Part Four
16th of Granite, 238, early afternoon.
The Marsh of DeathThe Marsh of Death, apart from its obvious symbolic (and also very material) relation to demise and decay, seems to also exert some certain uncanny powers over living beings too. The further we trod southwestwards, the stranger the plants and critters seem to be -- not just the animal people grow in number, but sights of unnaturally large beasts become more and more common: flies the size of a grizzly bear, capybaras the size of a horse, and many more monstrous freaks inhabit this place. Giant trees seem to become more and more ubiquitous, too: humongous towering trunks of Highwood, sometimes reaching the unbelievable mark of three urists width, litter the landscape. How puny our underground fungal woods seem compared to them!
The journey so far, after my last altercation with the beak dogs, has been uneventful. Asides from the intriguing increasingly large fauna and flora, the river-strewn swamps roll steadily forward, and so do we. The coward Id, at seemingly random moments, will stray from our path and advance, sword raised high, upon one or another group of unwitting animals, usually those more to the innofensive side, like honey badgers and capybaras of the non-giant variety. After slaughtering one or two of them and getting outran by the rest, he'll inevitably turn around and stare at me with a particularly obnoxious look of hopeful expectation in his face. Is he trying to win my respect by needlessly slaughtering the creatures of the woodland? By visiting unprovoked attacks upon peaceful grazing animals? I'm no tree-hugging elf, but any dwarf worth their weight in cat spleen biscuits knows 'tis utterly dishonorable to slay a beast without provocation or need for sustenance. Shameful, just shameful. I glance over him with a look of scorn, turn around and keep moving.
16th of Granite, 238, nightfall.
The Plain of RingingWell, it happened without me even noticing. Like a plump helmet spawn turns into a fully grown mushroom on carefully tilled soil, or a portion of purring maggot extract turns into delicious dwarven cheese at the hands of a skilled cook, the Marsh of Death gradually shed both its unbearable cold humidity and its evil aura and morphed into a much gentler landscape; when we realized, we had already been at this new location for a good couple of hours there. The scenery now consists of smooth, sparsely forested hills with much more normal-looking fauna, even if the occasional giant wren or magpie can still be seen.
The most important part about this development, however, is the fact that I, Mestthos Scourfortress, am officially the first dwarf of the modern era to set foot beyond the Marsh of Death! Truly an impressive feat on its own, even though it is but the beginning of the journey in store for me. In lieu of a celebratory toast, I take a generous swig from my rum-filled leather bag and proceed to climb an elevation to see if I can properly scour the landscape. What a wondrous sight awaits me! Even under the last dusky rays of sunlight, the Plane of Omens glows with a supernatural sheen, and many marvelous panoramas unfold themselves before me! Rolling hills, snaking rivers, dusty deserts, dense forests and the beginnings of a sea, yes, a sea, the unbelievably massive pools of salt water, talked about only in whispered speculations among even the most learned scholars back in Smithpears! It's true, then, after all!
This is a moment of boundless joy. With but a mere glance over a modest hill, I have expanded the Lucky Ceilings' geographical knowledge manyfold. This is the sort of glory that we, the dwarves have been missing out on for nearly two and a half centuries, and how easy it is to obtain! Shameful, really, that it took my valor and mettle for this breakthrough to happen. Ah, but I should try to control myself now. Pride is the fool's folly, as the elders say back in Smithpears, and I would do better to keep my joy under control for the time being, and focus on the task ahead, that is only beginning. Coming down from the elevation, I set up a campsite, huddle against a tree root and try to sleep, thinking of the many wondrous paths I shall be taking in short order.
17th of Granite, 238, dawn.
The Plain of RingingEven with a healthy amount of dwarven rum in my belly, falling asleep last night was a somewhat of an arduous task. Try as I might, I could not keep my distance the alluring thoughts of new discoveries for the glory of The Lucky Ceilings that await for me past these plains I now pass by. Now, however, a new day dawns upon me, and I barely give myself the time to chow down on the rest of my preserved cap hopper meat snacks before anxiously resuming my trek. Close to our camping spot, a most intriguing sight: twin waterfalls, both a good seven urists in height, that feed into each other in the ever growing current of the Rankreleased, completely frozen over.
Truly, natural wonders abound in this world. After some fussing about, me and my yellowbellied excuse for a companion manage to find a way across the natural obstacle, and push ever onwards along the now frozen river bed. In the distance we spot an apparently small sand desert right where the Rankreleased feeds into another large river. This particular intersection does not appear in my map, which stops before these gentle grassy plains, but if my calculations are not mistaken, this river should be the one known as Lashedtrotted the Griffons of Peace, one of the widest and longest rivers known to us. It does have one of the longest names I've ever seen, that's for sure.
The sand on this desert, in a curious display of its unique properties, reflects a deep hue of blue when admired from a distance; upon closer inspection, however, it is clear that it consists actually of an irregular lattice of black and white patches of sand.
Indeed a most curious phenomenon; I carefully collect samples from both the black and white varieties of sand, making a mental note to mention their strange properties to the optometrists and geologists back at Smithpears whenever I get back. Just after we're done crossing the desert, though, another strange geographical feature salutes us, an even more outlandish one:
The currently frozen Lashedtrotted river, now an impressive eight urists wide, flowing into... A big, almost vertical rock wall? What does this mean? Does the river somehow flow into the precipice itself? Does the current get mystically transported into a different place, not by law of nature but by unknown eldritch workings? No description of this sort of phenomenon appears in any manual of geography, natural sciences or such back in the library of Smithpears, and that terrifies and baffles me to no end. In deeply disturbed desperation, I crane my neck upwards to gaze at the superior portion of this cursed landmark, in search of an answer of sorts, but what I set my eyes upon is an even more terrible, uncomprehensible sight! Aligned to the margins of the river, if it can even still be called one, two straight vertical dirt walls; on top of them, a solid, urist-thick sheet of ice, almost floating over this monstrous parody of a grotto, in a grotesque imitation of what the river proper would be, should the rules of nature be observed! It is such an outlandish sight that, even while suffering from such a terrible agony, I manage to hold back my tears and to draw a quick draft of this geological aberration, for it absolutely must be studied and debated by the natural scientists of The Lucky Ceiling:
Right after finishing my doodle, though, I make a point of distancing myself from this horrible caricature of a river, for staying near such a cursed scar in the face of Mon Slospu is surely to work ill effects upon any decent life-form. This must surely be a sign from The Moth of Terrifying, whom in His most infinite wisdom deemed fit to warn me of the troubled paths ahead, and tell me that it is now time to turn southwards, towards hopefully more civilized sites. How blessed I am, to live and thrive under the blessing of such a pious, benevolent deity! No matter how blessed I am, however, I do not wish to tempt my luck too much, so I grab Id by his filthy beard and make a quick exit southwards.
---
I like the style going on here! I don't play adventure mode much but this kind of attention to the moment-to-moment detail is awesome to read
Thank you! Since this is my first time doing a writeup, I thought I'd try to get "in-character" by having the protagonists' temperament be somewhat close, albeit exaggerated and parodical, to mine IRL -- way too verbose and descriptive, excessively attentive to inane details, a bit uptight and overconfident. I'd say it's been working so far! This is a lot of fun honestly, way less of a chore than I'd thought it'd be at first, and it means the world to me that it's resulting in a pleasant read
what amazes me often is DF's ability to provide endless base material for writers to pick up on and riff with. and then, you take parts from this constructed narrative and apply them as motivations for the in-game pawns. a sort of back-and-forth. NICE
Ah man I love that too, it's amazing isn't it? I think that tapping into this narrative vein has been sort of a breakthrough for me, one of my hangups with adventure mode used to be that I didn't really get into it on my own, but now I honestly can't get enough of it.