3rd Granite, 306
The first child of the new year is a boy, Nomal, son of one of the glassmakers, Bembul, and the marksdwarf Thikut. There have been some gifts, but everyone is too busy preparing for a possible goblin attack for a party.
10th Granite, 306
The Elves have arrived, this time without that annoying druid. They despaired at the destruction left in Kovest's wake, but seem to accept our explanations of the event. Even the treewalkers seem to have heard of our elevated status, bringing five pack animals' worth of generally valueless goods. The most interesting things they have are a couple of barrels' worth of gnomeblight, which given that we are neither alchemists nor wizards, we can do very little with.
In the end we traded some food for a lot of cloth, barrels and toys on the premise that we might be able to put them to use in the home economies. I even made the druids a gift of several fish roasts glazed with syrup for the sake of diplomacy; it is not as if we are lacking in prepared food.
13th Granite, 306
Apparently the druid was just a few days late. I don't envy the Count having to handle these meetings instead of me nowadays. He is certainly welcome to them.
Memoirs of the 1st Count Areldolush
13th Granite, 306
The Elven ambassador, Amayi Dimatienela, returned today. He seemed actually willing to negotiate rather than offer us empty threats this year. After receiving the initial abuse from him during which he launched off on a longwinded tirade about how our kind were raping the planet of its resources, slaughtering trees on genocidal scales and drowning kittens for fun (I opted against offering him some of the kitten stew) he began to talk about the massive deforestation in the local area and how they would not tolerate our logging on a scale larger than, say, a hundred trees. At this point, I was strongly considering burying him somewhere in a wooden casket, but opted to accept his offer and try to wrangle a few more trees out of him. He remained resolute, so we shook on an agreement and he cracked a handful of short jokes before leaving.
I'm tossing a coin. Tails, I order the forest clear-cut.
The diary of Cousteau Idenoshar
16th Granite, 306
Encountered a dwarf screaming for brass in the workshops today. I was about to order a coffin prepared when one of the workers pointed out that this was normal for him. I've asked for his file sent to my office.
Fath 'Oddbod' Ablelnebel, mechanical engineer. Age of eighty-three, immigrant from the Autonomous Rim. Mountainhome of origin: Olonkulet.
Ah.
I've ordered some scones brought to him and asked Jools if we have anything we can brew for tea. Hopefully he should calm down enough to stop gumming up the machine shops.
17th Granite, 306
Had a brief talk with Oddbod over scones and a bit of clotted maggot milk. He seems typical for a dwarf from the Rim; brilliant, but unstable. Very mechanical mindsets, throw a spanner in the works and it all goes to pot. We talked about the work on the Delver, the working conditions for the engineers and his old home. He didn't talk much about the last part, but I've assigned him as an assistant to Doman until further notice. He might have a bit of luck helping to clarify Dee's last great works.
I went down to the machine shops to listen to the stories, too. The legends about Olonkulet are infamous, but it chilled me to hear them again. A city of machines and a machine that was a city. A living, breathing beast of brass, iron veins that pumped fire beneath a skin of ice. A city of wonders and horror in equal measure, where the hallways could change and slaughter at a moment's notice, or else reveal hidden treasures and long-forgotten passages. The site of the Ivory Library, a marble despository of knowledge and history, some believe the only place one could ever know what truly transpired in those final days.
Nobody survived those days to record them. A handful of children, of which Oddbod was one, were smuggled out of the city as the gates ground shut, sealing everybody inside. What is known is that in the final weeks before the self-imposed quarantine, the city began sealing away whole districts devoted to food and production supplies, resulting in metalworking and baking alike grinding to a halt. As the provision of scones and tea ceased, combined with malfunctions throughout the city, great unrest swept over the inhabitants, possibly provoking the final lockdown.
Nobody knows what became of the inhabitants after the doors sealed. Nobody has ever been able to get them open.
Somehow, I do not think I envy the dwarf who ever succeeds.
A conversation on 28th Granite, 306
Tormy sat at his desk, pondering the four cages before him. The goblins were weak and scrawny from lack of food, surely, but they had been that way when they had arrived. Torture of any kind was illegal in the dwarven nation and it seemed they were quite aware of this. He contemplated the likelihood that they were enjoying better conditions now than they had ever experienced in their monolithic black homes. They had taken to feeding the goblins fishbones, which the foul creatures had gobbled up with religious gusto. More than one dwarf had privately hoped the wretches would simply choke on them but it seemed they were quite adept at their feasting.
"Why do you do this?" he asked idly over his ale, not really expecting an answer. "Why throw yourselves like waves against the shore to break on our fortifications?"
"Kutsmob commands it," one of the goblins, Strodno, answered unexpectedly. He picked his teeth listlessly with a tiny piece of fishbone.
"Kutsmob?" Tormy questioned, intrigued by the response. "Who is Kutsmob?"
"Kutsmob," the goblin slave Unguslu drawled, "who is known as Devilgraves, the Evil of Fire, is our dear mistress."
"Can't say I know her," Tormy harrumphed.
"You will," Strodno promised.
"Why do you go ahead with this, then?" Tormy insisted.
"Well, aside from the constant threat and promise of torture, death and fire," cackled the third goblin, Ngebzo, "there's the simple fact that we just plain hate you. It's that simple. I know you dwarves think you're the great engineers, the master craftsmen and all. That you praise beauty and somehow embody civilisation and can't seem to understand why everbody just plain hates you. That's why we're here, you see. We, very honestly, put the truth to you and yours."
"What truth?" Tormy scoffed. "All you care about is death and destruction. You've no grasp of culture, or architecture and engineering, of craftsmanship! Nor of truth, beauty and the sanctity of life! You're mad dogs, what could you possibly know about civilised people?"
"What could we know?" the fourth goblin, Nako, mused in a curiously subdued voice, almost as if asking the question non-rhetorically. "What could we know of culture? What could we know of striving for a goal? But then, what could you? All my life, I've watched your people. I was a snatcher once, did you know that? I have children back at the fortress; your children. I have saved them, you see, for do you know what I learned about you when I watched your kind?" He paused, rhetorically, and did not wait for a response before continuing.
"I learnt who you are, what you care about. Tell me, dwarf, do you find meaning in gold? Can you find purpose in your jewels, your fine goblets? Why do you make these things, all these very 'nice' things?" Something about the way Nako said the word 'nice' carried a derogatory implication to it, a touch of falseness. "Do you find purpose in making them? In owning them? How much do you, as a dwarf, define yourself by what you own?"
"Stop it," Tormy muttered, a touch unsettled.
"I see you always," Nako continued undaunted, "always striving, always mining and making and... meddling. Yet all you have to show for it are these... dead things. These still artifices. The humans in their hunts and their crafts and their farming, they are always building of themselves and of their people, always striving for something higher. The elves, hypocrites as they are, at the end of the day have at least to show for their toils living things. Trees, forests, havens of life and meaning. What meaning do you find in your trinkets? Is it beauty? Then why do you sell them on, or throw them away like trash when something better arrives? It is the joy of craftsmanship? Then why is so much hoarded by so few, why will your poor buy even the ugliest to sate themselves? Or is it perhaps that because your people do not talk, do not find joy in each other, you turn to cold idols to fill that void? Can it be that you define yourselves by what you own? Who then, in this relationship, is truly the owner?"
"I said shut up!" Tormy raged, picking up the half-empty bottle and flinging it at the cage. The bottle shattered on the bars, spraying the goblin with broken glass and liquor. Nako winced, then gritted his teeth at the alcohol seeping through the cuts. Then, quietly, he licked the ale from his limbs.
"You dare to say we have no purpose?" Tormy spat, livid. "What purpose do you serve, then? What purpose does your slaughter and rape and defilement serve? Where is the beauty and the culture in that?" Nako peered at him with sharp red eyes, licking his arm slowly in a vaguely feline manner. His gaunt, listless expression belied the cold intelligence behind his eyes.
"Our purpose is to give all of that meaning," Nako replied. "You take so much of what you have for granted. We take life, so you may realise its value. We disfigure so you can appreciate beauty, enslave so you can enjoy freedom, torture so you may see joy."
"Really?" remarked Tormy, disgusted.
"There's also the fact that it's really fun," cackled Ngebzo, which prompted a chorus of wicked laughter from the rest. Tormy snorted and spat at them.
"May the gods curse you," he swore.
"Oh, they already have," Strodno half-snarled, half-leered. "You see, that's why you should count yourselves lucky. Your gods still live. Your gods and the human gods are free to meddle, whilst ours lie rotting forever. Even the Elves, who killed their gods, still feast upon their infested corpses, the Force they are so fond of. I find it exquisitely ironic that the whelps, the broken and imperfect children of creation, should be the sole recipients of divine attention."
"Whelps?" Tormy demanded incredulously. "Broken and imperfect? This from gutter-swilling, mis-shapen cretins like yourself?"
"He doesn't know," giggled Unguslu. "He doesn't kno-ow!"
"What?" Tormy snapped. "What is so important that you don't think I know?"
"You don't know the inconsequence of the dwarven life," came Nako's crooning voice. "What is the dwarven life? To be born, to live, to grow weak, to die. Culling such weakness is sport."
"That is true of all life!" Tormy defended himself and his people, though he was unsure why he was stooping to this argument.
"Is it? Have you ever seen an old elf?" Nako questioned. Tormy paused and thought back, thinking desperately over the subject. Nako continued. "You will not. Elves, the murderers of the gods, do not age. They are born, they live, they die. No age, no infirmity, no weakness. Bright and pure til the day they die. So, too, are we. Never a natural death has a goblin died. Never shall one."
"What... what are you saying?" Tormy asked with growing alarm. Nako smiled, then, a cruel smile full of jagged grey teeth.
"I am saying that goblins..." He paused and licked his lips for effect. "Are immortal."
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Topic: Areldolush - "Waterbore" [Community Fortress/Penal Colony] (Read 18407 times)