The following tale takes place in the lovely dwarven town of SteelCrescent. Though, before I go into the tale itself I shall explain a little of the background of SteelCrescent.
SteelCrescent is my first attempt at an overland fort. More of a town, really, with architecture based on human towns. This means, naturally, SteelCrescent is a death-trap. Thanks to the lack of any real way to defend the town and the lack of an effective military early efforts of Kobolds, Goblins and Monkeys to undermine the fledgling town were unfortunately effective.
Because of this, many of my early artefacts now lie in Kobold or primate hands and few children grow up in dwarven society. Not to mention Goblin ambushes more numerous than many of the sieges I have witnessed (which, on a side note, are frequently led my Humans and Elves. Leading the elder dwarves to believe that they tall races are in cahoots with the Goblin scum! The elders ordered all elf and man skulls to be turned into totems and sold back to their respective races as a warning) Not to mention the fact that to the north of SteelCrescent is an unholy range of mountains. From which come Zombie Giant Eagles and herds of Zombie Mountain Goats. Mostly The Undead keep to the north but when the nights draw in and dwarves hold their heated Longland Beer close for warmth, hollow and anguished bleating can be heard from those terrifying hills.
Recently though, things are being improved. Many brave migrant come to live in SteelCrescent and teams of markdwarves and assorted melee soldiers have been raised, armed with the best leather armour and looted goblin weapons. Except for a single sparring accident and the odd goblin ambush, things have been good in SteelCrescent. Which brings me onto my tale.
It all began when I received the startling message “Shem Unvarlogem, Baby has drowned” Its not every day I get a message like that so I was quite taken aback. After staring at the message, somewhat startled, for a minute or so I became curious “Why wasn't this Baby hanging off the back of his mother like any good dwarven child?” I asked myself. It was then I decided to investigate the matter.
My first stop was to Shem's thoughts and preferences screen. This indicated that Shem was, indeed, fine! Not mad with despair, which was my first guess. Although it did explain where his mother was, she had apparently been lost to tragedy. On closer inspection it turned out that the mother was Lokum Logemamkol, the soldier that had died in a sparring session.
This painted a rather depressing picture. A Dwarven Baby losing his mother to a tragic accident in an effort to defend SteelCrescent from its enemies, only to die himself. But it didn't explain why Shem found himself drowning. As I mentioned he wasn't depressed at his time of death.
My next step took me to the father, Iton Uvarurvad. Iton is a Speardwarf in the squad “The Noiseless Roads” A successful squad of melee troops that Lokum was also a member of. A quick look at his thoughts an preferences revealed a rather worrying train of thought for Iton “Iton Uvarurvad has been ecstatic lately. He has lost a child to tragedy recently”
Now, this was rather shocking also, but could be explained. Iton had been indulging in some rather excellent food and drink recently so his mood could have been improved significantly even after the unfortunate death. I mean, the only alternitive is that Iton was glad that Shem had died and that would be unthinkable... wouldn't it?
On a whim I decided to have a look at Itons kill list, just to see if he had been doing his job. The first few were standard stuff, a couple goblin, a zombie mountain goat that had wandered down from the hills. Then right at the end, Itons most recent kill. Lokum Paintcounselled, AKA Lokum Logemamkol! This Speardwarf had killed his own wife in a sparring session! This made things interesting. I had assumed it was an accident but with this and other evidence I could not be sure.
There was one final piece of the investigation I needed to follow, Where and how did Shem Unvarlogem die. After tracking down the listing of Shems remains that the Clerk had dutifully noted in his books I found the poor Shem lying at the bottom of a stagnant pool. I recognised area immediately, this was the pool I use as my dumping pit. I knew Shem couldn't have fallen in without help but there was no one else in the area.
This was where my investigation stalled. I had no more leads. I knew that Iton had killed his wife and that he was unusually happy about his sons' death, no one could dispute that. But was it a mere accident? Was Iton so hopped up on Sunshine that he didn't care about his son? Or was it cold blooded murder, carried out by a dwarf who just didn't want a family?
I couldn't say, all the evidence was circumstantial. I couldn't do anything to him anyway, even if I were sure. But throughout my investigation there was one fact that still eluded me.
Who really killed Shem Unvarlogem?
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Topic: A Mystery in SteelCrescent (Read 1367 times)