Double-posting because update
Excerpts from
A Million Little Pichus: A Memoir, by Maximum Spin Valecrafts:
Three of the elves' Pokémon were claimed in no time. RedMageCole wanted the Cranidos and Birdy the Trumbeak; these are things I am more than happy to provide to my friends. And MottledPetrel came to me and asked me for a Gliscor. MottledPetrel, with his army of Joltik, I had sought to conclude business with for some time, and I was glad to see him come to me with a request. So I told him, "some day, and this day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. Until that day, accept this Gliscor as a gift on the day of my Garchomps' evolution." He nodded and scurried off with his new Gliscor.
Before the elves left, though, I chanced upon AernJardos singing raucously in the tavern, and I sharply informed him that he would be assigned a Jigglypuff for his disorderly behaviour. He didn't seem to appreciate the gravity of the punishment. After purchasing these four Pokémon, Goldsilver's tradeable stock was exhausted, and the elves sent on their way.
I spent some time contemplating ways to expand our export capacity, with an eye to the benefits that could accrue to my own business interests if we become exporters of wool or Combee products. Unfortunately, the latter case would take some time, since my precious Combee hives had all been destroyed at some previous time and I was in still in the process of rebuilding them, but the Mareep shearing was progressing apace under the watchful eye of my protégé bloop_bleep. As I considered these things and others, my wandering brought me back to the site of the recent battle, and I noticed something that interrupted my train of thought with a bout of laughter: there, in a murky pool now more blood than water, several goblins were sleeping with the fishes.
While in the midst of training RedMageCole's new Cranidos (under new fortress regulations dictating that all capable pokémon be trained for hunting or defense), a leatherworker was suddenly possessed by some unknown force, possibly a Darkrai, and charged off to the leatherworks floor. This was mildly dispiriting, since it suggested that the first artefact of my reign would most likely be pointless. Well, you can't win them all. I made a mental note to have the worker dumped in the goblin pond if the artefact disappointed me.
Then I stopped by the shearing station, which was in the process of being expanded. bloop_bleep, overseeing the construction, took a moment to ask me something strange about aliens and space and when I was going to have time to "update" something. I smiled blandly and responded "don't worry, overseeing Goldsilver comes first but there will be plenty of time for that afterward." bloop_bleep is a fine shearer, but he has always seemed a little odd sometimes. All that static from the Mareep wool might not be so good for the brain.
Around that same time, I had word that a few new migrants had just arrived to our beautiful fortress, and it seems they took the scenic route through the still-bloody battlefield, since every one of them was standing around crying about death when I got there. Obviously useless, the lot of them. I told them to stop shaming their families, but that just made them cry harder. At least they brought some Pokémon: a Golbat, a Gogoat, a Delphox, a Chesnaught, a Venusaur, and a Persian. No breeding pairs of anything, of course; that would have been dangerously close to being
useful.
Considering the new arrivals, I decided to ask FirePheonix11 to draw up a list of all the unclaimed Pokémon in the fort, or at least all the ones we know about. I even resisted the urge to cross off all the Gabite and Flaaffy before posting it next to one of the glorious statues I'd commissioned for the tavern.
Those statues were after a design I'd created in order to remind the dwarves of Goldsilver about their ever-present silent protectors. I had been making a point to install them wherever I felt the decor needed some cheering-up.
I had ordered similar customised statues for certain important fortress personae as well, to be placed in their personal rooms as a reminder that, even in their personal rooms, I am always watching. Watching out for them, that is, of course.
Meanwhile, the leatherworker finished his artefact, a Deino leather shield decorated with chunks of adamantine. After deliberation, I decided it was useful enough that I wouldn't bother executing its creator, for now.
FirePhoenix11 and RedMageCole informed me that they had learned a few facts about Luxray training. Luxrays, of course, will make a fine addition as ancillary agents to the Mareep Mafia. Before long, the same was true of Burmy and Grubbin training, which was less immediately interesting to me, but will probably make Mottled Petrel happy. Keeping one's business associates happy is the sort of thing one needs to understand to get ahead in the world.
Nothing of particular interest happened for a while after that. Until, of course, something did.
The cry went up: a Mega Medicham had been sighted approaching the fortress from the direction of the battleground (apparently the only place anything will arrive). There were always a few dwarves who had wandered out there to pick more items off the field of corpses, and the unlucky ones who had chosen to do so today were cut off from Goldsilver's entrance completely. This happened to include, for reasons which remain utterly beyond me, Goldsilver's rather no-account king, Bëmbul. This wasn't a problem as such, but Bëmbul had always been useful to the Mareep Mafia, even eager to let us take the real decisions off his plate – and it would be a shame to see him replaced with somebody who might get unfortunate ideas like "cleaning house" or "running a tight ship". So I sent the freshly-healed Nopal and his men to prevent such an occurence.
Meanwhile, I stood on the roof to watch and see whether they would succeed.