It was morning. Jimboo had appropriated one of the fancy storerooms for his new quarters to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s sardine meeting (and hey, this room was nice!). After everyone had filed in, jimboo rapped a bone scepter on the table to call the meeting to order. “First order of business,” he said, “Does anybody here have a map of this place?” No one did. So much for item #1 on the To Do list. “Moving on, then, what have you come up with for recommendations?” And everybody wanted to talk at once. Again. Dwarves usually spoke in soft voices because sound travels a long ways in stone tunnels. A dozen, loud dwarves jammering in a small room with smoothed walls was hard on the ears and jimboo had to slam the scepter several times before anyone could hear it.
“Hold it!” “One group at a time, starting with the Craftdwarf’s Guild. What’s with all the bone doo-dads stacked everywhere?” “Orders, Sir, that’s what we were told to do.” All eyes turned to the manager, Citadel Trustworthytunnel, who seemed to grow a bit smaller in their gaze. “Well … ah, it’s pretty much what we’ve always done … there are all those bones laying around and the single Crematorium can’t keep up with the new ones coming in, let alone all the old ones and …” Jimboo cut him off with a wave of his hand. “A new crematorium, then, and let’s hear from the Smiths.” They too, blamed the manager for outstanding orders issued on Repeat “because it’s what we’ve always done.”
So the morning went. And the afternoon.
Afterwards, jimboo looked down at the four scrolls of vellum covering the table. Lots of ideas were discussed, many of them fairly silly to everyone but the dwarf suggesting it. Some of the ideas were good ones – at least worth considering – and jimboo had filled several scrolls with them. None of those ideas had ever been tried and none of them came with instructions, naturally. Most of the ideas had come from the engineers, also naturally. Engineers always had ideas, most of them completely useless since they were as impossible as they were grand sounding. The head of the Engineer’s Guild had some good suggestions for fortress defense and exotic weapons and everyone was interested to hear those. But mostly, he babbled excitedly about something called “seven sigma,” whatever that was. Jimboo frowned and looked down at his hands. He had more than seven fingers so he could count that high but that’s about as far as it went. Whatever it was, it involved
A LOT of numbers and jimboo was all but certain even the other engineers didn’t know what he was blathering about. Said he needed a “Dwarven ‘puter,” whatever that was. Well, unless he could build one himself out of bones, that wasn’t going to happen this year at any rate and the only way jimboo could shut him up was to finally give him permission to speak with the inventors and researchers about his ‘puter. But there was one engineer, diffident and soft-spoken, what was his name? Goldbutt? Something like that. Goldbutt had what sounded like a very interesting idea: Restraint Theorum. Pick the most important thing, work on that thing until it wasn’t the most important thing any longer, then work on the next, new most important thing. That sounded useful. Practical. Jimboo had then asked him what he thought the most important thing was and he’d replied, “That’s it. The Overseer using Restraint Theorum.” It was a funny way of thinking but it did make sense, kind of. Maybe if it worked out at year’s end he could have a statue raised to Goldbutt – but no, that’s how rumors get started and there were already plenty of those in this place. The dwarves of Bannerheart loved to gossip.
The last to speak had been Meph Occultwhip, the Military Commander. He had waited in silence until all the other dwarves had spoken. Jimboo had not called on him, and he was patient. He was also – Meph. Jimboo sometimes wondered how the other dwarves spoke about him behind his back but he already knew how they spoke of Meph. Every dwarf in Bannerheart knew *those* stories. It was rumored Meph had “a thing” for FungYen.
It was also rumored that a couple of dwarves – more foolish than most – had made a joke about it where Meph could hear. But it was only a rumor, nobody was sure because those two dwarves were no longer listed on the fortress’ roll. They hadn’t even been soldiers. What they had been was here one day and not here the next. “Don’t mess with Meph” might well have been the unofficial motto of Bannerheart and jimboo had heard enough of the stories to believe that one, at least. But the soft-spoken Meph had waited until the babbling was done, and when asked for a military assessment had simply reached within his bloody armor and withdrawn a scroll, laying it on the table. This one did have instructions – worded as “suggestions” – and he had been content to leave it at that. But jimboo hadn’t yet read the scroll and didn’t think things through before saying out loud, “Summarize it. What’s the status?” perhaps a bit more abruptly than he had intended but it had already been a long and tiring day. Realizing immediately his mistake, jimboo could hear his heart thumping in the now very quiet room. He listened to that sound for several long seconds until Meph spoke. “I can direct the military. What I need is more soldiers. Not children, armored men – women, if you prefer – that can wield an axe.” After he spoke, all eyes seemed to focus on
his axe, that bloody two-handed monster of legend. “And …” Meph continued softly, turning to face Bogusbedus Dimpletorch, “this fortress could use a new Quartermaster. Equipment ordered never seems to arrive. We have no proper Warbeasts and some of those unicorns, while war trained, are still being coddled as pets.” Now the room was staring at Bogus and jimboo felt a pang of sympathy along with relief that Meph was focused on someone else. Meph was everyone’s idea of a proper dwarf: big (for a dwarf, that is), strong, tough, a natural leader and wearing that damn bloody armor of his. Except, jimboo noticed, his boots were made of soft leather. Were those the ‘requested equipment’ he had referenced? Bogus, on the other hand – well, everyone knew how the fortress talked about
him, too. Bogus was a Guilded Animal Trainer which already was a big strike against him. Moreover, Bogus was known to spend more time with his bees and unicorns than on his Quartermaster duties. Jimboo was relieved to have a moment to collect himself as everyone stared at Bogus. Well, he thought, I’ve already stepped in it; best thing now is to keep up the false front and perhaps Meph would also misunderstand just how meaningless the job title of Overseer actually was. “Meph,” he said, “I’ll assume the Quartermaster duties for now. Are the past requests you mentioned listed in this scroll?” Meph slowly nodded. “Then we are done for today. You will be contacted individually as appropriate. You’re dismissed.”
As the others filed out, jimboo locked eyes with Meph and said, “I’ll see that you get those boots.” A gamble. Another lifetime of silent seconds passed before the big dwarf nodded.
The last to leave the room, Meph had turned at the door and softly said, “I’d like to have a turkey, if you don’t mind.” Jimboo found himself shaking after he’d left.
17th Granite.
- Anvil has created an artifact bone maul, worth 146,040. The fortress now has its 3rd legendary bone carver. That labor was disabled for the eight other dwarves who have it as highest moodable skill.
Details:
It is a time-honored tradition for each new Overseer to bitch and complain about the previous ones (Boatmurdered, for instance). I’m not going to do that. That said, in a large, mature fortress with ONLY ONE FRIGGIN’ NOTE, there has to be some slack for comments.
Also, I have a new-found appreciation of what it must have been like those previous years; constant sieges = not much time to do anything else. I enjoy Masterwork but have never played before with all the Evil Twins and Secret !Fun! enabled. And have you ever noticed an obsidian cabinet on a basalt floor is practically invisible? That’s probably why some bedrooms have several and some others have none.
- Holy
cowTuskOx, those two Craftsdwarf workshops on the surface alone have 2,000+ bone amulets, scepters and trinkets between them. In the armory, there’s nearly as many bone javelins. Well, there were a lot of bones to do something with.
- The central staircase (1x3) is being doubled; it only went down nine levels, was heavy on traffic, not connected to other stairs since the cave-in and hauling slag down two levels (?) to the pits was done by a solitary, 1-tile staircase. There are several barracks with dozens of beds, each. And several large dorm rooms. At the same time, the fortress has dozens of single beds in rooms that are not yet designated as bedrooms. Hmm. A wall was knocked out giving a path from the expanded central stairway to the slag pits. Stockpiles added for potash. There be a lot of sphalerite stockpiled next to those pits; blast furnaces are tasked with brass.
- Shoot; at the new Prisoner Room training facility, I forgot to complete the bridge before removing the up slopes and had to tear a new wall.
- Wow, this fortress has 160 dwarves that have trained as Engravers. That beats craftdwarf as highest skill, I suppose, but there aren’t many Weaponsmiths and Armorers. Perhaps those were the ones now sleeping in coffins. A half-dozen or so have been skilled in metalcrafts from craftsdwarf first season by making copper short swords and helms (1 bar each). It takes about 6 to achieve “highest moodable skill.” The three best engravers (Guilded) are left to practice, the others have that skill disabled at least for now. They’re all making too much noise, anyway.
14th Slate:
We were just getting some things accomplished when Trade Incidentalthief decided to throw a party.
The Project so far:
- a month into the year already and I’ve managed to bring the FPS up all of 2. Big whoop.
Author
Topic: The Banners of Heart: ☼Masterwork the Fortress☼ (Read 34112 times)