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What should Zathel do on his turn?

Hook up FAILCANNON to magma sea (powered by a huge dwarven reactor).
- 11 (28.2%)
Build a castle over the fortress entrance.
- 11 (28.2%)
Flush all the grime from Battlefailed with carefully arranged sewage system.
- 7 (17.9%)
Construct opulent quarters for every dwarf in Battlefailed.
- 3 (7.7%)
Get rid of every Forgotten Beast using huge cave-in traps
- 7 (17.9%)

Total Members Voted: 39

Voting closed: July 31, 2010, 02:35:48 pm


Pages: 1 ... 28 29 [30] 31 32 ... 60

Author Topic: Battlefailed (Succession) Legendary Clusterf**k, free for all reclaim  (Read 628313 times)

Robocorn

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #435 on: July 15, 2010, 03:15:44 pm »

Diary of Robocorn, Child leader
I think I may be losing a bit of myself to this body. I've acquired his likes and dislikes and have used my considerable charisma to dig us a room in a vein of silver, which I now love. The little guy hasn't disappointed in the hair department either and has enough friends to ensure his constant political influence. I'll have to do something in return for this little guy, though he may have to wait until puberty to enjoy it.

In other news I've managed to close the maintenance shaft for the Fort Flooder and through a bit of fortuitous misconstruction, all of the water drained into Andreus's lava field from last year instead of killing us. What good fortune.

With much experimentation I managed to get all of the floodgates closed. Now all we have to do is periodically trim the fungal wood that will grow all over the trade route for years to come.

The elves left this month and brought to my attention that the goblins who arrived in slate  were still here, beating on any dwarf dumb enough to be outside. and let me tell you, there were around twenty, camping outside in fear of the two goblins. It was utterly anticlimactic to see both goblins easily struck down by a lone macedwarf. Is there no limit to the shame I feel about this place.


As my room was beginning to be completed, I decided to do a favor for future generations and make a lever to control the front moat (which I had been told had no lever and was useless as a defense measure), to remove any issures regarding identification, I made it in the corner of a room, away from any other levers, out of ilmenite, of which there is only one mechanism, and surrounded it with orthoclase to remove any doubt that this was the lever that controlled the front drawbridge.


The rest of spring was comparably calm to the early spring, and summer came calmly too. I'm beginning to wish Led were here so she could see how well we've made out here, also because that bony old human would hate living in the dank underground with us. I've engineered a plan I hope can bring this into fruition as well as get rid of all the worthless rocks lying around. It's a simple plan, one that involves making thousands of rock mugs and giving them away for free. If giving away useless junk isn't the true meaning of wealth then I don't know what is.

It was just another summer afternoon while I was telling the damn architects to build screw pumps they'd crewed up on earlier when I got reports of something like a giant toad that breathes fire in the second cavern. This is clearly an opportunity to flaunt our military and eat lots of toad meat.


to cease the constant distractions caused by the undead wildlife, I put it upon myself to close the door, cutting us off from the outside world. I don't miss it at all.

I seem to be running into a problem lately, when I tell my followers to build a screw pump, they'll go to the site, set up the designs, bring all of the materials to the site, and then the mason who was contracted to build the pump will declare that it cannot be built and will remove the plans and leave the components to lie on the site. I have over fifty of the pumps to make and the gall of these dwarves is not helping any. They shouldn't have a say in whether or not it gets built. If I want a wall built between a hostile dragon and an erupting volcano, they better damn well burn to death building that wall or I'll have something worse prepared for them.

Speaking of which, I had decided to fortify the wall around our aboveground territory. Almost immediately, the masons decided that they would prefer not to do this project that justified their continued existence. The saw no reason to get off their lazy asses and work like they'd refused to work on the pump stack, as I was ready to prepare some exquisite revenge we got some guests.

ensuring that my fortifications would not be built for some time.

Continuing with our theme of failure a human caravan shows up but refuses to do anything because our bridge is drawn, and will not be undrawn until our green friends leave. They show no signs of doing so as they've joined another ambush squad to have a tea party.

It was nearly a week until they gave up and went home. The humans brought many things and I'll see if I can't unload some of our useless stone on them. This season has been a constant disappointment and I dinnae think it has ever stopped raining for the last three months. The liason will be here next season and we'll see if we can't get someone swanky here to suffer with us.

« Last Edit: July 26, 2010, 04:10:32 pm by Robocorn »
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Zathel

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #436 on: July 15, 2010, 03:55:02 pm »

Wait, wait, what? Did I get that right? You flooded the spiral staircase? HOW?!... actually, I'm not sure if I want to know. Paving over the mud should help. Its what I did with reservoir pump stack, it seems to work.

Also, do we even have any competent military dwarves left?
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shibdib

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #437 on: July 15, 2010, 04:08:49 pm »

haha all the epic fail fun of this fortress makes a great read
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TurkeyXIII

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #438 on: July 15, 2010, 11:55:53 pm »

Wait, wait, what? Did I get that right? You flooded the spiral staircase? HOW?!... actually, I'm not sure if I want to know. Paving over the mud should help. Its what I did with reservoir pump stack, it seems to work.
But then what would we do for logs?  8)

Nice drawings Robocorn.
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A medium-sized bird with a distinctive fleshy wattle that hangs from the underside of the beak, and a fleshy protuberance that hangs from the top of its beak called a snood.

Andreus

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #439 on: July 16, 2010, 12:42:12 am »

This... this is... beautiful. I think Battlefailed may be the Boatmurdered of 2010.

Oh, and I'd like to voulenteer for the next open slot.
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Robocorn

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #440 on: July 16, 2010, 04:58:02 pm »

Diary of Robocorn, Child leader
This mornin' I tried to convince old Andreus 3 to do a masterful engraving of naked ladies over my bed. He refused, and when I said he could just do an exeptional engraving he stormed off, muttering something about post-dwarvenism and cosmic power. He should have more sympathy from me, I have to go through puberty TWICE.

In less important news, the humans have finished their week long trek to our trade depot. If they have anything at all, I'll buy the heaviest stuff so they can carry the greatest amount of worthless stone crafts away.


Autumn's finally come, the rain will stop and those bastards from graspedseduce will come and see how prosperous their "Dwarven paradise" is. They'll give us their least favorite baron and I'll give them  terrible rocks. But what if that isn't enough. I'll have to come up with something.

When I traded with the humans they were much more friendly than any of the humans in Graspedseduce they had plenty of stuff to justify selling off damaged clothing and rock crafts.


They are however, a bit lethargic with the leaving portion of trade, the part where they take the goods home or somewhere else entirely. Their lethargy troubles me.while it would be great if they just died, I gave them all of our throwaway stone goods and I really don't want more junk lying around this godforsaken dump.

The pump stack is doing terribly, It may take the entire year to finish it, regardless, the slime shooter will be completed, come hell or high water, which are both entirely plausible setbacks at this point.

On a lighter note, our tall garbagemen only took two months to get their sorry asses out of our hair and I don't miss them in the slightest. Tell your warlords we've got plenty more garbage where that came from!


The blistering breakneck pace at which these screw pumps are being produced is staggering. Almost two, in a month? you masons and architects must be proud of yourselves. We seem to have one miner and she has a deathwish, I thought it might have been my doing that killed most of them off, but it seems they were really a suicidal lot. I can't blame them for coming to Battlefailed then if that was their mission, oughta speed up the process anyway.

It's not like we're running out of food, but we could use more. I've decided to create a whole new plot for plump helmets to help keep the bastards fed. It's boring but it needs to be done.


The pump stack has been going well, the aboveground fortifications don't seem to have too many hangups and just because I can I'm putting together a litt- SHIT


no literally, a giant flying blob of stinking shit. if this thing gets in we're all dead. I can only rely on the caution employed by my predecessors to ward off flying enemies. AUUGH

Finally, the caravan has come from the mountainhomes. I'll unload our bone and rock goods (I've found bone is as abundant here as stone for obvious reasons) We just have to hope no goblins show up.

You've gotta have pity for those merchants, If I was a sniveling pissant from the cushy obsidian towers of graspedseduce I'd be scared shitless of this place allow me to unobscure our front gate

I'm resisting the urge to shout "Welcome to Fucking Battlefailed!" over the bloodstained walls of our carrion littered slice of hell. nonetheless, this is a great opportunity to bring all of our trashcrafts to the garbage-depot. Just in case you didn't know, if I never saw another piece of frigging gabbro again it would be too soon.

Unfortunately, the thought of crappy useless stone crafts draws in a goblin raiding party, maybe our "competant" "warriors" can dispatch them.

If it surprises you at all, then you haven't been paying attention. But the goblins armed with whips manage to chew their way through our front lines until some real warriors show up. A digruntles band of goblins waits outside because I'm not stupid enough to open the door.

down in the fort I unload a ton of useless crap we collected from corpses and craftwork and had to buy all of his anvils to just get him to fit it all on the mules. The guy looked like he was about to hump my leg after we made the deals.

He keeps telling me that he has a schedule, but I find that if I open the front door to let Onol out, then he'll let in the asshole goblins who are currently loitering outside our walls. I'll have those battle hardened Battlefailed warriors go and kill them as I open the door.

On a lighter note some poor woodcrafter has become possessed and will likely produce something of little or no value.

Hooray

I was going to save this for later, but I made an arena for goblin/skeleton fighting but I'd like to show this image of dust coming from a collapsing piece of floor tiling knocking everyone on their asses.

See you in winter.

Andreus

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #441 on: July 16, 2010, 05:16:07 pm »

Well obviously I, a noted postdwarvenist philosopher, can't be expected to do something so iconic of the dwarven condition as draw something on a wall for your own selfish self-aggrandizement, can I?

I noticed the OCEAN OF SLIME myself. I really want to know exactly how someone managed to get a frozen beast to release that much... extract. :-\
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Robocorn

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #442 on: July 16, 2010, 05:23:59 pm »

Well obviously I, a noted postdwarvenist philosopher, can't be expected to do something so iconic of the dwarven condition as draw something on a wall for your own selfish self-aggrandizement, can I?

I noticed the OCEAN OF SLIME myself. I really want to know exactly how someone managed to get a frozen beast to release that much... extract. :-\
You did half of the engravings in my royal bedroom, mostly of titans.

It's a secretion, every time Osman touches a wet tile he leaves a pile of noxious goo.
He's been around apparently.

Diary of Robocorn, Prodigial master
The goblins are here and they won't stop being a bother, They greatly outnumber our  warriors and I consider this a great time to throw our best soldiers at them and hope for the best.

This proves verily effective, It seem that all of our effective strategy involves sending three dwarves named Èzum, Sigun, and Zon. Legendary Axedwarf, Hammerdwarf, and swordsdwarf respectively, demolshing dosens of goblins while the goblins beat the life out of craftsdwarves or masons. A fine strategy if I don't say so myself.

Is it just me or is every goblin named Stozu?

Well, saves me having to learn their names when putting them in gladiatorial combat.

Speaking of which, in our gladiatorial arena that has yet to be finished one of our miners was caught in a freak accident and made gravity her bitch. We're currently working on plans to get her down.


In more disappointing news our possessed friend made for us a barrel, what is strange is that the barrel has an image of itself on it. A major problem with the possession of an amazingly ornate barrel is that I can't have it placed in my room for personal use.


Oh well. We've had no luck in lowering Melbil's body, a levitating corpse is a great ornament for a gladiatorial arena don't you think?

Well, The merchants are getting ready to leave and the liaison has yet to come. Those bastards aren't goign to follow protocol, they're going to leave us without proper representation, without proper law enforcement and without a proper philosopher, we can't make do with these posts-dwarvenist guys, they're awful, I want someone who thinks like me only moreso.

It seems as though my demeanor has rubbed off on the populace, they all walk around hunched over and grumbling about their dead idiot friends or their dead idiot dog who thought Stozu was a real friendly guy. The only problem with this is that other dwarves will not "nut up" and get on with their lives so I've come to the conclusion that I have to smooth and engrave everything to make them all feel better about their mediocrity. I'l let them throw parties and drink all the beer and be merry. I've had my legs broken enough times to know of dwarven instability.


A legendary miner that goes by the name of mathlc threw a tantrum today, and by threw a tantrum I mean he ripped an architect in fucking half. IN FUCKING HALF!
As an encore, he rips an arm and a leg off of a fisherdwarf.

Is it too early to sic the earthen gloves on this maniac?
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

some other whacko with anger management issues  manages to unfurrow an area of soil with the pure force of his rage.


In an entirely unrelated note, I'm ramping up coffin production and giving everyone snuggly warm beds where they can forget all their troubles.

The tantrums have been getting a little less frequent since I started making the new graves, and as a bonus I get to figure out who died on my watch, like Creiyd who must have contributed to this place while I was in hell, and cutiebard who thought this was a community fort a couple months ago.


well I've only got two months left to go and it seems like everything's been breaking down, but I'm sure it couldn't get
much worse than it is now. Wait' what's that?
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I'm speechless...

So after I lost my speechlessness, I decided to write down the situation at hand. There is a giant blob of filth spraying toxic gas all over the central area where all of our food is located and our best warriors are having little luck bringing it down.

This is all part of the experience.

After hours of beating the horrifying blob of stinking muck with their warhammers and crossbows,  the beast finally collapsed into a filthy heap of putrid goo. The brave soul who took out the beast. Shem shipdusts will be given the title "shitslayer" because "Shem Shipdusts, Shit Slayer" is an amazingly fortuitous tongue twister

Funny enough that gas that Nomar kept farting out was harmless and caused "numbness" and minor nausea. It just goes to show that even the scariest monsters can be really pathetic when fought head on and that we shouldn't believe all of this lore about the deadly powers of the forgotten beasts and should fight ahead even when confronted with seemingly insurmountable odds because even in the hellwasted pit that is Battlefailed sometimes good fortune smiles upon us...









Just kidding. Anyone who got anywhere near Nomar died of critical lung failure


So now I've got my first Berserker. Some trapper guy who nobody will miss.

The guy is immediately set upon by the trained soldiers but refuses to die even when five six eight soldiers are pounding him into the floor simultaneously, he even manages to kill one of them. Fortunately some axemen arrive and chop him to bits. better'n I had, lucky fool.


Only a few weeks later a stonecrafter goes berserk. Guess I won't be getting any more +gabbro mug+s outta her. I scrambled the fortress defense force and they struck her down post haste. I think I might prefer hell to battlefailed after all. I wonder if Xubkib will take me back if I go back to hell.

I'm not proud of it, but we've run out of coffins. I've just been piling up the corpses in the rooms in upper battlefailed where we seldom dwell, I'm not looking forward to the ramifications of this, but I haven't got any other choice, all of my masons are out tantrumming


Today, a glassmaker went berserk and got in a fistfight with an unarmed recruit. The fight left lots of vomit around the upper levels of the fort. I haven't been able to finish nay of my projects this year. The slimeshooter is less than halfway done, though the pieces are there. The mechanics of the arena are not in place and I still haven't crenellated
the outer wall so it can serve as a platform for snipers. All of these have been balanced by halfway failures like killing Nomar or getting a royal bedroom that you can't sleep in because there's always a bum in it.

I'd like to enjoy my youth now. When the month is over I'll just let anyone else run this hellhole into the ground. They couldn't do as bad a job as me if they tried.

Oh, and the giant one-eyed fire-breathing toad of death got into the fort.



Seriously

What the hell? Does the world hate me?

So I send out the earthen gloves and those other two squads who are around to make the earthen gloves look better. A wrestler engages Uker (the toad) and is immediately incinerated. Well, a least there's no tricks up this one's sleeve. I'm pretty sure I know what fire does.

Oh god I hope I don't know what fire does!

I didn't die of course. A tantrumming macedwarf drew the ire of the beast so I could get away. The macedwarf didn't last long as he was soon engulfed in fire. Our friend Uker then got a chance to show his love to the cripples in the hospital. After the hospital is reduced to a mess of blood and soot. Uker moves to the lower level dining hall where he pursues all except for the suicidal craftsdwarf. Really, you spare that one?


In a fit of awesome that makes the entirety of the victims of Uker look like pathetic miserable worms. A single swordsmaster, Kol Hallshimmered, struck down Uker singlehandedly with his masterful blade. Swordsmaster is an appropriate enough title for a dwarf such as him. I really hope it gets less exciting really soon.


I'm sure that everything will be just fine here in Batlefailed when everyone gets their stuff together.

evrything will be just fine, just fine, just fine, fine, just fine. fine. fine. just fine. just fine. fine. fine. fiiine. just fiine. fine fine. just fine. really great. fine. just fine. good. great. super. yes. super. super fine. just super fine. fine. super. super-de-duper. fine. just fine.


Nothing else happened, I tried to  stem the tantrum spiral but this is the kind of thing that's happened to me before. We've got over seventy dwarves, you should at least be able to save a dozen of them.

oh, the floating miner got a fey mood. Good luck with that.
« Last Edit: July 26, 2010, 04:22:04 pm by Robocorn »
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Zathel

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #443 on: July 17, 2010, 01:56:01 am »

You did know that someone earlier put a glass window to overlook the caverns?

Guess how the beasts got in. All in the name of Fun, I guess. It's the beauty of succession forts. When you build it by yourself, preventing breaches of security is piece of cake.

Anyway, I wonder if situation will stabilize until my turn.
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SethCreiyd

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #444 on: July 17, 2010, 02:33:36 am »

Robocorn, I've no words to describe how epic that was.  You tell an awesome tale.  Anxiously awaiting save - I got the link, but it seems to be broken.

Journal of Creiyd Edusil, (date unintelligible)
Final Entry
-----
Something is wrong with Cog.  Recently she's been espousing the same post-dwarvenist nonsense the late Andreus used to.  I think Krimson's death touched her in the head.  I'd feel bad for her if I hadn't given up caring.

The alarm has been sounded again.  Those bloody goblins are back.  Why in Lur's name did I join the military, anyway?
« Last Edit: July 17, 2010, 02:39:26 am by SethCreiyd »
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Andreus

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #445 on: July 17, 2010, 04:44:18 am »

Let us be frank, gentlemen. Killer herds of undead grazing animals? Battle donkeys? Identical goblins? Dedicated necropoli? Artifice barrels? Slime lakes? Shit monsters? Forgotten beast incursions through artifact gem windows? Anti-gravity miners with fey moods?

Battlefailed is 2010's Boatmurdered.

Together, through combined effort and force of will, we have created something to compare to that cthonian abyss from which so many dwarven legends have sprung. We have forged a new level of hell.

And it's not even over yet.
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SethCreiyd

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #446 on: July 17, 2010, 07:26:00 am »

Creiyd was waking up.

His first thought was, "I am dead."  This was not a hunch, nor some arcane knowledge missing a cause.  He simply felt no life inside of him.  Some earlier part of him had fled.  Maybe it was stress that was missing, or perhaps blood.

His certainty was helped by what he last remembered (a goblin's pike running him through), but that seemed so long ago now.  The existence he'd clung to as a living dwarf was a foreign lamp in the dark distance.  Now, a child's excitement was all he knew.  Everything before was as a dream.

And what a dream!  Before he'd even attempted to digest his surroundings, he was amazed at the inner world he found.  The events of his life passed like the flipping pages of a book in the wind.  But as he called each image to mind, he realized - with some horror - that he could no longer recognize many of the figures in them.  Their identities were slipping away, less distinct from one other than single termites in a log.  He started, fearing he might forget his own face.

Did he still have a face?  A fast caress assured him that yes, he did - and a beard, too.  All the parts seemed there, a fact apparent in his nakedness.  This was surprising, to be sure (perhaps even disappointing), but what had he expected?  Nothing specific he could recall.  He'd tried to speculate before his time, like any mortal must once realizing the irrevocable approach of death.  And wondering, in its own sneaky way, can lead to expectation, but what his were, he was not sure.  This worried him, as he felt himself slipping away in a manner he could not fathom.

Creiyd then turned his thoughts to the existence of the afterlife (as all mortals do once learning about it) and this rumination arrested him for more minutes than he could count on four limbs.

It was night where he stood, which was in a patch of grassy, rolling hills stretched to the edge of his sight.  A distant star, the only one out, glimmered in the sky.  The crescent moon floated almost directly above him, and in its bruised ambiance he could see a brilliant patch of white flowers.  They shone in the dimness, swaying in the wind, which he accepted as normal until he tried to feel the breeze around him and couldn't.  Puzzled, he cautiously approached them and stopped there, kneeling beside the small beauties as they danced in slow circles.

He glanced to the right to be startled by a figure, draped in a magnificent red and white robe, moving toward him in alarming haste.  The apparition glided, rather than walked, its hands concealed within the folds of his clothing.  Soon the creature drew near enough for Creiyd to see its golden eyes and young, elfin face.  "Avast, Creiyd Clearlanterns!  Do not pick those flowers, for they are mine to admire!  'Tis I, Lur Thiefwitch, Lor'lady of Jealousy, who moves them thusly!"  The being announced this title amidst a fanfare of white smoke, colored lights, and fluttering balls of paper that materialized loudly out of the air before him.  His charcoal hair was long and stretched back, blowing in the non-existent breeze, and his eyes were encircled with dark paint that accented his elongated beard and eyelashes.

"Lur?" Creiyd asked, uncertain.  "How can I know you aren't a trickster spirit?  You may be a foul monster of the abyss!"

The creature smiled.  "Laddie, if I were, you'd be dead in a whole new way.  But if that's the way you want it?"  The air around the two of them began to crackle with the smell of sulfur as shards of lightning passed through the air between them.

"My Lord!  Lady!"  cried Creiyd, prostrating himself before his god.  "I am not worthy to receive you, verily though I wouldst beg to."

"Not at all, my good dwarf," said Lur with a smile that revealed a dazzling set of pointed white teeth.  The cracks of lightning ceased, the air grew odorless once more.  "I wanted to thank yeh for yer pathetic Temple by granting ye a personal greeting, now that ye made it here."

Not sure how he should feel about this, Creiyd asked, "If I may, Your Resplendence, where exactly is 'here?'"

"Here?  Why, this is Limbo, land of the dead!  Welcome!"

"Limbo?" Creiyd repeated.  "So we Dwarves don't sleep in the stone forever?"

"Heavens no!" Lur exclaimed.  "Oh, yeh won't be going there, though."

"What?" said Creiyd.

"Nothing, never mind," Lur said with a wave of his hand.  "Come with me, ol' boy, there's someone who wants to see yeh."  And then they were flying, only an instant later, it appeared to Creiyd, who felt the urge to vomit uncontrollably as they spiraled through the air at blurry speeds without any seen support or reason.

"Dreams'll often lie to gain their wings," Lur said with such conviction that Creiyd fought his sickness down to pay attention, "to get one foot out the door when the rest cannae fit through.  Are yah payin' attention?"

Choking slightly, Creiyd answered, "Yes, m'Lor'lady!"

They flew not for long, but quite far, such that the sun had replaced the moon with enthusiasm by the time they landed.  Together, the two dwarf-shaped beings followed a road that lead to a group of many pillars, geometrically arranged and standing tall.  By the daylight they cast colossal shadows against the landscape.  Creiyd was so awed by the fine pieces of architecture that he almost missed the familiar figure that emerged from behind one of them.

"C-Cog?" he stammered, his senses returning.  "What in the Windy World?"

"Creiyd," she greeted him fondly, the musical voice striking a mast somewhere in his mind.  Familiar, not yet a memory, but quickly becoming one.  A memory is places visited, feelings had, people met and loved; this was something far more haunting.

"But I thought..." Creiyd began.

"...yeh cannae remember anyone from life?" Lur interrupted.  "Well, not while they're still alive, no.  But once yeh see them in Limbo, the memories come back.  Otherwise ye'd miss your loved ones fiercely ere they died, no?"  Lur rubbed his lips, a thoughtful expression crossing his face, and muttered, "There's an idea."

Creiyd caught her eyes with his, with an indecisive weightlessness on the inside, and as he surveyed her loveliness, each second unfolded into an inner battle: where one half of his hardened heart wished to stare in rapture, to hold her forever, while the other, wiser half screamed for caution against... something.  Someone.  Mercifully for Creiyd, this inner schism took a back seat to the buzzing warmth of seeing her again.  Then he realized that all this meant she was dead.

"But you're alive!" Creiyd complained aloud.  "I just had a conversation with you before the goblins came!  You were..." Creiyd paused.  "Not acting yourself..." he trailed off, his thoughts spinning.  Cog frowned.

Before long, Lur said, "I believe I can provide some illumination."  For a few seconds, the sun grew even brighter in the sky, and Lur laughed boorishly.  Then the light faded back to normal, and the god spoke again, his voice growing serious. 

"No, listen.  A long time ago, in the first year of Battlefailed's founding, before either of you emigrated to that mire, a dwarf by the name of Andreus died unceremoniously within its infant halls.  Without getting into details, let's say I owed him a favor, and he ended up getting a free ticket back to the Windy World.  Now, before anyone asks, I'm not going to do that for either of you, ever.  Sending mortal souls back to the physical plane tends to unravel things."

Creiyd and Cog both appeared confused.  Lur sighed.  "Look.  Ye send a dead dwarf back into the old world, and it causes problems.  There's a strict balance at work in the world - one body, one soul, no options.  But Andreus went back and didn't think his old body was good enough.  He took someone else's, creatin' a mortality deficit that Sahed's gonna kill me for."

"Sahed?" Creiyd whispered to Cog.

"God of Death and Rainbows," Cog whispered back.

Lur raised his hand toward the sky, and out of the ground popped a tree with skull-like knots protruding from the bark, the surface of which rippled like a pond disturbed and peeled away to the sides.  Pictures began to form against the now-exposed heartwood of the tree.  Creiyd and Cog watched, amazed, as the animated bark formed a lifelike rendition of Andreus sitting crouched in a tomb, painting small sigils on a coffin, with what looked suspiciously like blood.

"Andreus learned a few things in his time here," said Lur with a rueful stare at the sky.  "There's a reason the dead are supposed to stay dead."

"Which you ignored," Cog pointed out.

"Guilty!" Lur grinned.  "But listen, it gets better.  There was a great commotion when one of the hellspawn from this world followed Andreus through the dimensional rift.  Since neither of you fathom what that means for spacetime, I'll just mention that damned souls are now freely passing into and out of your old world, and the universe is falling apart at the seams."

The tree produced sound now, and image after horrifying image of the souls of Battlefailed's dead: some wailing through the halls invisibly, others pounding away futilely at ghostly coffins that yet held them trapped; scenes played of the newly-deceased being hurled across realities against their will, of unspeakable abominations screaming with violence as they ceaselessly raged against a shimmering wall of chromatic flame, smashing themselves upon it; the hellish chorus erupting whenever one broke through and vanished into the other side.

"Let us be clear on one thing," said the God of Jealousy, "Even here, a soul needs a vessel.  It doesn't just vanish when its body is stolen.  It has to go somewhere.  The displaced soul of the first dwarf Andreus commandeered was twisted by the forces beyond the veil, and, well, look."

The tree now showed a hideous, gargantuan turtle, oozing a horrid-looking substance from its every pore as it writhed in seeming agony, moaning as it swam in its own filth.  "He used to be such a cute little dwarf," said Lur.

Cog was the first to speak.  "It's so horrible," she said.

"Andreus must pay," Creiyd said at last.

"Andreus died a second time," Lur continued, "drowning in the Blueness.  This you both know.  It was funny for me, after seein' him die of thirst once before.  Only this time, he'd preemptively prepared himself for resurrection.  He didn't even get to Limbo this time, or I'd have had more than words with him.  He just skipped straight across town and took possession of one Cog Racksects, current mayor of Battlefailed - and knowing him, he'll probably perform that ritual again.  And every time he does, the hole in reality will widen, 'til the whole mess utterly collapses."

Creiyd glanced over at Cog, who was doing her part to appear outraged.  "And then what happens, Your Enviousness?" he asked.

"Then you find out what fun really means," Lur said darkly.  "But anyway, sweetie, that's why you're here," he finished, gesturing at Cog with a leer.

For a while, no one spoke, until Creiyd asked, "Is that all, Your Feminence?"

"Well, the two o' yeh won' be a couple for long," Lur said, resuming his previous joviality as he chortled, rubbed his hands and peered into the strange tree's shifting display.  "A bunch of yer friends are about to arrive."
« Last Edit: July 17, 2010, 07:54:09 am by SethCreiyd »
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TurkeyXIII

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #447 on: July 17, 2010, 10:12:11 am »

Oh man this is awesome, I reread robocorn's turn twice for the sheer hilarity of it.

Although the artefact window overlooked the third cavern level, while the death toad and shit monster came in from the second.  The only FB in the third cavern (AFAIK) was the diamond slug that caught fire when Andreus flooded the place with magma.

These last two FBs aren't my fault, I swear!
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A medium-sized bird with a distinctive fleshy wattle that hangs from the underside of the beak, and a fleshy protuberance that hangs from the top of its beak called a snood.

Oglokoog

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #448 on: July 17, 2010, 10:42:26 am »

This is awesome and I am extremely glad that I, at one point, got to play a part in it's awesomeness. I did almost nothing of note, but whatever.
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So we got monsters above, monsters below, dwarves in the middle and a party in the dining hall. Sounds good to me.
If all else fails, remember one thing:  kittens are delicious, nutritious little goblin-baiters, cavern explorers, and ambush-finders.

Zathel

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Re: Battlefailed (Succession) Coastal Zombie Hellscape.
« Reply #449 on: July 17, 2010, 03:38:50 pm »

Oh man this is awesome, I reread robocorn's turn twice for the sheer hilarity of it.

Although the artefact window overlooked the third cavern level, while the death toad and shit monster came in from the second.  The only FB in the third cavern (AFAIK) was the diamond slug that caught fire when Andreus flooded the place with magma.

These last two FBs aren't my fault, I swear!

Really? Hmmm... There must've been some breach left over from some construction project or exploratory shafts.

Hey, now that I think about it, everything started going downhill after I decided to move the whole mess that is Battlefailed deeper underground... well shit.
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