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

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I wish I could have joined in.

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Total Members Voted: 28

[OREOSOME]

[ The merfolk are not from MTG, but more or less native/from a modded world. They mostly look humanoid, although Makle is more serpentine. ]

[WillowLuman]

[Thank you, glad we got that sorted out.]
[Thinking back, I think the neighbors brought over a few barrels of drinks on the night it rained.]

X having told him they were done with the examination for now, HugoLuman wandered back over the the rapidly disappearing surface camp. What else was it that he had meant to do that day? Oh right. The crystals.
He went back into the impromptu hospital, where the survivors of the extrauniversal shipwreck still rested and found the 2 crystals on a tray next to the enormous sleeping general. How to get the message out of them? Telepathic, weren't they? Concentrating to block out background noise, he tried to listen.


[Corai, you want a scene? I've got an idea for reintroducing you to Wierd.]

[Gizogin]

[Okay, I am now officially moved back into college.  I was also just introduced to LoL.  This will inevitably lead to hopeless addiction.  I'm pretty tired right now, so no story post.]

[wierd]

[More bulk filler.....]



After a long, and meandering walk through the forest, the road to the microcline tower spilled out on the ground in front of him. Blue stones flecked with splashes of yellow orthoclase inclusions were laid haphazardly in the hardened clay roadbed, glittering and flashing in the sunlight as the shadows of tall weeds and grasses from the roadside ditches bobbed and danced over them.

The sun had descended past its zenith, and was starting to cast lengthening shadows. He would have to make this trip quick, or he would be returning home as the sun sets. He really didn't feel like dealing with gibbering imbecelic night creatures today.

Shifting the weight of the shoulder mounted basket to a more comfortable position, he picked up the pace and trodded down the path.

[Eric Blank]

[I am currently stuck in the college computer lab, wasting time between classes. I'll see what I can do...]
A dozen sober, angry midgets with but a string of sanity holding them high above the sulfur-belching caldera of madness charged wildly down the corridor, howling and whooping like a band of nomad raiders from some inhospitable region of the world. They crashed through the half-reconstructed corridors, slid precariously down the spiraling stairwell of rough stone blocks clinging to the walls of a deep pit, and bumrushed up a ramp-way, around the corner and straight into a large, open space. Their first victims were the booze barrels, and their second, the lard barrels.

Within half an hour, the entire party was passed out amongst the rubble, clothes stained with brand-new colors of booze and occasionally vomit, as others, only recently hearing the joyous news, filed in in a more guarded fashion.

Eric was nowhere near the shenanigans. Several stories below, trudging down a corridor. This was the passage to the first level of caverns, and also connected to the stairway leading deeper still. Everything was clear beyond a minor blockage in the intersection of this corridor and the last. The other miners were getting wasted and fattened, but Eric never could stand alcohol, and was still human in body. And he had perhaps overindulged just a little bit in some of the more delectable berries the herbalists had found. Prickle berries; wild black berries of the most delicious persuasion. Fisher berries and wild strawberries were also found, in smaller quantities. He'd have to spend more time in the woods, from now on.

He soon came to the stairwell. Other than a few steps having fallen out or snapped off, it was intact, and he carefully descended until he came to the caverns, having only collapsed a few more stairs on his way down. The cavern complex suffered serious damage around the southern walls, offering access to the lake beyond. Of course, a massive boulder of dense chert sat in the center of the cavern lake, surrounded by a pile of similar rubble. Detectable to him in the mess was the corpse of a dwarf, and some pet or other. All round the complex were more piles and boulders of rubble that had fallen from the ceiling. There wasn't much to do but add it all to the end of the schedule, and continue downwards, towards the forges and siege bunker, so he did.

Further down, he encountered layers of metamorphic materials, into the second cavern. By the third caverns, the schist and quartzite gave way to granite-gneiss complexes and suitably impressive granite plutons with their multitude of metal veins, and finally to diorite, and gabbro with large olivine content, among many other gems. Deeper still, lay the ultra-mafic green-stone belt and an ancient kimberlite pipe intrusion. The entire continent sat upon this material, thrown out of this ancient volcanic pipe as ancient proto-continents and island arcs collided and generated the friction and heat that welded the whole thing together. Dwarven engineering was the only thing that was keeping the temperature and atmosphere habitable and cool at this depth. ventilation pipes extended from cavern to cavern, in great numbers, and the exchange of air from these shafts provided clean, breathable air, and the introduction of cooler air from higher up. Nether cap was used as materials all around the fortress, to further reduce the ambient temperature and protect other materials from damage. Finally, the magma forges rested at the top of a massive glob of magma rising from the mantle deep below. And just a few stories above them rested the panic bunker, where, Eric hoped, some other survivors still dwelt in safety, with their impressive supply of food and drink.

[wierd]

[More filler.....]

"Excuse me.." he said, greeting the magically altered elven man who answered his knock on the tower door. "I'm one of your neighbors to the North.."

"Yes, we know you. You killed Thari. For that you have our thanks. We are aware of your condition concerning recent events and have already.."

"Yes. Thank you for the supplies you sent." Weird cut him off, while doing his best to remain civil. "I'm actually here to see if I could get some cooking herbs and spices. I'm interested in starting a small garden of them; The cooking up our way... it's horrible."

The elf blinked a few moments, then nodded hesitantly. "Just a moment while I inquire."

Weird smiled and nodded pleasantly as the door closed, and the sounds of bootsteps faded from perception behind it.

If he could score some seeds for basic cooking herbs and spices, things at the fortress would be much better. Some rosemary, terragon, and a little crushed thyme with black pepper rubbed on roasting chicken.......

His stomach growled angrily.

Best not to think about food right now.  He really hoped he could score here.

[Gizogin]

[Filler is better than nothing!  Nothing, coincidentally, is the sum total of what I have to contribute right now.  I'll have something later tonight, after my creativity drives have been fueled by food.]

[WillowLuman]

[My idea was that you might run into Corai at the tower, but that depends on Corai.]

[Wait, just thought of 2 things. Road? Did we make that? I wouldn't expect roads this far in the wilderness. Maybe elf-trails, but not roads.]

INCOMING RANT

Seeing how far down the caverns are, the stairs would probably be painfully long, like going all the way down the stairwell of an office building. I'd say 15-30 minutes to walk that. Something to keep in mind is that though dwarves may seem to swim through land in the game, in game time it actually takes them several days to dig out a room. Weren't the forges in the main fort, above the caverns?

Anyway, given the volcanic history of this area, there would probably still be a plume closer to the surface (below first cavern or higher) that we set up that pump stack from, since the magma sea would take months of digging with experienced miners to set up a tunnel to. Given said volcanic history, I wouldn't expect there to be any caverns under the nearby bay, it being the crater of a large eruption. And since there is room for a whole buried city between the surface and the caverns, I'd imagine they're far down.

Just trying to keep a sense of scale for both time and space here. With 200 dwarves for 5 days, then 150 for 2 weeks, I don't think we'd have set up a huge underground metropolis thronging with people. Given the description, I'd say surprisingly large but not huge bunker, with a loooong downwards path to a panic bunker far below the rest of the fort.

We gained a lot of plot holes from people losing track of time and space. While we were at Thari's the first time, for instance, other people wanted to keep writing. So they did. Since some of us were at the microline tower, though, time would have to be passing in story like events were happening over seconds and minutes, since being there much longer wouldn't make sense given the actions (we weren't captured and imprisoned, after all.) Back at the fort, though, they forgot about this, and wrote events as if they took place over weeks and months. MrHappyFace single handedly developed the entire field of cybernetics in about a day, deploying more than a dozen hyper-advanced cyber-soldiers. Maectur and the diggers were practically inhaling earth as they tunneled, even before the night of the first day. By the time we got back, the dirt hobbit-hole had become a fully fledged 1st-year fort complete with angry mummy.

The timescale of construction makes slightly more sense when we consider the assistance of the powerful planar dragon empire and their vast resources, but we were still conducting trade with them at a fully operational depot in just 2 days of our arrival. In just 2 days, we had gotten to trade goods. Who can say where the 200 migrants even came from? After the day of Thari's tower/goblin invasion/centipedes/Roead, all happening on the 2nd day, we continued to an equally batshit-crazy next day. In a single day, we faced both a magma pump-stack failure, a major disaster in the form of cyber-invasion, which was brought about by the return of Clockwork Hugo. Clockwork, who, though at this point we had been writing this thread for a little over a month, we had seen just 3 days ago in story as he ruined all our lives.
[/RANT]

So, now might be a good time to settle on what, exactly, we actually have. Let's say it's been about another 3-4 days of boring rescue work since the excursion to the OTHER tower, bringing us to a grand total of a little over 4 weeks in our new home.

[wierd]

[Hmm.. my character has in his posession: a basically empty hazard suit, created essentially from stolen materials (He didn't ask permission to use fortress resources.), a mutant chicken, and 2 possibly unstable and highly experimental (and now irreparably filthy) magic pigtail gloves. He had a pair of pigtail clothes, but they were destroyed when posessed by an insane death goddess who prefers exhibitionism.

The hazard suit contains such sundry things as: glass bottles, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, ammonia, and a few bits of metal powders and salts. Without a proper labspace, it has a lot of empty bottles.

Weird also posesses 1 missile launch key, 1 killer-coffer key, and is currently trudging around with a hastily woven but very large grass-straw foraging basket. 

All of the equipment I mention others having has reflected the lack of support infrastructure that the fortress has: Keshan and Themor are using cold-worked copper items, for instance. (Copper is one of the few metals that can be minimally worked without a heatsource. However, cold worked items are hard and brittle.)

I've been having my char work hard in providing needed infrastructure items, like pots, and bricks and the like. Sorta like now... he's looking to score some seeds for cooking herbs, so the food will be palatable. Seeds take usually 52 to 90 days to germinate and bear a crop, depending on the produce. He won't have herbs immediately from seeds. At least 2 to 3 months. He could land some fresh herbs and dry them for use during that waiting period though, depending on how charitable scorpion man is..... 

I have been trying to keep things in temporal perspective as best I can... that's why peepers is only about the size of a pigeon, despite being a carnivorous vacuum cleaner when it comes to food, and being a very fast growing monster.  In another month, he should be about the size of a *small* turkey. This is consistent with actual fast growing chicken breeds, like those used by KFC. In 6 months, he should be about the size of a german shepherd. (Growth rate drops off as body mass increases, as less energy from food is available for growth, vs sustaining what is already there.) It will take a year or more for him to be "pony" sized, and many many years before he is "T-rex" sized. He should be lethal to single humanoids by the turkey and dog size range though.

In eric's defense though, a highly volcanic region is likely to contain extinct magma tubes: deep channels in the bedrock that used to conduct a flow of magma to the surface, which stopped getting active flow, and cooled, leaving long, empty spaces through the rock. These would greatly reduce the amount of digging required to get very deep into the crust. They would also make convenient ventilation shafts, and the ways they twist and turn through the mountain would reveal hidded clues about the rock's composition. Magma flows through the path of least resistance, afterall. A sharp deviation in direction would indicate a sudden density change in the rock matrix.

Still... my char is basically just asking for a cup of sugar from the neighbors. That takes at most 4 hours, with all the walking.]

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

...of the powerful planar dragon empire and their vast resources...

I would like to note that the dragon empire wasn't originally going to be cross-planar.  My original intent was for the citadel to be a region or two over, but you kept referring to them being cross-dimensional, and they evolved into the format that you see them today.  Plus, as said during the thread ending fiasco, the entire world was destroyed and restored, and the world was restored to beginning of world-gen levels, with the change being that all of the intelligent races were in one single location, and constructed one conglomerate civilization.  There is also the fact that it has only been 15 years since then, so only the first generation of children is grown up at this point.  I would hardly call that powerful with vast resources.

[wierd]

[More filler! Yay for filler!]

He didn't have to wait too terribly long. A few minutes passed, and the same deformed elf from before creaked the door open just enough to speak through.

"Our leader, Askak says that you may have what you seek, if you can take care of a small problem of ours first."

Well, it seemed only natural. You don't go asking for something as expensive as cooking spices without offering payment.

"What does Mr Scorpion have in mind?" Weird asked jovially. He hoped the jest about askak's condition wasn't in poor taste.

"Our leader would like for you to remove an infestation of mice from our cellars. Fall is approaching, and the mice are leaving the forests and meadows in search of food for the coming winter. We don't want to share OUR food with them. If you can deal with the rodent problem, we will gladly offer you a start from our gardens, but not before. Our charity has limits, dwarf."

Weird thought pensively for a moment.... abominations like these people should not be at all disturbed by something like Peepers.......

"I think I have a solution for your problem..." he said at last, with a hint of a wicked smile, before digging into the back of his suit for where he had sequestered the voracious chicken monster....

[WillowLuman]

[In fairness, they probably have plenty of things like peepers skulking in the basement, as well as carnivorous plants. They would probably be very willing to lend us aid, being the only neighbors for hundreds of miles, though Askak is kind of sore about you since the whole mercy kill business. He doesn't hate you, but he'd be slightly less inclined to grant favors if it was you asking. In addition to herbs from the forest, there are plenty of Thari's created plants. Of course, they're still sorting through those to see which ones are edible/useful.]

[wierd]

[You also have to factor in several noteworthy concerns that a community official would have. It has been maybe 3 days since he sent a shipment of supplies. Being asked for handouts again, so soon, could be offensive and presumptuous. In addition to that, he has to ensure that his own population is well fed and cared for before seeing to the needs of others. Then you finally have the personal grudge issue.  Hence, the little token errand.  They have spices and herbs to spare, and could have easily given the seeds, but it is the willingness to work for the produce that is what is on the block here. That, and the mice in the basement might not be normal mice......]

[Gizogin]

[Okay, so we've jumped to a couple of in-story days since the checkup?  Just so I'm clear on the timeline.]

[WillowLuman]

[Since my checkup? No, I'm still waiting on the results of that, plus I need Zanzetkuken to tell me what's in the crystals. If I remember correctly, only one of them is for me.]