King Zan felt he was a people's king, despite his penchant for locking up growing numbers of the general populace for longer periods of time for not meeting his mandates quick enough.
The duchess Etur, and the mayor Ast were a part of his royal court who were convinced of this as well, and on any given day there were 5 or 6 dwarves in jail for various "crimes against production" as they called them. They were seemingly oblivious to Fath's growing cult of religious zealots who worshipped the artifacts of old. Fath would pick one at random on any given week to worship.
Axemosses
The Tepid Bastion
The Depth of Fancying
Flusheddeath the Oracular Targets
King Zan thought that since he worked with the miners they respected him, clearing out the large areas needed for the tree farm and the underground reservoir needed to irrigate it.
It was a difficult engineering project requiring controlled cave-ins of 4 stories of vast spaces that were mined out around the glass tower.
They also had to rebuild a strip mined area below with stone blocks to ensure the collapse didn't extend farther than what they wanted.
It was an enormous undertaking spanning years of effort that was finally ready. The switch was pulled and the cave collapsed.
After the dust cleared, the hatches were opened and water from the six floor reservoir rushed into the artificial cavern flooding in and irrigating the ground.
At last the dwarves of Archcrystal could clear cut a forest that was not beset by horrible clouds up above.
Etur the duchess was also very fond of elaborate traps, so she constructed a magma reservoir above the long glass entrance to the tower for any foolish enough assault the fortress - which still surprisingly happened at least once a year.
And above it the glass tower continued to rise.
Archcrystal was equally close to 4 heavily populated goblin cities and therefore invaded frequently by all of them.
The elves also assaulted Archcrystal once every few years in retribution for destroying the jungle, evil though it was. And always the following year their caravan would arrive wanting to trade as if nothing untoward had happened. When questioned about the raids, their diplomat would always reply that the attacking elves were a rogue off-shoot - "insurgent elves" as he called them, not officially aligned with the Elf Queen Lesana. So when the time came to test the magma trap at the entrance, somehow it coincided with the visit of the elvish caravan.
There screams carried well through the glass walls, but the dwarves insisted they could not hear them. The elvish diplomat looked on with horror as the last elf was pinned up against the locked glass door clawing with futile desperation against it. The outpost liaison looked at the elvish diplomat and shrugged, "Insurgent Magma."
On a sadder note Iton died at the age of 170, the last of the soldiers to invade Hell. Her blade “ShamefulIntense the Heavy Deterioration” passed to Kivish who already showed great skill with it.
Many of the weapons have been passed on now between 2 and even 5 generations. Fath regarded these with reverence as well and he incorporated their legacy into his “Paths to Divinity” sermons which he gave regularly.
But for a moment Fath sat alone in his opulent room designed by craftsdwarves centuries ago with pictures of glory and sacrifice in every known available resource. He would regularly attempt to commune with them but was constantly disappointed. They did not seem to share his efforts for communication. He was like a child in the throws of a tantrum, railing against what he saw was their disrespect towards him for not confirming his own beliefs. In his heart of hearts he knew they listened to him and if there was no response then it was their choice not to answer him which made his blood boil under the surface of his normalized exterior, practiced to appear calm and serene. But to Fath, anything could be rationalized and explained, and he forced himself to believe that he could hear the things that he wanted hear through a desperation and a longing for significance which provoked him to control destiny - or at least attempt to. He had a keen self awareness that the history of the world before him was very brief and that he could shape the story of his world for thousands of generations to come if he could only act with a lasting and permanent conviction. His was an absolute belief punctured with hidden doubts.
Author
Topic: Archcrystal: 500 years in a fortress [SPOILERS] Finished (Read 495140 times)