Silentthunders awoke to life in the overworld once more, disgruntled workers fashioning a limestone cover under the ruby glare of the blood sun. For many, standing atop the Citadel's great Fortifications was more than enough sunlight they needed for the next 10 decades. The bustle of Metropolitan life...
...Was briefly interrupted by an attack of the elf corpses, but by this point the elf corpses had been long incorporated into the annual routines of Silentthunders life, and Dwarves would happily work above and below the walls, even partying and dining whilst marksdwarves patrolled the gatehouses and walls killing elves. When the elf corpses were all killed and the patrols discovered no necromancers or elves, the all-clear alert was announced and the citizens went about resetting deadly mechanisms, melting recovered bolts and hauling elf corpses out of corridors.
Even in spite of all the haulers working non-stop to dump corpses and shoddy-quality finished goods down the magma piston, the corpse stockpile was finally completely smothered in corpses and a terrible hamster infestation. (Dead hamsters even clogged up one of the interior doorways).
Time passed with relative peace, with the Fort's gladiatorial game growing to encompass and test even the youngest of recruits, albeit they had much to learn and tended to rely more on their good strength than any skill. The Military was the largest it had ever been, so when the Forgotten Beasts attempted their ascension the Fortress was confident enough in its arms and armour to include a dozen untested soldiers to help them get some fighting experience against a worthy foe. Three Forgotten Beasts were assaulting the Quarry at three different points. The first was Yinathi, the six-legged pangolin that spat out webs. The marksdwarves let off several volleys, with the elite marksdwarves disabling one of Yinathi's legs to give the new recruits a better chance of surviving. The new axedwarves made a terrible work with their battleaxes, hacking and swinging away, they could not do more than tear and dent Yinathi's jagged heliotrope scales. With the new recruits getting caught up in the Pangolin's thick webbings, the older veterans moved in to save their skins so they could live to learn these lessons. Captain Litast Brightoars ducked under Yinathi's grasping legs and ran right into the Pangolin's side, driving his unnatural sword through its unprotected armpit, puncturing a lung. Yinathi was understandably quite angry at this sudden predicament, and attempted to bite Captain Litast in half; Captain Litast drove his sword through Yinathi's skull before it could turn around.
And that's how Nitemuling, or Visioncraze, first earned her first blood. One of the Fort's only two artifact weapons, the other being an ornamental artifact blowdart; Visioncraze is the only artifact weapon of real use. And right now she is wielded by Captain Litast, the Fort's greatest swordsdwarf, and at that time she was embedded in a giant Pangolin's skull.
Captain Litast withdrew with the rest of the axedwarves and hammerdwarves to the Hospital Barracks whilst the marksdwarves relocated to the Quarry Spire. Two more Forgotten Beasts were attacking, both could fly and one webbed whilst the other had some horrible plague contained within its blood. Not exactly safe for melee combat, to be sure.
The Marksdwarves waited in the top level for the first to arrive, whilst the second was still flying from the 2nd cavern layer. Baron Muthkat would give them the signal, before they did the Fortress proud.
Beneath them, a towering bushtit with a broad shell and mauve feathers landed on the former bee prisons. The bees had been moved out of fear of this very situation happening, but some fallen honeycombs still remained, as did the prison cells. The bushtit must have been attracted to the sweet honey, and did not notice the wall of steel wasps flying towards it until it was too late. It didn't die outright, as its shell was quite tough, but its legs and wings were immobilized to such an extent that it was effectively trapped in the prison (quite fitting, really).
The other one, the webber - she got close. She actually made it to the edge of the Quarry ring, unfortunately for her she chose the wrong side to try and leave from. Her left wing was broken, but she still kept on flying up with her other wing all on its own. Right before she could fly out and begin terrorizing the overworld, one of the Marksdwarves clipped her right wing.
She landed on her head. There was not a pretty corpse left over to carry away into the stockpiles.
The Dwarves returned to the Fortifications, content that the threat was dealt with until the Forgotten Beasts next got antsy again.
*They did forget about the bushtit however, which is now currently roaming the lower platform by the magma sea whilst on fire.
Then they attacked again.
I was quite overjoyed, as it meant I got to test out the new fortifications. Copper axeblades and cage traps worked wonders, yielding many body parts and corpses for the gladiatorial fights. Not only that, but the ballista was also readied and fired.
Of course what I hadn't realized was that my siege engineers were quite unskilled with operating ballista, as they were a recent addition to the Fort's defences. It was to my utter dismay that a ☼1500 steel bolt that had taken several days to manufacture flew wide off the mark, killing no corpses and breaking apart against the wall. A disappointing first shot, the siege engineers were then given a firing range to begin practicing at once in preparation of future battles.
Just as before, the all-clear was given and the Dwarves returned to normal life until the next big attack.
I also mentioned this before somewhere else, that whilst knocking down an old wall segment to give room for the ballista, I was absolutely startled by a pig skeleton falling through onto the poor children below. I did not know how that got there or how long it was there, nor how I did not see it all this time. It seems some poor pig got sealed up inside the walls a long time ago. It made me begin searching for other skeletons throughout the Fortress. There are a bunch of elf limbs stuck in fortifications, Troglodyte and Troll skeletons outside the Dining Hall Fortress, a few pig skeletons and megabeast skeletons slumped outside the memorial above the hospital and rather oddly, there is a named ogre skeleton (I think it's an ogre skeleton, quite unclear) in one room within the citadel. I don't even remember ogres being in Silentthunders.
I was also perturbed by the absence of a great big living skeleton... Thing. It was a giant flesh blob worm beast called Budam, that had wings and expelled noxious fumes - it was killed whilst defending the magma forges with a single bolt right to the brain. Its corpse fell into the waters, where it came back to life. There it remained eating fish, swimming about, probably believing it was a fish itself (it did take a fatal bolt to the brain after all).
Budam remained there for decades, and it sort of became an old past time to watch the noxious fumes bubble up from the surface. I like to imagine that all the Dwarves who went on break and stood on the Fortifications just to watch Budam were throwing scraps of bacon into the waters to witness this gargantuan dark presence in the water firsthand.
Then Budam was gone. Not even a corpse remained.
All I could tell was that a magma crab had recently been caught in the 3rd cavern layer traps (magma crabs had never until then ever been seen outside of the magma sea), and there was a particularly battered rattlesnake made out of grime swimming around in the upper reaches of the 3rd cavern lake.
If I had to hazard a guess, the crab set her on fire whilst the rattlesnake finished the job. This time around when Budam died, she was on land, and on fire. There'd be no coming back and there'd be no trace of her.
RIP Budam, she's eating cave lobsters in a better place now.
The demon known as the unseen water has been successfully moved to the prison. We are that much closer to colonization.
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Topic: Ravens are murder. [SPOILERS] (Read 169598 times)