The first thing I noticed when I came to Ineth Zafal was the vast pools of blood everywhere.
I mean, like, everywhere. The buildings are filled with blood, the river is coated with blood, even the goddamn trees have blood on them.
The second thing I noticed was how messily everything was strewn about. Workshops, buildings, bridges, quarries, all in random places. There was even a lever floating in the middle of nowhere. Whoever I asked about what it is or what it does would just shrug and walk away.
Oh well. Not my district, not my problem. I was sent here by the Mountainhomes after recent events at home have caused me to be ridiculed and labeled as humankin. The events in question were me stating that building above-ground structures "possibly could be might be not the worst possible decision to be made in certain very rare situations, maybe." After meeting with the Ineth Zafal Management Board, and upon evaluation of my engineering expertise, I was assigned as Chief Mechanic of Ineth Zafal and assigned to District E3 to make "a mechanical Weapon for the Defense of the Territory of Ineth Zafal."
When I arrived in my district I noticed something strange in the trees. Upon closer inspection it appeared to be a human maceman.
I tried calling out to him but he just stared blankly into the distance. I don't know who he is or what he's doing up there, but I guess I'll just leave him alone.
I started working on a weapon design, a sort of machine that fires high-speed water jets at invaders. This was my original design:
The minecart would go down the ramp (below the gear assembly), fill with water, go up the rampway a, go across to the other rampway, and roll down hitting the fortification at high speed, shooting the water at the enemies.
However, the minecart had an annoying habit of jamming against the gear assembly and bouncing backward. Thus I decided on doing another design:
My moving the roller over to the left I avoided placing any mechanics on top of any minecart tracks at all.
We started work.
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The minecart track was progressing quickly. However, there was still a lot of spare manpower to be used. I designed and began work on a pumping apparatus which would take water from the river and place it in a large water reservoir, for on-demand use by other districts.
Due to the complicated process of constructing pumps, however, work was slow on this new project. All the required components for pumps were located elsewhere in the city, and the architects designing the pumps had to bring them all the way over to obtain a gauge on how to progress with the design.
However, slow progress is still progress, and little by little the pump stack was built.
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Eventually, some of our group started to spot strange...
things in the sky. There were like great monsters, in the revolting shape of flies. Some of us started to panic and run away. I tried to calm them down and tell them to get back to work, but they
just didn't listen. Lazy assholes.
The Ineth Zafal ranged military was dispatched to deal with this problem, but the monsters were too high up in the sky. Management stationed them on top of the minecart track I was building, but they still couldn't reach the monstrosities.
This whole time construction had utterly stopped. In fact,
nothing in an entire half of the city could be done thanks to these beasts. They remained in the sky for a while, but eventually floated off to another place and left us alone.
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Some casualties have been caused by tests of my recent constructions.
First off, for some reason, a human was caught on the minecart track just as I activated the rollers on my (yet-unfinished) watergun. Guess no-one ever told him.
Fortunately, he was quickly rushed off to the hospital. Not sure if he survived, but eh.
Furthermore, when I tried to test my water pump, there happened to be cracks in the system, which allowed high-velocity jets of water through. A treecutter was caught in the spray and forced into the river. Not knowing how to swim, he drowned in the water right then and there.
Oh well. Sacrifice of the few for the betterment of the many! We must continue working.
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One day there was rumor of an expansive cave system directly underneath the city. Management picked up on this and decided I was the man for the job of piercing it.
However, they had one condition -- that I must make sure that sunlight reach every part of the construction.
I informed them that it was ludicrous and not at all possible, but they did not relent. Over many days I created a design that would satisfy their requirements. It involved many pumps and was generally very dangerous to all those involved.
The first attempt, in fact, failed, when a miner dug in the wrong place. He paid for it with his life.
The second attempt had a revised design, however, and work continued on it without incident.
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I was standing outside overseeing the construction of my projects when I heard a snarl somewhere east of me.
I saw some... donkey-like creature, but with absolutely ripped muscles and glowing eyes. I was expecting it to bolt straight towards me, perhaps destroying all my hard work of the past few months if not me, but do you know where it went?
It went straight into a tree. The tree with the maceman in it.
For the first time in 6 months the maceman actually
did something. He started fighting the monster. He fought valiantly, but eventually succumbed to his wounds and died right there in the trees.
However, his efforts were not in vain. His distraction gave Management enough time to position several militia at the base of the tree, which quickly ripped apart the monster as soon as soon as it came down.
Disaster averted.
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Several more strange things have been happening.
To set some context, the minecart track and the pump apparatus (but not the reservoir) have been completed, and the cave project is almost done with the hard part -- that is, piercing the water-filled soil layer just underneath the surface.
First off, several more humans died on the minecart tracks. Do they ever learn?
Also, remember when Management stationed those marksmen up on those tracks? Yeah? Well, they're still there. And they've obviously been interfering with my plans.
One time when I did a test run of the watergun (without the water), the minecart hit one of the marksmen and splintered into a million pieces. I witnessed the marksman
fly straight off the minecart track and traverse a parabola almost across my entire division. What was even more dazzling was the
complete lack of injury whatsover to the marksman.
He was a little stunned though. I don't blame him; I was pretty stunned as well.
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The start of winter had just started and I was relaxing in my chair when I heard loud shouts and clanging somewhere to the south.
I stood up and looked. A great force of goblins and trolls was approaching.
I shivered and feared the worst.
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Topic: Ineth Zafal, a Humankin fortress (Read 36191 times)