[First of all, I apologise for taking three days to update this. I kept telling myself I wanted to make more notes, but really I wanted to catch up on my favourite webcomics and let the work week end. I'm actually quite surprised we've only sunk to page two again. Speaking of which, fort members, where were you?
My job, if you'll excuse a discursion, consists of half shouting at Korean elementary school children and half sitting in a cold classroom waiting to shout at more.
Lately I've decided to school my cute little goblins in a fine art called door equiette.
See, I come from the south island of New Zealand. This is not terribly cold. Korea gets much colder in the winters, but Korea is also much warmer most of the rest of the time. Sufficeth to say that the South Island is definitely on the colder end of the temperate spectrum. To add to this, we're a nuclear-free zone. This sounds great to the tourists and the paranoid but what it really means is "Electricity, and therefore heat, is expensive". Also, a lot of the housing was built to provide jobs during periods of recession and is somewhat underequipped in the insulation department.
What this means is that southern New Zealanders get schooled very quickly at closing doors behind them, so that heat doesn't escape.
Which means it's extremely difficult for me to understand why Koreans do NOT. They just leave doors swinging behind them wherever they go. This makes no difference in the warm seasons, but right now (I know it's still technically autumn, but it's getting there) it's remarkably annoying. Look, kids. This classroom is big, it's not heated in the afternoons, you KNOW the corridor is freezing, because you just came from there. Your teacher is wearing several kilos of Italian black leather to keep warm and instead of taking that as a hint to close the door behind you, you stand there making matrix jokes. Oh yeah, and complaining it's cold. I know that kids, I have better resistance to it than any of you and I'M a bit chilly. CLOSE THE DOOR!
I swear to god, they might be hazy on correct use of articles, but I can at least try to teach them this.
Anyway, back to our story]
Interruption
Enemy at the gates! Well, actually, enemy quite far from the gates, but they're coming fast! Well, actually, "fast" is not an accurate adjective. "Eventually" would be better. Enemy quite far from the gates! Coming eventually!
Kubuk convinces me to change it back to "Enemy at the gates" before to alarm with it. She reckons my version lacks a certain urgency.
I summon all civilians inside, send out the marksknights, Morul, and Xenomorph (who's actually asleep, so I CAN'T set his station. This is very stupid) to hold the inner gate. The Swordsknights, Axeknights, and Hammerknight I set on the tedious process of changing from their sparring weapons to something more appropriate. The three crippled wrestlers training in crossbows I put on the wall, the rest of the non-champs I stick to training.
The enemy consists of two squads. To the north, the most immediate threat, we have mixed axegoblins and boneunits led by one of the Sad Doom's local leaders, an elite bowgoblin. To the south, much more distant from our gates, we have hammergoblins and bonebags led by a master speargoblin.
It's a smaller force than I was planning on, but the timing is bad. We have about five dwarves outside the walls collecting silk. One of those being Tun, our (first) legendary weaver. These people are in for a pretty long run back towards the main gate.
To help get our people extracted, I order the emergency bridge to the south lowered. Unfortunately, because of slow response times, this is no help at all for our endangered dwarves, and just gives us the extra worry of raising the southern bridge in time to prevent the hammergoblins from using it. Not that that would lead to a serious worry because we don't plan on defending the outer walls anyway, but it could make things complicated. In the end though, someone does his job.
The elite bowgoblin could easily cut off a couple of dwarves if he moved. He has the legs for it, but keeps dropping back amongst the security of his slow-moving fellows. Our silk-pickers get in. By this time, I'm thinking of raising the outer bridge to get us time to equip everyone. The Plan is to let the goblins into the outer perimeter one warband at a time, close the bridge behind them, and annihilate them before the inner gate. That's the Plan. Plan, meet Charlie Foxtrot.
Just as I'm deciding to raise the outer bridge, I see a dwarf wandering vaguely across it straight her towards the now-close axegoblin group. It's Lokum, our ex-soaper turned triple-legendary swordknight. Because she was sleeping when the alert went out, she never got the orders about stationing and rearming, but she did get the order about dropping her sparring sword. My best soldier is walking into the enemy alone and unarmed.
I must admit, horrified as I am, it's fascinating to watch her throw those gobbos around with her bare hands. Almost too fascinating. The enemy leader is letting fly ineffectually at her [out of interest, those who claim missile troops are overpowered have apparently never paid attention to how inaccurate even the legendaries are against a single opponent. Those 20 kills from 25 shots stories are about firing into a packed crowd of grunts who would have died easily against a lot of other things], and a number of goblins are complaining loudly about their medical before I remember to order a sally.
Because it's a messy punch-up rather than a neat trap, three boneunits get away. Lokum, now with five more kills, remarks she's got a broken arm. I've already put her off duty just to keep her out of the way. She departs downstairs. I order everyone else back to the inner gate.
My biggest worry now is that the hammergoblins will take sufficient losses to the outer traps to break their spirit, run away, and deny us the chance to kill them all and sell their underwear. The hammergoblin squad is creeping slowly up the western wall. Three of them, two hammers and a bonebag, have taken their BRAVE pills and are well ahead of the rest. I'm really worried that these three are going to die to traps and make the rest run.
As it happens, one of the hammergoblins gets knocked silly by a stone-fall. The two others step over his crippled ruin and penetrate our outer perimeter.
Then Charlie Foxtrot calls again.
Xenomorph, being asleep, never got his orders about stationing and is now strolling out there to go outside. With some help from the marksknights on the gate, he kills the two hapless invaders, then wanders over the outer bridge into the sight of the hammergoblins.
I sigh, order him off duty, and order another massed charge. We meet the enemy on the same ground where we met the first squad. The enemy is slower, has no missiles, doesn't even outnumber us, and is incalculably weaker goblin-to-dwarf. We annihilate them.
Instead of winning by cunning and position, we won by disorganisation countered by overwhelming strength. I'm so ashamed. I'm going to stop writing now.
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Topic: Fogcrystal. A Domestic Comedy with Werewolves (Read 10395 times)