Chapter 3: Dinosaurs, Demons, and YouJournal of Asmel, 11 Limestone, 1000Two peasants, a clothier, a tanner, a lye maker, and a diagnoser. Those are skills the new migrants have. One of the peasants, Iton, at least has some novice skill a weapon (being good at a mace means you’re good at using a spear, right?). Otherwise the skills are not very useful to anyone. How much lye do you have to make to become a high master lye maker? Has anyone, in the history of the world, ever, Ever, needed that much?
Kivish also managed to get on my nerves by letting his pet goose fly up on the tree and get stuck, and then he got stuck trying to go after to it!
Luckily, the fire department (an angry dwarf with an axe) managed to cut him down after a few days. We could have gotten him down sooner, but we had more important things to be doing, like this ‘no job’ thing everyone seems to be having these days.
We’re going to have to fix that. I’ve begun to changes everyone’s allowed skills so that we are able to work more efficiently. I plan soon to order PychoAngel and Itel to enter the fortress and do some scouting work to see what’s down there. We have no idea how dangerous whatever down there is, which means that it’s entirely possible the second we remove the floor the two military dwarves will be killed immediately. It’s very brave of me to come up with a plan like this in the first place. That’s in the future, though. In the meantime, we have to get this fort up and running.
Journal of Asmel, 8 Sandstone, 1000We have settled into a rhythm. I have stopped my mining and taken up bookkeeping and managing of the fortress. I’ll also be a mechanic when we get more rock. We also have laid Amoth to rest. It wasn’t much of a funeral. Most people were too busy working to attend. I wasn’t working at the time, but I, once again, had more important things to be doing, like admiring a fine chair in the dining room while on my break.
Tilat, meanwhile, now has the masonry job enabled. She isn’t actually a mason yet, though, because we don’t actually have any stone. Degel, the other peasant from the migrant wave, is now a miner. Everyone else has done what I’ve said they were doing before, or really whatever I tell them they should do.
The reason I’m writing this update, though, is that today, we are finally going to learn what we’re up against. PychoAngel and Itel are ready. On my order, the floor blocking fortress entrance is removed. The two dwarves rush down. On the surface, we begin to rebuild the floor, but do not complete it fully. That way, if something goes wrong, we can reseal the entrance.
Events of 10 Sandstone, 1000PychoAngel stopped. Iton was behind her, still trying to catch her breath. The two of them had descended nearly forty levels, and still, they had seen nothing at all. The only sign of life the spiral staircase had was some moss growing on the floor they stood on.
“Good,” Iton thought. She wondered if the others were wrong. Maybe the screaming they heard was a weird problem with the wind. Maybe there was nothing down here at all. She had asked PychoAngel about this, but the commander had ignored the question.
PychoAngel looked back up. “Alright,” she spoke, “Break’s over. It’s time to keep moving.” Apparently, you kill the only titan in the world in a duel and now you think you’re all that. The commander ran down the staircase, with Iton struggling to follow.
The newer recruit wondered if they could actually win in a fight, especially now that they had tired themselves out. Sure, they were armored fully in steel (besides Iton’s breastplate), but between the two of them, they didn’t have that much skill. PsychoAngel’s two minute battle with the titan didn’t count.
The military commander stopped suddenly. Iton, running and panting behind, nearly bumped into her. They had entered a small hallway. The stone all around them was smoothed. Even in the darkness, Iton could tell that they had reached the main part of the fortress. In front of them lie a single downward staircase. The two dwarves walked towards it.
Before they reached the stairs, however, PyschoAngel froze. Iton started to ask what was wrong, but the other dwarf quickly covered her mouth, so she couldn’t speak. PychoAngel pointed, just below the stairs, and Iton saw them.
Something else was wrong, though. One of the creatures turned gently towards them, whispering. At first, Iton couldn’t hear what the creature was saying. Slowly, though, the creature slowly became louder and louder, until the dwarf could hear: “Iton. Iton. Iton. Iton. Iton. Iton. Iton. Iton. Iton. Iton. Iton. Iton. Iton.”
Iton, horrified, looked at the military commander. The two dwarves waited, then slowly crept back towards the spiral staircase. Once they felt they were far enough away, both began sprinting up, back to the layer with the cavern moss. Another dwarf was there, building a floor over the downward ramp.
With the floor built, the two military dwarves relaxed. The creatures below could not get up. They were safe, for now. “How did they get out?” asked Iton. “They can’t escape unless someone lets them out, and nobody was here to let them out before you guys!” The dwarf began to panic again.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know,” PsychoAngel replied. “And calm down! We need to get back to the surface. We have to tell the others what we saw.” The two dwarves rushed back without uttering one more word.
Journal of Asmel, 12 Sandstone, 1000We now know what inhabits the fortress. The screaming we heard, as we had feared, was a group of demons, who had somehow escaped Hell and into the underground. We don’t know how, and we don’t know why, but somehow, they’re here.
After that, we all met in the dining hall to decide what we should do. Kivish wanted to abandon the fortress. He asked us if fighting demons was worth it to reclaim the fortress, and suggested that we abandon the area to build a new fortress somewhere else. I told him that if we ever needed help with lye making, we would ask him. We were going to make a decision that wasn’t entirely stupid. He may have tried to start a fight after that, but a look from PychoAngel shut him down.
The military commander then went into greater detail about what she was down there. They saw four demons. Without a doubt, they know that we’re here. One of them even began chanting Iton’s name. For some reason, though, they did not attack.
For simplicity, I’ve posted each what each of the demons are below.
The first is an ankylosaurd devil. Basically, picture a turtle. Now, cover the turtle’s shell in sharp spikes. Now give it feathers and wings so it can fly. Make its tail as hard as rock so it has the ability to bludgeon anyone to death. Also, it has a venomous bite. Finally, make it giant and filled with the urge to destroy the world and murder everyone. You know what? Don’t picture a turtle. This looks and acts nothing like one.
This one is easier to picture. First, take a roc. You know, the kind that are huge and murder everything in their path. Take away its feathers and give it scales. Now put mandibles around its beak. This one, too, is poisonous. You have successfully created a pterosaur demon! Nice work, moron, you just created a pterosaur demon.
Finally, though, theyItel described the one-eyed brute. The other two demons were merely giant, intelligent, evil dinosaurs who had unusual and more deadly feature. You know, not very hard to kill. The one eyed brute, now, is a true monster. Normally the shape of a bird, it has a long, elephant-like trunk hanging from its beak. This is the monster that new Iton’s name. This is the most hideous, terrifying monster the world has ever seen:
The face of evil.
It’s a lot like that, but even
worse.
Behold! The monster of our time. The bane of our existence. This small, adorable bird from HELL is the deadliest creature this world has ever seen. Its dust attack means melee combat is impossible. It can fly, meaning we cannot outrun it. Then there’s the whole, “I know your name and am going to whisper it seductively as I kill you,” bit. To make it worse, PychoAngel said they saw two off this kind of demon. Truly, there is no end to the terror.
Now that a new floor has been built, we have about forty levels of demon free stone to work with. Eventually, though, we are going to have to face the demons. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but I do know this: we will not run. If we ran, the demons would somehow find a way to escape to the surface. We will not hide, either. Eventually, when we are ready, we will fight. And once we begin to fight, we’re going to murder ALL the chickadees.
OOC: So, there’s what we’re up against. Not a single demon we’ve seen so far is made of ash/snow/fire/sand, which means that they all are going to be extremely hard to kill. Trust me, I’ve done some alternate universe testing, and every battle with even a single one eyed brute has ended with the entire fortress getting massacred. It’s not going to be easy to retake the fortress, that’s for sure. Also, I'm not sure why the demons didn't attack, but I'm not going to complain about it.
@Nep Nep: I’m actually pretty glad something interesting happened quickly. It might be a while before I feel confident enough to fight even one demon, not to mention the entire army of them. Most of my other worlds sound more like yours; I only made this a community fortress because I thought it was really cool.
@De: Yep. It’s a pocket world. When I generated the world, I never intended for it to be a community game. Normally, my crappy laptop can’t handle very large worlds for too long, which means smaller worlds are the best way to go. It’s still pretty fun though, as generally pocket worlds with three megabeasts tend to kill off every civilization except for goblins, so we can expect a fair amount of sieges later on.
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Topic: The Watchers: Siege of Axedipped (Community) (Read 3806 times)