Pricefortress
It's not known who chose that name. It must have been a random drunkard. Mishosurvad is full of random drunkards, and random drunkards, specially those from Mishosurvad, enjoy a good joke.
The war was almost over. The dwarves had successfully repelled the dark stranglers, who were more annoying than dangerous[1]. Mishosurvad's nobles had decided that, as the first great dwarf empire, it was their duty to colonize the swamps of Cursed Udborg and show the world what dwarves could do when they were sober. Cursed Udbord was a swamp crawling with necromancers, where the had the nasty habit of not staying dead too long (that wouldn't be so bad if only they didn't come back willing to kill anything with more life than themselves). The actual reason was that a particular dwarf named Bothon Osegeb[2] was having dangerous ideas about a political system called democracy and how Mishosurvad would benefit from it. Even worse, he was starting to tell people about it.
They looked for volunteers. They said that Cursed Udborg was full of treasures, and that once they dug very deep (far away from the dangerous dead creatures roaming aimlessly above them) they would find gold and adamantine, iron and alcohol.[3] They said the dwarves who went to this expedition would have their names written in the Hall of Legends. They told the dwarves that the stories about entire armies disappearing in those dark swamps were just stories. They also said that they would be allowed to drink as much alcohol as they could produce. Still, no one volunteered for taming the swamps. It was weird, because dwarves don't often show signs of common sense.
The nobles then decided that the penalty for any crime would be joining the expedition to the Cursed Udborg. Mishosurvad had never been safer. People shivered thinking of the possibility of being sent to any place that had hard work to be done. Children could go to taverns without having their vocabulary shockingly expanded (the nobles had also decided that swearing would become a minor infraction), dwarves could leave their socks drying outside without the fear of losing them. Mishosurvad was becoming a place where someone could be actually happy. Unfortuntely it didn't take long for six dwarves (random drunkards) to be caught commiting small infractions. Infractions that would usually be punished with a few days drinking water instead of alcohol, but that in this case would mean death. Even worse, undeath.
Then they had to convince Bothon Osegeb, the dwarf with dangerous political views, that they were very interested in his ideas. They were so interested that they would be founding a new colony only to test this new political system. Osegeb wasn't willing to lose this opportunity of showing the world how brilliant his idea was. If even the nobles were supporting him, who would continue laughing at his claims that dwarves must have the right to choose their leaders? The answer, Osegeb didn't know, was everyone.
It was 1st Granite of 41 when two miners, a farmer, a mechanic, a mason, a carpenter and Bothon Osegeb arrived in the tundra north of the swamps of Cursed Udborg. With an astonishing exhibition of common sense, Bothon decided this would be the ideal place to settle down. Had they gone further to the south, they would have died surprisingly quicker. In fact, a few kilometers south, a band of gnoll corpses was going in their direction with alarming speed.
Before they had enough time to dig something big enough to keep all dwarves safe in the underground, the gnolls arrived. A mason named Fikod Esthancerol was the first to die. He forgot that he had a silver warhammer in his hands, and that a gnoll could be easily killed by a few well-placed strikes. After seeing their companiong being teared apart, everyone ran for their lives, and the slowest dwarves were the first to go. Zefon Mosusmoldath, one of the miners, was too drunk to coordinate his legs well and escape the gnoll onslaught. The Gnoll bit and scratched and shaked and grabbed until the miner stopped moving. Then the mechanic. Then they tried the stray ironclad horse, but the horse kicked a gnoll to death. That seemed to send a message that even a corpse can understand, and the gnolls seemed to retreat, taking a few trinkets with them.
When they regrouped, they had a brief discussion. The remaining miner decided he would be safer a few kilometers deeper in the ground and began digging staircases that would eventually lead to an underground cavern. An underground cavern where they would have set up a farm, built workshops, made a legendary dinning room, built great bedrooms with the finest (and only) beds of Cursed Udborg, and even seen a few groups of immigrants with more courage than intelligence arriving in the horizon, chased by the undead.
I say they
would have done all that because their deceased companions decided death was the best thing they had ever experienced. It was so good that they wanted to show their fellow dwarves how it was, so they could experience and enjoy it themselves. The mechanic was the first to arrive, surprising the three dwarves who were having a long conversation and apparently trying to decide how screwed they were. He went for Bothon Osegeb, the democratic expedition leader, first. He probably wanted to show him the wonders of death first, considering Bothon was responsible for their fate. Bothon decided death could wait until he had built a successful democratic fortress and quickly cut off both legs of the now-deceased-again dwarf mechanic. Then Bothon went for the undead miner, and put the miner to rest again by the method of decapitation. The deceased mason also showed up for the party. He killed the farmer, and then the carpenter. Bothon killed the mason with a few quick slashes. He was suddenly alone. Until the farmer stood up and overpowered him. His last thought was of a beautiful democratic fortress thriving in the midst of a desolated tundra.
[1] Imagine everyone stopping their daily business, gathering in a crowded dinning room with stinky horses, gates being closed, military squads hastily grabbing their weapons, wearing uncomfortable metal armors (which were always either too tight or too large), and running to the gates to defend their wives and children from the terrible orc menace. All that while an iron bell, designed more or less to destroy any eardrums in hearing range, rang endlessly. Then the drawbridge would be lowered and there would be a bunch of unarmed apes trying to convince the gates to open with punches and kicks. The people of Mishosurvad used this as a justification for the brutal tortures committed against strangler prisoners. Most people supected the actual reason to be fun.
[2] Remember this name. He might become famous or not.
[3] They were right, except for the alcohol. The rocks under Cursed Udborg were surprisingly rich in all kinds of minerals.
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Topic: Pricefortress (Read 731 times)