Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[chaotic skies]

<<I forgot how much he reminds me of Sam Witwickey from Transfromers. Or whoever played him.>>

[Amperzand]

Morale is becoming a true problem, with the initial high spirits of a new home fading. The poor food and cramped quarters do not mesh well with the traumatized settlers that now command these cowed serfs, and the unsteady psychic drone from the east only makes matters worse. There have been several minor fights, and things continue to deteriorate.

His Lordship's troops are well-equipped by the standards of the age, but the fortress needs gunners, and a dozen remaining competent settler-warriors, already equipped, do not carry sixty muskets, or provide real massed fire to handle a true enemy force. Something should, perhaps, be done, either to train a subset of the preexisting troops, or to gather volunteers from among the serfs, presumably to serve under Settler officers.

Mayor Murdoc's party digs deep over the next week, carving a narrow exploratory shaft in preparation for a great passage downward in the now-fortified place before the access pillar.  The rock, which is unusually densely layered here, contains a myriad of lesser ores, in low concentrations. A considerable effort over some time would yield a useable quantity of several metals, like mercury, tin, zinc, chromium, germanium in some percentage of the zinc's ore, and raw silicate in the form of mica.

Emerging somewhat concerned from his testing, Skies begins research into the mysteries of alloying, tempering, and treating metal, recruiting the Mountainhome's observers to provide him with whatever knowledge they can, and help in trawling the library's stock for information. A week is hardly enough time for breakthroughs, but signs are good for progress. The observers, while meant largely to ensure the knowledge goes where their masters wish it, are also skilled scholars and researchers themselves.

Elagn, finding a few volunteers for hazardous and frightening cavern-work, continues preparing the dam site. The path is further smoothed, partially paved with forge slag, and a crude cart track lain down beside it.

The engineer Gwolfski, working in the same shack as Moony and Porky, continues refining the technology of steam, making slow and cautious progress with little opportunity to test, and his usual foolhardy impulses damped by the presence of other Homelanders and dour Observers.

Porky, his own more foolish impulses similarly dampened, nevertheless continues work on explosives, bolstering the chemical knowledge of the fortress.

Moony begins a series of scale models for the dam's generators, leaving the Mountainhome engineers to finish his wire extruder.

Magus Patham begins work on advanced power storage, beginning with basic voltaic piles, but quickly forging ahead.

Spoiler: Fortress demographics clarification. (click to show/hide)

His Lordship has sixty Elite soldiers, loyal to him alone, and uninterested in the affairs of the others.

Below them are some fivescore and ten light Infantry, effectively well-trained levies. They serve as enforcers for the Serfs, and will, in combination with conscripts, form the bulk of any dwarven army. Their loyalties are less set in stone, but the Serfs dislike them.

Then there are the Settlers, a small group, thoroughly traumatized by their experiences, but competent and loyal to the Homelanders.

The Homelanders are individuals, not all wearing their original bodies, pulled from across the multiverse to change the path of this plane. Everyone other than the Settlers are suspicious of their oddness, preferring familiar things.

The Serfs, the largest group, are a motley horde of peasant laborers, ordered from their homes to take up new lives here. They are in generally poor spirits, and dislike those above them, though they have been too thoroughly intimidated over generations to try anything.

The Observers are, aside from generally intimidating the Serfs, irrelevant to any but the Homelanders, who they watch and aid as thoroughly as possible, and seem to have annoyed.

Spoiler: Fish (click to show/hide)

Your PEA datapad seems undamaged, but refuses to turn on. It would appear that you stopped using it because the Skalewyrm incident drained it of power, and some way of recharging it has not yet been found.

[TheBiggerFish]

Don't they have solar charging?

[Amperzand]

[I don't know. Given that they've functioned for long periods in fortresses entirely sealed off from the surface, I'd say no, but this can be discussed.]

[TheBiggerFish]

((I'd like to check that in Spearbreakers.  Or, well, I'd like you to check it in Spearbreakers.))

[Amperzand]

[Insofar as I'm reading SB, I will eventually have researched it, but I can't really speed that up. I'm not saying the thing's dead, just needs some work to power it, or if it actually is solar, then no problem.]

[Chevaleresse]

Report findings. Let the other miners continue exploring while I draft up and implement plans for better civilian amenities (dining halls, bedrooms, etc.) Try to get some hunting parties organized to patch up the problem of food quality/variety while the newer aboveground crops go. If we've got the capacity, request some livestock and somewhat more exotic crops from the Mountainhome, with a letter detailing the work we've recently done and promising eventual returns if necessary.

[Gwolfski]

"Out of pure wondering-ness, what happens, if gods forbid, the leader dies?"

[Amperzand]

[There would be an investigation, then more reinforcements and another administrator.]

[Gwolfski]

{Not a heir/election?}

[Amperzand]

[He's basically just a regimental commander with noble ties dropped into the Lordship because he's loyal, I doubt he's got much in the way of a family to pull heirs from, and the Mountainhome wants somebody reliable in control here. The Mountainhome is far too totalitarian for elections, that's why hard-boiled Settler dorfs exist in the first place.]

[LordPorkins]

((Darn. Well then, Fish switch your goblet with a random nobles next feast.))

[TheBiggerFish]

((Why?  And how would I even know?))

[Gwolfski]

((I advize you to bring your own drinks for a while, Fish}}

[TheBiggerFish]

((As if I didn't.))