The brave dwarves of The Ardent Order set out upon the desert with a grand plan, Udirurdim, the black tower. Their great goal: to forge a tower of rock and glass, not merely built from mined stone, but brought to the surface as liquid magma and cooled into solid obsidian.
Within a season, they had established a serviceable base camp, dug into the black sand. King Knock (as their foreman was called) was a great leader, and every dwarf had their tasks well in hand. The local aquifer was breached, a source of magma located, and the fire imps exterminated by Marks, hammerdwarf and sureshot. The lavish food and rich wine flowed freely. The only thing lacking was timber, but the dwarves had brought a great number of barrels and decent stock of logs with them, so there was little concern. Soon the great work could begin.
and then the camels came.
only a small herd at first, and Marks slaughtered them with glee. then another herd. and another. finally, after dispatching 18 of the beasts, marks threw his common sense aside; after running out of ammo for his crossbow, he charged one of the humped menace, and broke his arm and leg. for two seasons he recovered in the infirmary, and the wretched creatures were allowed to roam the surface unchallenged. a caravan came and went, and King Knock drove a hard bargain, talking the traders out of some 30,000☼ worth of steel armor in exchange for a smorgasbord of dwarven cooking (Chef Stone's roast camel with wine sauce being quite the delicacy), and the bewildered merchants left after making a mere 15☼ profit.
eventually, two dozen migrants arrived, attracted perhaps by glory of the Great Plan rather than the material wealth of a fortress as yet made only of sand. Marks, healed and clad in steel, took two fledgling marksdwarves under his wing and once again began exterminating the humpy menace. Brick Whiskey, the fort's resident brewmaster and mason, was possessed by an eldritch spirit, and produced an Obsidian armor stand. perhaps the spirit was trying to warn the dwarves of things to come, but the stand was shoved into a stockpile amongst the other knicknacks, and ignored.
more and more camels came, and were dispatched, skinned and butchered. the stockpiles overflowed with their bones. a few hunters were lost in the effort, but Marks persisted, becoming a warrior of extreme skill. the mold for the fortress's foundation was dug, and in an unfortunate mining accident, the human guild liason was killed in a cave-in.
A migrant Clothier withdrew from society, and perhaps sensing the dreadful heat of this place, produced a pig tail thong.
King Knock was at this point buried in the paperwork of keeping the records of a burgeoning fortress up to date, and in his haste to crunch the numbers, missed a glaring flaw that would bring the fortress to it's knees.
The booze ran dry. The crops were plentiful, but there were no barrels. Thousands of globs of camel fat occupied every barrel the fortress had. the citizens were getting edgy. camels had killed 3 more hunters this season. a rogue giant scorpion killed 2 more. the goblins decided to add insult to injury and managed to creep into the fortress's very gates before being detected, bringing with them several formidable human axemen. Before the expedition's small military force could respond, the fiends had murdered a nearly two dozen citizens, including all the original party save Marks.
His squad rushed valiantly into the fray, but only marks was left, having dispatched the entire force single-dwarfedly. in the chaos however his body was broken, having sustained heavy injuries to his lower body, left arm, head, brain, and spine.
The few remaining dwarves, leaderless and maddened at so much death have taken to infighting. some fell into melancholy, some worked away at their tasks oblivious to the decay around them, but all hope is lost for the grand work.
An elven caravan arrived, and were spit upon by one of the few remaining sane dwarves, who offered a barrel full of the disastrous fat for their entire worthless stock of twigs and berries. The elves left in disgust, followed swiftly by dwarves, abandoning the accursed place to the unrelenting desert.
Author
Topic: A grand plan, brought low by temperance, humans, and CAMELS (Read 1613 times)