Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Bunny]

My name is; that is to say, by the time my records are found, was, Mistem Rockwave.  Formerly miner, now Book-Keeper and one of the last living members of our failed fortress; Regag.  Gloved-daubed.  So named because our expedition leader, the original at least, was a fool with no taste whatsoever.

I realise it is considered disrespectful to speak ill of the dead, but since I expect that I shall soon join them, grant me a boone in this.  Of the original seven that journeyed here, and the group of nine immigrants that joined us soon thereafter, only I, my lover Ibok Fieldtrades, and the two young daughters of a dead immigrant remain.  

I fear for the children.  Little Logem and beautiful Stukos.  They have lost everything, and  our walled-in fortress will likely not see another four seasons.  The food stockpiles may last, having been maintained until recently to support a much larger population.  But the drink stockpiles dwindle, we have no water, and my lover destroyed the still in a fit of uncontrolled rage at the death of our good friends.  

Trader caravans have passed this fortress, waiting outside the raised drawbridge for entry, and perhaps they bring much-needed supplies.  But we will not permit them entry.  I daren't lower the drawbridge and venture across the security of our high, fortified walls and moat.  Not with the hordes of death and destruction looming beyond.  Mostly, those visiting caravans are obliterated quickly by goblin hordes.  Those that wait a little longer, meet a far more gristly death.

Our tale is an ambitious one, and a lesson in foolish pride, bad tactical thinking and naivete.  I will start from the beginning, that you may see the great heights for which we aimed, and the speed with which we advanced, before the fall.  Perhaps, were it not for that last great folly, we would have endured.  And who could then predict how magnificent our fortress would have become?  But, it was not to be.  Read our tale; read, and learn from our mistakes...

[Bunny]

Tekkud Tokumkivish, Mistem Tunasob, Dakost Lolumkabok Lorban Nilil, Dumat DokokulZest, Ibok Fikuknish and Mistem Iduker.  These seven names, my lover, my brothers, my leader and I.  We were so young, so brash and so ill-prepared.  It seems so long ago, when in actuality but a few short years have passed since we believed we could take on the world.

A lone, travelling merchant had arrived in the dead of night in our mountainhomes.  Bloodied, mortally wounded and half-mad.  In his dying breaths, cradled in the arms of Tekkud, he had muttered tales of a nearby land of exciting, but risky prospects.  Layers of rock and earth encrusted with precious metals, gems, perhaps even adamantine.  Good, hard rock in which to carve a mighty fortress, but deep chasms filled with unholy creatures to test our courage, our strength.  Tekkud, ever ambitious and tiring of his lowly trade duties, rallied and convinced us that we could forge a new mountainhome in such a volatile plain.  

The mayor was, in time, convinced, and so we set out, across dry desert and choking jungle, over mountains and through valleys, to the land we had heard such tantalising things about.  And indeed, there it was, magnificent and terrifying both as we looked down upon it from the edge of a cliff.  There, in the distance, a great crack in the earth, wider than the mightiest river and so deep that the bottom, if there was one, disappeared into blackness.  From a distance, we could see a few creatures roaming about the chasm.  Their hulking, deformed bodies meandering aimlessly about.  Trolls.  And that wasn't all.  

"Look!  Brothers, over there!  What is that?" cried Dumat, our woodcutter and carpenter.  I followed his gaze, as did my brothers, and espied what, for a moment, I swore resembled the flicker of massive, leathery wings.

"We shall move with caution," ordered Tekkud.  "Dig deep, far from the chasm, and exit only when we have need.  But in time, we shall reclaim all of this land for our own, and reap the rewards in this rich rock."  He held in his hand a nugget, encrusted with fat gems.  A token, found near the edge of this land, and a good omen, we thought, of the riches to be found.

Four of us, practised miners, found a shallow cave close to the base of the great mountain of obsidian that dominated the area.  Shallow, but it's walls would serve to shape the first defences of our entrance.  Soon, we had built our protection.  An open, grassy courtyard at the front was surrounded with double-high, double-thick walls, in front of which a long moat had been dug.  A single bridge, connected to a lever, permitted entrance to this courtyard, but the bridge could only be reached via a corridor of cage and rock-fall traps.  Past the courtyard, the remains of the cave converted to a wide corridor, leading into the mountain itself.  There, a massive covered hall housed our trade depot, animal stockpile and kennels, and the great doors to the fortress proper.  We felt safe, behind these walls, and free to dig deep.  

And dig, we did...

[Bunny]

Progress in the mine moved quickly.  Though the obsidian was hard, the levels below were a patchwork of firm rock, rich metal veins and fat pockets of white and yellow sand, perfect for our farming industry.

"I forsee this place expanding quickly, once word of our great progress reaches the mountainhomes.  Dig deep, and dig fast my brothers.  I want four farms, a great food stockpile, a dining hall and enough bedroom for twenty dwarves dug out and cleared before the year is out.  Also, let's have a nice, big meeting hall up on the entrance level.  Something to impress visitors, yes?"  Tekkud's ambitions grew quickly.

"Oh, don't look at me like that!  It may seem like a lot of work now, but you are stout and strong dwarves, and I picked each of you especially for this task!  I know you can do it!  We've enough food and drink to keep us a year or more, so we can concentrate on really establishing ourselves, here.  Lorban, I want you to smooth all of the walls, and where sand is abundant, tear it down and erect walls of pure obsidian.  Let's make this place something really special.  Dumat,  we'll need a plentiful stockpile of wood for all the new beds, but while your out there, do keep your eye out for exotic creatures, hmmm?  I swear I saw a leopard outside yesterday, and a tame wild cat would really be something to talk about!"

Oh, we all felt so buoyed up by such speeches.  The work was hard, yes, but Tekkud was right that we had enough food.  We had taken no wood, no weapons aside form a single axe and our picks, nothing but four dogs and a massive supply of food and drink.  We could have spent a year and a half doing nothing but digging and building, and still retain sufficient supplies that an immigrant wave would cause no problems.

In any case, work progressed so rapidly, and before even the end of our first year we were joined by more dwarves.  With the two children, our numbers now totalled sixteen.  More than double our original numbers.

Before long, we had established all the bedrooms, and the essentials, and work progressed on a lower chamber to act as both an exploratory area for digging our metals and gems, and to form elaborate burial chambers.  "Every dwarf that inhabits these halls shall have a burial chamber all to themselves, smoothed and furnished while they live, and engraved and sealed in death.  The final, sealing wall shall be crystal glass, that we may gaze upon our lost loved ones, whilst keeping their belongings and bodies safe and secure."  So Tekkud had ordained.

But, things were not going as Tekkud had planned.  With the wave of immigrants, he now had a workforce of farmers, more engravers, a brewer and dwarves to work on trade goods, but the mine was looking scruffy.  Rock wasn't being cleared as quickly as he wanted, and many areas that should have looked magnificent were instead strewn with debris, and the cage traps that protected our fortress had, instead of wild cats and terrifying beasts, caught groundhogs, horses and two lowly child snatchers.  These pitiful caged animals still served to decorate the precious meeting hall, however, and Logem and Stukos would spend their days jeering at the child snatchers in between helping out in the farms.

The most disappointing and vexing issue for Tekkud, however, was the lack of respect these new immigrants had for him.  Unlike the near religious devotion he had inspired in my brothers and I, these newcomers saw him only as an administrator, and took his orders lightly.  Many had even taken to wandering about outside, despite his strict instructions against it.

When the first death occurred, the graves at least were prepared...

[Bunny]

The disrespect that embodied our new brethren had begun to infect others, and at the same time we had all become heady, almost drunk, with the sense of pride and ability that Tekkud worked so hard to instil.

Word had gotten out that Tekkud lusted for exotic creatures and, emboldened perhaps having ventured outside without suffering harm, a few of my brothers had taken to wandering into a nearby, very odd cavern, to gather animal corpses.  For study, I suppose, and to get a feel for the variety of wildlife in the area.

It was a truly odd cavern.  There was something very unnatural, artificial in it's construction.  A dent in the earth; a perfect circle, sloped on all sides and with a sloped entrance in the centre, but the tunnels within were a rambling, meandering mess such that a rabbit might make, albeit strewn here and there with carved stairwells to different levels.  I must confess, this mixture of the natural and the crafted, apparently without reason or purpose, and no signs of the civilisation that may have created it, unnerved me greatly.

In any event, for all that Tekkud forbade entry to, and forbade the items contained within this area, our brothers continued to explore it.  Until one day, Dumat was lost.  Poor Dumat, it seemed, had wandered down there after a mole rat, only to meet death at the hands of an enraged troll.  Out of fear that others would be lost, his corpse and all his belongings were strictly forbidden, and Tekkud ordered a wall be built around the entrance to the tunnels.  Sealing poor Dumat forever, to rot in the dirt.

The plan was only supposed to be temporary, of course.  Tekkud had a plan.

"We will wall up that accursed tunnel to keep the disgusting filth out of our way.  Then, once our numbers have grown, we will each train with weapons, and will venture into the depths to wipe out those hideous creatures, aside from those few we choose to keep for our own amusement!"

It was a noble plan, but a doomed one.  The wall progresses slowly, so far was it from our fortress and our stockpiles of stone.  Tekkud was loathe to send miners to dig nearer to the tunnel, as he intended to keep the numbers nearby to a minimum.

In any case, the thought of Dumat, rotting below, was too much to bear for one of our newcomers.  A woodcutter by the name of Edum Inulthob, who had recently given birth, and who had remained silent on the identity of the father.  In retrospect, it is clear that Dumat was her lover.  In either case, she too fell.  Edum ventured, baby in her arms, to the caverns to collect poor Dumat's body.  Though she fled out of the caverns quickly when discovered, she was chased a ways by a troll, losing her newborn, and shortly thereafter her own life.

Soon, the beasts from the caverns began to bubble up towards the surface.  Batmen, Ratmen, trolls, imps, and more.  Two more lost their lives, innocently collecting cave spider webs that grew on the surface near that mighty crack we had seen upon our first arrival.

This was too much for Tekkud.  It was time to take action, and take it fast...

[Bunny]

Our bowyer had constructed enough crossbows for us each to take a pair, and we had  sewn leather quivers and crafted bone bolts aplenty.  Every adult member of the fortress was conscripted, every one.  Tekkud recognised our nervousness, and so he lead the charge, armed with a sword instead.  But we were disorganised, inexperienced and not meant for battle.

The first few that made it into the chasm took out a few trolls, but soon fell when caught in close quarters combat.  Others, a few stragglers that had become lost, wandered in the wrong direction.

Seeing this, Tekkud came to us, comforted us, and led us back towards the battle.  But, in his excitement, he led us down a different valley.  There, I saw again that movement I had glimpsed so many months ago.  But so much, so very much closer.  And oh, so much bigger.  Leathery wings, and then a glimmer of a massive, yellow eye.  And then, I remember only heat.

When I awoke, I was back in the fortress.  Ibok had rescued me, and brought me back to the safety of the fortress, raising the drawbridge behind him.  I was unharmed, but traumatised.  So many had been lost, and now we, and the children, were all that remained.

It matters little, now.  We are doomed to die, and I would rather it be over.  We realised, after a time, that even the fortress was not safe.  We may have a moat and a wall t protect us, but dragons can fly.  And what if it carries over some of those other creatures, or is joined by a flock of batmen?  No!  No, I say!  If we are to die then that death shall be of our own choosing!  The children may not understand, but this is for the best!

We have moved our beds, and those of the children, into the tombs.  We have walled ourselves in down here, and now await the sweet kiss of death.  I have spent these last few nights engraving our history on these walls, and can feel death approach as I grow ever thirstier.  The children cry at night, with hunger, and with grief, but they must be strong.  Better to die down here amongst our brothers than inflamed by a dragon on the surface.  At least here, unlike all of our brothers, the last survivor can entomb our corpses, before climbing into his own coffin to die with dignity.

Remember us, remember our lesson, and do not try to aim for such great heights so quickly.  Go slow, go cautious, and above all keep away from this accursed place!

[Dadamh]

Aside from being an example of good writing and an enjoyable read, this story is actually a fairly decent lesson for new DFers.

[Bullion]

it's Edutainment.

I quite enjoyed it.

[Savok]

This be good writing. Ah, such a rare sight!

I hope you don't mind that I port this to the wiki stories page.

[Royal Surveyor]

Fine quality.  A shame there likely won't be more of this. 

[Volatar]

Amazing storytelling. I enjoyed it

[Bunny]

Yay!  My stuff gets into the wikistories!

  And thanks for the compliments... although you've all made me blush!

[Jackrabbit]

mm fantastic storytelling, if a little moody. but that made it great! Please post another.