "Well, I'm sure it was a dwarf cause e' had a mighty fine beard, but I couldn't tell how long 'e were dead for. As for the others, I've no clue. I guess we can only hope that it was only some rouge thralls that wandered away from their tower, but I know better than to hope."
The five dwarves thought about what this meant for their future for what seemed like ages but was no more than a few moments. Besmar broke the silence.
"Lass, one more question. About how many did you think there were?"
Kosoth eloquently responded, as if prepared for the question. "I was just thinkin' about that, certianly sounded like a half dozen or so, maybe more. At that size, it were probably just a scouting party. Nonetheless, I say we should stay away from the surface fort so we don't make any sound up there and tell them where we are, supposing they don't already know."
Sarvesh quietly voiced her agreement. "I agree, it's much too dangerous to go up there unless something serious happens. It's cold above the aquifer anyways."
Id, almost obligated by the turn-like nature of the conversation also added in a quick note. "Aye, no reason to be up thar. We all got work to be doin' though, eh? Let's hop to it."
Id's dismissal ensured the breakup of the gathered members of the party, and everybody went back to their labor.
Avuz dug. Man, was it boring down here. He swung his pick into the floor beneath him, carving a crude stair shaped chunk out of the ground. Maybe he should go get a drink soon, or see how the brewing operations are going, or just... something. Claim to be patrolling for zombies since he was the only one who had anything close to a weapon. He swung his pick again, Man, was it hot down here. He wiped some sweat off his brow.
Wait... hot? Avuz broke from his labor-induced trance, quickly realized the implications of unpleasant heat at this depth, and began carving stairs with a newfound burst of adrenaline. Suddenly, the pick broke through the roof of the endless magma sea.
Hot magma flowed just below his feet. He watched it closely, looking for telltale signs that denote locations of precious blue metal and the much less subtle general flow of the current that signaled a rough layout of the immediate area surrounding the breach.
After he was sure where the precious veins of adamantine lay and had a rough idea of what the currents said about the shape of the giant magma resivoir, he gave a single cry to be heard by those above.
"Magma!"
By the end of the month, Zon finally had forges to work in.
None of the party had any experience working metal, but it was agreed upon that Zon was the steadiest hand and the most potential. First and foremost came an axe-everybody was sick of sleeping on the ground, simple as that. The remaining two copper bars would be saved for weaponry.
With everybody finally laboring, the fort evolved rapidly. Id churned out stone blocks, Besmar and Kosoth hauled them into place in the planned safe area, Zon felled trees, [farmer] began sowing the first crops (which, unfortunately, did not include plump helmets due to their complete absence in the caverns), and Sarvesh started to gather silk for the creation of cloth.
Zon was in the Northern section of the caverns, taking chunks out of a large tower cap with his rather shoddily made copper axe. The quality of his work did not please him, but shoddy though it may be, it was still an axe. Most varieties of cavern tree were hewn fairly easily due to their exotic nature, anyways.
Abruptly, his thoughts on metalwork were interrupted by a rustle of movement just out of vision! Zon turned around in an instant and brandished his weapon, prepared to fight of flee depending on the source of the noise.
Zon stared into the darkness, looking for whatever it was that had made the sound. Another rustle occured, and he whirled around to the source, placing his axe between the sound and his body.
And then, he saw what it was. He lowered his axe a little. It was a mushroom, but also a creature!
He looked suspiciously and curiously at the creature, and more came out from the dark behind it. They stared at each other for a while before Zon relaxed and turned his back to begin woodcutting again, confident that these mushroom men meant no harm.
It was a comforting thought that there were still some things in the world not trying to kill them.
Meanwhile in the main body of the fort, something far more important than lumber was finally being made.
Booze.The lack of it had been drawing work to a crawl: a dwarf without alcohol is a slow dwarf. A slow dwarf is an unproductive dwarf, and in the Blizzards of Despair, an unproductive dwarf is a dead dwarf. In addition, the only source of water was still far above the newly dug central meeting area, which compounded with the danger of potentially alerting invaders of their presence (if it had not already been found) was downright annoying due to the length of the trek, all for a paltry few gulps of water.
That would no longer be the case for the seven dwarves of Fairpaper. Alath lugged a rock pot and some [plants] to the still and began the arduous task of brewing.
And after what seemed like an eternity, freshly brewed alcohol poured into the pot. Not much, but it would last until a second batch could be brewed.
Perhaps more important than even the alcohol was also a result; the seeds of the cave wheat used were free from the chaff and could be planted for a renewable source of food and beer. In one swift stroke, the fort's sustainability and durability were reinforced threefold, and just in time for the end of the first full year since the founding of Fairpaper.
There was no time for celebration, however; between construction of bedrooms, processing and growing of food, and all the many other miscellaneous tasks that needed to be done, there was never a time in which all seven of Fairpaper's dwarves were idle. As a matter of fact, there was seldom time when even one was idle, not counting breaks to tend to basic needs such as hunger, thirst, and tiredness.
And so, rather anticlimactically, the first anniversary of Fairpaper came and went.
View the fort as of the end of chapter two
here!
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Topic: Fairpaper: The Hardest Embark (Read 5488 times)