It is once again that wonderful time of year when Maximum Spin and his eight flying Mareep come to deliver presents to all the good dwarf boys and girls.
Excerpts from
A Million Little Pichus: A Memoir, by Maximum Spin Valecrafts:
To solve the little population problem, Nopal and I took a trip down to the throne room to see King Bėmbul. A noted patron of the arts, I knew Bėmbul would be swayed once I extemporaneously delivered the new poem I had just written for him, a sonnet employing querns as a metaphor for the beauty and fragility of dwarven life. After I finished, King Bėmbul took a solemn look back at the special statues I'd ordered placed in his hall, further proof of my dedication to the arts, and agreed to change the tax law so that Nopal's businesses would not suffer from the immigration.
So, I ordered the lever pulled again and the newcomers welcomed to Goldsilver. This time it was Beirus who performed the task, and a careless blacksmith was almost crushed under the bridge in the process, but everything ultimately turned out okay.
Perhaps feeling the need to reassert power, King Bėmbul came to me and demanded I find someone to carve him a pair of amulets, but other than that, which was easily sorted out, the next few days were uneventful. I was beginning to feel like my reign had gone on for too long without enough happening. The project I'd deemed most important, paving over the magma pipe to prevent further deadly Slugma intrusions, was agonisingly slow, and would probably take years to fully complete. Other than that... well, I guess I discovered that my overseership might slightly lack vision when there aren't any demons to kill. All in all, though, having a stable and productive year without too many major hiccups is probably for the best.
A tiny bit more excitement, though not much, arose when a metalcrafter who had been lazing about in the library suddenly had some kind of grand idea and took over one of the forges, running off to claim some valuable gemstones and adamantine wafers for what would probably be a useless project. Sometimes I wish I could just replace all these dwarves with Mareep. Mareep never get fancy notions or waste precious resources on vanity projects. I told him that I was reserving the right to throw him in The Pond if his creation didn't thrill me.
So what did our metalcrafter make, you ask?
A crappy amulet. Emblazoned with the image of a baroness who isn't Paddywagon Man, and a Queen who isn't
me. Waste of good metal and gems, hell, even a waste of good
Swinub leather.
I told Led, the crafter, in no uncertain terms that the only reason he was still alive is that I could probably use this to get one of the amulet-obsessed nobles to do me a favour later.
Not too long afterward, Autumn came, and with it another swarm of goblin soldiers, at the same place where everyone always shows up. I dispatched the military once again, noticing in the process that the goblins didn't seem to have any Pokémon with them this time, and that one of them was already vomiting in horror at the bloody field before them. The first soldier to charge out of our gate was, oddly, King Bėmbul. Maybe he got more from my philosophical story about life and querns than the mere veiled threat I'd intended. In any case, Goldsilver's team of master macedwarves was close behind him in support, so I wasn't too worried about the political ramifications.
Within minutes both of Bėmbul's arms had been shattered and a goblin had ripped out his tongue.
The same goblin immediately bit the King on the head and latched on, which did nothing to ease the nearby macedwarves' rescue attempt, especially when they too were embroiled. The macedwarves were far more competent and had sustained no serious damage, but it wasn't long before the cry went up...
I was mildly annoyed that he hadn't had the decency to do it
before I'd wasted perfectly good stone on those amulets he ordered.
While the battle on the surface raged without any further serious injuries, I ran down a few flights of stairs looking for a sufficiently simple-minded lackey to hastily declare King. I eventually found one in the person of Mistźm Polishoils, who I knew to be steadfastly loyal and properly respectful of the sort of cunning I'm best at, though perhaps a little more intellectual than I would've liked. I hoped he wouldn't ask too many questions like "why is my throne room full of statues of the last king being tortured?"...
By the time I got back to the tower, the battlefield was a good deal bloodier and it was clear that our side was starting to take damage, although nobody else had actually
died yet. In particular, of the dwarves important enough for me to actually know their names, Azalea was on the ground and looking pretty worse for the wear, and Beirus had begun to flag. On the other hand, there were only five goblins left alive, so if we could wipe them out quickly enough, everything would probably be okay.
Soon there were only three.
Then two.
Then one. I called off the civilian alert so that the wounded could be brought in for treatment while the military finished the job. And so Bėmbul's body could be retrieved, of course. I suggested we throw it in the pond, but Nopal told me that would probably make the new king sad.
And finally, the job was done, and Goldsilver's loyal soldiers began trudging home. Azalea, Beirus, Nopal, and MCreeper had all scored some kills, while Paddywagon Man had been late to the party once again. He managed to stab one goblin in the shoulder this time, though, which I was sure we'd never hear the end of. Due to the position of the fight, the Pond scored zero kills this time, but the river did get one. And some goblin's hand, somehow. Looking up, I saw that the trees were once again festively decorated, and... there was a siege engineer in one. How long had he been there? I have no idea, and neither did he. Irritated, I ordered a stair built into the tree, since cutting it would probably just send him tumbling into the Pond.
On the way back from the battlefield, a gelder bled out, but everyone else seemed stable. Needless to say, nobody in Goldsilver bothered trying to help on any reasonable timetable. Help pick up the loot, sure, but help carrying a half-paralysed Azalea to the hospital?
Nonsense.Eventually, though, xSkeletalx's cracked team of medical 'experts' were on the case, and all was quiet in Goldsilver once again. Uh, except for the screaming coming from the hospital.
At this point I noticed that one of the stray Garchomp I'd been watching over (with the intent of claiming them if nobody else did) had been missing for some time. I thought back to a fire that had happened a week ago in the caverns, due to a rogue Magcargo... sealing the magma pipe would have to be a top priority for the next two seasons. Goblins, it seemed, were nothing compared to fire in Goldsilver or to our true foe in the depths, I thought, and shuddered. But that sort of thought, at the time, I pushed out of my mind. The horrors I knew lurked below us were one thing, but there were more pressing horrors to think about.
I was interrupted by the broker telling me that the trade caravan from the dwarven civilisation we'd sort of inadvertantly joined had arrived. I told him to round people up to start dragging "high-quality goblin imports" from the battlefield to the depot. This thought was immediately followed up by an even more striking one: "Holy shit, we can trade amulets now!" for a single moment until I remembered that baron Shidoni also loves amulets, and might demand a ban on exports at any moment. Still, for at least a little while, amulets were technically a legal trade good in Goldsilver again, so I had some bins of amulets brought up as well.
And then it was time for Mayor Mottled Petrel to meet with the diplomat as usual. He was pleased, it seems, to inform us that we had been declared a barony, despite having literally housed three consecutive kings of the realm who were definitely not consulted by anybody in the process of declaring Goldsilver a barony. In any case, I rushed to the room to ensure that Mottled Petrel made the right choice of baron to elevate, and...
Well, who did I choose?
I wanted to play to the end of the year for this update
but then we got a baron.
So, does Paddywagon Man win or lose? THE CHOICE IS YOURS,
POCKETBALLGOLDSILVER.
(also the diplomat sniped me before I got a chance to see what new pokémon are on offer, so I'll probably have to ask you guys about
that, too.)
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Topic: But You Still Gotta Catch 'Em All - Succession Pokemon Fortress of Goldsilver (Read 79721 times)