[None of these spoilers are restricted, the update just ran so long I decided not to clog the page with a wall and cut it into bit-sized chunks. Do read all of it, there's relevant information in here.]
======AUTOMATON SPARK======As a nice start to the week, Magus Patham's automaton spends two days in a crudely sealed dead-end passage filled with barrels of what appears to be radioactive waste. When the thing emerges, and is promptly scrubbed as thoroughly as possible by a soldier with a basic education in the dangers of radiation, a suit of full plate-mail thick enough to be usually restricted to cavalry, and a crude face-mask made largely from imported silk handkerchiefs and hope. When the little machine informs him for the third time that it no longer detects radioactivity on its structure, it is released to make its report to Patham.
The barrels contain, at a ratio of about one part in eighty to organic ash and rock dust, an isotope of Promethium, currently emitting beta radiation, and with an estimated half-life of seventeen years. These emission spectra are mostly consistent with those of the flask of Dead Zha's Ichor currently sitting under several layers of cloth and sandbags off to the side of the refugees' chamber, at least with regard to mundane radiation, the more esoteric stuff is absent. Some further data is available for specific query information gathering.
Mayor Murdoc's ongoing clandestine project with the arcane containment room is paying off. With the beleaguered dwarf requesting the week off, he is able to finally get the thing working entirely right, assisted greatly in this by Patham spending most of his days working appropriate glyphs into tiles of various materials, which are then embedded in the walls, floor, ceiling, and doorframe of the chamber with liberal application of a pickaxe and molten lead "Adhesive". The door itself is made something of a class project for Patham's evening lessons, and an inch-thick panel of heavily enchanted bronze with complex inline locking mechanism is completed in record time. By the end of the week, the chamber is as ready as it can be made, with multiple redundant safety measures. Ideally, the system will be left alone for a while before use so the various glyphs and enchantments can properly charge from the depleted Geothaum.
Elagn's ongoing project with the gasbags and electrocuting water is also going well, with a large nest of cave spiders having been found and captured to produce good silk for the cause. A large-scale electrolysis machine, or more accurately a big copper pot buried under a carefully sealed stone hut and linked to a variety of mechanisms and wires, is well begun as the week draws to a close. Making good use of the gaseous products of the thing is as yet unfeasible, but the project, having been exhaustively planned, is being handled by the increasingly competent cavern builders and will require no further Homelander support. A week or two, and it should be entirely online. Existing small-scale electrolysis machines easily provide enough hydrogen for scale-model tests, though the engineers in various departments do look forward to having more fuel for their handy little gas-torches.
The unusually psychotic Homelander by the name of Moony has been released from the local jail after the designated two weeks, and immediately shuts himself in his cubby-room to tinker with a new idea. Something about "relays". Chaotic Skies endeavors to aid in the seemingly actually useful concept, and as a result of this some real progress is made. While the truly advanced electrical technology of the Homeland remains thus far out of reach, some interesting concept drawings have been refined to the point that the tech labs could produce and test prototypes with some assistance.
The ongoing lessons prove to be quite interesting this week, with the new students (After the initial enthusiasm of watching Chaotic's practical lessons fades, only two remain for any useful period of time, namely the Settler, who after you get a good look around the bandages proves to be one of the soldiers present at the Skalewyrm's "Induction", with the addition of even more burn scars, and the Goblin Priest with his increasingly cynical attitude.) bringing the challenge of a more basic introduction than even Chaotic needed, and some fascinatingly anachronistic, but nevertheless useful ideas, respectively. All in all, things turn out well enough, if not especially quickly.
Additionally, with help from a crutch and generous dosages of somewhat diluted dwarf booze from the Canteen, Patham's various broken bones have healed to the point that he is no longer bedridden.
The miners have encountered another branch of the pitchblende lode while working the upper iron deposites, and bring a fist-sized lump of the stuff, carefully washed free of any loose dust, out for Administrative examination. It would appear the deposite is larger than initially believed, and a cursory scan by Patham proves the ore, which he had not previously had a chance to examine, is considerably purer than would be the case in the Homeland.
The Gunsmiths are making progress again, and report that they have not only manufactured more powder, cartridges, and sundry, but mounted the remaining Howitzer in a mobile carriage, produced a dozen more shells for the thing, and begun another phase of prototyping for several of their designs. Something called "Nitrocellulose" is apparently being usefully employed to some end or another. The Howitzer, along with a hastily trained gunnery team, has been stationed at the Auxiliary Entrance for the time being, despite that position's poor sightlines.
The great Dam in the caverns has, at last, been completed! The rumble of turbines is audible through the rock of the fortress itself, and quickly rigged cables hum with power as they introduce to the smoky, crowded main hall an unaccustomed brilliance, courtesy of a prototype arc lamp mounted within a simple box of translucent rock crystal near the ceiling. High-voltage electricity is now available for authorized projects, and more of the inefficient, but smokeless and very bright lamps are being produced for other major chambers.
The scouts who volunteered, despite the danger, to watch the access valley report a legitimately huge force, bearing the triple standards of Mountainhome, Military, and Administrata, is entering the mouth of said geographical feature. All fortress personnel of importance are requested to report at the Auxiliary Entrance for a greeting party of some sort.
The last few hours are rather blurry, but you feel quite certain you were doing something at home, and then... You weren't. It all gets rather confusing, but you've been walking through awful, muddy terrain that looks to have been burned recently for several days now, while being yelled at intermittently in a language that, while it definitely isn't English, you seem to understand well enough. You, and everyone around you, seem to be dwarves, being shorter, more medieval in appearance, and generally in possession of a lot more beard than you remember being the usual case back home. Your walking companions are peasant workers of some variety, evidenced by their attire and complaints to be fairly unimportant, and to have been "volunteered" rather precipitously by something called the "Administrata" for an expedition to the "Gods-Forsaken deathtrap" everyone is apparently headed for. There are rather a lot of soldiers and wagons piled with supplies about.
About the second day, things begin to get odd. You're quite certain you saw a steaming crater several miles to the left of the column, but attempts to ask about this meet with further yelling. Several more of the apparently-controversial craters are passed by, and in one case has to be navigated around. You begin to feel rather strange.
Midway through the second day, you determined by noticing the sun's direction of movement that you are likely heading east, which for some reason worries you.
You're quite sure you didn't have tinnitus before, but there's some kind of buzz or whine at the edge of hearing, very aggravating. Occasionally it pulses. Sometimes the pulses go on irregularly for hours at end, and you begin to have trouble focusing.
About the end of the fourth day you're really starting to feel exhausted, hungry, and in need of a proper shower.
The fifth, and you arrive at a distinctly unfriendly cluster of tall, rocky hills and low, rocky mountains. This is circled around for several hours, but a little after noon the column comes upon a broad valley leading into the cluster. There once appears to have been a road leading down the valley, but events have obviously transpired.
Where the rolling plains you walked through previously were burned out and occasionally revealed concerning craters, this little valley, about a half-kilometer wide, looks to have been a warzone. The ground is pocked with craters small and large, several akin to the endlessly steaming pits you encountered in the plains, but the rest, more than a thousand in all, appear to be from some time ago. The large, indistinct column of steam or cloud rising over the hills off to one side really begins to worry you.
And then you get a proper look down the valley itself. It seems to be a rough straight shot four or five kilometers into the hills, and at the end of it is one of the larger mountains. Cut into the base of this mountain is what can only be described as a destroyed fortress. The outer walls are largely intact, but whatever was inside them is, aside from some morose-looking shards of masonry poking through, buried inside the rubble from the evidently recent collapse of at least twenty percent of the mountainside. The ground before it is pocked with even more craters than the rest, and appears once to have sustained some farms, but the shanty buildings associated with them, along with all of the crops, appear to have been knocked down by a tremendous force from direction of the worrying column of steam, then burned.
The remains of a small encampment slightly more recent than whatever caused that sit off to one side of the ruin, and everybody appears to have stopped so as to let some groups of people in shiny armor examine the various ruins. You are no longer being yelled at, and nobody appears to be paying much attention to the peasants.
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Topic: If Bay 12 was a fortress Part 3: RETURN OF THE CHAOS (Read 235014 times)