A koopa stands over the corpse of another koopa.
---
'...Whaaaaat?' SetII was dead, and Mottled Petrel had no idea why. He looked back over his reports...
To find nothing. Needless to say, the rux merchants were pretty freaked out by the koopa who spontaneously died right next to them. They were also pretty freaked out by the pentaceratops who was goring one of their fellow merchants to death.
Their concerns were warranted, because after killing the merchant the pentaceratops went and toppled most of the rux's and the mole people's wagons.
'They're going to have some strong words to share with me next year' thought Mottled Petrel, who then noticed that there was another caravan coming through.
The ratooey caravan was thankfully coming down along another path, but based on past performance it seemed unlikely that they'd make it to the trade depot. To further cement this point, the haulers were already hauling the supplies left amid the ruined wagons of the last caravans.
The silani caravan came next, equally perturbed by the other fleeing merchants. In the distance, the mole person ambassador could be seen running towards Mottled Petrel. After finally reaching him he skipped the formalities and said "We're leaving, this place is too dangerous, what do you want for next year?". Mottled Petrel still didn't have anything he wanted, especially with so many destroyed wagons to sift through for free stuff "Just bring us some coke bars, we'll try to make sure the place is a little bit safer next time. What do you mean you can't bring us coke bars? Whatever, just make it steel".
The meeting was interrupted by a gnome dancer petitioning for citizenship. Mottled Petrel rejected him, they already had enough useless
'artists'. Now that he thought about it, he had been rejecting a lot of dancers recently. Immediately after the gnome was rejected, a forumite bard requested citizenship, and was denied.
The merchants that made it inside were greeted by many puddles full of blood and toxins, a traditional Modded Hell greeting. The ratooey minister of trade was particularly mortified when he unknowingly stepped into a knee deep pool.
Mottled Petrel requested some zinc flasks for next year, and then pointed him towards the cleaning well, which was on the other side of the field of pools he had just crossed. Off in the distance Mottled Petrel could see a troll fighting a wandering tyrunt, and was surprisingly winning against the therapod. Upon futher inspection it looked like the troll was just giving a very firm handshake.
The military was sent out to help with the hand shaking.
Another gnome dancer was denied citizenship as Mottled Petrel watched the troll get his leg broken by the less than amused tyrunt. Once they got there the military had no problem snapping the beast in two. 'Speaking of animals, were there any in the caravans that were destroyed?' Mottled Petrel wondered, as he decided to look at the work-in-progress ledger of all of the items left by the caravans.
'What the hell are we going to do with these things? The last thing we need here is more fire, much less a fire monkey.' Mottled Petrel wondered, as he looked accusingly at the chimchar. At that very moment Mottled Petrel had an idea, a wonderfully terrible idea, one that he would probably live to regret. Mottled Petrel caught Imic by the shoulder as he was passing by "I want you to build a square of fortifications covered by a roof up where the invaders keep coming from, and I want you to pasture this chimchar in it right before you close it off for good. And then, I want you to make any precautions necessary to prevent whatever forest fires this thing makes from getting out of control.".
Imic was obviously perturbed by the notion of breaking the ancient koopa fire code by keeping a fire breathing creature around, but he also seemed glad to finally get a 'fortressier' related job "I'll do my best, sir". He immediately took out a piece of paper and started scribbling ideas, and asked "Is it okay if I make the thing out of lead? We have no use for it, and it would be super cool for the intimidation factor to have a cage of lead spitting fire." "Sure, whatever, just make it work".
'More migrants!? We haven't even given all of the most recent migrants weapons yet. Whatever, I'll just blow through them.' Mottled Petrel thought, as he watched yet another demon koopa lead a group of normal koopas towards the fort. When the demon koopa finally reached the fort entrance, he looked like he had a well thought out backstory that he was going to regale Mottled Petrel with, but he was cut short before he even started "Name and proffession, we're in a bit of a crunch right now, we're still busy picking up all of the bodies of the most recent invaders, if you have something to tell me tell me later.". The demon koopa was taken aback, he clearly had expected to have had a red carpet rolled out for him like most forts would have "Ugh... Mugam, Great engraver" "You can stay as an engraver, but you're also on mining duty, NEXT! Come on people, make it quick." "Nokopoc, high master weaver, proficient animal caretaker, skilled papermaker" "Ha, good luck finding any use fore those skills here, furnace operator, go find yourself a coal shovel." "Nokom, novice brewer, proficient fisherkoopa, high master beekeeper" "General farming" "Nokooko, novice furnace operator" "Keep doing that, but also smithing" "Boogamo, novice miner, accomplished weaponsmith" "Keep doing that, and armorsmithing" "Nokoopi, competent lasher, talented gla-" "You don't need to finish, military" "Gamukep, talented spinner, adequate glazer" "Military... Hm? Is that it? Alright, I want to see anyone not doing anything important hauling bodies!".
'We're also going to need an expansion to the metalworking section, and I've got just the idea'.
Mottled Petrel's 'great idea' mostly involved punching a hole through the floor of the main room, and then building a shoddy staircase down to the big magnetite vein he had mined out but never did anything with.
For what seemed like weeks there was nothing but a constant stream of koopas leaving the fort, picking up a single clothing item off of a dead body, and then walking it back into the fort for storage. It was almost infuriating to watch.
Somehow, someway, the stars managed to align perfectly to allow a fungal crow to sneak from the caverns, all the way up through the fort, past dozens of koopas and hundreds of trained animals, to walk right into the tavern and claw at the face of the mole person ambassador. How this happened, no one will ever know, but the mole person immediately gave chase.
The fungal crow ran all the way down the hallway into Auze's room, and then began frantically fluttering around looking for a way out. The mole person ambassador grabbed the fungal crow by the leg, and then snapped it with his bare hands. After grabbing the fungal crow by one of its face tendrils he flung it against the ground and began mercilessly strangling it. The whole time this was happening, Auze was standing less than 10 feet away, bathrobe on, in his underwear, toothbrush still in his mouth, watching in bewilderment as the fungal crow struggled around the room as it was being strangled, spraying green blood all over his room.
After the fungal crow finally stopped twitching, the mole person got up, dropped the corpse, and finished the mug of smiling turnip wine he had managed to hold onto during the whole exchange. Auze was left having no idea of what just happened. The situation was further compounded by a forumite macemite asking him to grant him residence. Auze agreed, and then went back to bed.
Eventually, Mottled Petrel actually got around to trading with the merchants that had actually safely made it to the depot. He didn't really find anything of value, so he bought a few waterskins and backpacks. And as an apology for having their caravan destroyed the last year, Mottled Petrel offered one fine small cave spider silk glove, that the broker assured him was worth 782 Urists, to the silanifs.
Another fungal crow attempted to sneak up into the fort, but was stopped in the mining layer by Asin, who promptly beat the fuck out of it with his laptop.
After the birth of about 12 bob-ombs, Mottled Petrel had them pastured by the area where the invasions had been coming from. Unfortunately for him, everyone was too busy carrying bloodstained clothes.
After much indecision, Mottled Petrel decided that he would send the squad that actually had training to finally retrieve the Book of Coagulation. While they were getting ready to leave, he also made the initial blueprints for its temporary holding chamber for if the book was actually found.
'Let's hope they actually get out there this time without an invasion popping up, I want that book' Mottled Petrel thought, as he began thinking of a complex system of bridges to act as airlocks to the book.
News of the book recovery was also apparently enough to inspire a number of visiting scientists who had been leaching off of the fort's library for some time.
A corpse pit was also designated for excavation, in case another creature that could raise the dead happened to chance upon the current corpse pile. The last Mottled Petrel wanted was the 100+ body part in that pile getting up to invade.
When the merchants finally left, they plowed right into a herd of ponyta that happened to be right across the brook. Instead of burning the caravan to a crisp, the ponyta instead fleed in all directions, and saved the fort from another mass fire. One even manages to to get caught in a cage trap, and is promptly designated for taming.
'Spoke too soon I guess' Most of the silanifs got away, but the ponyta who was caught must have fired a revenge fire ball at the last wagon, because it was now on fire.
One of the other ponytas was strangled to death by a visiting poet, which sparked another fire.
Pikalord, not wanting to be shown up, decided he was going to attack the last remaining ponyta... right next to the entrance.
After breaking the ponyta's leg, Pikalord was set aflame, likely to die soon after. The ponyta then shot a fire ball at the passing Dionysus, who was finally on his way to retrieve the book. The shot missed, and Dionysus wasted no time smashing the small horse's head in.
Unfortunately, the ponyta that had been caught died from the heat of the forest fire it had set, leaving the koopas without their desired new war beast.
Surprisingly Pikalord actually survived the fire because it started raining soon after he was ignited. It didn't rain long enough to put out the three fires that were now raging across the recently reseeded meadow, but Pikalord's life was at least saved by the precipitation.
Next to attack is a large flock of giant buzzards, who attempted to pick up a wandering lawnmower and fly away with it. Dionysus, still taking his time leaving to retrieve the book, was able to kill one of them and scare the rest off. Soon after, one particularly brazen buzzard decided to fly straight into the entrance and down the entrance ramp to kill a wandering thrash dove.
Before the remaining military could reach the scene, the giant buzzard bit a passing fembot's toe clean off. Maybe it was the scent of blood that got their attention, or maybe it was the fact that most of the animals in the fort were swarming the giant buzzard, but the scene caught the lazer-ceratosaur's attentions, and they set upon the giant buzzard like a swarm of locusts. In almost no time, they reduced the giant buzzard to a pile of ribbons, and then went back to whatever it was they were doing.
All Mottled Petrel could do was twiddle his thumbs and wait for the last two wrestlers to make up their minds about which identical pair of socks they wanted to take for the road so they could actually retrieve the book. And wait he did, for Mottled Petrel really wanted that book, and the greater being withing him wanted to amuse itself with the pitifully impotent devices the mortals called 'magic'.
---
It's about time that the plans for 'The Cheesening' are finally laid out in full, as the first cog of the war machine is slowly being put into place...
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Topic: The Resurgence of Modded Hell (Back, Still Broken, Now With Giant Butterflies) (Read 301160 times)