Journal of "Halfling" Aludoddom, 2nd Granite 1003.
Oh, my head... Who would have thought shattering the fabric of existence could give you such a hangover? Last I remember was Gaunt screaming in anger as he was eaten by our fortress crocodile limb by limb, part of an epidemic of contagious violent insanity that had come to our fort. The four of us survivors running to the magma chronosphere chamber with the zombies on our heels. Thank the gods it worked.
Now it's Granite again, my head is still killing me, Chaosgear is still alive and not as a soulless revenant, all traces of Gaunt have somehow vanished - it seems he did not exist in this timeline at all - and Remuthra is our military commander and newly appointed overseer. Dizzying, but it's better than being torn apart by the living dead. Berul be praised, my left mitten is still here and didn't turn into a toad or mini-forge or a lump of clay. Which we seem to have about 300 of, stored for some unknown purpose, by the way. Ho hum.
Remuthra has been talking about harnessing the earth's blood to destroy the walking dead for good. He's been drawing and designing and designating, and screaming at the miners to get back to work whenever they get an excuse to stop digging. Which is often, since by miners' guild rules, if one of them singes a finger on some hot rocks, the entire area is "too dangerous to mine" and they can get back to emptying our rum supply.
Now I like traps and magma and burning things to a second, hopefully more permanent death as much as the next dwarf, but there is a downside nobody seems to notice except I. That is, as I told them today in the dining hall, we can't butcher what we catch if we dump it into magma. Butchering the undead may sound a little dangerous or slightly suicidal, but we need meat. Not just for savoring, either.
"If anyone remembers, and I'm starting to doubt it," I said, "I lead us to live here in Armok's godsforsaken ass-crack among the soulless walking elephant husks and thieving raccoon skeletons and crocodiles and glum purple trees and patches of mud for a reason, and it wasn't to admire the damn scenery or see the exotic zombie leopard."
"It was to an extent to mine some gold and make great halls where they said we couldn't, but mostly to grow sliver barbs, farm spiders and make silk. To catch the cobs, we'll need animal traps on the surface, baited with meat. The only good source of meat here is the zombies, after you re-kill them. Do you see the problem?"
"We need silk. Silk," I told them. "You can use it to web cage traps and make mittens and -- What do you mean that's insane and not worth the loss of life?" Even if dwarf lives were more important than silk, it's not like death is something permanent here. They won't be dead for more than five minutes after hitting the ground. This point wasn't well received, however.
In other news, it's been two years, and there's absolutely no clothesmaking work for me. Sigh... I'll just have a little cruor to get through another working day in the office, and get back to bookkeeping.
What a sour taste.
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Topic: Ghoullights Chapter III: The Lamentation of Dyes [Succession] (Read 41105 times)