I really enjoy making these and reading the comments makes it even more enjoyable
Of course, I'm more than happy to continue.
Hmm, maybe Garry could have a heart attack from eating too much Spam. :p
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First, Blitukus found the need to fully establish his means for shaping the metal. So, he walked back into the tunnel, back down to the work room, and dug out the corner in order to make room for a smiths shop. On his way over the river, a few of the rough stone chunks dislodged from the bridge and fell into the river. Before hauling that anvil over the bridge, he would need to replace it with something suitable for such weights, less he end up salvaging a rusted hunk of an anvil out of the river...
After he finished carving out more space, he walked back to the bridge, and began knocking stone out from the supports until the entire bridge just collapsed into the river, sending an enormous cloud of mist into the air. Then, he dismantled the columns, leaving only the base at the bottom of the river. He never really liked destroying his own work, especially since it was a milestone, being his first construct in the glacier, but it had to be done for the sake of progress. He watched the rough stone tumble downstream on the river floor, sighing out of his nose, but turned and walked back into the tunnel. He hauled a boulder into the masons shop, and broke it apart, crafting the chunks into blocks. Then, the second boulder came from the space which he had just excavated. He then hauled the blocks to the river, making 2 trips, and built the supports anew, the new blocks making a true circle over the rough shape of the old supports imprint. Blitukus finished the supports, and stopped for a drink. He found his work was done much more swiftly than last time as he finished and continued to lay the blocks to form a path over the supports, using every last block to do so. The new bridge easily stood in the current of the river, and quite visibly was ready to support a large weight. He had dismantled the structure of his past, sacrificing his milestone work for progress, and he got every bit of progress that he wanted.
He found another random boulder, and brought it back to the masons workshop to make blocks out of it. At the same time, he designed his forge in his mind, and crafted the blocks to specification. Not wasting any time, he moved the blocks to the new space, and then crossed his new bridge, walking through the exit. The anvil was a dwarven anvil, and was very, very heavy. Luckily, his efforts in mining had made him very strong, and he managed to haul the anvil even though it was intended for a creature larger than him. He grunted as he dragged the large iron mass, but his new bridge stood firmly under the weight as he crossed it, not budging at all. He built the forge, the anvil placed near a wall, assembling the blocks to form a furnace to the side that was smaller than the others, intended for heating the metal, and a water container on the opposite side, intended for cooling the finished product. Again, he carved a duct in the ceiling to bring the smoke from the furnace to the vent, and to finish it off, used two leftover blocks to make a nice, heavy hammer to work the metal with. He now had everything he needed to produce and work metal, and, thinking of this, he smiled at his accomplishments. It was all starting to come together, he was making progress toward building the machine, but, he still needed to design and build the infrastructure. Pick axe resting on his shoulder, he walked back into his room and got back to smoothing the floor and walls. Chipping away at the walls produced a lot of dirt and chippings, an inconvenience to many dwarves, but Blitukus found it was useful as material to put in the farm room. Deeper, finer soil would allow for better food. He quickly found it to be a dull and repetitive task, but he was creating a large amount of space to write designs upon, for the smooth walls were like a large, blank chalk board to him. He had read about tower caps the day before, and, much to his dismay, found one growing in the muddy floor under a barrel. When it grew to size, he noted that he had better have either a pick or preferably an axe on hand otherwise it would block the tunnel, permanently. A barrel had been emptied, and every now and then Blitukus took a break from smoothing the floor to move a mushroom from the floor into a proper container. He found, even more to his dismay, that a tower cap was growing under the door, and would seal the door shut when it matured. He looked down at it.
I wanted lumber but not giant mushrooms growing all over my home!
He continued, but stopped to take a drink as he nearly finished the southern wall. The barrel was nearly empty, and he would have more room for food when he emptied it. Plus, being drunk added onto his toughness and strength, making him less prone to be annoyed by bits of rock flying at him and less prone to tire. Luckily, despite the alcohol, he remained sober enough to not simply make the floors even more rough. He noted a drawback to working in such a state: he would be unable to design and build anything truly large unless he was perfectly sober. It became colder outside, and a snow storm howled, piling up snow once again on the glaciers surface.
Autumn has come.
It's really been close to three seasons since I was stranded out here? It seems like only a few days.
Smoothing the work room was proving to be long and tedious. Blitukus stopped for a meal in the mean time, and took his time eating it. It was the last piece of meat within a 200 mile radius, and he took his time to enjoy every last piece of it. From now on, he would be eating those purple mushrooms, and he was not used to being a vegetarian. Unfortunately, meat doesn't grow on plots, and he was still the only major fauna around... except for that red being.
Who was she anyway? She sounded like a she. Was she trying to hit me with that anvil, or did she sense my needs and send one my way?
He continued smoothing. The smoothed floors were cold, but rather comfortable beneath his feet. But, something eroded his comfort immediately. He heard the grunts and yell of a sasquatch outside, but was unaware to its whereabouts. He saw the door to the work room, which he was in, open and close, slowly, but missed who had done it. A sense of dread came over him. He continued smoothing, but remained alert. The roar sounded again, but, he listened carefully. It was not in the room, it was not in his home, it was far outside of the tunnel.
The door had likely been pushed by some vermin milling about. Blitukus breathed a sigh of relief and continued smoothing. Maybe he would first build a nice, heavy bronze door to keep out the sasquatch. The last thing he wanted was to wake up one day to a sasquatch ambush. He finished smoothing, and realized, that if the sasquatch kept yelling and roaring on its way in, he would notice it in time to prepare. He had dug through solid rock, opening a tunnel to the mountains artery. If he was forced to, he would hold no hesitation in digging through the skull and brain of those who would try to kill him. He had better uses for his bronze, better things to do at the moment. He needed steam for his machines, and steam needs fire to be brought to water. He needed a magma machine to bring fire to water, and he now had the space, and the sobriety, to design one.
He took the coal dust from the smelter, and used his fingertip as a writing impliment to sketch out a general plan for the machine on the wall. He would need a floodgate to draw up the magma, a channel to deliver it to a tunnel, and another floodgate to release it into the tunnel. In order to continue mining coal, he would need to bridge the channel. He lacked the metal to bridge the magma river itself, but as the magma is drawn up, the lower volume would make it spatter about much less. Heavy stone would do, as there would be no spattering to eat away at it. He would have to build an aqueduct to bring the magma across the chasm, and it would spill out into a continued tunnel. Then all that was left would be continuing the tunnel to near his home, and he would have fire. Getting water to that point was a simple matter of two floodgates and a tunnel. There, at the meeting point of fire and water, he would have steam, and he would build his boiler. While building the tunnels he would benefit by making service entries so that he wouldn't have to walk a long route when he got hungry and thirsty, increasing efficiency. These service entries would have to be blocked by a channel dug right into the service entry with a tall lip on the outside. Before arriving here, Blitukus had never really seen magma, let alone experimented with it. He would have to learn as he worked, and possibly go back to correct any sort of error.
He looked at his design for several minutes, and then set out to etch it into reality. He would need 24 units of room to build the aqueduct, and since a single stack of blocks would cover only 4 units, he would have to craft 6 sets of blocks. He walked away, grabbed a boulder, and began making the blocks. A boulder reliably produced one set of blocks, and he would have to repeat this 5 more times. He finished, and proceeded out to get another. He walked across the river, and heard a gushing sound. On his way back, he froze, terror shooting into him. He was about to be overtaken by a wall of water. SPLOOSH! The water plowed into the bridge, knocking Blitukus clean off. He found himself slammed into the river, water forced down his throat.
The force knocked all of the air from his lungs, and time was short. He grabbed onto one of the rocks from his old bridge on the cave floor, and held on. Fighting the current, he made his way over to the wall, and pulled himself upstream on defects in the rough wall. Nearly entirely out of air, he pulled himself to the surface and brought himself onto the shore. The flood had burst through, rocketing up the tunnel. If he had not rebuilt his bridge, he would have been knocked unconscious by falling rubble as the bridge was washed away, and washed downstream to his death. His new bridge proudly stood unaffected, yet he was still nearly washed downstream to his death. That was close, much too close. He was still being pushed about by the flood waters, but they were receding, and he was firmly on shore. The flood receded, leaving him sitting in mud. He stood up, and shivered. He coughed and hacked, driving the water out of his throat. He shook the water off from his fur, and took his pick axe to the wall blocking him from his main tunnel. After breaking through, he continued hauling stones and making blocks. But, as he was chipping away at blocks, suddenly an enormous bat-like creature landed before him and knocked his tools away. It seemed injured, and was angry against all because of it.
An injured giant bat has sprung from ambush!
Blitukus jumped back from it as it snapped at him, he took up his pick axe and stood back as the creature spread its wings and approached him. The giant bat had a crippled wing and leg, and was desperate to eat something, or perhaps suck someones blood. Blitukus quickly pinned the creature and drove his pick into its body several times. It screeched, spat blood, and died. He shivered again and breathed heavily, pulling his bloody pick out from the corpse.
So much for home sweet home! It turns out mining through flesh is easier than it sounds...
He stood for a moment, his fear being canceled by his evident victory over the beast. He continued on. He was nervous that something else would surprise him... forget it. He stopped to get a good drink of rum, and put it behind him.
Good rum, maybe if I drink enough I'll figure out how to mine for fish!
He then continued. He only got one more set of blocks done when he decided to sleep for the night. When he got up, he would have to get rid of that dead bat before it started stinking the whole place up. But, this day, browsing through his books, he found what he was searching for. "of Fire, Iron, Steel, and Magma" by 'Tito' Greatsmith. He curiously read it, and it described everything he wanted to know. It included details on the properties and manufacture of steel, and even included designs for magma-based versions of the forge and smelter. It would definitely reduce fuel costs, but these devices must be constructed from steel in the first place. Steel seemed costly to produce, requiring limestone and extra coke as a carbon source. Bronze would suffice for most of his steam-powered devices, so he would save steel for when he really needed it.
That day he had a dream, perhaps a nightmare, of an indescribable jumble of information. Perhaps his subconscious was complaining about the act of reading while drunk? When he awoke, he had a headache from the drinking of the night before. He grunted and got up, rubbing his head, then walked back to the work room. He picked up the giant bat corpse, the large beast weighing him down as he dragged it to the chasm and heaved it in. It disappeared into the darkness. THWAP! There was an angry screeching from below. He continued back to finish the blocks. After a while, he had finished. The workshop was littered with blocks, enough to build a suitable aqueduct with. He was making progress, but there was still much to do. His head churned dreams of a steam powered, magma heated future, but it also churned nightmares of a painful death at the hands of a ravenous beast, and a watery grave. He mumbled under his breath, "What the hell am I up against?"
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THANK YOU whoever wrote teleport.exe XD
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Topic: A Kobold's Quest II (Read 76104 times)