Chapter 95: Priorities Welcome back to Whisperwhip. It's been a while. It is a standart fort, populated by exploding cats, a hundred forgotten beast corpses, a legion of devils, a couple giant metallic constructs, and a dragon gatekeeper. I think it says a lot about this fortress that
the goddess of murder and blood would visit the place and have an existential crisis, and somehow that's not something I remember immediately because much weirder things have happened.
After checking the status of our monster traps, I decide to perfect our newest surface project, operation FLASHFIRE. The goal is simple, replace every soldier by a dragon scorching the savannah during sieges. Kills invaders, destroy useless items, doesn't endanger dwarves. it's perfect in theory.
In practice, the dragon has a mind of its own. every time I modify the design, he flees to observe our quern collection.
Flashfire mkII is unleashed. Still has issues. In the first itteration, the dragon wouldnt fire because of fortifications. In the second iteration, he fires once then runs outside to do battle. He survives unscathed this time, but we can't hope for this to work every time. archers will just fuck him up.
Our engineers work on markIII, in which two bridges and some channeling are used to contain the dragon.
The trolls are attracted by objects. I place a bait and wait.
The trolls are scorched, but goblins will not be baited by a table, and they dont have bows to shoot the dragon with.
Good thing we have something to their taste. bring me some dogs over here!
it works! Goodbye goblins.
the tail of the invading party survives the scorching assault, and decide to leave right the fuck now.
The project is a success, but in the process one of the bridges is totally melted by dragonfire. Something about mechanisms not being fire-proof, I presume.
********
a minotaur! Oh no!
The dragon is nowhere to be found. Normally I'd try to catch this creature, but anything that isnt fireproof or metalic is quite useless to my future plans, So I order Vabok to shoot him. The soldier fires once and leaves the fight. the minotaur falls over from the pain and is pilled up on by thirty war dogs that shred him to pieces. Okaaaaay, that's kinda hardcore.
i look at the combat logs. The collossus is still alive, if you can call it that. It is mostly just a memberless husk attracting demons. this is a bad thing. As a result, my combat log is so full that anything past fifteen seconds simply gets overwritten. That's bad. Did you know that a bronze colossus is caught in a burst of flame? trust me if you didn't, the game will make sure you learn about it.
Step one of my assault on hell plan, retrieve the hatch room. with the snow demons killed, e can claim it for ourselves once more.
The caverns get busy.
a forgotten beast or three make their way to the fortress. I panic for a little while, but confirm that they are either stuck behind mushrooms, or in the Doomcave.
The efforts of our dwarves pays off, and now the hatch is reclaimed and cleaned!
Next step: isolate the DOOMCAVE from the adamantine spire. The two have been connected to unleash demons against monsters a few updates ago, but to no avail. In the process, demons destroyed the contingency bridges, so it cannot be sealed with engineering. I send the dwarves to the third cavern layer, and have them work on some plugs.
nothing happens. Only debris fall to the ground. The seal doesnt work. I try once more, still nothing. fuck that, we arent wasting the golem's diversion.
New burrow. everyone near the adamantine corridor. No time to waste.
Step 1: open the path to the sealed section of this fortress. success.
Step 2: Have a standby worker with masonry plug the path to the doomcave manually. Success.
Step 3: Have Vabok stationned at one hand of the corridor to shoot the 4 demons of snow that may aggro from the spire:
Vabok where the fuck are you.
Vabok got lost and went to the caverns instead. Abort! Abort!
Seal the hole!
Well, that's... not optimal. Four demons of Snow just rushed in, and our soldier got lost instead of defending the corridor. The masons arent fast enough to seal the hole.
also, it appears that they are all here because of a burrow, which i created to hasten the work and have every dwarf ready and proactive.
fuck.
The first victim is our mascot, the cheerful entertainer and novice diagnoser, our beloved Stray tigerman diagnoser. i like to think that he jumped in front of the demons to buy us time. that's what he,d do.
I'm sorry buddy.
I'm so sorry.
Vabok where the fuck are you right now. are you... are you here yet? did you get out of the caverns?
Vabok is sleeping. not... nearby or anything. as soon as the demons attacked, he started climbing the entire fortress to sleep at the top layer of Whisperwhip. There is a reason we have several bedchambers in the way. Because an entire trip through Whisperwhip is quite the endeavor. it can take days.
Our only soldier is now to days away from the combat. Amazing.
I call our trainee marksdwarf Plato, and hope he/she can deal with this issue promptly.
Plato is dead.
not that I blame him, anyway. amidst the several caught on fire anouncements, one can scout a few casualties racking up.
Vabok is still sleeping.
No worries, buddy. the fortress is doing fine while you take a nap.
Despite the grim nature of this event, I can't help but laugh out loud when i notice that our ''Chief ragdoll engineer'' is getting tossed around like a puppet.
Fun fact about snow demons. they are very frail but somehow their blows send people flying accross the room. it also conveys a special extract which basically freeze the victim's lungs and brain, and leave them there to die slowly. they dont even finish off the victims that survive. they just freeze them and watch them die ominously.
Now lets follow Vabok as he wakes up.
Vabok, go and station yourself downstairs and fight the fucking demons right now!
He goes to the barracks... and pick the heaviest bin he can find.
He travels to the bottom of the base. At this point it's been a week since the massacre occured.
the easiest burrow to use was the coliseum. I modify it to include booze and food stockpiles from the consession stand. The survivors are stashed there and cheer as Vabok emerges.
''Save us Vabok!''
''help us''
But Vabok has more important tasks in mind.
he travels all the way to the spire, and stores one weapon from the previous squad into the bin. He, of course, leaves the bin right there and venture... upstairs?
''I need to pick up supplies!'' Vabok announces.
He steps over a dozen corpses and freezing dwarves and head back upstairs.
he grabs yet another item and stores it in a stockpile. Along the way he steps over more survivors screaming for help, more bodies, more bloodshed. But proper item storage is what sets us apart from mere animals, and Vabok understands this. He knows the line between chaos and order is crossed by disregarding stockpile management.
At least this time he decided to use a wheelbarrow. that's military training for ya, makes you
efficient.Alright, items are properly stored! Now Vabok can go and retrieve his military equipment. He's missing a vital part of his uniform. He enters his spare bedroom, and collects... a spare used pair of socks. I can't blame him. Have you ever had wet socks because of melting snow getting in your boots? You always need a spare pair of socks. Those are snow demons after all.
Any second now Vabok. Any second.
Oh yes, your waterskin. Can't forget about that. Gotta have those extra two rations of booze if you are stationned down there. Silly me, how could
i forget. are you gonna grab the closest one?
Oh... you are going out of your way to take from the last barrel in the farthest storage room. That's... a valid life choice i suppose. There's just no compromise when it comes to choosing a spirit you like.
I AM BATTLE READY! Announces Vabok to the surviving half of our fortress. he makes his way downstairs.
One of the demons made his way to the bottom of the mines, where he killed a bunch of dwarves. He appears to be missing.
He was one of the three demons to enter HAVEN, now not a very friendly place. like, i dont think sending dwarves there right now will improve their morale at all.
The fourth demon is camping somewhere in BASE1, overseeing a bunch of freezing dwarves with gleeful eyes.
Strangely, it seems that only this demon and one other in HAVEN are still alive. The others are... dead? I have no way of knowing what took them down, since any action older than twelve seconds gets replaced by ''yo dawg the collossus is on fire!''
And now he has made it.
After two weeks of fucking around. vabok is ready to save the fortress and take down the demons. go forth, demon slayer.
He reaches HAVEN.
..and walks past the demon of snow. He station himself in a random bedroom. The demon is there, Vabok, fucking take him on. Shoot him. you are a legendary sniper.
Vabok why are you just standing there passively.
Vabok why are you going into melee range.
Oh.
Oh come on.
You spent two weeks preparing for this moment.
And somehow you forgot your motherfucking weapon!He punches, miss, gets dumped against a wall, and starts to freeze there. The demon stands there, unimpressed.
Here's a good view of the entire battle. Click this screenshot, do not disregard it.
********
As soon as Vabok finally chose to ''engage'' the enemy, i ordered rutile boulders to be carried downstairs.
The lower fortress is sealed. Anyone left there is either dead or soon to be dead anyway.
people are starting to be unhappy about this whole affair.
You know what, nish the lye maker? I'm not even mad at you. You truly deserve to be tantrumming right now.
Tantrum at your heart's content.
And you too, sakzul. nevermind the fact that I'm relying on you to construct a wall between us and demons, you tantrum as much as you like.
And you too Sarvesh. You too. Everyone gets a free tantrum pass today. we've earned it. it is justified.
********
With all the medical dwarves... unavailable, nobody remembers to feed or give water to our rotting comatose rovod, fortress champion. maybe it is for the best. He has been in this state for decades, and probably deserve a rest.
someone dies of thirst as well.
In the middle of a booze stockpile.
The dwarves living in the bedrooms of BASE1 are now homeless. instead of claiming new beds, they decide to use the children dorm. They all just... pile up on the floor in fetal position and fall asleep there, instead of using beds.
Whisperwhip is safe from demons as of now, but their attack has killed half the fortress, and left the rest... damaged.
Edit: Fun quote from the last chapter:
Retaking the spire is possible, but the death of amo, or a somewhat alert demon, or any amount of dwarven lazyness will doom us all
I just remember who Vabok was.
He's the one recruit that got lost and fell asleep when the army died to keep the demons at bay.
That explains so much.
Poll
28 (57.1%)
Author
Topic: Whisperwhip: a megabeast steakhouse (Circus Edition) (Read 144100 times)