New fort in an evil glacier - a lovely spot, the Ice of Glooms, prone only to the occasional burst of insidious murk (husking mist). My initial fort struck the earth(ice) and dug in, hiding the horses, the three lovely boards and our precious, precious anvil.
As the miners ventured down into the depths, the first cavern was revealed with giant underground lakes; a fortuitous find. The farmers began harvesting edible fungi as the miners went seeking the blood of Armok below. Deeper and deeper they dug, until the air grew stale and the torches guttered. Eventually, sweaty and filthy, they staggered back out into the tiny hole in the ice we sat in - the rock was hot and flowing, semi-molten and useless for forging. Now we had to dig sideways, a much more dangerous endeavor.
Despite the miners' misgivings, we located the magma sea and dug forges. The miners channelled out troughs for the flowing magma beneath the smelters and forges, and the masons began working feverishly to get them all set up. We would finally have metal again! I was planning the farms in the cavern when I heard shouting from below. Some... thing... had come out of the lava vents. The mason swore it was a tiny manikin composed all of flame; he point-blank refused to go back into the deeps. The metalcrafter finally went, desperate to have something to do other than carve rock into pots.
We crept into the depths, makeshift weapons at the ready. He went down the final steps and around the corner and... anticlimax. "'m seein' nowt." came his glum report. He threw down the anvil he had carried, making a tremendous crash, and dragged a gabbro boulder to cap the vent designed for the smithy. "Oi, Mason, y' goin' t' get these forges aright or no?" The mason cursed and went around the corner, swearing there had been something there.
"No worries", I said, trying to soothe everyone's rattled nerves. "Maybe it went back into the vent. Let's get these capped, and we need worry no more on it."
Unbeknownst to all, the fire imp HAD been there. And it hadn't gone back into the vent. Instead, it snuck up the steps... past all of us. It made its stealthy way out through the doors above at the trade hall, and up the corridor past the depot, into the glacier itself. We wouldn't discover this for weeks, however, as we were digging in. I needed to go outside to retrieve the hatch cover the mason had made, so I wandered up the stairs... only to stop at the trade level, dumbfounded. All I could hear was slopping water on the other side of the door, and a little mud was leaking out below it. The imp had eventually gotten itself frozen into the glacier, but the water that it left had to be drained into the caverns below, then the entire hall repaved to get rid of the mud, filth and mushrooms. The miner also had to cut a new channel to the surface. Never a dull moment on the Ice of Glooms!
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6122915 times)