GIVE US THE DEETS MAN, DID YOU FIND THE NECRO?
The dead walk again! (Again). It's been two winters since renovations began on the reservoir works, nearing the 3rd. The brook was entrenched with frost in late autumn, with winter dawning on the horizon. Another thing creeping on the horizon was an elf horde. This was slightly problematic.
Baron Muthkat Practicering was angry that day, incredibly so. The sun nauseated him, his wife was dead (and thankfully, he didn't have to be the one to kill her the
second time) and he'd been far too long without a good fight. Baron Muthkat stood at the palisade, looking beyond the battlements. The skies were clear, and it wasn't raining dwarf blood anymore, so he could easily see the foe. In unison they encircled Silentthunders, making for the gatehouses, and like idiot elven buffalo they rushed the battlements en masse, enfused with determined malice. Muthkat stood with 2 speardwarves and 1 combat miner of the Blockaded Spines, firing steel bolt after bolt into the charging horde. One of the speardwarves interrupted his methodical annihilation of the elf corpses.
'Tekkud is out there!' Shouted Akrul Ragslaughter, of the Blockaded Spines. The look on her face was a mixture of concern, surprise and urgency. The look on the elves' faces was a skinless visage embedded with two large olive eyes. And a steel bolt here and there, every now and then.
'Bring him back!' Shouted Muthkat. And with that, Captain Ingish, Akrul and Rakust set off to find Doctor Tekkud Oakchanneled, husband of Akrul Cerol Ragslaughter.
Muthkat stood alone on the palisade as the elves' stench began to infest his nostrils, making him angrier; he wondered why the elven corpses weren't polite enough to contain their miasmic stench beneath a full coat of skin like everyone else. Were they flayed in life before death, for whatever nefarious purpose the last of the Bells of Amusement had in mind? Were they in an advanced state of decay? Why were there so many elves? Many questions, and too little time for answers. Muthkat reached for his next bolt, and paused, as he saw the pink stick in his hand. He had forgotten to empty his quiver of training bolts and replace them with steel bolts. How forgetful of him, he thought, as he fired the tunnel tube bolt into the closest elf corpse. The wooden bolt flew straight and embedded in its face, jutting out awkwardly. For a moment the elf corpse looked like a skinless pink-horned unicorn, and Muthkat was close to laughing. Then the elf corpses were on him, led by their unicorn general. What happened next was somewhat of a blur.
Later that day Muthkat regained his good wits on a brass road paved in mutilated elf corpses, with a bloody steel crossbow in his left hand and a bloody adamantine battle axe in his right. He made his way back to the Fortress courtyard lodging pink bolts in the few surviving corpses that showed signs of movement; stuck on wall spikes here or burning on the magma moat's periphery there, all turned into pink pincushions in short order. He named his crossbow Windrack the Bitter Numbers, as there were a lot of numbers associated with his crossbow. 232 lives, all claimed by Windrack the crossbow.
Feeling somewhat better, Muthkat made it back to survey the damage. The mess outside had only gotten worse with yet another layer of elven corpses to eventually clean up, and about a half a dozen or so sentry pigs had been killed. At least the sentry plump helmet men well all right, though they didn't seem happy either way.
The Dwarven Mechanic Thikut greeted Muthkat on his way back into the Fort. He carried Doctor Tekkud carefully, as his leg had been broken just about everywhere. Captain Ingish returned soon after, as did Rakust, who was glad to have not died on his first true military experience. Muthkat waited for Akrul to come back. Fearing the loss of one of the Fort's legendary bowyers (who could ever turn down an Akrul crossbow!), Muthkat was delighted to hear that she was the first one out and the first one in, having been brought to the hospital after single-handedly holding off the elves on the northern bride to an almost-fatal end. She is one of the Fort's many blind Dwarves.
As winter sets in and the reservoir is dry due to renovation works, this is perhaps the worst time to be wounded. Clean water is available safely in the quarry gardens, which isn't exactly clean water but it's the closest thing there is to it, since the brook is frozen for another 3-5 months (can't remember the exact time the whole river unthaws). If they live that's great, if they die at least they die together.
Spooky, spooky elven fleshy skeletons. One of them's still alive and just burning away in the moat, turning itself into a great big smoke stack.
The necromancer Sazir Razorbelts has still not yet been found. I must know where the necromancers found all these elf corpses. Also, why only elves? Maybe the necromancers have a particular hatred for creatures that are naturally immortal? Maybe these forests were once elven burial grounds, and the necromancers profaned them, making them evil? Maybe the necromancers just find it particularly easy to raid the elves? Were these elves about to be eaten by their peers, and the necromancers just stole the equivalence of dinner scraps? Who knows.
Baron Muthkat was on the brass palisade shooting elf corpses, when I noticed that he'd run out of steel bolts (one shot kill) and only had tunnel tube bolts left (shit wooden training ones). At which point elves were storming the palisade with comically large numbers of bolts sticking out of them. Muthkat's been worrying me for quite some time as since the death of Commander Vabok he's been getting sober (I assume it's the Dwarven equivalent of a human becoming an alcoholic), starting fights and breaking shit. He calmed down a bit when I put him back on military duty (that's one thing I've noticed, even the blind soldier Dwarves don't like being off duty for too long, once they've become used to the military life it is their life), and could probably have used a bit of cheering up (slaughter) and trauma (attacked by undead) to help him forget about death. The undead swamped the walls the moment he ran out of steel bolts, at which point Muthkat entered a martial trance and began cracking skulls with his crossbow and taking legs with his axe. He's calmed down since his martial trance.
While this was happening the Dwarves of the Blockaded Spines set out to save Doctor Tekkud, who had one of his legs savaged by an elf corpse. He was out stockpiling fallen bolts when the elves attacked. Captain Ingish focused on stabbing elves approaching from behind while Akrul moved ahead to kill the corpse trying to kill her husband. Rakust tried to make himself useful, but is still a fairly fresh recruit. A brave amateur. Akrul got mobbed by 5 more elf corpses, she managed to push one into the magma moat before having her arm broken (dropping her adamantine spear!). At this point she fled a short distance before collapsing from pain (this saved her life) while Ingish and Rakust swooped in to save both of them. Many war pigs died, I wanted to see if their corpse would be enticing to any stealthy necromancers. Nothing. Sun Tzu Necromancer is testing the Fort's defences.
As a sign of progress, it is noteworthy that for the first time ever the Fort's towers are now so tall that builders working on the top level cannot actually see elf corpses far below, and if they can they must be like ants to them because they're not even worried and no work is interrupted.
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Topic: Ravens are murder. [SPOILERS] (Read 169810 times)