A koopa layed in a hospital bed with a bandage wrapped around his head, another koopa stood over him. Not standing over him to tend to him or ensure he is doing okay, but just creepily watching him sleep while heavily breathing. A particularly heavy breath was enough to awake the sleeping koopa.
---
"Wha?! Where am I?... Who the hell are you?" Mottled Petrel asked as he sat up in his hospital bed. The koopa who had been standing over him backed away a little "Uh, I'm Madd, I just got here with the migrant wave. I don't think the demon koopa got my name right so I came here to clear that up for any records or whatever you might have.". Mottled Petrel squinted "Madd?" "Yup, I get that a lot. Usually I have my siblings Sadd and Gladd with me to help show what a nutbag my mother was, but I'm on my own now. Oh, I'm also an architect if you need any help on that giant tower or other towers or something. Well, I'm actually a woodcutter, but I feel like if I try really hard I can become a great architect! Just look at this blueprint I drew while I was watching you slee-
Uh, while you were sleeping!". Madd handed Mottled Petrel a piece of paper, it was a rendition of a koopa on top of a tower giving a thumbs up made in green crayon. "Uhh, alright. I'll consider it, go talk to Imic, he seems to be the only other koopa here who wants to be an architect.". Madd nodded and walked out into the hallway, but before the door had even closed a troll walked in with one of the poor new injured recruits slung over his shoulder.
Mottled Petrel turned to his left to see that the other injured warriors were already covered in bandages and splints. MoonyTheHuman noticed this and started giving Mottled Petrel the rundown "We've had no extra casualties so far and no injuries we think will be permanent. Except Kogamok, he has a fractured lung which might haunt him for the rest of hi-" "-wait, wait, wait. A fractured lung?".
"I don't understand it myself, but his lung does indeed seem to be fractured. We will see if we can apply an internal splint to stabilize it, but it might just be best to leave it be. Oh, and you passed out from sleep deprivation on top of the tower, you should take better care of yourself Mottled Petrel-san." Moony then ran to grab the newly arrived recruit from the troll "Oh, and it would be nice if we had a well in here,
or any well at all!". Mottled Petrel frowned, the koopa people had a tendency to go way above and beyond when it came to underground water works, which usually led to flooding or just having a useless underground reservoir because an important step had been skipped. 'I might as well, it'd be pretty cool if we had some kind of above ground fire extinguishing system too, or maybe a flood trap, or maybe- dammit, this is how we get a mess of water ducts that lead to nowhere like at the mountain home. Lets just keep it simple for now.' Mottled Petrel took out his order paper from his shell.
'We'll make a channel here, and then a well. Simple, and-' Mottled Petrel had to make a concerted and jittery effort to pass of the order without adding some kind of water tower or cistern or some other giant waste of time to it. 'Welp, time to help move all of those bodies out of the way.' Mottled Petrel thought, as he got up to go about his day.
Mottled Petrel stood with a few onlookers near the animal stockpile at the kangaskhan that had been caught. It was truly a formidable beast by any standards, but after seeing one of the hunters kill its only child right in front of it it had turned it into an even more cold blooded killer. Pikalord was one of the koopas in the crowd "Do you want me to try to train it sir?" Mottled Petrel looked at the scrawny koopa next to him, and then looked to the kangaskhan who was busy trying to pry open the bars of its cage, and then back at Pikalord. "Uh, sure, if you think you can." Pikalord looked back, indignantly "Of course I can!" he proclaimed before he marched up to the cage. Mottled Petrel looked away, fearing the wors- "Alright sir, he's completely tame!".
Mottled Petrel looked back to see the kangaskhan wagging its tail like a dog as Pikalord scratched its chin. "What! What the hell did you do? That thing looked like it wanted to collapse the fort on our heads just a moment ago!" Pikalord grinned "A good magician never reveals his secrets, but lets just say that the koopa people have had kangaskhan domesticated for decades.". 'Oh, right... wait, do we?' Mottled Petrel pondered. Mottled Petrel eventually shrugged and walked away just before Pikalord began playing fetch with the skull of the beanlet that had given the kangaskhan its name. (I've been informed that Kangaskhan have an ability that lets them turn themselves berserk or something similar, so I have no idea what to do with him.)
He was stopped by a shadowgnome hammerman "Heard there was some giant vomit ball abomination living in the caverns, mind if I stay here for a while to try to cleanse the area. It's what Conibo Coniboiyema, shadowgnome god of boundaries, would want me to do.".
"Uhh, what does eradicating monsters have to do with boundaries?" the shadowgnome looked mildly offended "Well I have to ensure that the monsters understand that the topside is our part of the word. That's setting a boundary, and now I kill whatever tries to come up here from down here, that's enforcing the boundary.". 'Oh this guy sounds like he's going to be a piece of work, he's going to annex the fucking food stockpile and then set up a 'boundary' or something stupid. So I'll just deny him' "Sure, you can stay" the shadowgnome jumped up and clicked his heels together before running out of the room. 'Gods, why didn't I listen to myself'.
While crossing the main room minding his own business TheRedWolfII suddenly stopped and looked down at his hands. His eyes widened and his hands started shaking "I've been here before, I am but one of many, These aren't my hands, This isn't my scale, But they know something, Oh, they know, they
knoooow...". He then dropped all of his stuff and ran frantically.
He claimed a craftskoopa's workshop, dashing any hope Mottled Petrel had of getting a useful artifact out of TheRedWolfII's episode. Now that he thought about it a little, it was kinda weird that a koopa had arrived at the fort not that long after another koopa with almost his exact name died. SetII had also arrived after his earlier name bearer died, and he had walked inside like he owned the place and had lived their his whole life. Mottled Petrel recalled that the first thing he had done upon arriving at the fort was that he ran up to the widow mayor Eris and said 'Hey baby, what'd I miss?', before being pulled into the mayoral office by the mayor herself. 'Eh, none of my business.' Mottled Petrel thought, as he crossed his fingers for an actually useful artifact.
Mottled Petrel was in the crypt addressing the 'bomb-omb problem' when one of the migrants handed Mottled Petrel a piece of paper "Found it on Stingpie's corpse" was all he offered. The note simply read 'If I am to die, do not memorialize me. I want you to throw me in the
traaaash'. "Uhh, alright?" Mottled Petrel turned to the troll who was busily carving a crude 'Stingpie' into the side of one of the coffins "Maybe we could, honor his final wish... Uh, I don't know. Sorry Stingpie, but we've already assigned you a coffin."
(Sorry man, I wasn't quick enough. I can still have you do purely lore based ghostly things. As of almost two months later you still remain unburried, so maybe it will be fine).
Mottled Petrel thought that he might as well make a note to who ever might decide to go around pulling levers 'Top right is for the outmost cave airlock bridge, left of that is the inner airlock bridge.'.
After nearly half a month of dragging a single log to his craftskoopa's workshop, TheRedWolfII finally began making his construction.
Mottled Petrel didn't really care, so he went back to moving the rest of the newly born bob-ombs down to the cavern room. It was almost time for the caverns to be opened in earnest.
Another Tomtenisse bard petitioned to join the fort, Mottled Petrel paid him no heed and told him to go find the others.
Mottled Petrel almost spit out the smiling turnip wine he was drinking when TheRedWolfII held a borderline fucking
hand mortar over his head. "With this I shall make the world anew!" he proclaimed before holding it protectively towards him, denoting that he had no intention of sharing it. "Uhh, good job man, you can use that in battle if you want. What kind of ammo does it take so I can order some made?" Mottled Petrel asked "I haven't the faintest clue how to operate one of these things or what kind of ammo it takes, but I'm damn well going to bludgeon people to death with it." TheRedWolfII replied without so much as taking his eyes off of his work. Mottled Petrel was a little disappointing, but he shrugged "Fair enough, you covered that thing in bone spikes so it should work fine". Mottled Petrel had to admit, the thing looked damn cool with the skull of the baby kangaskhan worked perfectly to be the muzzle of the gun.
After the fire had burned down all of the wooden next boxes on the surface, Mottled Petrel was reluctant to replace them with more wooden nest boxes. Instead, he placed the remaining store of wooden nest boxes in the dormitory for any aspiring koopa mothers.
The nest boxes were immediately overrun by helmet snakes.
Mottled Petrel stood in the winding hallway that would lead to the cavern entrance. The preparations were almost done, most of the cage traps were loaded and the least important airlock bridge was almost done. Mottled Petrel shrugged 'Fuck it, I want to see some weird cave stuff' "Alright guys, open it up, tell the monster hunters their hunting ground is open.". The mechanics shared a worried look, but they eventually moved to mark the wall for destruction.
As the wall crumbled before the pick of Derpy Dev the cacophony of sound that was familiar to the first cave layer filled the koopas' ears. They noticed more glistening mineral veins that could not be seen from the first opening, but no creatures could be found. The military waited in front of the entrance, making sure that nothing big bum-rushed the entrance before it had been tested.
After a few hours the only thing to trouble them was the echo of the call of a distant blind cave ogre
"What, are you doing, in my SWAMP!". "Hey, KoopaUnknown?" rainbowdashfanboi84 asked his superior as she looked nervously from side to side "Do you think he's talking about us?". Even in the near absolute darkness, KoopaUnknown had a determined look on his face "He'll anzwer to my trident if he iz".
An unsettlingly loud sloshing was reverberating through the cave, putting the group on edge. The glow of the lanternfish in the underground lake and the twinkling of the glow worms above them was all the light group had to go off of, creating a beautiful but sinister ambiance lighting. A rustling came from behind them, and they almost instinctively threw themselves towards the sound. But before they could they found that the sound had come from a cowering cheese maker.
"What the hell are you doing down here? There's forgotten beasts, and minor demons, and gods only know what around!" Wags exclaimed. The cheesemaker simply replied "I'm on web gathering duty, we need more joltik silk" before he sullenly slinked out into the cave via some natural ramps right next to the entrance. 'I should probably get rid of those' Thought Mottled Petrel, who was observing from the safety of the entrance hallway.
A few minutes later the voice of the cheese maker echoed through the cave "
Oh for fucks sake... Hey guys! There's a giant pit over here that leads down to the next layer!".
That put the fighters even more on edge, knowing that even more deadly second cavern layer creatures could be in the area.
After a little while longer Mottled Petrel called out "Alright, just move out into the cave a little, if there's still nothing you guys can go back to the barracks.". With that, the koopas reluctantly moved deeper into the cave, hugging the lake's edge. Eventually Mottled Petrel called them back, knowing that they would likely have to rush down here again if something was to happen.
Before he pulled everyone out, he ordered the lingering Darkening Kaos to have a hallway dug into the side of the cave, filled with cage traps, and ended with a chained capnap to catch any wandering creatures.
SilverlockII tapped Mottled Petrel on the shoulder "Sir, Scourge dropped a tree on himself. He's dead.". Mottled Petrel frowned, he had liked Scourge "Well, I guess he gets that last coffin we had made.".
Not long after the military had left do something else, the forgotten beast finally made its move. Right behind it were a pair of Lo, hoping to join the offensive on the fortress.
Unfortunately for the invaders, bloop_bleep wasn't having any of it.
He was a very conflicted fighter, but he was very adept at swatting forgotten beast extract out of the air.
Finally, bloop_bleep decided to remain curled and hope for back up. He was thrown around like a plaything but still continued to bat away the flying extract. After taking a serious bruising, bloop_bleep shot one final bolt of lightning, killing the forgotten beast with a lucky blow.
Thankfully, neither he nor the ground had been covered in extract. But now another more serious problem was at hand. Many koopa civilians had been lost after battles over the years because they were just too stubborn to uncurl themselves. They stayed in their curled positions for days, even weeks, until they decided to either give it up or they died of thirst. Bloop_bleep was still curled long after he had killed the beast, and he showed not signs of uncurling.
About ten seconds later one of the Lo's attacked Darkening Kaos, who was assembling a cage trap. With the element of surprise, the Lo managed to scratch the hell out of Darkening Kaos's arms and then punch a hole directly through his cheek, but after a few seconds the Lo began running scared as Darkening Kaos became overcome by rage. After chasing the Lo off, Darkening Kaos walked right back to the cage trap he was working on, right past the other dumbfounded Lo.
Bloop_bleep still refused to uncurl.
Right after the Lo's came a reacher, who was either minding its own business or actively seeking prey. 'You know, maybe I should restrict access to the caves' Mottled Petrel thought as he watched the reacher claw its way along. Luckily, the military had finally made it to the caverns after the Lo call, so they met the reacher head on. At which point, the reacher began fleeing in terror. It was too late for it though, as Lord_lemonpie bashed both of its arms off in little time before he had one of his mini-chomps bite the thing's head clean off.
The koopa people learned a good deal about Lo anatomy from Lord_lemonpie's dissection of the slower of the two.
Upon its death, the Lo dropped a pretty damn good figuring of a bottlenosed dolphin man.
He then went on something akin to a witch hunt as he chased the screaming ghost through the winding tunnels before eventually driving it down into the second cavern layer.
In an attempt to persuade bloop_bleep to uncurl himself, Mottled Petrel ordered a few stairs built next to him for the sole purpose of dropping them, hoping he'd be knocked out and forget what he was doing.
Summer had arrived.
---
Turns out the caves suck,
who would've known. But despite all this unnecessary bloodshed, we got a pretty rad bottlenose dolphin man figurine.
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Topic: The Resurgence of Modded Hell (Back, Still Broken, Now With Giant Butterflies) (Read 301019 times)