Deep in a fledgling koopa fort, a koopa is leaning against a wall as he takes a sip from the mug in his hand. The hand he has against the wall sinks into the soft stone, throwing him off balance and causing him to spill the contents of the mug all over his new shell.
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'Dammit, what is this wall, talc?' Mottled Petrel pulls a small chuck of stone out of the small hole created by his hand. He crumbles it in his palm with ease 'This is talc! Why did we have to get the weakest stone ever for the main hall, how are we going to get any mastercraft engravings if I can just pull pieces off with my hands?'.
Mottled Petrel looked around, as if doing so would offer a solution. His search only revealed a passed out ninji laying at the base of the ramp, with something splattered all over his feet.
'Oh come
ON! Where the fuck is that barrel.' Mottled Petrel stormed over to the food stockpile, but could not find the dream ale barrel that had already caused him so much hardship. He did succeed in finding what used to be the barrel, and its contents below it.
There were a number of animals around that also had dream ale covering their feet, these animals were unconscious as well. 'Fucking hell' "Somebody clean up this pool for fuck's sake. And don't get it on yourself or I'm having you thrown outside for the ponytas once you fall asleep!" Mottled Petrel yelled, but of course, no one made any effort to clean up the pool.
Up on the surface Enemy Post was running toward a herd of reindeer chargers with his wooden AK 47 held over his head. After a long afternoon of shooting the reindeer at point blank he had done little more than bruise their skin. At one point he managed to fracture the leg bone of a particularly delicate reindeer charger cow, but quickly ran away because he was out of ammo. Sore with defeat, he clambered back to the fort and collapsed in the dormitory that had been built next to the dining hall. 'Guess it's time to give him an upgrade if I want him to actually kill anything' "Oh
NUUUuukkuuuuu." Mottled Petrel called in an almost song like voice. Nuku popped up from behind his smelter. He wasn't quite annoyed by being asked to forge weapons and armor, because doing so would probably end up saving his life, but in the short term he didn't really want to make them. "I want you to make a steel cannon and a lot of iron bullet bills to go with it. I also want you to keep in mind that Enemy Post is going to be the one wielding it, so try not to make it something he could hurt himself with." Nuku looked like he was being asked to hand a baby a match in a room full of explosives "Uhhh, are you sure you want to give him something so... powerful? The weapon you just requested could probably reduce an elephant to a red smear at a distance of 200 Urists, and you want to give it to someone who can't even speak proper koopish so he can go around shooting birds?".
Mottled Petrel knew he was going to regret this decision, and many of his last feelings like this had come true, but he had made up his mind "Enemy Post is our first line of defense, if anyone is going to see the enemy first it's going to be him. If the invaders march up to our fort to find a borderline psychopath running around with a high grade piece of handheld artillery they'll probably turn tail and run. If not, I'm sure Enemy Post will have no problem breaking their shield arms before the military can get there to help.". Nuku looked like he saw wisdom in the words Mottled Petrel had made up without any prior thought, so he got to work.
Mottled Petrel could hear what sounded like someone kicking around a pile of loose gravel above him, probably from the soon to be underground farm. Upon walking upstairs Mottled Petrel saw Pikalord kicking around the materials that would soon be the farmer's workshops with anger painted all over his face. "What the hell are you doing," Mottled Petrel asked "are you going to build the workshops or what?", Pikalord stopped his kicking of the supplies to turn to Mottled Petrel "I can't do it sir, it's
impossible! There's this big boulder in the way, and every time I try to build around it I find that there's a part that needs to go there!". Mottled Petrel blinked "Well why don't you move it out of the way instead of suspending the task for the twelfth time?", Pikalord looked at the boulder in his way for a solid thirty seconds, before slowly sliding it about a foot to the right and out of his way. Mottled Petrel shook his head and walked back downstairs 'I'm starting to see why the mountain home wants nothing to do with us'.
Spring has arrived, and Mottled Petrel is directing the construction of new workshops in the upper right corner of the main room. Directing might actually be too strong of a word, his thought process was more like 'I don't care where you build it as long as it gets built'. "I want a leather works, a loom, a clothier's shop, an ashery, a soap maker's workshop, a dwarven bakery, a meat hut, an unpacking station, a slot machine, a gardener's workshop, and a shell workshop. I don't care who makes them or where they go, I just want them made. And while I'm at it, someone mine out a room next to the hospital for the levers, that bridge is useless to us if we can't raise it.".
Down the hallway the room for the temple was still waiting to be made a temple. Mottled Petrel thought about all of the wonderful Koopa deities he could assign the temple to.
He instead decided on assigning it to no specific deity, it was way too soon in the fort's life to begin forming cults. Again he shrugged and placed a piece of paper next to the door 'Temple: The Fed Healing. Please, I need better names.'. On his way out of the hallway Mottled Petrel called once more to Nuku "Nuku" Nuku almost fell out of his chair as he heard his name called "Make three more weapons each for the army". "Sir, we're out of coke." Nuku responded, as a ninja and two humans walked into the fort and into the tavern. "Well once we have some more coal mined I want you to get to it" Mottled Petrel responded. 'They're going to need it' Mottled Petrel thought, as he listened to the sounds of the recently started live sparring coming from the barracks.
After days of ruining the proposed second fortress level to acquire more coal, Mottled Petrel ordered the start of the production of long term resident quarters. The workers weren't happy that guests would be getting personal quarters before them. "Come on guys, I just want four rooms so that we can attract long term residents. Our personal quarters will be next on the list, but I think I'd like to attract some more giant squids to the fort to help protect us." Mottled Petrel pleaded. The crowd that had gathered looked at the giant octopus who was busy arm wrestle the ninja in the tavern with them. They all agreed that it would be pretty cool to have a giant octopus at the fort.
One of the koopas in the crowd happened to be Scourge with his pet alolan meowth. As the crowd began to disperse, the alolan meowth evolved into an alolan persian. For those who do not know, an alolan persian is very similar to a gray puma with a circular blue gem in the middle of its forehead. Scourge looked down at his pet with an impassive look on his face as the cloud of smoke began to clear. He smiled a little, and then ruffed up the persian's head fur before leaving to make more cages.
Through the open door Mottled Petrel saw some of the magikoopas carrying various items down the hallway. Mottled Petrel followed them to find that the empty room at the end of the hallway was now filled with many of the various magic related workshops. A conjuring circle, a holy altar, a magician's studio, a star beacon, a wood burning charge point, and an alchemist's laboratory. 'Saves me the effort of setting this all up myself' Mottled Petrel thought, as he slid out of the doorway.
Once in the main room he was met by bloop_bleep who had just run up the stairwell "Sir, we have discovered an expansive cavern deep underground! There is also an almost vertical pit that seem like it leads to the second cavern layer." behind bloop_bleep a large cloud of shimmering, multicolored spores rose up from the stairwell.
Most of the spores brushed against the ground but didn't stick, continuing farther up to the exposed dirt of the ramp "Just board it up for now, while leaving a little peep hole. I'll take a better look at it later. We are in no position to try to invade the caves yet." 'Gods, it took us a whole year to only reach the first cavern layer? Progress moves too slowly around here, I'm never going to be able to move to the next step of The Plan at this rate.'.