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[Jaxicat]

"S'not right I tells you and I should know."

Not again.  Against my will I looked up at the old wrinkled dwarf shackled to the bench beside me.  He'd been trying for days to engage me in conversation.  For the past hour he'd finally grown silent and I had allowed myself high hopes that finally he'd given up.  Yet here he was at it again. 

One must forgive my lack of civility during this time of personal tragedy.  Normally I strive to not rub my breeding nor my vast intelligence in the faces of those less fortunate.  I believe that if we hope to help  the common-folk to behave with a modicum of civility and logic, then those of us who are gifted must each seek to elevate those lesser beings with gentle yet firm guidance and teach through our example.  However, the circumstances of the time led me to believe such an exercise in charity would be pointless in the extreme. 

Despite all this and against my better judgment I decided to respond to the old man's fears.  Perhaps he only needed to be soothed and would return to his new-found habits of silence and introspection.

"What isn't right?" I asked.

"Wait for it..."

CLANG!

"That!" he said triumphantly and a little too loudly right into my ear.

The clang repeated every so often and I heard shouting and cursing going on outside the confines of the brig. Eventually things seemed to calm down.  Thankfully my neighbor drifted off to sleep and I was left in relative peace for a few hours. The endless droning of the dirigible's rotors lulled me once again into a languid, dreamy state. 

When the explosion happened, my heart skipped a few beats and I found myself screaming along with many of the other prisoners on board the air ship. 

One ought not to judge me too harshly for this lapse in control for had I not recently been made to be put through much in the way of injustice and unfortunate circumstance? 

For the crimes of necromancy and miscellaneous unsavory deeds I'd been given a sentence of transportation to one of the new penal colonies far to the east, beyond the boundaries of the civilized world. To think one such as I, Hope Constantine daughter of the late Doctor Victor Constantine could fall from such heights and be shackled alongside the common riffraff to serve out the rest of her days in obscurity.  It would fill any sane mind with a sense of tragedy and rightly so.  But do not shed a tear for me, I beg you, for I am not one for wallowing in self pity nor even for taking comfort in the well meaning compassion of others. 

The events which followed the explosion are jumbled and ragged in my memory like pages torn from a book.  There was fire and blood, black smoke which choked and blinded and there were screaming pleads for help from the dying.  I try not to dwell on the negative events in life and indeed despite the crash of the air ship and the end of many lives, fortune shone upon me that day.

I found myself laughing amongst the destruction and with my new found sense of destiny, it was hard to mask my glee from the other survivors.  I'd been given a second chance in life and this time I would do things right. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Jaxicat]

Right now this is just a story of my current fort.  If there's any interest I might make this into a community fortress at some point.  I am imagining this as some sort of mad scientist in a dark steampunk world.

[Jaxicat]

SPRING 1051

In those first few days of my new life, chaos ruled the day.  None of the crew survived and it was just the common criminals out fending for themselves and me. 

I should correct myself, I do try to be as honest as possible.   There were in fact a few of the crew who survived but they were wounded and in need of medical service.  Although I was banned from ever attending the university after my father was executed, I fancied myself something of an expert on dwarfish anatomy.  Indeed I could show those Doctors in the mountain homes a thing or two about how things really work. 

So it was that I found myself considering helping these injured men and women but then logic and reason  set in and I realized that we were out in the wild without hope of rescue and limited supplies.  More mouths to feed could mean the end of us all and I didn't have my laboratory here with the equipment I needed to prevent infection.  No matter the talent I might lend to healing these poor souls, more suffering was sure to follow. 

I am by nature a selfless being and it was the healthy survivors I had to think of now.  And really, hadn't these dwarves already set in motion the course of their fate by trying to fly me away to some terrible place to serve out the rest of my days?  Who was I to interfere with their freedom of choice?  It was their decisions that lead to their present circumstances and perhaps the kindest thing I could hope to do would be to end their suffering.  Never let it be said that I lack compassion.

Afterward,  I washed the blood from my hands in a puddle of murky water and I set about counting heads and found that there were seven of us, most in various states of shock.  This number seemed too small. 

I was positive there had been more. Apparently a few survivors had run off on their own, no doubt taking some of the precious remaining supplies with them.  Oh well, my father always taught me that one has to work with the situation at hand and not cry over spilled wine.

If we were to survive we had to work together toward a common purpose.  We had to work together like the gears of a finely crafted clockwork automaton.  As I called out to the others and tried to set in motion out salvation, I received many dirty looks and I had to pretend more than once to not hear the foul language and name calling aimed at me.  This was to be expected.  After all these poor misguided souls had wallowed all their lives in filth and without direction.  In time they would come to see me as a benevolent goddess come down from the heavens to help them in their time of need but for now I just needed them to get moving so that we could start organizing labor in constructive ways.

Eventually people did start to move and we all set about to getting things organized and stockpiled.  As the others labored I set for myself the task of doing what I do best, thinking.  We appeared to have crashed into the side of a mountain.  I have no way of knowing which mountain or even the general location but I knew it was far east of the mountain homes. 

I decided to have a look at what the others had managed to salvage from the wreckage.  There were a couple of picks and an axe and various other pieces of equipment but nothing looked very useful to me.  Those fools were spending their time gathering this batch of garbage when they could in fact have gathered something really useful like some of the instrumentation from the airship.  This is what I get for letting them work on their own initiative. 

They had managed to gather some food together, most of it looked fairly unappetizing but I knew I had to keep my strength up so I looked for the best quality stuff I could and put on a brave face as I suffered through it.  Someone yelled at me at one point but I ignored her.  The food was simply awful but it was better than nothing.

By dinner time I had grown accustomed enough to the foul food and cheap alcohol that I could eat alongside the others without even grimacing much.  Most of the others spoke together in hushed voices and didn't even glance at me but I caught one man glancing at me in a funny way.  Infatuation is to be expected in these circumstances after all the excitement and although I found it flattering to some degree I had no desire to encourage him.  I went to the food stockpile and gathered up a bit more and went off to eat in privacy.  It wasn't long however when I heard the sound of approaching footsteps and then out of the shadows came the man who had been looking at me.

Well, who could blame him really.  Still, I felt it was prudent to make clear that he needed to look elsewhere if he was hoping for romance in the wilderness.

"Hello," I said.  "I'm Hope."

The man gave me another one of those funny looks he had been giving me all evening.  He really was kind of cute once you got past the grime and bad manners.

"Bryon," he said.

A man of few words, I thought to myself as the silence stretched out.

"Look," I said.  "Its to be expected that you might find yourself feeling an attraction toward me. After all we are stranded here in the wild.  Nobody to judge what we might do or to tell us who we can love.  But really we must strive to control our urges for-"

"I saw you," he interrupted me.

"Saw me?"

"You killed them others. The crew and them others," he said. "I could tell everyone all about it."

He waited as if to let that sink in. 

"Unless there were some reason not to." he said with a smile.

In that moment, I felt my mind become crystal clear.  All the bad alcohol and a dashing smile must have clouded my senses.  Shame on me for not paying better attention.  Oh well, more spilled wine not to cry over.

"You could do that," I said.  "But you don't want to."

"I don't?" he asked.  A look of suspicion washed over his simple features.

"No," I said.  "Come let me show you what I found."

I slowly got up and started to walk away without looking to see if Bryon was following.  I knew he would.  Curiosity mixed with a dash of greed is often the best bait.  When we were far enough away from the camp that I was sure nobody would see or hear, I stopped and waited for him to catch up.  I gave him my most winning smile.

"What is it?" he said.

"Oh just this," I said as I plunged the carving knife into him.  I found the knife in the wreckage and it had come in quite handy with the wounded crew and it was coming in quite handy now as well.  It was soon over and he'd barely made a peep other than the original gasp of surprise.

Now, how to explain this to the others?  It was a fair bet that one of them had noticed the two of us gone from camp and suspicions might be raised.  Honesty is often my policy but I could not hope to expect lesser minds to understand my actions.  Perhaps I could claim he attacked me and I had to defend myself?  That wouldn't explain the knife and I didn't really like that solution.  It was the best I was able to come up with at the time and I was resigned to it but then fortune smiled my way again.

[Jaxicat]

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[Jaxicat]

Spring 1051


As the first light of dawn began to light the sky, a chill breeze picked up and I shivered and hugged myself to keep warm.  Birds began their morning chorus and I allowed myself a moment to listen briefly in appreciation as I cleaned my knife on Bryon's shirt.  Then I heard them.

If you've never heard the singing of harpies, let me tell you, you are missing out on one of nature's most beautiful sounds.  That is assuming of course that harpies are in fact natural creatures.  My father once told me he theorized that they were created by some magic or science in an age long ago.  I held my father's opinion in highest esteem, still it would be unscientific of me to form any conclusions without rigorous study of the subject on my own.   Perhaps I would soon get my chance.  But for now I saw a solution to my dilemma about how to explain Bryon's unfortunate demise.

When I was very young my father would sometimes let me come sit in his lab if I promised to sit still and be very quiet.  On one of my visits he had in his possession a caged harpy which he had bought from the elves in order to dissect and study.   He always had multiple projects going on and it took him weeks to get around to the actual dissection.  I used this time to my advantage becoming friends with the caged creature,  in the mornings it would sing and I would hum along with it memorizing its haunting song.  Technically I was breaking the rules by making some noise but Daddy always did let me get away with things as long as I wasn't being too naughty.  Eventually the harpy learned to trust me and would even eat from my hand without hurting me.  I named her Alice and I'll always cherish the time we spent together.

When it was time to dissect Alice, Father let me sing to her to sooth her before he began his cutting.  Ah fond childhood memories but I digress. 

I still remembered the song and as I heard the harpies sing their own renditions of it, I formulated a plan.  I waited for a lull in their performance, not wanting to mar such beauty with my own meager singing abilities.  Softly at first, I hummed the song and then when I heard the harpies join in from the valley below I sang louder.  Soon we were harmonizing in their strange musical language.  I could hear them flying closer with each note and I decided now would be a good time to set my plan into motion.

I ran toward the camp and screamed at the top of my lungs, "Help!  Monsters!"

The others woke and waited for me with expressions of alarm on their faces.

"What is it?" they asked.

"Monsters, oh please help they are attacking poor Bryon."

"What sort of monsters?" one of them asked .

"I don't know!" I forced tears to come to my eyes.  "Some sort of bird creatures, please come help."

"Birds you say? That don't sound so bad," one of them said.

One of the men picked up a sword salvaged from the wreckage and went charging in the direction I 'd come from.

"Yarrrrrrrrr!" he yelled as he ran off.

The rest of us waited and strained our ears to hear what was going on.

A few minutes later, we heard him yelling again. 

"Yarrrr!...ow!"

I winced in sympathy at whatever had caused the pain.

"Take that you girly-willow-waisted-puke-for-brains!"

Eventually the man came limping back.  He was bleeding pretty badly and he had a grim expression on his face.

"Well they killed poor Byron-" he said.

"Bryon," I corrected.

"Yeah they killed poor Bryon but I got 'em back!" he said triumphantly.  "They won't be troubling us no more."

His name was Marius Blackmoon and we all congratulated him even as we mourned for poor Bryon.  That evening after we feasted on roast harpy we held a vote and it was decided he would be in charge of our military.  He was of course the only member of it so by default he was in charge but still it was nice and although I feel voting be a barbaric way of handling things it seemed to fit well with the craziness of the situation we found ourselves in.

As the days passed we weren't troubled by anything else just as Marius had promised.  A simple shelter was carved into the side of the mountain which eventually we began to think of as home.

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