Let me tell you the tale of Logem Idokurist of The Pale Hatchets, forever to be regarded as a miscreant and a traitor.
All is well in The Pale Hatchets, food and iron are plentiful. The caravan arrives while the broker, Logem, is in the middle of a party. I turn off all his labors to make sure that when he decides to leave the party, his only remaining responsibility will be to tend to the merchants.
"Okay," I say to myself, "he can't be there all season, I'll just wait for it to end."
Surely enough he leaves the party eventually, but instead of attending the call of 'Trader requested at depot,' he finds that all that partying has made him thirsty.
I reassure myself, "That can't be helped I suppose, and there is still some time left."
His thirst quenched, the broker now feels drowsy and heads off to a bed for some rest.
"Dammit," I exclaim, now clearly annoyed, "get to the depot and trade already!"
I consider appointing a new broker, or perhaps allowing anyone to trade, but there is still some time left in the season, and I have no one else with skill appropriate for trading. The alert comes, 'The traders will soon be leaving.' I hastily check, yet again, to see if Logem has awoken and answered the request. To my glee he is no longer sleeping. However, he has 'No Job.'
"I probably checked just as he woke up," my reasoning deferring to optimism, "any second now he will get the job to trade at depot."
Logem, who I will imagine to be groggy and only half-awake, does not go to the trade depot, but instead strolls over to the food stockpile. He must want some breakfast to offset all the partying and drinking he took part in before his slumber. In the meantime, I am watching anxiously over the depot for the broker to arrive such that I may begin the trade before the caravan departs.
Something is amiss, he should have arrived by now. The beds are not that far from the depot. I query the units screen to find out where my rogue broker is. If I were not yet in a state identifiable as angered, I certainly am now.
The caravan departs.
A sequence of expletives not befitting to repeating leaves my mouth. Logem, now energized by his breakfast and with no other tasks, joins a party. Gruesome and horrifying ideas stir through my head as I contemplate how to give my broker his retribution.
Alas, I am robbed of the chance to reward the broker his just dues. A force upwards of forty reanimated corpses has arrived. Not yet off the map, the caravan is literally torn to pieces, and the army of the undead gains a few more belligerents. Scattered about the surface lay the articles I had aspired to barter for. The food will rot on the grass, exposed to the elements. I have not the time to melancholy over such waste, the zombies pour into the fort. My militia, thirty strong and ironclad as they were, stood no chance against the swarm of unholy abominations. Within minutes The Pale Hatchets is reduced to a hovel of toxic miasma and undeath. Despite logic, I resolve that this is all the fault of Logem Idokurist, derelict broker. He shall be remembered as a vile traitor, dwarves will spit and yank their beards at the mention of his name.
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Topic: Moments of why does that dwarf have to be doing that job at that time (Read 2098 times)