CHAPTER 49: Crimson and lavenderSummer of 119Summer is here! The monstruous spider-buffalo has been slain, and the elves have departed, let's hope we get some free time to...
Nevermind. It's
another forgotten beast. Two weeks from the last one. Deadly spittles aren't too much of an issue if people dodge correctly, at least. I'm scarred of filth, on the other hand, but that's mostly because I remember the nightmare that was Rifi, another creature of grime, and one of the fort's greatest enemies. We will face the monster as a team. I gather my squad, and head to the caverns.
Like a swat team, we sneak behind the creature as it tries to jump in the river. This area has been cleared, giving us much space to dodge the spittle. It's time to gank up on this asshole. As soon as it shows its ugly head, the creature is met with a rain of bolts from our overtrained militia. It tries to respond with a projectile, but the emptied cavern give my men enough time and free space to easily sidestep it. Once the beast has been injured by two volleys, I jump in to tank it, while the rest of the squad rains death on our foe.
it can't punch us if it doesn't have any hands. That's what my advanced knowledge of monster anatomy tells me, anyway. Filth doesn't have much bones to break, so I take out my trusty dagger, who'se name I can hardly pronounce myself, and cut off Baci's hand. Off you go!
The battle rages on, but my team has a lot more experience dealing with giant beasts than Baci could ever be prepared for. He tries to breath more of his extract, but I block each blob masterfully, while bashing it repeatedly. With a hand short, he has a hard time keeping up with two melee dwarves flanking it.
Enough games, it's time to finish this. First, you don't need any hand, buddy. Let me punch that away for you. there we go. Now, a slap on the face is all it takes, or so I learned from our KS master, Alath. So I decide to brush my hand gently against Baci's cheek.
It works. Baci instantly dies. Fuck logic.
I would like to take a few moments to just point out how dumb the combat situation is getting here. This is the first week of summer. A dragon attacked right before winter, then a Titan, then we had a siege, and then spring came and there was another forgotten beast. Then this one like two weeks ago. That's right, we've had two forgotten beasts show up so close to each other that we couldn't even butcher a single kitty between the two.
The spirit of Baci immediately leaps into a random leatherworker, who proceeds to create a leather headscarf. ''Well fought, little creature. After centuries of rampage, you have vanquished me. This is my final gift to you!'' It is a very ugly headscarf, worth less than those produced by our leatherworkers when not posessed. I wear it nevertheless because that would be impolite not to.
Well, it's now the second week of summer! Let's pick up the ten thousand iron shields lying around the fort and smelt them, shall we? And butcher some dingos while you are at it, they'll feed our magic tiger person.
Or not. Another beast. This one is coming from the lower caverns, and probably can't reach us for now, so it just chills and watch a giant olm go about his business. I hate having eldritch horrors wandering our basement, tho, so I'd prefer if we killed it now, instead of hoping it's not lurking in a nearby lake when we finally venture deeper. Open the plug!
Before the workers can show up, I change my mind. Let's take some time to turn this random hole in the ground into a more sensible defence. I spend the day with Dumat and the mayor designing the blueprints for this level. There shall be two long corridors, with a ballista at the end of each, next to an ammo stockpile. The south area can be used to store food and implement some basic dorms, should we have to send troops in the depth for too long. Before i can dispatch any workers to do
that, tho, we have
another problem coming up.
Now we know why the Lavender Empire hasn't sent any trader to our fortress in five years. They were slowly hoping to weaken us by denying us trade goods, weapons and food. The mayor took the time to meet the lawgiver of the empire last year, which was a pretty dark time for our army, with people dying left and right, and hopes being at an all time low. The lawgiver must have taken that as a sign of weakness, and decided to begin his assault. A few skirmishers show up, right on the edge of our castle. This would have taken any fort with its pants down.
Whisperwhip, however, is definitely not just any fort.
As the humans look for some easy targets to start off their assault, they are instead met with a rain of death from the walls. The patrolling marks-dwarves shoot the first human archer dead before he can land a shot. Our civilians would usually be lying around picking up clothes and corpses, making them easy prey to a group of skirmishing rangers such as this one. I assume this is what the lawgiver was counting on. Ah, unbeknownst to him, our absolutely terrible management has thwarted his carefully-prepared assault!
Here's the thing. Sometimes, you accidentally click buttons. One of these buttons actually disable the hauling of food lying around. It must have happened, I dunno, 7 years ago. But for almost a decade, the stockpiles have been emptying drastically, and I now know why. Food hauling was just... disabled somehow. I woke up in the middle of spring and figured, hey maybe ''something'' is wrong in the obscure hidden order menu? So I tried something and now people are hauling all the food. That's right, for maybe 7 or 8 years, butchered corpses were left to rot, and only gathered once the item counted as ''refuse'' and not food anymore. that's also why there is a million barrels in the courtyard when the tower next to it is a giant food stockpile. And that's also why all those blood barrels were lying outside and nobody would touch them, except to dump them. That's also why the kitchens have been am miasmatic nightmare for so long. And yup, that's why the trade depot is constantly full of shit even when there isn't anything to trade. It also means that we turned about 700 animals into rotten corpses for exactly no purpose.
But in the end, it was not for naught, because today is the day that we use our absolute lack of organisation as a mighty shield! The humans have launched their surprise attack, but everyone is inside hauling barrels of fishes that probably died ten years ago. Lady Asmel looks at the archers outside with a strange glee in her eyes. she's jumping in place like a kid awaiting his christmas presents. ''Please, general, let me go outside! I'm bored! Being on the wall all day is no fun!''
This happens. Yes, that's the whole combat text. So she did kill a dude by shattering a guy's angle so hard he stopped being alive.
Asmel is back, disapointed to see that there were only one squad of archers to slaughter. She's back on the wall drawing stick figures of dead humans with the blood dripping on her weapon, before it dries up. I order that the human corpses be forbidden and left to rot there at the frontier between SoothedSlapped and our own Duchy. Their skeletal remains decomposing under the arid sun shall serve as a warning to all members of the Lavender Empire, that they are not welcome south of Quula's old tower.
''General, even the dismembered limbs?
-
Especially the dismembered limbs.''
As soon as Asmel is back to her patrol duty, her squadmates spot two kobolds trying to grab the human stuff. The first one dies to Asmel's underlings coming back to the fort after showing just a moment too late to the party. The Champions rush outside and run after the second one for an extra dose of !FUN! for the kobold. It dies instantly.
Asmel isn't even back from her murder-jogging that a new siege arrives. This cannot be a coincidence. Two days apart. Were the humans in league with the goblins? They have allied with a demonic being in the past, and the power vacuum left by Quula's mysterious vanishing could have led to such an alliance. Were the human archers merely a distraction, meant to lure our forces to the western side?
That's more likely than not. For the first time in a long while, a group of trolls have arrived from the east, and immediately launch an attack on bridge gate, murdering pigs and forcing their way into the courtyard. The lawgiver's plan wasn't as bad as i first believed. He knows that we now only have one squad patrolling the wall: The Ferocious Tools, led by Lady Asmel herself. But he also witnessed that we respond with every archer threat or thief menace by dispatching the ferocious tools outside to intercept the problem. This would leave us with nobody on the wall, just like now. Asmel is still outside in the plains, and the trolls have smashed their way inside! Immortal-d is hunting various monsters, while the Spinfs of Wheels are in the second cavern mining, and the Magical Gloves are hauling food and brewing drinks. My own squad is off duty after just defeating a forgotten beast and mobilizing against a second one. We have 60 soldiers, yet nobody is currently able to defend the fort.
Asmel's team is ambushed by a group of trolls rolling in from the western side of the castle. She's busy fighting her way out of a foe pile. Meanwhile, a group of goblins and more trolls are taking advancing from the south-east, coming down from Dogshatter Hill, and are marching straight toward the main gate!
it all happened so fast! they came up from nowhere, fast as lightning, from so many good angles. I realize that the moment the goblins stopped most of their assaults, only to come back stronger and more clever, coincides with the moment the Lavender empire started their trade embargo. The human-goblin cooperation has been going for many years, probably for as long as the Death goddess herself has been gone. The humans aren't the most devastating foes on the battlefield, but they possess a sense of strategy and military tactics that the goblin lack. With the human generals calling the shots, and the goblins acting as shock troops and disposable legions, warfare just became something drastically different here in the northern savannah.
In the heat of battle, Dumat comes to me and explain something he should have told me ages ago. We talk hurriedly as I rush toward the surface, all the way from the deepest tunnels. Surprisingly, the elves have been our only allies. No wonder they supply us with war animals, food, and logs. They know that encouraging our war efforts and providing us with goods is the only hope of seeing the human empire fall, the only way to free their enslaved brothers. Yet to avoid being seen as openly helping us, Dumat and the elven traders have been playing a small masquerade: the elves are seen as reluctantly paying us tribute, as to avoid scrutinity from the lavender faction.
''Why did you never tell me?
-I assumed you'd tell the mayor, who was in charge of meeting with the lawgivers. It was just easier to have everyone out of the loop. I swear, the elves told me they were trying to free their friends, but I was never told the lavender empire would attack us like that!
-It makes no sence, tho! The goblins killed the previous overseer!
-Yeah, of course they did. But humans are short-lived and power hungry. Whoemever is leading the dance now must be working closely with the goblins for years, and arranged for the previous lawgivers to disappear, creating a power vaccuum. How easy it must have been for him to be crowned the new emperor, when he announced that he sealed an alliance with the Passionate sins.
-Hum, human politics certainly is more cut-throat than our own.
The empire has always been hungry for conquest and pillage, and never were afraid to side with demonic powers to achieve wealth. We should have known that the disappearance of Quula would not be the end of their warmongering ways. If anything, the vanishing of their goddess had only fanned their lust for expansion. Quula had began her reign as a warlord, but had grown into a strange contemplative creature in the end, more prone to observe elves than to slay them. now that she is gone, the humans see this as the dawn of a new era of glory and loot.
I reach the surface. The fort is in chaos. A troll is fending off an army of dogs and lions in the children dorm, and more greenskins are trashing the courtyard. A few dwarves are on the wall repelling foes outside, while a few more rush to defend the courtyard and the main entrance. One troll made it so far as the kitchens. Thank Armok, the civilians are able to escape thanks to my judicious attribution of war animals. Everyone who said it was pointless to award cooks with a war lion has been proven wrong on this day.
''Why has nobody washed my duchal clothes?
-My lord, it seems that there is a siege going on.
-Sieges never stopped anyone from doing that! Go wash my clothes!
-My lord Tun, that would be suicide! I can'T!
-You are all useless, I'll wash my own stuff then! Go make me 3 querns, imbeciles!''
Zas the peasant thinks that sneaking outside, ignoring the alert, and passing a legion of trolls is a great thing to do. He wanders outside for no reason.
Some men volunteer to fetch him out. Go get him, quickly!
Duke tun manages to escape his clothwashing adventure unscratched, but there is nothing we can do for the foolish Zas. There are too many foes, and not enough of us available. Now one of our Hammerlords is the one in trouble. Now that there is no reason to hold off the trolls, he must retreat, but the trolls are converging on his position, and fast. We can't let him die that easily. Form a line! If we can help him run fast enough, we'll be within archers range, and the wall guards will be able to give us a hand.
The situation inside the fort has calmed, but now the soldiers are stuck outside out of position. The trolls are coming from the valley, and a group of goblin archers led by elite troops is advancing from the south-east. The trolls will be met with a million bolts, but the troops must retreat to the fort before the goblin shooters get in range! Should I dispatch more troops, and weaken our defences against the western army, or stay there and meet these foes with ranged attacks, and pray that our tropps are tough enough?
From atop Dogshatter Hill, a goblin leader overwatches the whole combat. Two os Asmel's soldiers were left stranded from the rest, and managed to stay out of sight for the whole fight, picking off stragglers escaping the battle like two jolly rogues. They turn the tide by sneaking up on the leader, and taking him out. The enemy forces break just as they get in bolt range. The loss of their leader, and the rain of ammunition is enough to send them away.
This goblin makes a last ditch effort to cross the entire map, but one's body can only contain so much blood. he doesn't make it. Soon many will share his fate.
A squad of goblins is preparing to escape. The full might of Whisperwhip is on the move to destroy them, a torrent of steel, leather and bloodlust. None will escape this fight, definitely not the lone troll hiding in the dumpatorium.
Dumat has been injured by the troll commandos, but I'm told he will heal in time. I hope he regains consciousness soon enough. We'll need information from the elves if we are to stop the Lavender Empire from overtaking this continent and wiping out all other races. Whisperwhip has endured many beasts, and many sieges, but the combined might of the strongest nation, and one of the most populous goblin horde in the world... this is something else entirely.
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