CHAPTER 4: The great wars: Battle of DogshatterYear 105This year opens with some small sieges, and 2 titans showing up. The militia, now 60 dwarves strong, manage to take all of them down, but not before a miner is eaten raw. One of the titans is turned into a thousand pieces of tallow.
Seeing that the wall is holding, but barely, the dwarves start two projects
1- A mining excavation. The first layers of the mining complex are striped almost bare, save for a few support pillars, in order to acquire enough slate for a new wall. (because making blocks is not something intuitive) Space is limited up in the mountain. It's time to go deeper. A single staircase has proven disastrous, so they dig a long corridor, and intend to have the entrance to the lower levels at the end of this hall, possibly protected by bridges. The miners start digging holes, and soon find themselves stranded deep underneath the defensive corridor, while an architect tries to create bridges and get them out. Since all the mecanists and architects were drafted, this proves long and difficult.
2- The main entrance is to be extended. Walls on each side, and a new forward gate. That way, anyone taking down the first gate will have to endure crossbow fire from both sides while they work at the second, older gate leading inside the tower. Because design flaws are what this fortress does best, ( after titanslayin' ), most of the builders decide to make the fortifications before they make the ramp next to it, and soon find themselves locked atop the wall by their companions, in a ''fortif--dwarf---fortif---dwarf---fortif formation.
Meanwhile, the guys levelling the field are having a massive problem. Some animal traps were randomly constructed and placed around the fort about 5 years ago for no real reason. Because nobody dares to remove them for some obscure motive, the dwarves just channelled around them, leading to various abrupt hills with a trap on top, right in the middle of the construction project.
The plan is to have this new tower extension double as a small dungeon only reachable through the barricades. At the bottom shall be the jails, and in the middle, the war dog training grounds. That way any prisoner that breaks free will have to deal with doors, a bunch of war dogs, and then the militia patrolling atop the dungeon/wall. Nobody knows what to do with those like, 60 dogs prior to training, so the canines get penned outside the fort, on a nearby hill. They are promptly forgotten, 'cause stuff on a different z level might as well not exist.
The new siege arrives around this point. There is always a new siege in Whisperwhip. 30 trolls, 95 goblins, including many weapon masters and a large group of archers. Archers are the bane of every dwarf in this proud army. It includes many shooty dwarves, but their training comes from randomly pointing at targets below until sieges end or the commander gets bored and orders a sortie. They absolutely cannot win a fight against real, trained archers, let alone goblin snipe masters. A retreat is immediately ordered to the burrows below. With the stockpile off-limit, some butchers decides to abandon what he was doing, and drops what he was carrying. AKA: SOMEONE DROPPED A DEAD COW RIGHT IN THE MAIN DOORWAY.
To sum things up, half the work force is stranded atop a half-finished wall, the other half has locked itself under a bridge in the mine. This new wall isn't even half complete. It has no doors. The previous door is held wide open by a dead bovine thanks to incompetence and terrible crisis management... Once this force reaches the fort, everyone and their mother is fucking dead. Soldiers cant hold that many fiends. Not with archers on their side and a giant gap leading straight to the main staircase.
It's time to get the miners out of this stupid hole. Militia commander Asmel orders them to create a new squad, and station them outside of the pit. They respond to this by promptly falling asleep. Screw this squad, it's cancelled now. Within the second, engravers start to depict incredible sculptures of ''miner dude X'' imploring not to be demoted, among a bunch of angry dwarves. He is seen crying, or confused. All of the new dining hall's walls are covered by this event. No, I'm sorry sculptors, but he was in the military for 5 minutes, received exactly one order to climb a ramp, and didn't do it because he was asleep for the whole duration. I am pretty damn sure he is not as broken and emotionally shattered as you are depicting it. Plus, how is that more relevant than, say,
ALL THOSE HORRIBLE EVENTS YOU WENT THROUGH?
Our workforce is apparently doomed to death by thirst or impalement, so blocking the door or finishing the wall is kinda out of the question. The trolls and goblins charge from the south, ready to rush inside the fort. That's when memory of the new building's secondary purpose comes back. A training facility. That's right, those dogs are still outside nearby...
Sixty of them, conveniently located near the fort, right above the incoming army. The pen restriction is deleted; all the dogs come rolling down the hill, creating a canine flood that ensnares the incoming foes before they can reach the door. They are right in range for the archers, and the dogs sacrifice themselves to hold the line and buy the marks-dwarves some time. The south flank is broken, at the cost of 57 dogs, and 30 cats. Here's the thing. Captain Mistem has a lot of
cats. Like, really. When the dwarves retreated to the top of the tower, the door had to be locked. Mistem was the last dwarf to do so, and behind her tailed enough kitties to overthrown the local government. There's exactly one door protecting the fort's core from the incoming onslaught, and by Armok is it not going to remain open 5 more minutes to save all those pets. A bunch of trolls make it inside despite the dog flood. The dead cow holding the outer door right open does an unsurprisingly terrible job at stopping them. The cat cluster, however, does prevents the invaders from simply flying through the entrance hall. The trolls stop for a snack, which is enough a distraction as the army needs to get the jump on them.
The wall holds, but at what cost? All the pets are gone. There is still no defence against archers. As soon as they get in range, the workers atop the wall are toasted. The southern attack was merely a glimpse of the numbers that are marching on these lands. It's fair to assume that the goblin equivalent of Mance Rayder's army still stands strong outside the wall, bidding their time, testing the weaknesses of Whisperwhip. They give the fortress no time to recover; the next assault begins...
A score of archers move from the west, led by a great weapon master, who decides to use the unfinished constructions to climb through the wall and reach the battlements. The easiest way for him to do so is to climb a small random mini-hill. That's right, the enemy leader steps on an un-removed animal trap. He is now alone, entangled, right in front of 60 angry dwarves with crossbows. They aren't great shots, it's hard to miss all your bolts against a target 10 feet away. If you've seen the execution scene from the movie Heroes, yeah it's a bit like that. The sky darkens with a ridiculous amount of bolts flying westward. The volley hit the goblin leader, sending him flying many, many squares below and backward. He lands on the ground, amidst his own archers. Within a second, he proceeds to achieve a liquefied state, promptly occupying a 20 feet radius spot on the ground.
The archers look at their atomized leader, and decide that seriously, fuck this shit. They head north instead, to war with the humans. Miraculously, the workers on the wall survived. The miners finally find a way out of their dumb pit and rush to the surface, helping the wall-makers out. As soon as every single worker of the fort is finally safe, a new siege arrives, as big as the last one.
The elven caravan is promptly slaughtered as they stop to wonder why the cliff-side is covered in dog parts. Some hunters and woodcutters are shot down as well. As the dwarves prepare for the worst (mentally, definitely not with any kind of actual plan), the goblins finish the elven traders and avoid Whisperwhip altogether. They seem to be headed north as well. A few are shot as they venture too close, but it seems that the goblin nation has launched a full offensive against the Lavender Empire. The members of the Wilted Sack lie right in the warpath, however. They know more will come. If any siege decides to stop by the fort and launch an attack as the first invaders did, this will be the end of Whisperwhip.
Word is received from an elven ambassador. The utter annihilation of their last caravan, as well as weird accidents the year before, has made them very mad. They claim that last year's merchants were ambushed by dwarf bandits, while it was obviously their fault for accidentally dropping an angry bull's cage while travelling nearby. They also mention that Dumat the broker dared to offer wooden goods, for their... wooden goods. Long story short, the elves are cunts.
With hordes of goblins and trouble from the elven nation, Whisperwhip's future seems gloomy at best. Can the might of the brave soldiers triumph, despite the shaky construction projects and sub-par weaponry they wield?
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