Full Title: Slaves to Armok: God of Blood: Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress: The Saga of Weatherwires: The Doom of the Diamond Cloisters: Children of Dwarves: Self Insert.
Notice: this story is based off another story wrtting by someone else, you can find it here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14lQhE-rPk2H_kPA61WR5sp6xw0ifR196TjQFmBe8TEk/pubOriginal forum link:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=93279.0Author's note: This is a fanfiction. It chronicles the life of the Dwarf Lokum EarthMurder during the rise and fall of WeatherWires. The prose is amaturish at best.
I will be taking some creative license here, because, as anyone who plays dwarf fortress knows, it's not completely realistic.
OO
In TowerClasped, you could always hear the creaking of the massive gear assembly that sat in the heart of the fortress, where ever you were. The sound was so omnipresent that it didn’t even bother me while I was sleeping anymore. In fact, I found it easier to sleep while the sounds reverberated through the walls and the floor, and could actually count time by it.
The creaking was always louder in the morning, because of the morning rush down in Gear Den, as dwarves on the day shift woke up and got on their minecarts to head out to the farming dens where they would be working, tending to the farms all day, while the night shift were on their way back to eat and get some sleep.
It was a particularly loud creak that woke me up that morning, and I rolled over to look out the window. The weather was clear, which was surprising, as for the past few days a blizzard had been blowing through.
Nestled along the shoulder of the great mountain peak called The Enchanted Tower, TowerClasped was not really a fortress in the traditional sense. It had been founded for the sole purpose of providing wind power to the deeps. In particular, Gear Den, and the smaller dens that surrounded it.
The Merchant of Echoing, TowerClasped’s parent civilization, was a civilization in exile. It’s last true fortress, MountainDune, had been lost in the year 18, during the Dawn era. It was now 28th Obsidian, in the year 135, and only the oldest of dwarves remembered what it was like to live in a proper fortress.
The great windmill farms of TowerClasped had been built in the year 98, and the massive gear assembly that provided power to Gear Den and the hundred other dens surround it, had taken a solid two decades to build afterwards.
The Windmills were used to power rail rollers, meant to make the more remote dens more accessible. Without the rollers it would take days to travel between the different dens, but with the rollers it only took hours, at most. This had the added advantage of making it easier for the military to respond to external threats.
I let out a loud yawn, while sitting up and stretching, then looked out the window again while smoothing out my beard. No blizzard meant that today was a work day. It was too dangerous to work during a blizzard, as the wind could blow a dwarf clean off the mountain.
With a sigh, I got up and walked over to my cabinet, and picking out some warm cloths to wear. Wool was particularly abundant in TowerClasped, as it was pretty chilly up here. I put on as many layers as I could, and a wool cloak on top of that, then ran some fingers through my black beard to smooth it out again.
Once I was dressed, I walked into my personal dining room and over to a coffer, out of which I picked up a biscuit, a goblet, and my only book, which detailed the individual parts and functionality of the great gear assembly. I then pulled the goblet through the rum in my personal barrel. I sat down on my rather crude stone throne, and set everything down on my tastefully arranged stone table. Opening the book, I took a bite of the biscuit and a swig of the rum, and got to rereading.
The great gear assembly that transmitted power to the deeps was over 5 mega-urists deep. A urist was the height of a single dwarf, and a mega-urist was 1000 urists. As an axle could not actually be crafted that was that long, a single section of the assembly was composed of 200 axles, each about 25 urists long, with gears on each end, and they were all crafted out of steel.
As the gear assembly couldn’t possibly support it’s own weight, it had to be held up using special support systems attached to the sides of the shaft, also all crafted of steel. And all of this had to be well oiled, as friction could damage to the gears and the axles, and too much damage could cause entire gear sections to collapse.
Needless to say, there was a steady supply of jobs in TowerClasped, which was the main reason why I had emigrated here in the first place.
Having finished my biscuit, I downed the last bit of rum and sat up, packing everything back away into the coffer, before walking out the door. The apartments of TowerClasped deep into The Enchanted Tower, as TowerClasped had a population of about 300 dwarves. I made my way down the straight and narrow passageway that lead towards the shoulder of The Enchanted Tower, as that was where the Windmill farm was.
The apartment passages led directly to the Grand Hall, which was where most dwarves had their meals. The Grand hall was large enough to host all 300 dwarves of the fortress at once if need be, it was 500 urists long, 100 urists wide, and 3 urist tall. At some point in the distant past, someone had smoothed and engrave dall the walls and the floor, and someone else had installed windows in the ceiling, so the place was pretty well lit.
The hallway I had just emerged from was only 1 urist tall, but that didn’t bother me too much. Dwarves apparently weren’t affected by claustrophobia like humans were. When I had first been reborn into this world it had taken me a while to adapt to it, but I was well used to it by now.
I was still pretty hungry, and wasn’t eager to get out in the cold just yet, so I decided to head down to the food stockpile to grab an extra bite to eat. After carefully picking my way through the mountain of rock pots, I found a rock pot marked Giant Cave Swallow Roast. Taking the lid off of the pot, I reached inside and carefully fished one out. Dwarven prepared meals tended to come in their own packaging, usually a wrapping made from cave wheat flour. Sniffing it to make sure the roast wasn’t moldy, I put the lid back and made my way to the drink stockpile after grabbing a flask from the flask stockpile.
I decided to go with wine this time, as I already had rum at home. Plump Helmet wine had a pretty rich flavor, but wasn’t as sweet as rum. With flask and prepared meal in hand, I made my way back to the Grand Hall.
“Ah, hello Lokum,” said Athel when I joined her at one of the tables in the Grand Hall. “Ready for another day of snow shoveling?”
“Hopefully the last day of the year,” I replied, slicing open my giant cave swallow roast with a nearby knife, and noticing the pungent smell of cheese. “Spring will be here in a few days, after all.”
“Remind me, what did you do before you were conscripted into snow shoveling?” she asked curiously, nibbling on a pork roast.
“I cleaned and oiled the gears on section 51B to section 52G,” I picked up a slice of roast and bit into it. Not too bad. “Haven't lost any fingers yet, thankfully.”
“You’re luckier than me, then,” Athel replied glumly. “I’ve been stuck cleaning refuse carts ever since I got here.”
“Ouch,” I winced sympathetically.
“Yeah...” Athel trailed off. “Still, any job is better than idling around down in Gear Den, you know?”
I shuddered. In my past life I had basically been a lazy good for nothing, but in this new life… I felt restless when I wasn’t doing something productive. Perhaps it had something to do with being a dwarf, but lazing around all day doing nothing was anathema to my new sensibilities.
Down in Gear Den, the only jobs available was farming, or joining the military, but only a small portion of the population was necessary for both, so almost half of the population was idling most of the time, and if you did happen to get those jobs, you didn’t get paid for it.
“Yeah, and at least we get paid,” I said, finishing off my roast, before standing up. “Well, I’m off. Have a good day cleaning refuse carts.”
“Have a good day shoveling snow,” she nodded, standing up herself.
I smirked, and turned around to make my way towards the windmill farms. Just one more day of shoveling snow, and I’d be free to return to my old job of oiling gears.
At least I wouldn’t be freezing my balls off.
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Topic: Children of Dwarves[Self Insert Fanfiction] (Read 1230 times)