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[mikekchar]

I don't have a good track record of these kinds of things, but as it was kindly received in the "What's going on in your fort?" thread, I figure I'll try to continue the story here:

The Bandit Camp

It wasn't supposed to be this way.  I mean, there were 7 of us and our lives were hopeless.  Can you imagine getting to the age of 52 years and not having a single skill to your name?  We were all in the same boat -- no family, no friends, no skills and no money, wallowing in pity in the depths of Lokumesesh, Spearspun.  Nobody gave us a chance at anything and so when Thob called on us, we had nothing to lose.

"I've got them!", he cried breathlessly.

"You've got what? Herpes?" Etur retorted.  She spat on the ground.  She didn't like getting woken up at 4 am and being dragged up to the trade depot.

"I got a Yak.  And a horse.  And even a wagon.  Look, this is our chance.  There's 7 of us.  Just like all of them expeditions.  We can do it, I tell you.  We can start our own fortress."

We looked at each other.  Then we looked in the wagon.  It was empty.  Not even an anvil.  It was crazy, hopeless and stupid, but so was wasting our lives staring at the walls in the depths of the mountain home.  So we went.

We didn't venture too far out.  Dwarfs are made of stern stuff, but the land of the Big Tools was surrounded by the goblins of The Swift Hell.  We didn't stand a chance against them.  And beside that, our plan was to make a temporary kitchen, hunt, fish, gather plants and ultimately sell food back to the mountain home.  It wouldn't do to be too far away when the caravans started their journey in the fall.

At first it was fun.  Etur took up the fishing.  She's a right brat -- always spouting off at someone.  Within a week she had built up a grudge with half of the group.  I have to admit that even though she rubs me the wrong way, I admire her spirit and count her amongst my friends.  Thob likes her too.  Maybe a bit too well.

Eshtan slaughtered the yak as soon as we set up camp.  From that point, we called him "Butch" -- short for butcher.  As luck would have it, we have another Eshtan in our group, so it helps us keep them apart.  Mistem set up a temporary tanning rig with wood from the wagon and tanned the hide to make leather.   She's another one who's about my age, but she only seems to have eyes for Butch.  I guess killing a cow is manly in her eyes.

Since, I don't mind spending time with Etur, I took up cleaning fish.  I tell you, Etur loves to fish.  "Here's another one that looks like you, Deduk!", she'd call time after time.  Sense of humour like war hammer.

Mosus and Thob set to work collecting plants.  Our plan was simple: keep shuffling the wood from the wagon around, building various work stations.   We would cook prepared meals for the mountain home.  It's not glamorous, but that stuff has an amazing profit margin.  In no time we would have enough food to trade for an axe, pick and maybe even an anvil.  Just like any other fortress expedition, we could strike the earth and build our fortune!

Eshtan (the not-Butch one) called out to us, "I've got a surprise for you!".  We looked around and what did we see?  A glorious barrel of foxtail millet beer!  It had been a whole month since anything other than river water had passed out lips and I immediately started drooling.  But where had he gotten the wood for the barrel?  Everyone knows you need 3 pieces of wood to build even the most humble of trade depots.

"Who needs those snobs from the mountain home?", he sneered.  "They never gave us the time of day when we lived there and now we are supposed to trade our hard work for their trinkets?  Never, I say.  We will take what we need and if they don't like it, *they* will be the ones suffering."

I looked at the camp.  One barrel.  One fishery.  One log.  There was no way to build a trade depot.  Once you build a barrel, you can't just "unbuild" it.   You can't prop it up on a stick and write "Please trade with us" on the side.  It's just not dwarfy.  If I could have found even a single urist of magma, I promise you Eshtan would be swimming in it.  I would even have been happy to give him a hammering -- but of course, we had no hammers.

Well, there was nothing for it.  From today we are the Bandit Camp.  We will hunt the wildlife to become strong.  We will build a tavern to lure in travellers.  Woe be unto him who has an axe because it will soon be ours.

To be continued.... maybe...

[Glass]

Interesting. Please continue.

[mikekchar]

"What's wrong with wanting more?"

I used to aks that question all the time in the fracking mountain home.  All anyone would say is, "It is terrifying" or some other such crap.  What the heck does that even mean?

"Etur, haul that granite pot to the storage room.  And don't eat anything!  You're fat enough as it is!"

I'm a girl!  You don't say that to a girl.  I never trusted those sons of kobolds.  "Haul the weapon rack", "Haul the magnetite ore", "Haul the dead elf".  When do *I* get a chance to do something, you know, not crap?  One day I'm going to create a masterpiece and they can shove their rotting elf princess corpses in ... in that place ...  Oh shut up!

That's why I went with Thob and the others that night.  Look, I don't trust them any more than I trust a hungry cave crocodile, but it was my only chance *do* something that doesn't suck.  I mean, Thob's OK.  And Deduk too (even if his face *does* look like a fish).  But the rest of them are pure garbage.

Well... I guess they think the same about me.  I've been hauling the damn stuff all my life.  Like they say, "You are what you haul"...

Anyway, as soon as we got to the camp, I said I'm gunna fish.  Not cause I like fishing.  It's just so I don't have to talk to those gorlak heads.  And anyway Fish-face Deduk said he'd keep me company cleaning fish.  But he keeps talking about romance. "Who do you like" and stuff.  And every time he talks he has this look on his face like he's gunna puke.  Ha ha ha... a puking fish!  Yeah, Deduk's OK.

So I'm there fishing and like a month goes by.   I'm just fishing, fishing, fishing and that damn Eshtur says, "I've got a surprise for you!"  So it's like, he's built a barrel and filled it with beer, which basically ruins our whole plan.  "An oversight", he says.  But I don't believe him.  I think he schemed this thing right from the start because the very next thing he says is, "We're going to have to fight for what we want.  We're going to take what we deserve."  And he appoints himself "Military Commander" right there on the spot!  What military?  *I'm* not fighting, that's for damn sure!

So Thob's the expedition leader, right?  Eshtur can't just make up stuff like that.  But right then I look at Thob and a strange look comes over him.  He sighs and says, "We can't go back.  This isn't what I wanted, but we don't have any choice now."   And that's it.  By Mengmad's silver services, we're bandits.

Eshtur has this whole plan.  First we get Mistem to fashion up a quiver from the skin of the yak that Butch slaughtered.  Then Mosus makes a bone crossbow and Thob makes 20 bone bolts.  Every single fracking time, we gotta tear down one shop to build another one because we got exactly 2 piece of wood to work with!  Eshtur figures that we can get one dwarf to hunt with the crossbow and then everybody else will join his "Typhoons" squad.  The hunter will sneak up on some animal, shoot it until it falls over and then everybody else will pounce on it.  Finally Butch goes to work on the corpse and we recover bones to make more bolts.  He says that if the hunter is careful, we should be able to increase our bolt supply no problem.  If we keep doing that, in a year or so he say's we'll be strong enough to take on the caravan.  I think he's maybe got a couple of fire imps in his magma, if you take my meaning.

Eshtur wanted me to be the hunter.  But no way, I'm doing that.  I don't fight and that's that.  But he put me in his stupid "Typhoons" anyway.  Yeah, whatever.  So he makes Butch the hunter and as soon as everything's ready, Butch goes off to hunt a turkey.  OK.  It's only a turkey, but Hospitality be praised, it works!  Butch is like chasing that turkey all over the fracking place but finally manages to land a bolt in the turkey's leg.  And then quick as a brook eel, Fish-face walks up and strangles it.

Thob orders the butchery to be rebuilt and... no.  Butch has decided that he'd rather go hunting more turkeys.  So Thob's like shouting at the top of his lungs, "Anybody, build a butchery before that turkey corpse rots!"  And I don't know who done it, but anyway somebody built a butchery.  But it's like, why the heck build a butchery when the corpse is half way over to the mountain home?  I mean, you can't butcher something you can't get.

I thought Thob would burst his nob (ha ha ha).  He goes, "Just haul the turkey to the corpse pile.  Anybody!  Seriously, anybody".  Like, are you *supposed* to haul refuse outdoors?  I never seen that in the mountain home and let me tell you I hauled plenty of refuse.  But he's going, "Yes, it's OK to haul refuse outdoors".  Nob... Mark my words... One day someone's gunna go out to haul a goblin tooth during a siege and then it's gunna be over.  But, whatever.

Deduk, goes out with his face flappin like a fish and picks up the dead turkey.  I think he *loves* that turkey, cause he almost gets to the refuse pile and Eshtur says to go kill another turkey.  Butch had shot it in the belly (first time! -- Maybe he's pretty cool after all) and Eshtur is all, "Typhoons, Gooooo!".  So Deduk hangs on to his turkey bride and runs all the way back to the other turkey.  But the first turkey must have been super heavy because Eshtur sprints past him.  "I got this one", he says.

I don't know what in Mengmad's larder of plenty that Eshtur was thinking, cause he's just grabbin turkey bits all over the place.  Maybe he and Deduk have a turkey thing going on.  Ewww...  But the turkey is like biting him and he's just grabbing it.  Finally, he's bruised in just about every body part and he punches the turkey in the head, which ends his little love affair.  Deduk walks up, still fondling his turkey corpse, and Eshtur says coolly, "I have improved my fighting.  That was satisfying."  Yeah... right....

So, anyway, we finally haul those turkey corpses back for Butch to deal with them and we end up with a total of 12 bones -- That's enough for 60 bolts!  So Eshtur, was right.  Maybe this *can* work.

Anway, someone's talking about taking me off fishing duty.  Apparently we have over 100 prepared meals, so we don't need no more food.  Does this mean I have to talk to those goblin breath bozos?  Well, Mengmad says to be hospitable, so I guess I have to try.

[mikekchar]

In case anyone is waiting with bated breath...  The bandit camp kind of ran into a snag and I keep rage quitting because I can't solve the problem...

An echidna showed up and Eshtur started whacking it with his crossbow.  The echidna curled up into a ball and all Eshut can do is to bend the hair a bit.  But he won't give up!  I thought he would give up when he was thirsty, but nope.  Whack-a-mole/echidna forever!  I have no wood for a bucket, so I can't give him water.  I suppose he'll die -- whereupon I have no wood for a casket, not stone for a monument... so he'll haunt us forever.  I guess that will be interesting, but I've kind of lost focus.  We'll see if I continue :-)