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[Ishar]

They mean it this time. They even brought a general and their queen, in addition to the 'usual' army of melee fighters, war giraffes and saurpods, and of course dragons. We raised the bridge, and Sir went down to the arena for a little demonstration. He descended to the pit with the Elite blades, and had every other soldier watch his lesson.

-That - pointed towards the cage - is the enemy. It's a white tigerman, fully armed and armored. taking their weapon away is for women and children, AND we can1t take the weapons of those that approach now. Open the cage!

The tigerman sprang out of the cage the minute it opened, and tried to run towards the exit. In vain in fact, for it was locked of course. But still, the creature tried. Sir blocked its path, even though the tigerman was much larger than him, and was wielding a perfectly fine steel battleaxe.

-As you can see - he explained, blocking a wild charge - the tigermen are quite agile for their size. Back off now! So, they are fast, they are big and some of them even have decent weapons. I won't lie to you, some select few of them even know how to use them. Not this one it seems.

One knee to the stomach, and he even turned his back on his opponent to face the recruits.

-They have their weaknesses though. For one, they either don't have armor, or only have shit armor. Well, some of them have shields, but you get the idea. They also rely heavily on their warbeasts, and as you can see, a capable warrior can take one of them no contest.

The tigerman regained its composture, and lounged forward again, trying to attack the commander, who merely stepped sideways, and bashed the passing tigerman's head with the pommel of his sword.

-Down, boy. I'm not finished yet. So, in addition to being poorly armored, the enemy also has a difficulty avoiding even the simplest trap. Open the exit!

As the mechanisms started turning, and the grate of the arena slowly opened, Sir's opponent decided to try its luck with the other, maybe less dangerous inhabitants of the fort, and beelined for the exit again. The creature even made it through. Of course the True Phalanx was waiting for it at the next corner, but that was obviously not needed, as it was caught in a cage trap at the moment it left the arena.

-So, to sum it all up: they have nice weaponry, can use them, and they bring some badass warbeasts. Oh, and they vastly outnumber us. What is our advantage though, is that they're dumb as fuck, don't have decent armor, only a few of them are really skilled fighters, and they don't have such kickass leaders as you. Now. Officers, to the the war council. Others, dismissed.

[Jarod Cain]

Wow, how did I miss that you restarted this?

Also I think it is hilarious that Silus has twice now gone to battle with nothing but her shield.
-J-

[Ishar]

(At least missing the restart gave you plenty of things to read.)

Every squad leader followed Sir to his dining room (it was recently furnished with golden tables and chairs - really nice apartment to tell you the truth), where he sit down and ordered a tankard of ale for everybody. There were six of us there: Sir himself; Freya, our leading fighter; Silus, as the spartan leader; Panopticon, the hammerer; Firehawk as the leader of the recruits, and of course myself as captain of the guard.

- What's our plan, Sir? - asked Freya - Same as before?
- No. We have something they don't.
- Honor? - asked Firehawk
- Artillery. - answered Sir - We have a slade turret, exactly for occasions like this.
- So we just lock the gates and let our turret handle everything? Won't we get a chance to prove our valor?
- Well, Firehawk, YOU will certainly not. You are not ready, not by a long shot. You are still a little more than a raw recruit as I see it.
- But...
- Simple thing. Silus has a soldier nicknamed Greenhorn. He was named that because he's the weakest of the founder military. He was in hospital for a month after the last siege. Could you kick his ass?
- ...
- Thought so. Any other brilliant ideas?
- Sir... - I spoke up, quite timidly to tell the truth - I think we may have a problem.
- What is it, Captain?
Using that title gave me exactly the courage I needed.
- Your idea would be great, but it has one fatal flaw.
- And that would be...?
- Dragons. They brought dragons again, and I'm sure their breath would just melt the turret right then and there. The turret idea is great, perhaps not to destroy the army, but to disorient them somewhat, but we absolutely need to do something about the dragons first.
- Yeah, dragons. I've been thinking about that. Any ideas?
- Patience. - said Silus - Just lock the gates for now. Slade production is going nicely, and it's almost enough to forge volcanic weapons for our top soldiers.
- What can we expect?
- Well, when I was down at the forges yesterday, it seemed like we could give zweihanders both to you, Commander, and to Ishar as well. In addition, there's enough slade for a battleaxe and a spear, that could go to Freya and myself.
- That's not all. - said Panopticon - Volcanic is awesome, I know, but if we take into account the supply of slade BARS we have in stock, that could be enough to arm every blunt weapon specialist in the fort with a slade warhammer or morningstar. I think that's really something.
- Agreed. Silus, I'm sorry, but your spartans will have to stick with their old spears for this one, we can't wait for those, too.
- Sir, I guess we could - smiled Silus - but we wouldn't want to make it too EASY for the men, would we?
- I guess not.

And he actually smiled back. I guess those tigermen are in for the fight of their life.

[Ishar]

4th Spring
The first wave went more or less according to plan. The massive sauropods walking right into the cage traps, and we chopped their riders to bits. No casualties, and only Greenhorn got wounded. Most of our guys are vastly superior to the tigermen when it comes to melee combat, and our equipment is obviously way better. They only have numbers on their side, and in this tight corridor, their numbers... count for nothing.

Sir felt that this using tactics like this is almost cheating. For the interest of fair play (and to keep the soldiers on edge), we face the next wave outside the trap corridor. Because we are MEN, not elves or shit like that. My next entry will likely be a bloody battle report.

It was a weird start. The tigermen looked almost... afraid to come at us, they sent out warriors one by one. Of course, they were immediately torn apart when they reached us. A quarter of them lay dead on our field, another quarter captured, what were they trying accomplish by wasting more men like this? We will probably never know.
After the third lone charger, Silus and the True Phalanx simply got bored and left us to care for Greenhorn. Can't blame them, the guy was roughed up pretty bad. He's lucky though, he always healed quickly from any injury. Probably that's what saved him during all his training under Silus.

After a while, they sent in a whole squad, so we needed to actually work together against them. That mainly meant to draw their attention, and let Freya do her thing (her thing is bisecting enemies with a volcanic battleaxe). Fine, some of us got in a few decent hits as well, but Freya carried the weight of the battle mostly by herself even at this point.
Panopticon got hurt a bit, we were worried that he might be overwhelmed, but he caught a second wind, and regained his footing surprisingly quickly. The training seems to work for him, but he really needs to let the old steel warhammer go: slade ias much better, I think I'll strictly assign him one.
It went mostly without problems for a while, at least until the swordmaster arrived. that guy only had a silver zweihander, but held his own against Sir and Panopticon, even hurting them a bit before they took him down - of course they took him down, but that little brawl took a little toll on them, and the battle suddenly turned into an actual battle from a laughable slaughter.

From then on, it was pretty brutal. Freya lost both her weapon and her shield, and both her arms were broken. Half blind from the pain, she managed to crawl away from the battle, unfortunately in the wrong direction, out to the open mountainside. She was out of the fray, sure, but that meant that retreating, and raising the bridge would have been a death sentence to her, so we had to fight right to the bitter end.
Sir was getting desperate after Panopticon was knocked out of the action too. He called in the reserves - the recruits in training, led by Firehawk. Say what you want about those guys, they may not be properly trained yet, but they carried their own weight! It may be due to most of them having mithril armor, but they hold their own against the tigermen, and managed to take some pressure off us. Meanwhile, Panopticon managed to stumble back to the fort, so he was safe. Sir might scold him for pussying out from the fight, but I think he did his part.

Following the arrival of our reinforcements, we slowly started to gain ground again. The squads gradually advanced, right until they reached the queen. It wasn't pretty.


'Excuse me, your Highness' - engraving by Zin, high priest of Armok in Newtorments

Seeing the demise of their matriarch, the cats panicked and ran for the hills. Sir let them get away this time, as they have a simple message to deliver: the dwarf of Newtorments can kick anybody's asses.

(OOC: It was strange that the True Phalanx left their posts and went underground. I know that dwarfs sometimes to that to get food or drink, but the whole squad doing it together, ome of them caring fro the wounded was a nice touch. It really felt like they were concerned about their brother-in-arms.)

[Jarod Cain]

The way that all the characters act in this is strage, especially seeing as how they really do seem to be re-creations of the characters from the previous fort down to how they fight. Still, awesome.
-J-

[Ishar]

I went through a lot of trouble forcing them to be like that, assigning gear and tasks very carefully, but it's finally producing some results.

[Ishar]

Nobody expected this, but Zin actually did something useful in the temple, as his prayers were answered: we received a golem heart for our offering of iridium. The Metal Lady quickly called dibs on it, and built a magma golem forge.

Soon after, our reknowned weaponsmith (whose name I just looked up), Tomio built a steel golem cast right then and there. The possibility is there to turn people into golems... I'm not sure I'm glad that we have that kind of insurance, or terrified that Sir might abuse this kind of power.

Sir ordered an alternative entrance constructed. He's right: the current one is great for merchants and their wagons, but far from ideal as a defense position. The miners dug out a huge area in no time, but the mechanics are taking their time. Panopticon designed another turret system, and setting up the shutters for it takes forever.

(Sorry if I miss an update or two, I'm rather busy this week.)

[tomio175]

Woo, I've been useful!

[Ishar]

Since your dwarf is the best weaponsmith we have (by far), he made most of the volcanic weapons. I'd call that useful enough already.

[Ishar]

Greenhorn got up from bed today. He still can't hold a weapon of course, as both of his hands are in casts, but a total recovery is expected soon. I'm glad he got better, he was pretty badly wounded, a lesser dwarf might have succumbed to these injuries quite a while ago. I know he is an extremely dutiful soldier, but he really shouldn't push this: I saw him overexerting himself in training, and that won't help his recovery.

The first crossbow unit is established. Tomio provided them with exceptionally crafted iron crossbows, all five of them rocks full scaleplate armor, and they are armed with copper bolts. Even though only a few of them knows how to handle a crossbow (they were hunters, but there's practically nothing to hunt around here), I certainly wouldn't want to be in their line of fire.
Still, since they are marksdwarves, and therefore, not proper soldiers, Sir gave them appropriate nicknames: Nobody, No-one, Anybody, No one in particular. Their leader had the honor of being called Somebody. They didn't seem to mind. Timid fellows, as it is expected from marksdwarves.

[Ishar]

Give me a break, it's not even summer yet, and the tigermen are back. How do they gather forces so fast that they can afford two sieges in a single season? Doesn't matter, we will tear through them as usual. Greenhorn is mostly good to go, he still has some minor fractures here and there, but we gave him a volcanic spear and full mithril armor, that should be more than enough to compensate a bit.

This might be problematic. In addition to the usual swordsmen and axemen squads, they have a platoon of lashers, and another of crossbowmen. What may also be noteworthy is that they didn't bring any warbeasts this time. Maybe we battled the sauropods into extinction?

Confidently, we let the bastards in through the main gate. Of course, their vanguard was caught in the traps, and we personally dealt with the remaining shock troops. It was a routine operation, the only notable development was that Firehawk gave a charging order to his squad - that was unexpected, since they were not really needed, but it was nice to see the recruits performing above expectations again. It may be time for some of them to join the big guys, and give new volunteers for Firehawk to train. I'll request something like this from Sir when we get the chance.

About the battle: we had no casualties of course, but those lashers pack quite a punch, as they injured several of our bravest soldiers. Surprisingly, three of the four spartans went down with broken limbs, making Greenhorn somewhat of a regular patient. What's really interesting though is the fact that Silus got injured, too. She doesn't get injured. She just doesn't. And here she is... flails are every bit as dangerous as the lore says. Anyway, nothing serious, it will only take a couple of days for them to get back to action, but I suppose that means they are skipping round two. Yep, the crossbowmen are still out there, so we are going to storm out and throw them into the wind.

...or not. The drawbridge slammed down, we charged out with our full military strenght, ready to face whatever they can throw at us - and there was nothing. We found a single remnant lasher trapped in the moat, and he was very talkative after Panopticon 'persuaded' him a bit. The tigermen told us that their leader hoped we were almost crushed during the last siege, and they were hoping for easy plunder. Well, they were wrong. For his cooperation, the dying tigerman was given a quick way out, by Freya's battleaxe.

I don't think these guys will be back anytime soon. They won't forget the beating they got today.

(OOC: FPS is getting catastropsically low for some reason.)

[Ishar]

4th Summer
We are hacking tigermen up in the arena to free some cages and to pass the time. Most of the prisoners are sent into the arena without their weapons, to serve as punching bags to Firehawk's recruits. Since we sent them packing last time, not much happened. The Metal Lady and Tomio started crafting some titanium furniture for a future nobleman's palace, and the fact that we can afford such luxuries is saying something. Mainly that we are really-really bored.

My request to transfer the recruits into actual squads has been denied. Silus doesn't want to hear about the new speardwarf joining the True Phalanx before he's MUCH better with his weapon, and Sir won't take anybody into the Elite Blades with anything below perfect track record. I would have taken the lads into the fortress guard, but the Commander told me that law enforcement is strong enough as it is, with Panopticon keeping order with an iron fist (and a slade warhammer). I have to admit, he has a point. There wasn't any incident since that violated production order, and even that guy served his sentence months ago, and returned to work without any problems.

If everything goes on like this, we will have volcanic weapons for every soldier by the end of summer, and volcanic armor for most of us by the end of the year. The metalsmiths also produced a good number of crafts, so it would be really nice to see a caravan sometime in the near future. We still don't have any warbeasts, our only turret got smashed to pieces somewhere along the line (nobody noticed), and it would be nice to construct some advanced buildings. Sir wishes to outfit the Nobodies with rifles in the long run - their official squad name is 1st Recon, but No One In Particular calls them that. Somebody agreed with him first, but Nobody joined him, and the rest of the warriors just laughed at them. I have to admit, these names are hilarious.

(OOC: Special thanks to Meph for the name idea.)

[tomio175]

Is this going to be updated ever again?

[Ishar]

Yes, I intend to continue when I get my shit together again.

[Meph]

Yes, I intend to continue when I get my shit together again.

So... right about now?