The Life and Times of TheCheeseMaker, Reborn, Summer of 108 (Part 3)With the death of the forgotten beast, Shadowgraves has settled into a general time of peace and quiet. By the way, guess who Maxcat is related to?
I guess superdwarven wrestling skills run in the family.
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The remainder of summer went by slowly. I reorganized all the stockpiles, putting stone next to the masons workshops, metal and ores next to the forges, seeds near the farms, plants near the stills, etc. Every civilian was assigned hauling, and the result?
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The passage winds around another corner. The cold, muddy floor has begun to stick to my boots. I can smell the miasma in the air. It gets stronger with each step. I come to a woman, sleeping on the ground in front of me. She smiles. I decide she must be dreaming. It looked like a pleasant dream, with how happy she seemed.
As I approach, her smile widens. It widens much too far to be normal. I look, and see two giant gashes, on each side of her lips, slowly increasing in length. Finally, they reach her ears. She wakes up. But she didn't open her eyes. Her eyelids just vanish, leaving two gushing slits above her eyes.
With her horribly enlarged mouth, she screams. She screams and screams and screams. I cover my ears and close my eyes to try to ignore her, but it is not enough. Her bloodied face imprints itself in my brain, and her screams leave my ears ringing. I run, but I cannot escape the sight or noise.
It ends with a voice,
"Now you will know why you fear the night."I get up. I pace around my room for a few hours. Ever since I've moved my quarters to my own floor, the fortress seems so lonely. Eventually, I get the courage to go back to bed and fall asleep.
Repeat. Each night. Every night.
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The Life and Times of TheCheeseMaker, Reborn, Fall of 108Guess what happened today?
Chaoseed is now merely unhappy, instead of very unhappy. It is a glorious day indeed.
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The dwarven caravan arrived today. We mostly just traded metal crafts for food and metal bar, but something else caught my eye.
I asked how the merchants managed to fill an entire barrel to the brim with gremlin tears. They explained to me how another fortress in the south had a gremlin infestation. Hilarity ensued, and now one of the major exports of the fortress is barrels of tears taken from the new slaves. I asked what its purpose or use was.
"Absolutely nothing," the merchant stated, "But I have a question for you. If you had the choice to own a barrel of gremlin tears, or not, which would you want?"
I bought it.
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Hauling continued.
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Migrants. Animals slaughtered. Pets pastured. No armorer. Everyone drafted.
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Finally! This was a chance for excitement. Actually, I was content with just letting the bronze colossus walk into one of our cage traps, which we could then unleash upon our enemies. Unfortunately, I noticed a slight design flaw in the surface.
And by slight, I mean that anything that's a building destroyer can waltz right into our fortress, ignoring both the traps and the military. How was this not discovered sooner?
Axedwarves! I choose you!
The axedwarves engaged the colossus in what I presume is an old dining room. Now, I would like to say that the attack was glorious. I would like to say that dwarf fought machine in an epic battle that would decide the fate of Shadowgraves. I would like to say the fight was even close.
But in truth the megabeast died faster than a kobold fighting a blind cave ogre. The killer was named Bomrek. She was arrived at Shadowgraves in the summer, and was drafted, equipped with elven armor, adequate axedwarf skill, and a steel battle axe, she killed the colossus in only a few hits. It was her first kill.
All that was left of the former beast was a bronze statue of two octopi. No one bothered to tell me how a giant, humanoid abomination turns into a statue of
two of the least humanoid animals on the planet, and I didn't ask how. I've come to accept things like this. We placed the statue next to our trade depot, along with the artifact statue made during the summer.
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We walled off the old pump stack because I didn't like how dwarves were traveling though it rather than through our main staircase. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the carpenter who finished building it walled herself in, instead of out. So for the past 2 months, she's been stuck there, without any food or water. You know, after dying and coming back to life, I stopped caring if others lived or died, so I was about to leave her in there. Then I realized that if I let her out then the only dwarf to die during this year so far would be the one dwarf I meant to kill. I want to let this record stand.
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Hauling has slowed down immensely, we're finally ready to begin building some more, instead of just waiting. Nightmare still plague my dreams, but I have come to deal with them.
They could not have chosen a more menacing way to say that.
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Topic: The Fortress of Shadowgraves (Succession Game)-Taking Applicants Now! (Read 54974 times)