A diary from Thikut Moruldast, head tradesdwarf of Sibrek Mishos, the Mountainhomes:
"For years we have been successfully trading with Urdimrithol after their re-discovery. They were originally no more than muddwarves, wallowing by a river and soaked from the constant rain. The savages were picking fruit like elves and eating raw meat right off the butchered corpse. We brought them training, metals, animals. Decency. They gave us first nothing more interesting than raw mussels and that we could only resell to the poorest of humans - so little profit the trip was nearly not worth it. But soon we taught them how to make fire, how to properly butcher animals for cooking. How to make pots, jewelry, which they sold to us in abundance, grimly crafted out of bone.
And then they became our most profitable stop. Their meals - pork roasts of the highest caliber, with imported elven cheeses and the finest sides - became the prime delicacy among all the nobility of Sibrek Mishos. We couldn't bring enough to satisfy them, and every caravan was stripped of nearly anything metal. They built wooden palisades to keep the goblins at bay, and their sad mud huts became a thriving wooden town. They mastered mechanisms and their cage traps became legion. Their war dogs traveled in packs of a dozen, they even had somehow drafted giant jaguars and leopards into the military and captured some giant sparrows for their eggs (those secrets bought me a summer home when I returned with them). We taught them the secrets of working stone, of working the smelters, of true dwarven metalworking.
Though normally a trifle, one of our best selling items were picks. I should have been suspicious. Nothing was visibly mined - not a moat, not a proper trade depot set in stone, and not even a stone door was visible. Had I been more attentive, I might still be rolling in the gold. As it stands, I am nearly destitute. One year the entire town just disappeared. The caravan arrived, carrying their requested load of steel, and nothing. Not even a pig. The butchery seemed recently used, the blood still fresh. Most oddly, everything of value had been stripped. Every cage trap, every table, every seed. All that remained standing were the empty wooden hovels and the pile of corpses on display outside the main gate.
We investigated. We discovered some underground cellars for storage - rather large, but carved out of dirt rather than proper stone. Some of them smelled of pig, others of bird, and one smelled of blood - we found goblin bodies piled in a corner, and noticed hatches above, leading to the zoo. These catacombs were not very extensive, but they led to something very odd - a large stairwell down. Not more than two dozen steps and we found a tomb - a heavily decorated coffin with armor stands and weapon racks littering the room. Two more empty coffins lay in nearby rooms. The stairs kept descending, so we kept traveling. Eventually we made it to stone, and found two massive carved out rooms - it's a wonder they didn't collapse. We were quite deep at this point, and my two guards were getting nervous, but I insisted we keep moving. In the second room, we found a much smaller stairwell leading down that could only accommodate one at a time. I pulled rank and took the lead. We traveled for nearly an hour, before finding a small hallway. The stairwell ended in a hatch that seemed to directly drop into the perils of the caverns. As there was no safe way to make the drop, I directed we head down the hallway, which led to another narrow stairwell. It seems these dwarves had tried digging, but had no stonesense of how to properly enter the caverns. It was unbecoming.
We traveled another hour, and that's when we started hearing the screaming. Horrific sounds of battle, death, and misery wailed up from below. We slowly pressed on, hearing it get louder and louder, when this stairwell abruptly ended in another hatch above the caverns and a much larger hallway off to the side. From there, the wails were even louder. I again pulled rank, but this time to be at the rear. We made it most of the way down the hallway and almost to what seemed a major juncture, when a badly bleeding blind cave troll and a half dozen goblins rounded the corner and charged us. We were prepared to die nobly, and set ourselves to receive the charge. But just as Morul leaped at the cave troll and lodged his axe in its shoulder, just as Ducim jammed a spear through the chest of a goblin and took a bolt to the leg, all hell broke loose. There was a loud clap, like thunder, and what seemed to be an eruption of steel and bronze, as the walls themselves exploded into dancing shards of metal that carved down friend and foe alike. The cave troll's entire lower body was mulched into sausage. Poor Morul tried to dodge, but was caught and ripped in half by the incredible force. What seemed like lightning crackled down the hall, blowing two goblins into pieces and driving a barrel sized hole through Ducim's chest. It missed me by mere urists. I dropped my axe and fled, almost making it out of the hallway when another loud clap erupted and my leg was destroyed, lost halfway above the knee. I crawled to the stairway, pulled myself up a few steps, and quickly gave myself a tourniquet while I tied off the severed arteries with spare thread. Somehow I finished it before I passed out - for who knows how long - and started the long trek back to the surface.
I suffer, now. Not from the leg, but from the memories. Whatever those dwarves dug to, whatever they found, it should remain lost. I have ordered no more caravans be sent, all records burned, and the name entered into our Hammerer's Tome of Non-utterance. Some foul magic is best left forgotten.
-Thikut Moruldast"
A diary from Zasit Tunostar, head mechanic for Urdimrithol:
"Another siege showed up. All the kids came out this time to watch the new shredders installed on Kezatsazir. For a change, some of the goblins seemed to turn and run. Luckily for us, I built that minecart shotgun. A couple hundred urists of goblinite should ruin their weekend. I think Logem loaded some up with ballista bolts this time, too. Should be gruesome.
Oh yeah, remember to pick up some rum on the way home, the toddler seemed a bit sober this morning.
-Zasit"
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Topic: Challenge: The Lost Colony (Read 19371 times)