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[Kubuk]

We have arrived to the long abandoned fort of Bekaras. I don't know what'll we find inside, the whole place looks like a mess. Dwarven skeletons and goblin-sized rusty armor pieces laying everywhere on the ground. From the looks of the place, I bet the fort was overrun by a goblin raiding party. It must've caught them by suprise. My grandfather told me stories of Bekaras, the legends say that the guards were taken off easily by the attacking goblins, they were unprepared for the fight, the traps jammed, and the greenskins used heavy blunt weapons, that their armor couldn't deflect. The soldiers were killed easily at the front gates, but the big massacre was in the depths of the fort. As the goblins descended into the area, a former miner named Cog had enough of it, and decided to make his last stand. Eventually somehow -by Armok's blessing maybe- he managed to organise a bait for them. The citizens ran for their lives, but they scattered around, making the greenskins to split up, so that Cog could fight them one by one. Cog was known to be a very strong miner, he was capable of shattering 3 Urist-high boulders with just a swing. Cog grabbed a hammer of a dead soldier while the gobbers were chasing the citizens, and said "Shalt I let mine brethren succumb in fear, wilt mine right to enter Valhalla be taken away for all eternity.". Eventually, Cog has found the goblins, and fought them one-by-one in legitimate duel style. The fights took hours, perhaps days. Suprisingly, Cog came out winning. Once the massacre was over, Cog led all the living citizens into the main hall, looked around, and saw his best friends' corpses being dragged to the makeshift graveyards. He then sat down on his chair, grabbed a flagon of the fort's finest ale, and just looked at it with empty eyes mumbling about his failure to protect his kind. The last living stonecutter engraved Cog's heroic act on the Wall of the Great ones. He was crowned as the fort's ruler. The survivors cheered and threw huge parties for days, even months. But Cog... He was not Cog anymore. He took the most damage, his soul was crushed. He just sat there on his throne silently, spinning his flagon on the marble table, constantly chanting ancient words. After the season has passed, the first trading caravan arrived after the massacre, but the seals of Bekaras remained shut, the fortress' connection to the kingdom was lost. From that day, the 23rd of Obsidian -when the caravan returned with the bad news about the fort's suspected abandonment- is considered the darkest day of all Dwarvenkind in Mon Suttu. The failure to make such a rich mountainhome flourish felt like a stab in the kingdom's heart. We lost our former glory, and Dwarvenkind descended into darkness. The legends say that "King" Cog was later murdered by his own brethren, whom he sacrificed his soul to. Rumors say that King Cog cursed the fort, and the whole Dwarvenkind with his last words. Some of the former citizens managed to escape the fort by the time it was under the siege. Their descendants are called as the Coggers. Personally I am a Cogger too, and this is why I find this whole story interesting. Our party of seven is actually just a mere group of fighters and crafters, who want to reveal the secrets behind the fall of Bekaras. I hope we'll find out what happened in there...

[zomara0292]

I like your writing style. I will be watching you from now on.

Side note, may I take one of the warriors. Perhaps a sworddwarf. I do like to watch my foes limp away in fear. if you do allow this, I would like his name to be Zomara

[RabidAnubis]

It was nice, but use paragraphs man.  People lose their place in massive blobs of text.

[Kubuk]

[I'm writing the whole thing based on my reclaim attempt to a fort I made a while ago. We'll see how it turns out. No slots are available for characters as all of them are mine ]

[Kubuk]

Day 1.

We approached the main gates. The cold winds coming from the inside of the hole suggests that someone, or something, already opened the path to the core of the fort. I feel very unconfortable with every step we take. I stop for a second. I see strange stones lying around on the floor, and holes in the ceiling. I'm sure these are trap stones, most of them had dry blood on their surface, but their sides are covered by moss. These traps were definetly activated during the siege, but judging by the size of the rocks, none of them could've been lethal. Our Hammer soldiers were shaking in fear, they knew we entered a forbidden territory.
 "Maybe we shouldn't wake up the evil spirits, Kubuk. Let's get out of here before something happens!". I agreed with him, we should've turned back. But we didn't, my instincts kept pushing me. We moved on, only to find that the main gate was closed tight.
"Ye see this? None couldst be that strong to lift it." - Said Tosid, one of the soldiers. "There's naught here but the evil spirits of our dark past. Leader please, we have to leave, now!"
- "Just one more minute, my brother, be strong!" - I replied. We took a look around the halls that we had access to, but didn't find anything interesting, it's too dark in here to read the engravings. We decided to set up camp just at the entrance of the mountain. The soldiers look really scared, they're shaking ever since the cold wind gusts hit them. I don't like this at all, but we have to gain entrance to the Fortress core. Luckily I have a map of the fort, I have studied the blueprints for years. The whole structure is a masterwork, even for Dwarven standards. The massive main entrance consists of three layers of perfectly sealed massive stone gates. Through the gates, the main hall. This area is a big circular room, it was used as the meeting area. The whole design is just fabulous, the entire fort is connected to this very point, one can access any area through this main hall. I always found that Bekaras' corridor structure is just simply too great to be left empty. This fortress must be repopulated soon! After browsing through my other records, I have found the prospector's reports on the mountain. By matching the diagrams with the fort's map, I have found a very strange coincidence. All of the major -absolutely worthless- ore veins seem to avoid the fort's structure. The prospectors of Bekaras must have found a way to check the ore containment deep within the stone layers. With this technology in their hands, they could build the fort in one single layer of stone. Not a single ore vein got through the structure.
I have noticed a strange symbol on the map. The image of a snake is drawn just to the south of the enterance hall. I wonder what that means. Sadly I don't remember what does the snake symbol mean in the ancient Dwarven culture. I showed it to one of the stonecutters. He just stared at the piece of old paper, not knowing what to say.
 "I'll be honest with ye, mine brother. It's just some splattered ink." - He said, then took a sip of his wine. This made me confused, ink doesn't splatter this way, it must've been drawn there intentionally! I must check it as soon as possible tomorrow, but we need to rest now. The journey took a lot out of us. Hopefully I'll be able to think with a clear head once I had my morning rum.