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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

[wierd]

[Agreed. A lot of the work that the woodcutters will be doing is dressing the timber:, eg, removing bark, and cutting into useful sections and planks.  This used to be done with special axes in the days of yesteryear before sawmills, which I presume is the case in DF's universe. Weird could probably get a great deal of "refuse" from the dressing process for kilning. Stuff like scrub limbs, bark, and outer pulpwood that isn't good for carpentry. There should be a large amount of such lumberyard waste building up.]

His meeting with Eric hadn't gone well. He wasn't sure why he had been so caustic with Eric; it hadn't been his intention, but for some reason, he just couldn't keep his opinions to himself. Something about Eric just always brought out the worst in him, which was one of the many reasons he tried to avoid him as much as possible.  On the bright side, Eric's "maintenance" mindcontrol efforts seemed to have removed the "dumbass disease" from the labor pool, returning them to a decidedly less zombie-like condition.

Jerry had told him that he coul have all the castoffs from the timber yards he wanted, and that burning it all up would actually help speed things up by removing the clutter everywhere. A few hours, and some heavy hauling jobs later, and the castoff limbs, pulpwood, scrub growth, and excess bark had been quickly and efficiently moved to the kilnyard, replacing the charge of bricks and pots that had been unloaded previously. Weird hoped Eric liked bricks, because he was going to be swimming in the things before long; with the need for pots completely filled, 100% of the kiln space was being used for bricks, and it was a very very big kiln.

It wasn't too bad firing the kiln the way it was supposed to be fired, though the continual bucket brigade tossing wood up the line from the woodpile to the stoke hole was wearisome. It sure beat concentrating nonstop for more than 8 hours though, and people could rest him off.

Rikod said that while he could get into the residential quarters, they had not been declared safe to sleep in yet, and had been forced to snag bedding and sleep in the relief shelter earlier the day before while weird went on the exploration of the ancient tower. Pillows and blankets were a decidedly rare luxury item, and had received envious looks throughout the day. So much so that Rikod had needed to hide them to ensure their safety, and only dug them back out late that evening when he and weird retired to the tank for the night.

With the rise of the morning sun, the daily grind churning out masonry supplies resumed in full swing. The kiln was checked periodically to see if it was ready to unload, while more bricks were pressmolded and layed out in the sun to dry, awaiting their turn in the huge oven. Weird wondered if Eric was even using the damn things, or if he would insist on mining stone blocks to fix walls with just to spite him.

He had decided the day before to let Rikod serve as the workflow liason with Eric, citing the disasterous events of the previous day. Rikod was a lot of things, but quick tempered was not one of them. It was becoming painfully clear to him that he desperately needed to work with eric if things were going to get any better, and equally obvious that some things were just outside of his control. Asking Rikod to be a liason was a desperate move, but he was determined to not be a dick by proxy. Given what that damned dalek said about the real enemy being subtle and manipulative, he was seriously wondering about the source of his misbeheavior. It was possible that eric too, was being manipulated. It was a scary prospect, but it was all the motivation he needed to direct his more acidic mannerisms toward that unseen agency. If it wanted him and eric to be adversarial, he would make absolutely sure that everything in his power to prevent that would done, out of pure spite. He would bake eric a fucking triple decker birthday cake with chocolate fucking frosting and a stripper inside, if that's what it took.

He would NOT be manipulated this way. Dissention when unity was needed would NOT happen because of him if he could help it. If that meant having Rikod as a contact liason, so fucking be it.

He would inject as many layers of obfuscation as necessary to discourage that avenue of attack. Oh yes. He would.

[Eric Blank]

[It doesn't actually require more than a few hundred cubic feet of bricks to replace the missing floors! ]

The excavations were going decidedly nice lately, compared to other responsibilities in the community. Nobody had been squished by debris, and work was progressing far more rapidly than expected. About half the fortress was accessible again, if not safe. Sure, there had been a few large collapses, and it appeared that part of the stockpiles and workshops had been completely flattened into a pile of rubble at the bottom of a multi-story hole, but the good news was that the food stocks were probably mostly intact, somewhere behind this pile of rubble here...

It was at the bottom floor of the massive collapsed pit (short of the caverns that it was open to), and down a corridor, around the corner, and past the rampway up to the next level. The dining hall was right above the food stocks, and the kitchens were crushed under debris across the hall from them. But, the food was either behind this pile of rubble form the poorly-planned entryway into the dining room collapsing above, or under the rubble of the poorly-planned temporary dining room floor that was supposed to be condemned beforehand anyway. A few meters of crap was all that separated Eric and the two volunteer miners from the supplies everyone needed. It was only slightly less crap than was blocking actual access to the dining room, but slightly less is still less.

Luckily, there were no more bodies within reach of any currently-accessible portions of the fort, and only 2-3 altogether, which meant that the other 8-15 missing were probably A-OK in the lower half of the fortress, below the first caverns and with access to the bunker's supplies.

[wierd]

(Brick size is your typical 2x4x6 inch clay brick.  The first charge in the kiln had about 750 bricks, and about 100 really big pots. The charge currently in cooloff has about 2000+ bricks inside. Pots are harder to fire, and need space between them to keep them from being glued together as the glaze melts. Bricks are fired inside protective clay structures called saggars which keep kiln gasses off of them, which ensured they don't get glazed by the wood ash. The saggers are then removed by smashing, pounded up into small bits called grog, and added to the clay for the next batch of bricks. This ensures more even and controlled shrinkage of the bricks, and improves the functional load yield, as fewer bricks will split/crack during firing from thermal stress. I doubt more than another load would be needed after this one.)

[wierd]

Scuttlebutt was that excavation work was making noticable progress, now that replacement materials were available. he would probably not get any recognition for taking any initiative in that respect, but then again, eric wasn't getting any either; that wasn't how dwarve society worked: you did what needed to be done, because it needed to be done. You didn't get recognition for doing what needed doing. That would be like getting praise for making your bed in the morning. Praise was only given for truely exceptional things, like creating artifacts, or defeating a whole army by yourself. He and eric had gained a bit of notoriety for getting people out of the collapsing fortress instead of saving themselves, but that was yesterday's news. Today's news was more dark, punctuated with the hope of returning to normal quarters and getting real booze again.

The brewers had set up a makeshift still, and were trying to make alcohol, any kind of alcohol, out of just about anything they could find.

Rikod had eagerly snapped up the experience of firing the kiln the correct way, and with workflow working correctly with refuse from the lumberyard being "dumped" in the kilnyard like clockwork, the ceramics industry was going strong. Getting muddy making bricks was good honest work, but with everything in hand, he was just another cook in the kitchen, and was more appropriately employed elsewhere.

Ruehd was still overseeing the collection of wild edibles and herbs, and in light of the desperation of brewers for anything sugary enough to ferment, he turnd his efforts that direction, joined the herbalist workgang silently and nonchalanty, grabbed a berry picking basket, and headed into the woods.

It was good having multiple skills. And this would get him far away from eric for the time being. Things needed to cool down before trying to talk with him again. It was imperitive that he and eric patch things up, but timing was everything, and this was too soon.

Looking into the forest, he smiled broadly at the sight of the horribly spiney and vicious looking trees. The brewers would get a lot of sugary crap today. Oh yes. Jackpot.

[WillowLuman]

[Our opponent doesn't exactly directly manipulate your actions, he merely arranges things so that you come to the wrong conclusions. The way things work, something would have made you snap at Eric on your own. Which is worse, since it's harder to tell when you're being manipulated. I suspect we will all become very paranoid.]

Things were looking good in terms of recovery. HugoLuman had been helping with the hauling all morning, and saw that the fort was rapidly being uncovered. He'd tried to ask Eric about reinforcing the walls with cement, but Eric merely told him that they didn't have the time or resources to do that at the moment. So he worked on, thinking about large spaces for a bessemer furnace, proper cement mixing, and quake-proof tunnels. A little concrete did a lot for reinforcement.

After a few hours, he managed to get some free time, remembering about the crystals he'd found on that draconic general. He found the survivors of the crash in an isolated part of one of the two above-ground buildings, guarded by Vemini. Just as he was about to look at one of the two crystals next to the sleeping general, he noticed that there were 3 other figures in the room. "Hey, who're these?"

Vemini looked in. "They showed up yesterday. Two of them claim to be mer-people or something. They are to remain here until someone decides if they are to be trusted."

[wierd]

[Weird does not know the extent of the adversary's abilities. For all he knows, the baddie has a copy of DFHack and runesmith running. As such, he considers the situation dangerous enough to second guess his own behavior. Enough so that he will seek means of insulating a volatile situation. An knockdown drag-out between eric and weird would be quite entertaining to the mysterious figure I am sure, and if they keep at each other's throats while nerves are frayed, it is an inevitable conclusion. Weird wants to avoid this, but is dismayed by his recent behavior. It has him paranoid. No question. He *definately* wants to resolve the animosity with eric, in as peaceful a solution as possible. His recent behavior is evdence that he can't do that himself. That's why he is trying to arrange things so that he and eric don't have to interact directly, and hopefully mitigating the animosity. As long as eric doesn't think this is weird being a sneaky little fuck who is trying to get people involved out of cowardice, rather than practicality and necessity, things should be golden, but the potential for it to get sour is very real. Eric: please don't cast weird as a dickhead. ]

[Gizogin]

[Argh, typing from my phone is annoying.  I'll have to keep this short.]

"Ooh, how've you done that?" Lana asked.  "No-one's ever been able to block my teleportation before.  Anyway, I give up.  Your shield spell is perfect."  If anything, it was too perfect.  It had taken X all night to put it together, meaning that there was no way it could be practical for anything other than...

... a prison.

"Uh, X?  You can let me out now," she said, nervously.  "You've made your point, and I can't get through your spell."

"No, you can't," the android replied evenly.  "I'm afraid you're too dangerous to have running around unchecked."

"What do you mean, 'dangerous'?  Is this about that guy who jumped me in the tunnels?  Okay, so maybe I reacted badly.  I shouldn't have used so much fire.  But you can't just-"

"I'm sorry," X interrupted, "but I just can't have a vampire loose in the fortress."

Lana stared at him blankly, then did something X was not expecting: she laughed.  Lana burst into peals of laughter, tears streaming from her eyes, as X looked on in confusion.  When she'd recovered enough to speak, several minutes had passed.  "You seriously-  That's what this is about?  You actually thought I was a vampire?"

X looked nonplussed.  "Well, yes," he answered.  "Look at the facts: you have abnormally strong magic, you're weakened by running water, you haven't eaten or drank since you arrived, except when I reminded you to eat breakfast this morning, you were obviously faking being sleepy this morning, as you clearly didn't actually sleep last night, or any night, and you have your own tent with you because you can't go into a house without being invited."

"You idiot, I'm not a vampire.  I'm a cambion.  The differences are pretty obvious, you know."

[Okay, before you all go and look up what a cambion is, it's a half-demon.  Classically, they're the offspring of an incubus and a human, but I'm going with my own interpretation of them.  When I can get to a proper keyboard, I'll type it all up.]

[Eric Blank]

[Oh fine. I'll try to be nice lol]

[Your sister is demon-spawn? That's no good...]

[wierd]

[IIRC, it doesn't necessarily mean incubus spawn exactly... I recall a similar supersticious belief surrounding children born with the ambion still intact. It was believed tha such "veiled" children posessed supernatural powers, and were presumed to have a connection with fairies and elves... let me see if I can find data on it......]

[Gizogin]

[Demon-spawn isn't wholly accurate; I'll explain when I can.  For now, it's sufficient to know that cambions and vampires are superficially similar enough for X to have made the mistake.  If the opponent is indeed subtly influencing everyone, it would help to explain the mistake as well.  Just a little push to confirm his suspicions is all it would take to make him act.]

[wierd]

[Here we go!  A person born with the amnion still intact is called a Caul.  They are believed to have special powers, to be immune to drowning/have a connection to water, and the like. ]

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

After a few hours, he managed to get some free time, remembering about the crystals he'd found on that draconic general.

Hang onto those after you view them.  Something I want to use them for.  Need the mechanic or the general awake, though...

[Reudh]

[Cambion are in some interpretations, half demon half human, like Caliban in the Tempest. In others, because "Demons cannot create life because it requires a soul", first, a succubus takes the sperm of a man, gives it to an incubus, who then impregnates a female human with it, which causes the birth of a Cambion. As well as Gizogin's interpretations, Cambion are also said to weigh a huge amount while still appearing small; so much so that a horse cannot lift them. They have no breath or pulse until they are seven, when they begin to take on the characteristics of normal humans, and are nearly indistinguishable from humans. So if X wants to truly see if Lana is a cambion, he should make her get on a horse. ]

[WillowLuman]

[..only we extincted demons and there are no succubi/incubi in DF. Perhaps she comes from somewhere where they do have them?]

[Reudh]

[We did have planeswalking, remember. Perhaps Lana's human parent went to a plane were they existed? That makes Lana only Gizo's half-sister, remember... otherwise Gizo would be Cambion too.]

"Oh, hello Wierd. Come to help with the harvesting?"