The events of the 27th of Felsite, 1067"Very good, Zako. Again."
Zako notched another bolt and readied his crossbow. There was a moment of hesitation as he aimed, and then the strings were released, twanging loudly as the bolt was loosed. It struck the worn target, but it hit near the rim, no where near the bullseye. From the other end of the practice area, Likot snickered, and Sparrow shot her a nasty look. Rolland just kept his cool, saying in his normal monotone, "Ignore them, reload and fire Zako. No one has made anything of themselves without much practice."
"Yes sir, but... I'm parched. May I go and get a drink?"
"Hurry back," Rolland consented.
Shoving his way through the sea of training bodies, Zako eventually pushed through the main door. As his boots hit the first step, he heard someone behind him call, "Zako! A moment!"
Turning, he saw Eita standing in the door way. She had lost some muscle mass from her time spent in bedrest, but her arm was no longer in a cast which was positive improvement. Taking a few steps towards him, she pointed to his chest with her good hand, saying, "We need to talk about your armor."
"What, this?" He blinked, and looked down at his chest plate. "No, no, don't worry. I know, it's from some, you know, Old Major's collection. There was a big
to do about it a while back but Captain Fillwhip explained things to them, uh, as only he can... and it's mostly blown over."
When Eita just stared at him, Zako tugged at his collar. "I mean, it went over as well as anything involving Captain Fillwhip does. But still."
"That "Old Major" was my father. And I want to know where he is."
"...
what?"
"I've made the trek here for three years now, and was always told by the other merchant groups that Major DayCovering was here. And I see the house sigil on the armor your wearing, which can lead one such as me to think...
bad things."
"No, you're jumping to conclusions here. See, he left. To go fight the goblin hordes in the south, to protect this fortress from further harm."
"All I see is a Dwarf wearing my Dad's armor, with some cock-and-bull story to back it u-"
Eita went silent as a large hand clasped down over her shoulder. Tilting her head back, she stared up at Maggarg, and just beside him, Adol. Maggarg flashed a smile of crooked teeth, and Adol just shaked his head, pretty-boy hair hanging down tastefully over his eyes.
"Best ya' leave our little mascot alone, dolly."
Eita bristled, but Adol cut her off, "Leave the boy alone. We've already gone down this path. Go get this misplaced anger out of your system, and perhaps we can talk again over a mug of spiced rum."
Grumbling, Eita pulled herself free from Maggarg's grasp and stormed into the barracks to get ready for training. Maggarg laughed, and Adol asked, "You okay?"
"I guess," said an extremely confused Zako.
***
OOC: This would have been up sooner but I forgot I was doing some demolition, and my copy of DF crawled to 0 FPS. So twenty-some minutes later, I had enough time to go eat some cake, get a couple glasses of bourbon, and watch an episode of Always Sunny.
Mad Larks, you're in the greatly-shortened queue. I can have you come in with the newest batch of migrants, or you can hold off and wait until the Real Glacies shows back up to the fortress; I imagine even if he doesn't get the plans for his contraption, he could have found a clockwork genius
As Maggarg and Adol slowly develop into their own characters, I almost want to make them into their own spin off, just because of how absurd the pairing is. A big jerk convict, and his well mannered blue-blood friend, having adventures. Every adventure would end as Stravitch (the forum poster) would say when we used to play D&D: "Well, we can never go back THERE again!*"
(*Stravitch the forum poster, and the rest of the guys I was the DM for, used to set every town they went to on fire. It wasn't always on purpose, but it always happened. Every game ended with them beat up, singed, and standing on a hill looking down at the ruin and saying that line.)