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[Dustan Hache]

(Is that everyone? Yes? No? Maybe? If so, lets start the caravan. I have plans with it if amp lets me go ahead.)

[Amperzand]

{I don't really know why I didn't update today, but it's too late now and I will tomorrow. Hache, if you feel whatever you want to do is doubtworthy, PM me. Otherwise, go right ahead, after I write up a quick tie-together updop for everybody's actions.}

[Dustan Hache]

(And so it begins. Awaiting the updop.)

[Amperzand]

{Not everyone seems to have posted a summary, and I'm neither waiting nor finding all the scattered actions in the last few days of OOC shenanigans. If you post a summary before we get too far, I'll edit you in.}


Over the three months before the next caravan's arrival, much is accomplished.

Head Foreman Murdoc and his worksdwarves provide the magic specialists with a great supply of gems, having found several veins of the things, as well as hauling up crates of bulk diamond from the slain Beast in the caverns.

Patham works with the locals to strengthen our walls and their gates, banding them with glyphic steel, as the gunnery teams construct defensive positions and weapons nests. Repeating cannons, great guns, and light mortars are placed strategically.

In the northeast, the Necromancer Hache's power only grows, conquering those petty kings and under-militarized elven retreats within his intended territory with hordes of mercenaries and the risen dead, while strange workmen lay the foundations of a true dark tower, hewn from black granite and set against the raw bedrock. Their task will take long to complete, but work is swift.

The fortress' rising star municipal engineer, Gwolf the Skier, begins the construction of a crude steam engine, aided by many and sure to have been finished in time to impress the humans' trade emissaries.

Net and Blaze construct a number of curious thaumotechnical machines, of doubtful utility but great theoretical value. We shall have to test them against true foes.

The Head Foreman and our lead gunsmiths work to provide the sharpshooters with a better tool than muzzle-loaded light rifles for long-range marksmanship, namely a heavily altered version of the swivel-guns used by the great sailing ships of True Earth's past centuries. Those were crude, smooth-bore miniature cannons. These are constructed from strong forged steel, thick-walled and well-grooved, with barrels more than a meter and a half long and modified telescopes bolted to their topsides. Loaded with a quarter-pound of powder each shot and throwing thirty-millimeter minie-ball rifle slugs, the things, while rather slow to fire and difficult to aim, can throw leaden death nearly two miles with not-inconsiderable accuracy.

Said gunsmiths, in their own time, spend a while upgrading and reproducing the "Rattler" automatic weapon, providing what, for now, is effectively the last word in certain forms of close-range fighting.

In addition, with help from Gwolf, they finally produce a true repeating rifle, simple enough to construct in large numbers. The "Mallet" cog-lever heavy carbine and variants will, once the machinery to make them and their .62 caliber ammunition is reliable, be one half of the standard issue weapons of our troops for the foreseeable future, alongside a selection of axes and swords. For now, we have twenty or so operable late prototypes, issued to officers.

Hache, despite the best efforts of our defenders, gets a few of his abominable scouts inside our walls long enough to mostly understand the layout of our defenses, though exact locations and troop deployments will have been moved around for safety's sake.


{I feel certain that I have missed something, so if you think of something I failed to, please bring it to my attention.}

[endlessblaze]

"ok now that that's all done.....

time to make some magic landmines. and activation by touch and explode rune should do the trick....if I could set up a method to distinguish friend and foe...."

[TheBiggerFish]

"I thought I had done that."
"Eeh."
"All we need's a FOF glyph..."
"And that is pretty simple."
"Heck, with the step-up transformer, I could probably just churn those out..."

I do that.

[Amperzand]

{Ahh, that's what I forgot. Oh, and if you hadn't already, read Hache's journal;}

*snipped for linking*

You guys make some magic proximity mines in the standard anti-personnel model of a shaped charge- in this example a square metal box filled with dynamite, one wall of it made of wax and filled with shrapnel -blowing a whole bunch of metal balls toward whatever unlucky bastard triggered them. The separately manufactured charges can be made more simply than the proxybits, which y'all can feel free to explain, and have lots of uses.

Also, I place a number of a different sort of landmines.

Spoiler: For people other than Hache (click to show/hide)

They're remote-triggered and there're about twenty of them, placed strategically. They're also hundred-kilo crates of straight dynamite.

[Dustan Hache]

*the caravan would be originating from the north, a bit more heavily guarded than usual due to the recent conquest and raids taking place. There would also be a unfamilliar merchant tagging along with the group, contented to carry a small bag of items himself.*

[Amperzand]

A caravan arrives from the northern territories, and is forced to partially circle the steep, rocky hills the fortress is built within before finding a road inward, well-paved in the dwarven style with roughly hexagonal bricks of compacted forge-slag, full of base metals, creosote, carbonaceous impurities, and melted-looking gravel. Partially along it, as the fortress's unusual-looking wall looms some half-kilometer ahead, there are many signs, indicating in several languages that leaving said road will end in death.

After another, nervous, hour of slow wagon-travel, they reach a heavy iron gate and are welcomed by guards carrying unfamiliar weapons along more of the same road, within another set of gates, these set into the mountain itself, and to a great entrance hall, high-ceilinged by the standards of dwarves, well-lit with odd, spitting white torches, where they are met by a group of traders and fortress officials, eager for trade and news of the outside world.

[Dustan Hache]

*the unfamilliar merchant would look around the trade depot curiously, taking in as many details about the fortress and any visible changes to it, as if having seen it before*

[Chevaleresse]

((Did the drawbridge+pit get constructed?))

[Amperzand]

{For fuckssake, me.}

The main gates can, in addition to being firmly locked by dwarven machinery, be sealed by a great stone drawbridge, which can swing up to reinforce the door and crush any standing atop it, or down to drop them into a deep pit.

[TheBiggerFish]

I Detect Magic on the caravan.

You simply cannot have enough paranoia around here.

[Dustan Hache]

The stranger would have faint traces of necromantic energy on him, but the rest of the caravan would be clean, and the traces are coming from his clothing, implying they were close to a source of necromancy.

[TheBiggerFish]

I approach the stranger.
"So...Where're you from?  And why do you look so familiar?  Have we met?"

Spark pokes Amperzand.