^ Because who needs to do something as cheap as that when you can engineer an overcomplicated dwarf trick.
New migrant (from this update), fresh swordsdwarf trainee in bootcamp.
Bearskie's Journal (9)Red alert red alert. Again I am packing glass when fortress alert rings and causes glass to quiver. Pack of dwarves scramble out of central staircase like wambler pack when wolf arrives. Nobody to go down to lower fortress, we are told. What do we fear now, I asked them? Mighty cavern spiders, beast from forgotten depths, demons coming from walls? No, they replied, this is even worse. It is Zan; he has been consumed by madness.
Later Zan emerges from trapdoor, bloody sword hangs loose on his side. Blood is dripping from his wear that will not come out using soap. We are passed by with brief glance as he marches on without word. There is hard granite expression on his face but it looks disturbed. Haulers pull out at least five bodies from lower fortress. They are in gruesome shape and that means I am now disturbed too.
---
Strange knockings we hear in walls for many days now. Only today when Auze grab bowl and threw against wall shouting "WHAT IS THAT SOUND?!" we realise it was not normal wall-noise. It is not zombie wall-noise either since zombies not polite enough to knock. Noise is tracked to source at west depot entrance by bootcamp duty dwarfs. We can hear faint dwarf whisper unsullied and pure.
"Let us in!" they call upon hearing us but we told them to flee this place of madness before the dead came for them. They told us the dead were gone, what do you mean 'gone' we asked. "Let us in and see for yourselves!" For a moment we second-guess whether this was trick of dead, but realise we were being stupid and ordered gates to be opened. Slowly, in case the dead trick.
Air was found still with no trace of movement. Swiftly those with arms exited to scout the hill. They reported few lingering rhino corpses, but no summoned dead with arms. Beach surface where workshop used to be is now trashed wasteland. They find bronze god sitting within the old tombs, defiling the corpses of the old founders but nobody cares about them. New migrant dwarfs stream through the gate; they are ushered in quickly before we can change our minds.
There are talks on whether we return to surface now with dead gone, but there is still bronze god to deal with. No, it is too dangerous, yet MEGASHAFT will not finish for two more months. Two long months of stale air and old food. Now there is talk of disobeying order, of revolting. Zan has overstepped dwarven law they say, he should be punished. But few would dare go against dwarf who use sword more than bread-knife. Discontented dwarfs we trudge back to the underground, back to angry moods and talking walls.
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Three nights pass and we are awaken by earth shaken like cradle once more. Another bronze god! No, this was actual earth moving, slow yet unstoppable. Every dwarf still alive knows how to feel cave-ins through his boots.
Along with other dwarfs we ascend staircase to emerge into dust cloud that choked our lungs. We notice many things such as gigantic hole in ceiling above bed of block, stone, and many dead old stinky corpses; but most we noticed was giant bronze head buried beneath rubble staring with dead jewelled eyes. We recoil as if it would awake at any moment. It remained dead. Bronze god was dead.
Underneath was fresh dwarf body with pick in hand. Miner squad said she was of their kin, who had been slowly becoming consumed by madness over time. Her name was Shorast Ringroast. Craving escape she made plan to collapse tomb onto bronze god and flee from there. She dug ramp circle in full view of bronze colossus, hiding in stealth of night. There was rudimentary support pillar but it failed and did not fire, and so she dug out final part herself.
Miner's sacrifice will be remembered in only way we dwarf know how. Monument to Shorast Ringroast, slayer of Tharith Riddlehead the Cut of Wars, will be built upon this site.
OOC- The colossus was pulled out of position by an arriving giantess, and settled deeper within the tombs. This was my only chance to kill the bastard, because even if the Breakfastpit was complete, the colossus would take eternity to destroy all the coffins before entering the trap. As long as he was alive the surface would have been off-limits for good. I saw a chance and I took it. Breakfastpit is now free.
The Zan bit was some funky loyalty issue. I was worried it would spiral into a cascade, but luckily he seems to be on our side for now.
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Topic: Breakfastpit - A Succession Farm - 44.12 (Read 68622 times)