Part 3:
When we last left our intrepid hero Tosid, he had secured a supply of food and drink in his underground tomb of Helppost, safe from the resident hydra Smästa which had slain his fellow colonists.
For the entirety of spring he'd managed to cope with his loneliness by focusing on overcoming the immediate obstacles to his survival. Now he found that he was no longer alone...
The specters of Tosid's comrades, their corporeal bodies rotting on the surface of the desert, floated into his vision. Their spirits were restless, irate-- they could not find peace until they were properly memorialized.
Tosid felt a tingling on the back of his neck as their accusatory gazes fell upon him.
But the ghosts of his brethren were not the only newcomers brought to Helppost with the onset of summer...
A wave of migrants arrived, expecting Helppost to by now be established as a modest outpost with the trappings of Dwarven comfort.
Smästa gave them the ol' Helppost welcome.
Tosid, meanwhile, remembered his friends and toiled day and night to ensure they would not be forgotten.
Each fallen dwarf received a slab engraved with their name, the date and means of their demise, and some facts about them to set them apart from the rest.
Granted, Tosid didn't actually know them that well, so he had to make up a few facts.
Reg liked cherry opal, right? Sure! And if anyone loved short swords it was Amost...
The angry spirits were quieted, and the silent slabs that Tosid had painstakingly engraved became the only companions to share his dark enclave.
With his friends properly memorialized, Tosid took a moment to carve a statue from a mudstone boulder.
Tosid looked upon his work and smiled. This symbol of victory, a dwarven god frozen in a moment of triumph, would be a fine centerpiece for the nice room he'd begun carving out in a stonier section of his cavern.
He propped up the statue and somewhat jokingly designated the area to be Helppost's meeting hall.
All the residents of Helppost could meet here, he decided. There was certainly room for all of him.
As if on cue, two small beasts clambered down the crude stone steps toward Tosid.
A water buffalo calf and a cow calf, both livestock brought by the recently deceased or dying immigrants on the surface, had managed to succeed where their owners had failed. They had evaded the wrath of Smästa and found their way into Tosid's cavern.
Tosid was delighted!
For so long he had shared the lonely cavern with but ghosts and a turkey hen...
the sight of these two creatures instilled in him an immediate sense of purpose.
Of course, there was no grass in the cave upon which the young bovines could feed, so the only sensible thing to do was slaughter them immediately.
And a good thing, too, for the spoiling food that remained in the wagon was being ravaged by buzzards while Smästa was distracted by the migrants.
Helppost's larder now had plenty of foodstuffs to keep Tosid happy and healthy.
But despite the hydra Smästa slaughtering the visiting dwarves and Tosid slaughtering the visiting animals, even more visitors arrived.
First came a trade caravan. The merchants stayed as far south of Helppost as they could, cautiously surveying the terrain and seeing nothing but death.
There they waited in vain for some sign of life from the outpost.
Next came more migrants, walking unknowingly to their doom.
Tosid was drinking dwarven wine from his one wooden barrel when he heard unfamiliar footsteps echoing through his cave.
To his utter shock, it was a young girl!
Tekkud Idossazir, a 5-year-old dwarven child, immediately ran to Tosid to hold a meeting with him.
Tosid had no choice but to drop what he was doing and listen to her story.
She had arrived with her mother, father, younger brother, and an unrelated leatherworker. As they crossed the final dune on their approach to Helppost, a monster worse than any nightmare attacked their party.
The monster killed Tekkud's family before her eyes.
Tekkud miraculously managed to escape, found her way to the hole near the toppled wagon, and had climbed down into Tosid's cave.
Although complaining to Tosid made her feel a little better, perhaps it also made her realize the enormity of the situation. Her family had come here expecting to find a fortress--perhaps an unimpressive hillock, but a stable community nonetheless. To come and find a nightmarish scene of blood and corpses stalked by a many-headed menace, while a single dwarf cowered underground with a private stash of food and booze...
Well, let's just say that Tekkud lost her temper.
Striking out at the nearest available targets, Tekkud grabbed the turkey hen and punched Tosid.
She trampled the plump helmet farm plot.
She destroyed the butcher's shop and craftsdwarf's shop.
She toppled a memorial slab.
She hurled a pot of tallow into the aquifer pond.
Finally, she punched Tosid in the neck, fracturing his spine.
Tosid was knocked unconscious and then beaten up by the child.
Fortunately, the fractured spine was Tosid's only lasting injury from the fight. Well, that and his pride.
Tekkud, meanwhile, was quite pleased with herself.
Maybe life in Helppost wouldn't be so bad after all, she thought.
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Topic: Helppost the Accidental Hermitage (Read 5005 times)