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Yes

4 (14.3%)

No

1 (3.6%)

It was fun for a long time but towards the end it just started to drag

6 (21.4%)

I wish I could have joined in.

17 (60.7%)

Total Members Voted: 28

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Yes, but now what I plan will not have as large of an effect.  Or be as surprising, considering how (I think) everyone at the fort knows that when one disaster strikes, it is quickly followed by another.

And still, why did you do that now?  Pm me the answer, in case it contains information that may be relevant to what I am planning.

[wierd]

On the way down into the now heavily frozen bowels of the fortress, he noticed something strange glowing under the door to HappyFace's derelict cyber workshop. Eerie red light and puffs of gross vapor crept from underneath the door.

Weird was livid. If that good for nothing, sociopathic, insane, and gibbering idiot had anything to do with what happened today, he wa going to skin him alive, make him regrow his skin, and skin him again and again and again until he went insane, THEN kill him!

Angrily, he kicked in the door, splintering the cheap pine off its iron hinges.

There, in the center of the floor was a spreading pool of disgusting coagulated filth gurgling up from a ring of obsidian tumblers, their combined vomit creating a disgusting semblance of a summoning circle, and a hellish portal leading to armok only knows where sending sporadic plumes of misty vapor up into the room.

Weird saw stars he was so angry.

Kicking the door completely off its remaining hinge, and into the hallway, he headed for his powder depot.

On the way, he bumped into the very being he had been seeking, carrying the very item he had set out to retrieve.  Roead, the mummy, carrying the heavy steel box.

"What the bloody 'ell is goin on up 'ere!?" He demanded. "I 'ad a ruddy nasty bit of masonry land right on me bloody 'ead!"

Weird was too angry to talk straight. He steeled himself, trying to reign it under control, but could only manage a sliver of compusre with which to attempt speech.

"Get. Your. Ass. Up. Stairs. NOW." He growled, almost as if demonically posessed. "Some dumb fuck done screwed us royal. Unless you like being BLOWN UP as well as crushed, I suggest you hurry. See those? I intend to use em!"

He stabbed a finger angrily in the air at the stacked wooden barrels packed full of high exlosives.

Roead just staggered back a few steps, and raised his free hand defensively. "blimey bloke! I.."

"GET. UP. STAIRS."

Roead said nothing more, turnd right around, and began shuffling up the corridor as fast as his dessicated corpse body could move.

He didn't have much time. In a blinding rage, he tore into the munitions cache, and began making the bomb...

[Gizogin]

[Well, I'm stuck in a parking lot for the next hour.  I hate typing on my phone, so I'll keep it short.]

Gizogin surveyed the faces gathered at the designated meeting point, well away from the still-collapsing fortress.  He saw the hulking form of the Mk. V, with the VI and IX and most of the hospital patients gathered around.  Worryingly, he didn't see Gizo X anywhere.  The automaton would have been easy to see, as he stood more than a foot taller than any dwarf, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Just as Gizogin reached the hospital patients to ask if they'd seen X, the ground started rumbling again.  From the mouth of the fortress entrance, Gizogin's tank burst out, followed closely by his construction droids.  The massive vehicle crashed to the ground, bounced slightly, and sped over to the huddled dwarves.

Inside, Gizo X was desperately urging the tank to go faster, away from the deathtrap the fortress had become.  He pushed both control pedals down as far as they would go, giving the reactor's full power to both tracks.  When he was just a few yards from the assembled group, he pulled the pedals back, sending the huge tank into a skid, finally stopping just in front of Gizogin.

[Eric Blank]

And to the rest of you, why did you not correct him on that?!

Just mentioning that the comment above was mostly at Eric, and those who refused to correct him on that.

[Nobody is going to correct him. If we were going to correct someone for blowing shit up and ruining other's plans, you'd just have more reason to complain, and your plans would be completely ruined.]

Eric had run down the hall. There, he encountered Gizogin. One of the Gizogins, at least. He was already on his way to the surface. By the time Eric had reached the ramp down to the hospital level, Hugo was trotting up the hall. Wierd was ahead of him, spraying ice all over the damn place. Eric continued down to the hospital, to catch the other Gizogin and his droids packing everytihng into some sort of tank. Then Wierd came back down the hall to yell at Gizogin, who promptly drove the tank out throught the wall of the hospital and up the ramps. Nobody noticed Eric standign there apparently, as Wierd proceeded to melt and freeze his way through some debris blocking a hall. He had those dwarves covered, so Eric proceeded through the halls to rifle through every last dormitory and check for the injured, or just plain heavy sleepers. There were none. Everyone that didn't go up, had gone down into the panic bunker, which was in a relatively stable location.

There were, however, some dwarves trapped in the workshops. He could hear Jerry in there, screaming "I'm trying, damnit! These things are only meant to go through wood!"

"Jerry! You got the carpentry crew in there? Hold on, I'll get you out. Can't lose the carpentry crew!"

He began plucking away near the intersection of the halls outside the workshops, away from the collapse. Within two minutes, he had breached through, and was smashing apart large chunks of the wall around the breach. Two mroe minutes, and there was a hole big enough for them to crawl out, and they did.

The only other dwarves left in the halls were dead. Jerry and the workers ensured to haul out anyone Eric said was still alive, not questioning how he'd figured that out just looking at them. He could find all the dead bodies in this place just feeling them, but never a single live one. If Wierd was actually researching so many forms of magic, from elemental spells to healing magics, maybe he'd be able to figure out a spell to detect life or undeath, or a reasonable way for non-necromancers to detect the recently decesed.

Eric lagged behind, though, and soon got trapped while checking a side passage. A side passage with only one adjacent room, and 4-5 meters of stone everywhere else. This wasn't good...

[wierd]

There had been several crushed dwarves near the munitions dump, and he needed the manpower. Social graces and respect for the dead be damned.  Angrily, he hurled the void into their broken bodies, and felt them gasp into unlife, before setting them to work.

Six corpses, mostly civilians, picked up the 200lb kegs of explosive ETN powder he had created the week before. This stuff was every bit as nasty as TNT. Whatever was on the other side of that portal was gonna get one hell of black eye.

Down the corridor, around the corner, passed the dining hall, and back to the accursed nexus of horror that appeared to be ground zero for this catastrophe, he lashed the kegs together, and handed a smoldering toch from a wall sconce to one of the zombies.

He would use the zombie to blow the kegs.

Gathering his resolve, checking his bird, snatching one of the blood vomiting cups from the floor, and stowing the suit over his shoulder again, he sprinted down the hall.

then, at the second intersection, leading off toward the jewlers and carpentry shops, he heard it. Eric, cussing his brains out, and beating on the inside of a collapsed door frame.

Oh... he wanted to leave that swarmy, no good, delaying, cranky, recalcitrant, officious........

His blood practically boiled.

But this disaster was *NOT* eric's fault. Setting the goods down, he breathed deep, then approached the wall 2 meters away from the collapsed door. He remembered that it enjoined the now closed off room behind, and without saying a word, melted a hole through the wall, startling an already angry necromancer on the other side as huge jets of white hot fire tore through.      The now vitrified wall, before splintering explosively as frost crackled around the breach.

"OUTSIDE!" Weird yelled at him. "RUN."

Eric looked at him sourly for several seconds, then vacated through the hole.

Once more, he gathered up his belongings, the still violently regurgitating black mug, and double checking his terrified pet bird, then began his ascent to the surface.

Ice encrusted walls creaked threatengly, as the earth shook a few more times. Looking through the corpse's eyes he had left carrying their torches in the abyssal portal room, he was displeased to note that with each tremor the portal grew slightly wider.

He reached the surface, blinded by the intensity of the sun's light. Wordless, he strode into the milling camp of refugees, before turning around to face the fortress one last time.

"Is that everyone?" He asked coldly, the rage having had time to turn bitter and chill.

"We think so..." said a nearby refugee, amid a babble of talking and tears around them.

"Good." He closed his eyes. His hands twitched unconciously, as he commanded his minions to detonate their cargo.

Here, above the ground 4 stories up, there was a deafening crash, as a poweful plume of dust belched from the opening of the fortress, and the ground in the far north-east section sunk in profoundly.

The cup in his hand stopped bleeding. The portal had been closed.

[Corai]

-Earthquake, delicious delicious destruction. Im sitting back until I am needed.-

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Well, unless something happens and you are back on your feet, I'll have to treat what I wrote about as basically a preview of what will happen.  Carp.  I was hoping to get that over and done with.  The fort would've gained the Slashdiver and some of the weapons used in the war after the disarmament was begun.  I am completely serious about that last sentence.

[Gizogin]

Gizo X unbuckled his safety harness and climbed out of the tank's driver compartment.  He hopped down to the ground, and looked over at where Gizogin and the G-Bodies were standing.  Well, most of the G-Bodies; the VII appeared to be absent.  As he later found out, it had been crushed while trying to prevent a falling rock from crushing an elderly dwarf.

"You're late," came the voice of Gizogin.

"Sorry about that.  Had to grab a few things," X replied.  "I believe these belong to you?"  At his words, the three worker droids flew over to Gizogin, and began to hover above his head.

"I see the tank is working."

"Yeah, it's brilliant.  I drove it through a few pillars on the way up, but they didn't even leave a dent.  It could handle a little more smoothly perhaps, but the ride is excellent."

[wierd]

Weird looked for hugo, and found him watching the spectacle.

The earthquakes had ceased. However, the damage to the fortress was extensive. Eric would fins crazy, rubrick, and convoluted way to blame it on him. He had been completely careless using X's elemental magics. He'd have to consult with him to come up with a believable cover story. In the meantime though, he needed a person already in the know to look after peepers. Now was not a good time to mention that he had been secretly raising a monster in his room. Definately not to the dwarf who had uncountable hours of work invested, crumble to dust right before his very eyes.  He knew that was probably the last person Eric would want to talk to at this moment, but it was important that he know who had done this, and what had happened. As little as he knew for sure, at least it was better than knowing nothing at all. Nothing was more terrifying than the unknown when it came to manifest in ways like this.

Hugo was far off, but gizogin and the G-bodies were chilling out with their prototype battle tank, checking it over and discussing its performance.

"Excuse me." He said behind Gizogin, one of the few people that already knew of, and more importantly, approved of, his adorable pet 'chicken'. "Could I ask you a favor doc?"

[WillowLuman]

HugoLuman narrowly dodged a clump of rock. "Come on!" shouted Wierd.

"I'm going as fast as I can! I've got a leg still on the mend here!" He hobbled to the junction down the hall, starting to turn instead of going straight on.

"Where are you going!?"

"To find the source of this! I can feel exactly where it's coming from, it's driving me mad!"

"Are you insane!? This whole place is coming down! "

No idea where to go from here, since this post seems to have been ignored. Where should I be now? I really have no idea

[wierd]

Gizogin put you outside in the refugee camp.

Right now weird could use some emotional support, as he really, really needs to discuss with eric exactly what he saw, and why he did what he just did.

The unbelievably heavy trail of sick, coagulated blood leading out of the fortress, and coating the whole left side of his body where its infernal bloody vomit had inescapably covered him and the floor should be ample proof that there was something unspeakable afoot. But eric might question wierds lack of involvement in the event, given he has been the most prominent magical experimenter in the fortress so far. (X keeps to himself, sees fewer people, and as such is easier for him to remain secretive.)

[Eric Blank]

[Oh okay then. No need to dig now I guess...

Damn Wierd, you have way too many secret projects going for you right now, it seems. ]

Gizogin put you outside in the refugee camp.

[I can just imagine Gizogin spotting him, walking over, picking him up by the scruff of the neck like a puppy, and dragging him outside on his back in an undignified manner saying "Oh no you don't, mister! You haven't been discharged!"]

[WillowLuman]

[Some minutes ago]
Vemini tore chunks off the wall of debris that obstructed his path, until eventually he made a hole. He dragged HugoLuman behind him, barely getting them both out onto the grass before the passage collapsed behind them. "What were you doing, damn fool!"

"The source... I" wheezed HugoLuman, getting to his feet.

"Come on, move it! We've got to get clear!"

"The disturbance, the source, it's moving!"

Vemini sighed. He hoped that the giant lizard would have enough sense to keep moving, but now he had to go check the status of everyone else. He sprinted off to find anyone else that might be trapped, get them clear before this whole place fell in.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Anyone got a figure on the amount that were killed?  Matters to what I am trying to do.

[wierd]

Given that it would have happened suddenly, while people were working, or hauling goods around, id say around 1/3. 

So:

200 initial pop boom
-50 (cyber invasion)
------------
150
-50 (1/3 fortress pop lost; happyfaces's superfun happy ride)
-------
100 residents.

50% pop reduction in under a month. I think we are beating boatmurdered at this rate.