Year 205, the rule of Mitch
Chapter 8: Operation Rain
Rain can have a significant effect on the morale of this place; it washes away the tides of blood rain that make knee-deep pools outside, it cleans us of our filth as our only water supply is silty, stagnant cave water, and it represents the polar opposite of the hardships we face; where red blood makes vile, the blue water makes clean. What the blood hides in its murkyness, the water gives clarity. The blood infects our drinking supplies, the water provides. Red and blue, good and evil.
So in me dubbing my plan 'Operation Rain' seemed not only symbolically appropriate, but physically as well, given the fantastic hue of the fabled metal Adamantine. The thirty sets of iron armour has had our armour smiths skills vastly improved. The job re-allocation and migrant waves has left a decent surplus of workers to work on idle tasks. And soon, there will be time to implement my three-step plan (estimated time to finish, four months), and enact The Great Plan. And 'Great' the Plan will be; a true test of triumph and glory that surpasses all that have come before it. It saddens me that I need to keep it hidden from the public eye, lest they frighten and turn against me...
Anyway, the three steps of 'O.R.' go as thus:
1. Revamp the entire set of squads. Revamp the training regiment, revamp who is where, revamp equipment selection and add more to all squads.
2. Adamantine equipment for most of our forces. In this world, dwarves lose. Elves are faster, humans are more cunning, goblins are crueller, the barbarians are more tenacious, and the Spawn are... the Spawn. Our strength lies in our ability to defend in any means necessary; we don't just stop at traps. We don't just stop at an army. Our final lines are our beloved pets! We levy unarmed masses of civilians to fight armies! Hell, our women use babies as
shields and flails if they need to. We need an edge; and nothing holds an edge better then adamantine. Our defence will be our greedy pillage of the earth.
3. Crossbows. Neglected by many leaders, yet complained about when levied by their enemies, the elves and goblins. Other civilisations can afford to lose 50 in an attack, yet we can barely afford to lose 1 in a defence. Crossbows keep people alive, and are probably similar in practicality then our beloved (
ineffectual) pikes.
I will begin shortly.
12th Galena:
I've noticed there's a sick decoration propped up against our walls; one of our dwarves has been left outside to rot... for a few years now. Am I the only one just noticing this? Why has no one taken it down? Is it to scare away Spawn? Because I think telling them, "Oh look at how decrepit and dying we are,
oohohooho quake in your boots." won't quite scare them away.
Gemblade was expected to die in hospital, but we managed to get him out.
I've completely wiped the slate, ready to begin anew.
- The Invisable Walls, pikes. Fischer, Draignean, The Master and two others. Kept in the sake of tradition and the skill of the former two.
- The Gleams of Rope, hammers. Fed, Kramar, Litar and 3 others.
- The Mechanisms of Wishing, Ace Rings and The Ferocious Oars, axe militia. Five each. These are going to be our 'recruit mill', and we'll try and train as many peasants as we can. Two led by Gemblade and Pokonic, the other by some guy.
- Mountainous Socialites, crossbows. Going to need some management later.
Out of the 'recruit mill', 9 recruits have no skill. They have been chosen based on their happiness, their usefulness and their amount of relationships. Each military dwarf is stripped of all their jobs, except for a few (such as Feb, the legendary stone crafter/expert hammerdwarf), and have been dubbed 'Army Dwarf'. At 35 military dwarves (out of 80ish residents), we stand ready to fight the Spawn, and enact the Great Plan.
There probably aren't enough axes to go around, so I'm unforbidding all invader-brought axes and am ordering 30 new iron ones.
13th Galena:
What! Now!? No, no, no no no. This is so not fair, we're not organised. I sounded the alert, but some are still outside. We're going to suffer casualties today. This will be my first actual loss too.
14th Galena:
I managed to get everyone inside, Solpyre trailing far behind anyone else. Luckily, despite his closeness to the zombies, he made it in time. After he gets in, and we close the gate, we will regroup and strike at the necromancer. The abundance of corpses outside is going to make this exercise... daunting, to say the least. Not as daunting as if we'd been forced to fight them before our guys could gather armour and arms, but still troubling none-the-less.
Let's hope that I fare better against the undead then Sus, who got our high-master armoursmith killed (and less importantly, himself).
The Spawn are here too? That makes over 90 current invaders. Well, at least they seem contempt with ripping the corpses to pieces. Lets hope they find the necromancer so we don't have to.
I've noticed one riding a bear; are the bears in league with the Spawn? We have a bear. Is it feeding them intelligence?
Oh gods.
19th Galena:
A goblin was raised in one of our watchtowers, and Fischer has only an adamantine shield ready to fight. Why anyone made one of those things is beyond me, but at least it is training him in shields quite well.
I've created 6 extra craft-dwarf shops to extract adamantine strands. We'll arm our guys with adamantine pikes, first.
The Spawn are camping near the edge of our fortress, capable but not willing to enter our fort. Is this a 'siege'? Are they capable of intelligent and tactical thought? Are they here to protect us from the undead? Why aren't they charging in? Many questions, yet no way to get answers. Very frustrating.
Poll
55 (71.4%)
Author
Topic: [34.11] Spearbreakers - It shudders and begins to move (Read 2277803 times)