Print

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

[De]

Prologue
In a time before time the races of the world labored in anonymity, building their small works in the shadow of the mighty beasts who ruled the land. They worshiped their own gods and passed what stories they had to their children, but rarely did such tales go any farther than the clan hearth. Only a few brave souls ever ventured into the wider world and one group had little knowledge of any of the others.

Then letters were invented and the world began to change. Messages could now be sent, unaltered and clear, across the land. Events could be documented in a more specific form than a picture engraved in stone. Plans could be recorded and submitted for approval, notated, and revised. Supplies could be numbered and accounted for down to the last edible plump helmet. The proliferation of this new media brought about a growing sense of the identity among the members of formerly disparate groups. Societies began to be wider spread and laws consequently more complex. Across the world people began to declare themselves leaders and to claim much wider territories. Soon, any who wished to survive had to follow in kind.

Writing didn't belong to only the mighty though. Those with the time to learn and a few simple materials could now record the events of their lives and reflect upon them. Anyone could preserve their story. It was in this spirit that Queen Avuz named her kingdom The Paper of Dreams, and declared that their first new settlement be known as Soulbooks.

ooc: Notes

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I've been reading a lot of great DF fan fiction lately and I thought I'd try my hand using the fortress I've sunk the most time into over the last few months. However, since I wasn't planning to do anything of the sort (the fortress was started an experiment -dwarf breeding), I have precisely one screenshot, which is of a thought that made me laugh. So this thread is going to have lots of words especially for the first 9 years or so. There's also not going to be a strict timeline since I'm going off memory and some notes I took from legends mode.

This is a very early fort, I only did 5 years of history. I'm subscribing to the theory that Year 1 marks the beginning of recorded history and that all the beings of the world weren't spontaneously created at once by Armok (time before time and so forth). It makes things a bit easier and means my dwarves won't have to invent steel all on their own.

Contents

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Stones For the Missing
• Friends in Adversity
• Chasing Waterfalls
• Building the Plant Stockade

[De]

Soulbooks One: Stones for the Missing


***

On the first night the dwarves spent atop the mountain beside the waterfall in the place that would become Soulbooks, Shorast Standardplanned had a nightmare.

He was in a strange world surrounded by towering mushrooms and vast expanses of labyrinthine stone, structures that were foreign to him but home to the alien mind he inhabited. The mind he became, the mind that enveloped his own until he perceived his surroundings as an endless series of sharp outlines created by vibration, smell and taste.

Out of the endless darkness came the beasts. They lept down from the pillars of rock, carved by the receding waters and the hand of time, and fell upon the camp that was his -her- kingdom. A desperate struggle ensued to preserve life and home. In an instant one of her undefended workers was torn apart even as the soldiers sprang into action at her call. The brave soldier woman arrived seconds too late and was unable to do anything but avenge the death before a second beast came at her from behind. The queen slew the beasts that had killed her soldiers, facing the last of them in a long and gruesome duel, but the attackers had come on quick and sudden. Her people were scattered. She ventured into the caverns searching for them but the foul blood of the monsters clung to her, inhibiting the function of her anttenae and her scent organ. She lost the trail. Hopelessly, she continued on. Searching. Walking deeper, and deeper, and deeper still until...

Shorast sat up in the fading glow of the fire, unaware at first that he had woken at all. He blinked at the dim shapes all around him, confused by the functioning of his own eyes, unsure of who or what he was. Then he saw Onul the ranger watching him from his post beside the river and snapped back to the reality of his surroundings and situation in an instant. In the bright light of the moon and the orange flicker of the embers, Onul seemed to gleam alongside the eyes of his ill tempered hound, Kosoth.

Discomfitted by this image, Shorast pushed himself to his feet and staggered away from the sleeping expedition and the ranger's cold inspection. He looked down at the ground, avoiding that gaze, and telling himself that it was surely none of Onul's business if he needed to anwer a call of nature.

He'd never been good at socializing, or with words, and his mother had scolded him for going out of his way to see the worst in everyone, and still he'd never disliked anyone so much as Onul upon first acquaintance. The ranger held himself aloof from all of them, considering himself a separate and superior entity from the rest of the ignorant and ill prepared expedition. He'd been chosen for his knowledge of the surrounding wilds and his tracking ability and knew it. He rarely spoke, and when he did choose to share his wisdom, his tone was invariably one of amused condescension. "Shorey", the clumsy, bumbling mason with his hill dwarf accent, had particularly amused him.

"Does the meal not suit your delicate palette?" asked Onul in his usual fashion.

He and Kosoth had done for a pair of wolverines and a moose within moments of their arrival. Onul had brought the kills to Nomal, the only member of the party he ever paid any mind to, and they'd used the meat to supplement their meager rations. Dinner had been handed around with great cheer and the rum had come out. Shorast had forgone both, the wolverine smelled funny and his stomach was already roiling with excitement.

"Do forgive me," Onul continued when he'd failed to respond; he'd refused to respond for the entirety of the journey and perhaps that had drawn Onul's attention in the first place. "I should have known a noble spirit such as yours could not suffer such fare. Pray wait but a moment and I will fetch you the bilberries I saw earlier, they will perhaps suit you better."

Everyone pretended not to hear these remarks. Shorast, who considered himself level-headed, would have done the same except something had gotten into him since they'd navigated threw the treacherous river past the falls. He looked at Onul, for once dropping the armor of his impassivity to let everything he thought and felt show. Next to him, Ida, the first true friend he'd ever made, looked up in alarm. The ranger had met his gaze and returned a beautific satisfied smile, and then he'd gone to fetch the promised berries.

Getting well out of sight of the camp, Shorast climbed further up the cliffs. He sat watching the river and trying to discern his own feelings. He thought he'd learned to control himself, to keep the inconvenient thoughts that floated through his mind firmly contained, but now his heart wouldn't, couldn't, stop racing. The day, the excitement, the irrational anger, the nightmare, none of it would leave him. Finally, he did the only thing he could think to do and went looking for large enough stones. These were surprisingly easy to locate, almost as if nature had left him some suitable slabs in advance. Taking out his chisel, he closed his eyes and felt over the entirety of the stone with his hands.

This was something he'd never done before. He'd always been an indifferent mason, having taken up the trade because it was the one his clan had followed since beyond time immemorial. As a child, he'd often become so absorbed in his own thoughts that he'd lost track of the (boring) task of carving blocks until his father had struck him upside the head. He'd never really considered stone before. The texture beneath his fingers inspired him with a sense of history longer than the one the new dwarven kingdoms could ever hope to achieve. It seemed to vibrate subtly in his hand, surely an illusion, yet he felt it through his bones. He became aware of the smell of earth all around him, an idea came into his mind and lingered there like a taste in his mouth, insisting. He picked up his tools and went to work with his eyes still shut.

After he was done, he found an indentation in the side of the cliff that supported a tall tree. The spot was scenic and, most importantly, out of the way. He set up his memorials to the ant people hoping no one would find them, or if they did, that they wouldn't ask too many questions. Feeling physically tired but also lighter, as if something that had been twisted upside of him for a long time had finally been untangled, he returned to the camp by first light just as the others were waking. Onul, so far Shorast knew, never mentioned his long absence.

On the second night the dwarven expedition spent atop the mountain beside the waterfall in the place that would become Soulbooks, Kosoth returned to camp without her master.

***
ooc: Notes

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This isn't actually the tone I had in mind, but it is the explanation I came up with for the first two weird things that happened after embark. I noticed that when we arrived there were already five people on the dead/missing list. I was sufficiently puzzled by this to create and engrave slabs, and then left more curious rather than less, I searched the names in legends mode. Apparently a battle between trolls and ant people took place in the cavern (which I haven't found even yet) and it ended up recorded in my units list, somehow. I decided the dwarves must have all suffered visions the night they arrived and decided to commemorate the ant people and put their spirits to rest. Upon inspecting my players, Shorey seemed like he'd be the most sensitive to this kind of thing and he'd been the one to make and engrave the first slabs.

I checked all my dwarves on embark and found they were a friendly bunch. Onul was the most standoffish having only one friend and one grudge. He quickly proved himself useful as a marksman. I assigned the one hunting dog to him. And then he disappeared before I'd even built the first stockpile. I was puzzled as to what had managed to do him in for some years.

[Bearskie]

Good writing.

[Sanctume]

PTR - Posting To Read.  Good stuff.

[De]

Two: Friends in Adversity


The whole thing was hopeless but she kept at it anyway, which was in essence the story of her life. Nomal Entranceroofs contemplated this fact as she slid down the path, snatching at trees and bushes along the way to slow her descent and with the waterfall roaring in her ears. After the initial search turned up nothing except a smattering of wolverine blood near the river that could have come from a hunting expedition, the others had given up on ever finding Onul. She’d talked to their leader, Plantstockade was his name or something like it, and he’d agreed though he’d looked worried when he’d done so.

“You signed up to work in the kitchen and help in the fields and since we don’t have either yet there’s no reason for me to insist you stay. I believe Onul had an extra crossbow; take that and the rest of the bolts when you go.”

“You want me to go digging through his personal belongings?” Onul was a private person; he would hate the idea of people digging through his things while he was away.

The expedition leader had given her a pitying look that she had rather resented and said, “In this case I don’t think he would mind.”

She’d taken the crossbow, after all the woods were overrun with wolverines, but she’d continued to stew about that look and the tone of his voice, soft and light like he was talking to an infant. The whole reason she’d left home was to get away from this kind of thing. Wherever she went, the first thing people saw in her was how useless she was.

Her parents had been shocked the day she’d come home from a delivery trip to Snakecity and told them she’d signed up for the Queen’s new colony.

“Honey, you don’t have any skills,” her mother had said.

“I can cook,” Nomal had pointed out. “And I’ve helped you at the still enough to be able to manage it on my own. And you’ve had me out weeding in the garden since I learned to walk.”

Her mother had shaken her head, an expression of pitying sadness. “Biscuits and sewerbrew won’t keep you alive out in the wilds. You won’t be able to go off to your room and sulk all day when others are counting on you. You’ll be a danger to everyone around you; I hope you’ve considered that.”

“Queen!” Her father had shouted over the dinner table. “She’s not the queen of anything. Bunch of beardless scissorbeak political cronies made that up in that city of theirs, nothing to do with us and our hill.”

Her father’s clan had lived in their hill for as long as anyone could remember. They were all farmers and all of them hated outsiders, though not nearly so much as they hated each other. Their cousin Kogsak would come over to drink beer and roar about what a greedy idiot his older brother Ral was, moving on after the first hour and the initial dozen drinks to the profound laziness of his own son Tirist and the foolishness of his daughter Sibrek, which they’d inherited from their mother of course. Her father would laugh uproariously and add supporting evidence of his own until Kogsak would head off to his own burrow, and then he would turn to his wife and describe Kogsak’s general stupidity in equally loud tones. Every party ended in a fist fight. No one had a good word to say about anyone else on the hill, and yet no one ever left. In their minds there was nowhere else to go.

Nomal was in her seventies, lived in her parents burrow, had no trade and no one she could have honestly called a friend and she hadn’t minded. She was like her father in a lot of ways. There wasn’t anything she particularly wanted to do, or anything she wanted to see. The hill was the only place that was real to her and she wasn’t given to day dreaming or flights of fancy. Then the realization had gradually grown in her that if she spent the next hundred years listening to her father rant about how females couldn’t be rulers because they were too dumb to do anything more complicated than open their legs, or listening to her mother scolding her to do chores she’d taken care of hours ago as if she were a lazy, thoughtless, toddler and not a grown dwarf, she would run stark raving mad and then there would be blood on the floor. Whether it would be hers or theirs she couldn’t say, but that was no reason to wait around to find out.

Meeting Onul had been the event in her life she hadn’t known she was waiting for. He’d been appointed as the guide for the Queen’s new project and was one of the decision makers for filling out the rest of the party. He’d come into the wagon yard while she was waiting to pick up some replacement part for Kogsak. She hadn’t been able to stop herself eavesdropping on his excited conversation with the place’s manager. Onul liked to think of himself as mysterious and hard to read, but if you knew the trick of watching him he was obvious as could be. Soon enough he was spilling everything he knew about the expedition to her. He was disappointed not to be the actual leader, the Queen had appointed a desk sitting mechanic to the post, but he channeled this into jokes and didn’t let it distract him from the true task at hand. This was so different from everything she’d ever known as to feel like meeting a member of some new species. She’d added her name to the list of potential candidates in a wave of giddiness, knowing even without her mother’s comments that she didn’t have any particular skills to recommend her and that it was a long shot. She suspected the decision to include her had been entirely his.

Her parents’ constant comments and palpable disapproval were welcome, without them she might backed out the day Onul arrived with the finalized list of dwarves and equipment.

“We set out on the first day of spring. We need plenty of time to get there and establish a settlement before winter comes again.”

“The first?” She’d croaked. “That’s less than a month from now.” He hadn’t said anything, simply looked up from his paperwork. She’d ducked her head. “I’ll have to figure out what to pack in a hurry.”

To Nomal’s further trepidation, her mother had invited Onul to stay for dinner. He’d made it through a typical family meal, mostly by nodding and sometimes smiling a little anytime someone looked his way. She’d escorted him down the long walk off the hill and he’d turned to her and asked, “So are you the only normal person in your family?” At which she had burst out laughing. They’d lingered at the bottom of the hill and talked until well after moonrise.

The weeks of the journey were the happiest of her life, to the point where she wondered if she had ever really known what happiness was before. The members had all been chosen for specific skills, which meant none of the others knew the least little thing about cooking. They regarded her ability to skin and braise a rabbit without charring the outside and leaving the inside a rubbery cold mess as magic. Every night they would come into camp and anxiously ask if she had made biscuits and if there were any left. Along the way there were things to do, water to collect, plants to find, chickens to feed, the wagon wheel to brace while someone tried to get the other unstuck; they asked her to do things and weren’t surprised when she accomplished them. Every day she contributed to their task and the group went forward. Helping, she would never have guessed, was the most satisfying undertaking there was.

One night, sitting up late long past when they should have woken some of the others to take watch, Onul had said “I’ve never been able to talk to someone the way I can talk to you.”

Then they had arrived and life was terrible again.

A rustling behind her snapped Nomal back to reality in a hurry. She lifted the crossbow and fumbled for a bolt which her numb fingers couldn’t hold. Swearing, she was trying for a second when the shape of the creature she was staring at finally made an impression on her startled mind. Kosoth.

“Come here girl,” she tried, letting go of the quiver and patting her legs. “Who’s a good a girl?”

This had no effect at all. Kosoth was not a friendly dog, but she’d followed Onul faithfully and probably wouldn’t bite. Probably.

“Are you going to help me find Onul?”

The hunting dog ignored her and ran off ahead, disappearing back into the trees. Nomal sighed, some help would have been welcome actually.

She retrieved the dropped bolt from under the leaf litter and rearranged the quiver and crossbow. She’d seen them fired plenty of times in the contests at home but never actually wielded one. Marksdwarfship had not been considered a girl activity. She hadn’t felt like she was missing out on anything at the time, but now it occurred to her that the whole process was trickier than it had seemed from the sidelines. She’d also lost track of where she was going but that wasn’t a problem, going up the slope would probably bring her back to the camp. Probably.

Two hours walking was enough to raise a few doubts in Nomal’s mind. She kept catching glimpses of Kosoth between the trees, and half followed the dog. She though the hound might be sniffing for her master’s scent trail but further observation suggested that Kosoth was following a random zigzag path through the undergrowth. At last, as the light began to slant through the trees casting long shadows against the slope, she had to admit that she hadn’t found anything and wasn’t in the right frame of mind to do a proper search. Part of her whispered that she didn’t have the skills regardless of how she was feeling and her mother’s accusation “You’ll be a danger to everyone around you!” echoed through her head, as it had been since the night Kosoth turned up at camp alone.

To drown out that voice, she looked up at the slanting sun and thought I’ll climb up the slope and come out near that rise, the one you can see from the wagon, then the campsite will be on my left. I’ll try again tomorrow. She turned her back on the setting sun and resolutely started to half climb, half walk, up the side of the mountain, reassured by her own decisiveness. Which is why when her long trek brought her to only more woods, she was so disappointed.

The light had faded from gold to dusky shadow quicker than expected. For the moment, Nomal could see where she was putting her feet but that wouldn’t last much longer. Options flitted through her mind, turn right, turn around, shout, find a tree and try to climb it and look around, lie down and die, but none of them seemed real. She kept walking, from tree to tree to keep a straight line, carrying out the one task at hand. Until she heard a cry for help.

In an instant she was running, as if she was fresh from her morning mug of ale and out on a crisp autumn morning, as if she weighed nothing at all and all the force of the world were pushing her forward. She leapt over rocks and dodged around trees, crossbow in hand. She saw the black shape appear between two vast tree trunks and couldn’t immediately discern what it was. The thing was threatening a round dwarf shape dressed in green and blue, not Onul, though that didn’t matter at the moment. Her hand was on the quiver and ready with a bolt. She loaded the crossbow keeping the dark shape in the corner of her eye and then lifted it and fired. The thought never crossed her mind that she might miss, and she didn’t.

The shadowy shape roared in pain and surprise and dropped to all fours. It turned to face her and Nomal had just enough time to think ‘That’s a bear’ before it ran at her. She fired a second shot but this time it was a moving target and the bolt went into the ground, not even close. The third stuck into the side of its shoulder but the beast didn’t even seem to notice. She’d never thought such a lumbering creature could be fast but here it was before her.

A brown streak in the dimming forest impacted the bear’s side hard enough to knock it to the ground. There was a moment’s stunned quiet and then the two shapes were wrestling. Nomal heard a shriek, a dog’s howl of pain, and her heart fluttered as she realized whose it must be. Kosoth scrambled out from beneath the bulk of the bear with black blood thickly coating her side. This didn’t seem to trouble her as she made another lunge for the bears face. It swatted at her and she dodged away, this process repeating itself two more times. Then the green and blue blob tackled the bear, clinging to the thing’s back to bash it twice in the side of the head. The bear fell to the ground, huffing and groaning, until the dwarf stepped on it and crushed its throat.

The sound of the beast’s dying was terrible. Later, Nomal would realize that should have stepped forward and ended its misery with another shot, but the thought never crossed her mind in the moment. She was a complete blank. Eventually the dwarf in green turned to her and asked, “Are you hurt?”

Nomal stood blinking in further surprise. “No, not at all.” Then memory began to regain function and she jumped, looking all around her. “Kosoth!”

She called the name again but the hound was gone.

“She will never forgive us for bringing him here,” said the expedition leader. “She has the right.”

“Are you alright?” Nomal remembered to ask while she struggled to remember his name. “Mr. Plan-“

He waved a hand at her. “Call me Gears; Tek named me that when we were lads and it’s stuck ever since. I’m not injured, only winded.”

“Tek?” Nomal was baffled.

“Doctor Gemurgeshud you’d call him. Tek, and I’m Gears.”

The two of them had struck her as a couple of old sticks in the mud, appointed because of their high minded professions. They spent hours talking endlessly in long words and looping sentences so she’d stopped listening to them after awhile. She couldn’t think of them at Tek and Gears. She couldn’t imagine one of them bashing a bear’s skull in. The dwarf was a ball of fat with twigs stuck in for arms and legs. Had she really seen it?

“What are you doing here?” she asked at last.

“Searching for you.” His face quirked, lines of amusement were just visible in the fading light, and then he looked away. “I was afraid… Business is no excuse. We don’t know the circumstances or the details of our surroundings, no one should have gone out alone. I’m sorry.”

“I’m fine.”

He didn’t answer her right away. He almost seemed to be talking to the bear. “I can see the ribs and the bones of the shoulder. It’s spring skinny, freshly woken and starving.” Gears shook his head and tossed the rock he’d been holding cupped in fists down beside the corpse. “I suppose we have our answer as to what became of Onul Rabrigoth.”

She looked at the black hump of the bear and thought that it was like the period of a sentence. It was the end. Full stop. Something inside of her went completely still then, frozen like a river that would never see summer again.

 “The camp’s back this way,” Gears said nodding his head. “You were close to home at least.”

“Yes,” Nomal answered softly. “Do you need me to carry you?”

Gears spluttered in indignation. “Carry me! You walk on young lady and just see if you can keep up!” He lumbered off with his arm firmly pressed to his side. They went a few steps like this until he relented and said, “Well, you could carry me a bit…”

Nomal put her arm around him and he leant on her shoulder. The two of them made their slow way back to the newly dug tunnel that led to the hole that was fast becoming Soulbooks.

The next morning, Nomal woke with her mind still a perfect blank. She made her way to the river and stopped when she saw a shape lying in the grass. Kosoth, her tail curled beneath her and her ears drooped and her eyes staring out over the water. Nomal’s throat tightened and her stomach dropped away beneath her leaving a thin line of pain between the two. She went over and tried to sit beside the dog but Kosoth flinched away from her. Tucked into Nomal’s pocket was a couple of biscuits, two days gone by now but enough to tempt a hungry, injured animal.

While Kosoth crunched on the stale biscuits, Nomal cupped river water in her hands and carefully washed away the blood and dirt. Kosoth had a long curving gash along her belly and another over her hip. They were wide but not deep. The wounds looked bad at the moment, but they would heal.

notes

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I just accidentally deleted this post while trying to modify chapter four. Woops... So there go the notes for this chapter. Sorry about that.

[Bearskie]

And here I thought Onul was just an ass; turns out he's got layers like an onion. Although the difference in his personalities does feel slightly jarring. Great writing as always.

[De]

Oh he's an ass too, just cleverer than what Nomal's used to. I've been trying to make up something based off what I can remember of personality. He died so fast I think I only looked at it the one. He was standoffish and aloof, prone to quarrels, valued friendship, considered his own talents and skills very highly, was a good marksman and had a dog. As far as I can remember. Fortunately he's dead and we'll soon move on.

Friendships:

Onul was friends with Nomal and had a grudge with Shorey going on embark.

Gears was friends with Tek and Ida

Ida was friends with those two plus Shorey.

Most of the survivors managed to make friends with each other before the dining room was dug. Shorey and Nomal are the only two left who just don't seem to click.

[De]

Three: Chasing Waterfalls


The waterfall was the primary landmark of Soulbooks, the clearest feature marked on their sketchy maps, the first thing everyone noticed. Some dwarves were impressed by it while others were terrified, two variations on the same emotion really. Most everyone agreed that the mist was nice. Ida Nourishedclasps came of a mining clan and had never seen such a thing before. She’d beheld the shining ribbon of water from afar and thought to herself, “I could build that.”

She dug out the trade depot and a storage room like one moving through a dream. She carved out a staircase to check the layer beneath without even noticing. The farms were annoying, she wasn’t sure if there was going to be enough clay to dig a proper mushroom field at first, but some prospecting soon solved the problem. She turned the initial failed field into seed storage and drifted back into thought.

Onul had disappeared. Shorey brought the news. There’d been something off about him but Ida hadn’t been able to put a finger on just what. In truth, she’d only half listened to him. They’d known each other all their lives, her family had dug rocks from the earth and his had turned the rocks into blocks, so she tried to offer what comfort she could. If asked she wouldn’t have been able to repeat what she’d said, or even summarize it. She figured he was upset over having developed such a dislike of Onul only to lose him so abruptly. They’d been a sight to see on the journey glaring at each other across the campfire every night. Some dwarves needed a good grudge in their lives. She tried to feel bad about having found the two of them so amusing and couldn’t manage it.

By the time she’d hollowed out the workshops, absently taking in Gears’s request to add space for craft workshops and a kiln, she had grudgingly come to the conclusion that her initial thought of an extension off the existing waterfall channeled into a drop that fell unimpeded into a magma pool was not the place to start. There was no telling where they might uncover magma or if there would be a good angle for the obsidian viewing deck. The queen, she was forced to concede, might not want to lend her the necessary miners, at least not right away. There’d probably be more than tunneling involved too, floodgates or some such; she’d ask Gears once he stopped rushing around like a headless chicken.

Digging out their new home required no actual thought on her part. The layout had been settled upon long ago in Snakecity and then tirelessly gone over and discussed on the journey. Gears had designed it to combine efficiency, comfort, and security. He meant to have them all inside behind a sealable gate before the autumn rains. An admirable goal, but his education in building design had been entirely academic. Ida had hands on experience shoring up mines, sealing off dangerous tunnels and adding comfortable temporary housing to the latest shaft. She had presented the potential problems that might throw a hitch in his designs and they’d started arguing contingency plans with the doctor contributing as a neutral judge and commentator. A bunch of fuss for nothing as it turned out, the site was pure perfection.

She’d finished the area for the kitchen before she realized that what she needed was a scale version to demonstrate her idea to others, a proof of concept, something small enough to build herself but impressive enough to convey the potential scope of the plan. They had set out to found a city for Queen Avuz that was to be the backbone of her future kingdom, and every great city built at the behest of a monarch required a monument. Ida felt the truth of this in her bones. Why not a waterfall? She mulled it over while she tackled the main hall. It was an argument that when combined with a two— no— a three level demonstration waterfall could not fail to move even the hardest heart. Soaring on an updraft of certainty and inspiration, Ida added alcoves to the hall to give the room a sense of space. Gears probably wouldn’t mind.

The food and drink cellar had a coal vein in the back. Ida investigated and found hematite and limonite. Then she realized she’d created a giant hole through the back of their dining area. She wandered upstairs to consult with the others, distracted by thoughts of her waterfall viewing room. She’d have to channel out the floor and create a platform or people would complain about wet clothing, people were like that.

The doctor and the little blonde girl were aghast at what she’d done, the so-called mess. Gears was torn, the value of the coal and iron ore competing against the perfection of his design. She could see him biting into his lip, his eyes rolling in his sockets, as twin desires fought within him. Nomal, the cook who had taken to wandering the wilds with a crossbow for some reason, pointed out that ore was plainly visible in the side of the cliffs so they didn’t really need to exploit this particular vein. If she had cared, Ida could have pointed out that iron ore was rare below the first couple of layers. Shorey did it for her. He also said he would build blocks to patch up the hole. Breathing out in a great gust, Gears told her to harvest the vein so long as it didn’t puncture the actual main hall or stairway. Ida shrugged and did as he asked. Iron was no good to her, it would only rust.

She considered the layout of the river while she worked. She’d have to dig a channel to move the water somewhere more convenient if she was going to build a grand display chamber. Come to think of it, she’d probably end up funneling it through this very shaft once she’d cleaned out the ore. With that in mind, she dug an access room off the back of the butcher’s and the tannery. It could serve as the leatherworks until she had the details of her project hammered out. She told the blonde girl, who was moving barrels to the storage, about it.

“Someone said they were decent with leather. Was it you?”

“No, actually, that was Onul. I’m the carpenter.”

“Oh,” said Ida. She’d stepped in it again. This always seemed to happen when she tried talking to people. She was bad with faces, and names, and personal details, that was all. She looked around at the bare rectangular room she had created with blocks between the mined out gaps. “Woops.”

“It’s all right,” chirped blondie. “A leatherworker is bound to show up sooner or later, and when they do we’ll have the workshop and stockpile ready for them thanks to your foresight.”

“I guess,” Ida answered. She felt like the girl was spreading the syrup pretty thick, but blondie went on, nodding earnestly.

“By then it’ll be even colder and we’ll really need better clothes, having the place prepared might make all the difference.”

“Heh,” was all Ida could say. The girl had a point. On a whim, she accompanied the other dwarf back into the cellars. She opened the last keg of beer and offered her a mug. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Doby Whimtool.”

“Well Doby,” Ida lifted her mug, “let’s have a toast: to the future inhabitants of Soulbooks.”

“May they never go barefoot,” Doby answered. They knocked mugs and drank.

The two of them finished the keg and Ida decided that blondie was alright after all, and that maybe she’d been going about this whole thing wrong. She’d focused on having a steep drop, but wouldn’t a stepped waterfall possess a subtle grandeur of its own?

The doctor interrupted both Ida’s progress on the dormitory and her internal debate between the grand cascade she had first envisioned and a more intricate display of small waterfalls and pools she now contemplated. He was bored, she decided, and he wasn’t going to go away until she paid attention to him.

“I feel we shouldn’t dig any deeper before building the hospital. We’re quite a ways from the surface as it is,” he was saying.

“I thought we’d decided the hospital would be phase two, we’ll get to it later with the barracks and the bedrooms,” answered Ida, almost by rote.

“I always felt that reasoning to be off. It’s not just soldiers who get injured.”

Ida looked around for help but they were alone in the stairwell. “But no one needs a hospital right now, do they?”

“That’s the thing about hospitals, Miss Nourishedclasps. You don’t need one until you do.”

“Look, if I don’t get the forges finished Gears is going to tear his beard out.”

The doctor gave her one of his mild smiles. He was always like this, so polite and contained. “I know that very well. I don’t propose you stop to dig me a hospital. I’m prepared to take care of that myself. What—“

“You are?”

“Yes, of course, but what I need your help with is channeling water. I feel it’s important that we create a reservoir before winter—“

He didn’t need to say any more.

Building the reservoir took frustratingly long. Finding the coal seam had popped the cap off the smelter of Gear's greed and he wanted the gold they found in what was meant to be the reservoir’s control room minded out. He also wanted the whole thing smoothed before it was filled. Ida was grinding her teeth before she was allowed to dig the long narrow tunnel that would connect the reservoir to the catch basin of the mighty waterfall. She carefully punctured the separating wall and fled back the way she’d come. Unnecessarily as it turned out, the water spread through the tunnel in a thin disappointing trickle rather than the expected torrent.

“You don’t have gravity on your side,” explained Gears when he observed their work. “You don’t even have anything to divert the water from the main current and into your channel. Starting higher up would have given you a faster flow, it still could, but I wouldn’t bother. You’ll get enough for a well, eventually.”

It would matter when she began her project, Ida thought. Though, she was already considering using this trickle method to control the water levels in certain pools. In some places the water would have to be deep, but it would be diverting to have areas where it was shallow enough for children to play in. She could remember, vaguely, playing in natural pools as a very young child back before they’d had to flee the caverns.

“I suppose he is right,” sighed the doctor.

They were bent over the holes Ida had opened into the reservoir in preparation for well construction. Ida expressed her opinion by spitting down into the shallow puddle slowly pooling beneath their feet. She kept one eye on the doctor to see his reaction, but he didn’t even flinch. He had stone dust in his hair and the lines around his eyes. She glanced up at the new hospital. Fortunately, the doctor hadn’t uncovered any metal ores or gems during the dig and so the construction had been allowed to remain as square and inviolate as he had imagined it. The whole setup was a bit plain to Ida’s eye, but it was solid work nonetheless, amazing work for someone who was only learning the trade. She looked back at the dwarf.

“You done this before?”

He met her gaze. “No, not at all. I grew up in the city. I always wondered what it would be like to work in a mine though, to live like a real dwarf.” He smiled but his eyes seemed tired. She clapped him on the shoulder.

“Tek, you’re welcome in any mine ‘o mine any time.” His thin smile grew until it was wide and beaming.

“That’s kind of you to say Miss Nourishedclasps.”

“Call me Ida. If we’re going to be sharing the prospecting tunnels in future we might as well be on first name terms.”

They shook on it. As she walked back to the partially finished dormitory, her pick held by the head to avoid accidentally maiming anyone else who happened to be using the stairs, it occurred to her that something she’d said had made someone else happy. That didn’t happen very often. It was worth remembering.

There came a day, not long after, when there was nothing left to mine for the moment. She dug out bedrooms for each of them until Gears told her to stop because they were having trouble furnishing the existing rooms they had. Making a barracks would have been laughable. Even with a few new faces they were a small group and all of them were constantly at work. Well, everyone but Ida that was, for the moment.

She wandered the freshly smoothed main hall for awhile and then popped into the kitchen where Nomal was laboring over barrel after barrel of bilberry biscuits. Ironically, the girl bent over the hot stove looked like she hadn’t had a decent meal in weeks.

“Armok’s blood girl, you look like a risen wraith.”

“What?” Nomal blinked at her through the steam.

“You’ve been so busy down here making meals, when was the last time you ate one of them, or had a decent drink for that matter?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Sure it is. If we’re going to have to slab you along with your hunter buddy I’d like to know in advance.” Ida was just alert enough to duck the pan that came flying at her head following this remark.

“By the gods, why are all of you so awful?” demanded Nomal, scowling at her stove.

“I don’t think I take your meaning,” said Ida. “I don’t think we’re awful. Well, Gear’s little mustache braids are kind of awful, and I heard the doctor singing in the hallways the other day and that was pretty awful, but by and by-“

“You are awful,” replied Nomal letting go of her anger. She seemed to deflate. Her expression dull and disinterested, which was somehow more worrying than the sudden violence had been. “All of you are obsessed with the weird schemes you have going in your heads and you don’t live in the real world. Someone could die in front of you and you’d step over them and say “Hmmm, I wonder if there’s a way to continuously cycle the water so that the waterfall in my garden will flow all year round.”

There wasn’t anything Ida could say in response to that. She grabbed her pick instead.

Good old Shorey, he might be a bit slow and clumsy but he always came through when needed. Thanks to him, Onul’s memorial hall was the first place to see proper engraving in the entire fortress. His work complimented her careful attempts at elaborate architecture and made them look better than they deserved. She couldn’t help but feel some pride, even as the three of them went about conducting a properly solemn service for Onul.

The ceremony itself was rather awkward, none of them being good with words or particularly devout. They murmured a few prayers and Nomal began to cry. Shorey slunk off to corner of the hall and carefully studied the statue there, a particularly silly course of action since he’d made it himself. Poor boy, he had a good heart but his grasp of social situations didn’t extend much beyond what to do in a fist fight. She pulled Nomal into a hug, glad she was there to look after things. Foolish, the two of them were both morning the same fellow but neither of them seemed to be able to say anything to each other.

She rocked the crying girl back and forth and studied the ceiling. Something really had changed about Shorey’s work. It wasn’t that he’d suddenly become a master overnight, though the work he was doing for Soulbooks was certainly improving his skills, it was more that everything he made had character to it now. There was a certain indefinable quality that drew the eye; even his rock blocks looked more balanced somehow. The rooms with the pools flowing through them would have to be engraved and decorated with statues, she decided. They’d also probably need chairs and tables as well, and a stand for passing out biscuits and cold ale. She’d have to ask both of them about it later.

ooc: notes

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In spite of being tagged with every loner/antisocial trait imaginable, Ida was widely loved. All I can think is the few interactions she had with people must have been meaningful. Maybe the way she lived half inside her own head and focused on her own projects so much gave her a kind of aura of determination and joy that touched those who spent time with her.

I don't know if it's something about 40.24 or the Perisdextrant's starter pack but none of my dwarves grieve for friends or pets or relatives. So long as they don't have to see the body, they don't care. I've decided to take some artistic license in that regard.

[Zuglarkun]

Your characterization is impressive. Very nice writing overall, I like that its not just formal overseer reports and more of differing perspectives among the different occupants of Soulbooks. Looking forward to seeing more from you in the future.

[De]

Four: Building the Plant Stockade


One of the first treatises to be recorded and distributed amongst the rising dwarven civilizations had been Irdanman Applehead’s work, The Enchanted Plane Explained, which described the fundamental forces acting upon the world and the natural laws which governed their behavior. Perhaps the oddest of the phenomena detailed within was the interaction between objects constructed by sentient creatures, such as dwarves, and objects that had come about through the actions of nature, namely trees. Trees, as the elves had observed since time immemorial, possessed vast quantities of the natural force of the earth, but once they were cut down and reconstructed into useful walls, this energy was rapidly voided. Something about this equal but opposite negative force interacted in strange ways with the living trees causing distortions in time and space, sometimes to a degree so alarming it threatened the continued existence of the universe. Stones it was widely believed, though it had never been sufficiently tested, were worse.

The elves had long since found a way to harness the energy of the trees. The two species lived in a harmony that the other bipedal folk of the Enchanted Plane found mysterious and inimitable. The dwarven method of coping was to either live far underground, the vast woody fungi of the caverns not sharing this particular property of the surface trees, or to cover the visible horizon in stone structures while turning the trees into charcoal for the forges. Conflict between the two groups had been sadly inevitable. While most found a way to tolerate or at least ignore one another, there were rumors of war to the east between The Hames of Socketing and a band of elves from the south.

There weren’t any elves so far north but there were other creatures and Soulbooks needed defensible walls, and the standard two block tree perimeter was not going to suffice. Gears eyed the sapling that had sprouted up overnight next to the flagstones he had carefully laid himself. It was too close, far too close. He heaved a mighty sigh and stomped off, calling out for Shorast.

“Blocks!” he shouted at the poor mason, who was already toiling past the entrance tunnel with a gneiss block balanced on his shoulders.

“I did the blocks already,” replied Shorast, thumping the one he was carrying down for emphasis.

“We’re going to need more I’m afraid.”

“How many more?” inquired Shorast, his voice full of sinking doubt.

“Hmmm,” Gears tapped his fingers on the resting stone while he calculated. “What we really need is for you to go back to your workshop and start making blocks until I tell you to stop.”

Standardplanned groaned a little too dramatically for a dwarf who had simply been instructed to do his job, but he nodded in Gears’s direction. “Aye, blocks until you say otherwise, I’ll get to it.”

“They’re very fine blocks,” said Gears in way of consolation.

“Ought to be sir, I’ve been carving blocks for as long as I can recall. I’d swear my first memory is of a chisel and a measuring string drawn across an uncut slab.”

“Well, once we have enough for the wall, you’ll be moving on to furniture.”

“I’ll look forward to the day, sir.” Shorast tried a feeble and unpracticed smile on him which Gears responded to with his own grin. Gears had an engaging expression and knew it. As far as he was concerned, there was no harm in using his natural gifts to lift the spirits of others; it was the essence of leadership and part of why her majesty had chosen him in particular to lead her project.

He mused on this as he walked into the entrance tunnel, past the waiting mechanisms and blocks that he had designated to become their front gate and through the hall where the traps would be laid as soon as he had a spare moment. The primary stockpile was at the end of this passage just beyond the new trade depot and the chicken coop. At some point he’d lost track of how much food and drink they had left in their supplies, an amateur sort of mistake but then he’d been busy. Gears wasn’t simply the expedition’s leader, he was also its bookkeeper, manager, business broker and only mechanic. Ida had sent word up that she’d dug a rather grand bedroom for him on the dormitory level but he hadn’t even been down to see it yet. He pushed this thought away, stretched his arms until he heard both shoulders pop, and then settled in to take stock of their bits and piles of things.

This turned out to be more complicated than expected. Already the system of stockpiles they’d worked out was confusing, a situation that was only going to worsen as the fortress grew into something worthy of the name. There was also the strange smoke he kept seeing in the air; Nomal must have gotten around to firing up the kitchen three levels down. The tantalizing thought of wandering downstairs to assess their biscuit supplies occurred and made counting even more difficult. The trouble with counting, Gears mused, was that it was inherently boring and thus failed to occupy the mind.

“Sir?”

Gears jerked in surprise. “Not now, can’t you see I’m counting.” He peered into a narrow face framed by long bright hair.

“I’m sorry sir, it looked like you’d fallen asleep in the doorway and I needed to put this back.” Doby lifted the handles of a small light cart.

“What is this?”

“It’s a wheelbarrow, sir. I just made it, and a few others. I hope that was alright. The wood stockpiles are overflowing and I though nobody would miss a few pieces.”

“No, no, use as much wood as you please, there’s plenty more standing around outside, but how did you get that thing up the stairs?”

“Oh I just wheeled it along next to the railing, sir, no trouble at all. It made moving the barrels down to the kitchen so much easier.”

“Is that where they’ve gone? I thought we’d run out of food.”

“You ordered the rest of it moved to the kitchen and pantry yesterday. There’s still one keg of rum and a barrel of ale left. We still have two servings of dried beef and three or so cave lobsters left after the trip. Nomal’s been collecting bilberries and storing them in another one of the barrels and she took that nasty rat weed stuff into the still, she says she can make it drinkable.” Doby tried to sound hopeful but couldn’t help wrinkling her nose at the prospect.

“You kept track of all of that, did you?”

“Well yes sir, I’ve been in and out of the kitchens all day and-”

“Good.” He looked around and picked up the thick green book the queen herself had given him the day their expedition had departed. He ran a thumb over the smooth unbroken binding and then pushed it into Doby’s hands. “I want you to keep track of it in here. I am officially giving you the title of bookkeeper of Soulbooks.”

“But- but sir! I’ve never done any accounting in my life!”

Gears smiled. “Well you know the saying about what you get for digging good ditches.”

Doby simply stared at him; her bronze colored eyes seemed to be swallowing up her face.

“All you get for digging good ditches is a bigger shovel,” Gears finished. “I’m sure you’ll do fine. All I want is for someone to keep track of what we’ve got in this book, someone who isn’t me.”

“So… You want me to write down how much food we have left?” She rested the book on the lip of the wheelbarrow, the tome made her hands look even tinier like those of a doll’s.

“And about our overflowing wood stockpiles.”

“But you were the one who cut down the trees, don’t you know how much there is?”

“I’m afraid not, I was trying to solve a problem and I didn’t keep track. We need somebody to count how many logs there actually are. And to check where the rope went off to, and to make a couple more buckets for Tek if we can’t find the ones we brought with us. Basically we need someone to keep track of everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes. I see you understand.” He patted her on the shoulder. “You’ll have an office just as soon as Ida gets around to digging out a new storey for us. Bookkeeper is a noble title, one of the most important posts in the government. Congratulations on your promotion. Now I’m going to bed.” He squeezed by her, no mean feat given his belly and her rather generous proportions, and headed off down the stairs before the gray smoke could carry him away again.

Tek was the one who shook him awake after two days spent recovering in his brand new bed that still smell of pine shavings. The doctor pressed a mug of straight water into his hands. Gears preferred beer first thing in the morning, assuming it was morning, but didn’t complain. His tongue felt like a scrap of leather stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“What happened?”

“Exhaustion, you’ve been asleep for days.”

“Have I really?”

“Yes, making up the sleep deficit. I would have left you to wake up on your own but Miss Whimtool seems to have some kind of crisis over in the workshops; thank you for having her find the buckets by the way. If you could spare a moment to assemble them into a well it would make looking after patients like you more convenient.”

“Does that puddle you call a reservoir have enough liquid in it now to support a well?”

Tek scratched his beard. “I suppose there’s no rush, keep it in mind though.”

“I do. I was planning to head down to the hospital right after breakfast, as it was, but now you tell me there’s a crisis so we’ll both have to wait.” He held out an arm and Tek took it, pulling him to his feet. The doctor stayed close by his side as he hobbled on his stiff legs to the staircase.

They heard the shouting while they were still one storey away.

“What are we supposed to do with nine hundred and thirty eight blocks? We can’t even move in here!”

“Listen lass, I was told to make blocks until the boss said stop and I have. I’d still be making ‘em too if we weren’t out of rocks.”

“That’s the other thing, you’ve made every stone in the fortress into a block, what are we supposed to do for furniture?”

“Beats me. Yer a carpenter, why don’t you go sand some twigs into a chair or whatever it is you do and leave me be.”

“Oh dear,” said Gears and he hobbled a little faster.

“Don’t you take that tone of voice with me you blockhead!” Doby was shouting as Gears cleared the stairs and entered the workshops. Tall pillars of stone blocks filled the room and spilled out into the surrounding environs. Glancing up, he could see more of the things taking up space on the stairs. He didn’t have time to contemplate the extent of the pileup, Shorast had his hands on his hips and tiny Doby looked ready to launch herself at his face.

“Now, now you two,” said Gears scooting in between the mason and carpenter. “Everyone here was simply following my orders.”

“The furniture stockpile is full of blocks,” answered Doby, turning on him. At least she wasn’t yelling at Shorast anymore. Not that this was a huge comfort in the face of the full force of her irritation. “Production has come to a complete halt. There’s no space anywhere. What are you going to do?”

“Build a wall,” Gears improvised.

“We already did that,” pointed out Shorast.

“A bigger wall, one that’s high enough to give us a vantage point on the surroundings and to protect the outdoor farm that new woman wants to set up. Maybe we’ll even put in a tower that we can guard our livestock from.” It sounded like a good plan for something he’d just made up. Shorast and Doby both stopped to contemplate it. Gears seized the moment of silence and ran on ahead. “Shorey, go find Ida and have her dig a second stockpile up on the first floor and we’ll move all the blocks out of the furniture stockpile and into there, that way they’ll be on hand for wall building. Then you, Miss Whimtool, can proceed with building furniture for our dining hall. Does that sound like a good plan to everyone?”

It did apparently. Gears saw the carpenter and mason go off to their tasks and then made his way back to Tek.

“Well done,” murmured the doctor. “I don’t suppose you have time to come look at my wells before you begin planning your new keep?”

“Maybe if we go right now,” Gears replied. He wasn’t too worried though. The layout for the building had begun to take shape in his mind the moment he’d started speaking. He was already making calculations for how to deal with the uneven ground outside. Soon the dwarves of Soulbooks would look out across the forest from the heights of their new castle. The trees would not know what had hit them.

notes

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So... remember how I said there were only a few screenshots for this fortress? Well, now you can revise that to no screen shots. It all started when Soundsense began crashing every time I opened Dwarf Fortress. I thought to myself "No problem, I'll just reinstall this from the zip file for the starter pack." So I backed up the saves and I thought I had backed up the User Generated Content folder, then I deleted the older LNP folder and created a new one. The saves for my fortresses were fine but the User Generated Content folder turned out to be empty for some reason. Which means all my screen shots, notes and this episode were gone. I rewrote the episode, as you can see, and I will probably get around to writing up some new notes but there's nothing I can do about the screen shots. Sorry about that. As an added bonus I also accidentally deleted the post for chapter two while trying to work on this one, so you can that I'm on a roll here.

This chapter was harder to write because there was less of a mini-story arc to work with. Fortunately, there was the incident of leaving the order to make blocks standing and then forgetting about it to work with. This is why many of the older parts of Soulbooks have all wooden furniture. It's lovely wooden furniture I should point out, Doby is a master of her craft among many other things.

[Gwolfski]

did you check recycle bin?

[De]

did you check recycle bin?

Yup. It was awhile before I realized my mistake and I share the laptop I'm using until I've assembled my new computer. Not a huge loss, just frustrating.