16th Hematite, 205, Early-Summer (by Zon Rimtarothil)
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I hobble down the halls of the fortress, astounded by Asob's rapid progress. I'm actually very impressed at her work in the lower levels... rather than letting her artistic side get the better of her, she stuck to cold, hard practicality. Tunnels dug in the absolute shortest path possible for quickest travel! The magma ducts are nice and straight! They don't twist around into knots and span multiple levels! It just gets the job done. Too bad it's flowing so slow...
Oh,
here's the problem. Poor Asob must have forgotten about her obsidian farm! Every dwarf knows you only need the magma to be two Urists deep to get obsidian, three if you want to be sure it isn't all going to evaporate. Let's dump some water in there right away to plug that up - with less space to travel, the magma should fill up the forge vents quickly!
I send Tirist Unibiseth, a Stonecrafter to go and pull the lever to drain the pond into the magma. I notice this, along with the weird zoo and the king's gaudy crypt, is one of the few places where Asob did a little splurging in Asėnism. The water drainage is simply bizarre looking! Why couldn't she have just kept them in straight lines? Now I see why we have so many Armok-damned hatches in the mechanism stockpile... ah, oh well. Let's just see how it works.
((DFMA)) ((Movie)) Ugh... Not well, I'm afraid. Well, the problem is obviously that hole in the floor that the water reaches before getting a chance to spread out. We can send someone in to patch that right up later.
Tekkud Usirudil, Stonecrafter started gibbering in ancient elven and took control of a craftsdwarf shop. Shouldn't call it elven, really... it's feyspeak, the rotten elves simply stole it from them and butchered it into their own XXelven languageXX with
vomit covering.I am most disturbed by reports of humans appearing in goblin raiding parties... even more disturbing is the sight of one Eslo Tumwister, Human Maceman and guard to the Pesor Siti merchants, chasing and killing a pack of wolves in our territory. What gives him the right to just go around killing our wildlife?! They're running
away from him, not towards... I'd like to hear him try to give a self-defense plea. Besides, those wolves killed a kobold (and, apparently, an overzealous hunterdwarf just last season) for us. They're good protection, so long as the workers don't get too close.
Just as soon as I say this, īton Shigósreg, Trapper, fails to cram a wild wolf into a cage and has his head ripped clean off. His hunting dog, Ingish Ozormebzuth, goes to his body and sits pensively nearby. Well... I guess I can't always be right. Another coffin goes into the crypt.
As the merchants are unloading, I notice a peculiar sight... Unib is still following Sigun around. It's summer... Hasn't she made off with our trade agreements yet? She notices me staring, and hurriedly digs out a copy of
our requests to show to Sigun, which I'm sure he must have seen about twenty times by now. Does she even know what the Swift Arches is requesting anymore? She only has, what, two months to get back to them with our reports. I remember her being here when I got my injury... She might be spying on us. I seriously think we'll need to deal with this problem in the future...
Tekkud finishes his Basalt idol, engraving some world history trivia onto it. My guess is he's kissing the king's bearded ass. Whoops, clumsy me, remind me to
crush this tablet before King Minkot sees it emblazon its image in a masterpiece engraving on the underside of my office table.
I turn my attention again to the trade depot and balk. I count one axeman, two pikemen, two macemen, two hammermen, one bowman, one crossbowman, one spearman, one
lasher, and twelve merchants. I've never seen a caravan so well armed in my life... Are the surrounding lands becoming hostile? I was sure the dwarven kingdoms were strong here when we embarked! Are they simply paranoid about the goblin raiders?
Are they part of a goblin raiding party themselves??I pull Asob aside as I catch her on her way to the depot. "Asob, a lot of these men look dangerous... are you going to be alright?"
"Relax, Zon! I can handle it. Besides, if they try anything weird, we have a capable military to handle them."
"If you ask me, they look pretty evenly matched for us... and I don't
like evenly matched in the middle of our fortress."
"You worry too much. The humans in the goblin raiding party weren't from Pesor Siti."
"So they told you..."
Asob sighed. "I have my pick, OK? I've killed a batman on my own before, it's no big deal."
She left to go trade. Idiot! Comparing humans to batmen is like comparing water to magma! By the way, the obsidian creation is still moving
very slowly. Not even half of that area is solid yet.
The toils of the craftsdwarves really shined at this year's human expo. Here's a fine specimen of dwarven craftsmanship, which sold for 2,170 dwarfbucks:
I was somewhat upset with Asob, though, regarding another oversight. She had several dwarven syrup roasts made for trading, but forgot to forbid them! The hungry dwarves got into them and whittled away the stacks, putting good profit to waste. On top of that, there was a small collection of extraordinarily well-decorated
mechanisms that went straight to the trade pile. Ah well... it's certainly better than the fort bursting into flames because she forgot to put up a wall before tapping the magma vent, or something. We made some good profit from a collection of giant cave spider silk crafts, though.
"Ambush!! Goblins and humans again!"
Those sick bastards! They started with the poor hunting dog that had planted itself in the spot where Dātan fell! Are they trying to get at our loot, or just make us miserable?!
Predictably, this group heads straight for the northern puppy trap. The human is caught in a cage, but before the first goblin from that group can reach the dog, a
second ambush party reveals itself by attacking the same dog just seconds before the first party reaches it! What bizarre timing... The caged human pikeman is replaced by yet another human pikeman. Moments later, we catch
another human in the southern puppy trap. Hey, it's good to know these humans are as dumb as the goblins they're leading...
The human traders from Pesor Siti, the Confederacies of Targeting, have by now heard what's going on. They never actually put their weapons away, but they now wield them openly, determined to defend themselves. I am immediately convinced that the humans leading these goblins are
not connected to Pesor Siti. Their shared expressions of fear and hatred are more than convincing enough.
I draw my axe, gather my armor, and hobble over to stand beside the rest of the militia. The others turn and look at me in awe.
"Zon," Archibold says, "Leave this to us. We're professionals. You need not threaten yourself in this battle."
"Bah!" I say. "I've raised this fortress from its birth, and by Armok I'll die defending it. I've got a bone to pick with Kovest as it is, so if death meets me this day, all the sooner to sit down with him over a mug of dwarven wine!"
"Hey." Ast Numzasit, my dear lover turned speardwarf, pokes me with the butt of his spear. "Be careful out there, will ya?"
"I can't make you any promises." I give him a wink. "See you on the other side."
((DFMA)) ((Movie)) We rush headlong into battle, meeting the enemy halfway.After that was said and done, a kobold thief picked the wrong time and the wrong lock to pick and ended himself skewered at least eight different ways. Squish.
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Topic: Severedcoils - Consort Accumulation Challenge (Score: 5) (40d + DnD 5e) (Read 125169 times)