Just wanted to share my most recent !fun!:
Year 4.
Spring begins with celebration as Patternedclasps is just made a proper county of The Royal Road. Shorast Whipclamp is of course all too eager to exercise her new title of Countess. Nobility, right? Fortunately for us lay workers, her single-minded adoration of simple amulet trinkets is easy enough to please. Unfortunately for the countess, she wouldn't live to see those amulets adorn her vanity.
Celebrations are short lived, left with the liason that brought them. Goblins. Mean, ugly. A raid, from the east as if on cue, spurring a horde of Beak Dogs before them. A formidable party - largest yet. Our militiadwarves rouse into action, matching their numbers.
Blades clash. Goblins and dwarves meet the soil.
And nobody hears the danger looming beneath. Nobody hears what the loom has awoken.
Well, no dwarf living to tell of it anyway.
We know now the raid was a diversion. A means to whittle our defenses. And beneath the thundering of boots on the surface above, the loom begins to spin its dire web.
Yes fellow dwarves, you read me right. The loom. A fresh construction. A workshop that begins its life tasked with a single goal: collect webs.
Webs like those in the caverns well below.
Webs like those spun by Sarek Conflictdagger, the Crazed Abyss, a forgotten beast long departed from our lands.
Or so we thought.
The battle on the surface has ended. Our militiadwarves return in victory, the few that manage to return at all. The fight was close. It's only now we can hear the screams beneath us.
Familiar screams. Obok Partnerpaddle, the mayor. His face pummeled by great amphibious legs.
An enormous eyeless frog. It has large mandibles and it undulates rhythmically. Beware its webs!
Sarek Conflictdagger has returned. Someone has intruded upon its home.
Someone has stumbled into its web.
And already it's too late to stiffle the damage. Half of Patternedclasps is in the caverns below. The guard is distant, sparse and battered.
Time freezes a moment as I spot the Countess. Shorast shouldn't be down here. The caverns aren't a place for nobles. A green foot explodes through her head.
I watch as my friends and colleagues pinball violently off each other, one after another, thrown dramatically with each kick of Sarek's mighty legs. The children try to flee. Many stalwart dwarves try to flee. But the slaughtergrounds are covered in Conflictdagger's steely webs. Few escape its clutches. I do.
And when I dare turn to look at the carnage behind - when nothing remains but blood and bile and an enormous, eyeless and unharmed frog - Sarek hops away, back, deep into the caverns of its lair. A mind unknowable.
Today Patternedclasps survives. Our numbers halved and haunted, but strong.
The caverns are sealed until further notice.
And the loom - the damned loom that brought us to our knees, almost broke us - is dismantled. I personally saw to it every piece was thrown into the magma sea.
I hope The Royal Road doesn't rescind our countyship.