- CHAPTER FORTY ONE: A Prelude To Cacophony -
The Mad Scientist's Voice Log7th FelsiteMaddy's Journal. 7th Felsite. Woke up with a cold this morning. Forehead is hot, and voice is deep. Deep as the ocean of sin whose waves gently caress our fortress. There's a traitor swimming the dark, bloodied tide. One of the nobles? No, these seeds of chaos were sewn too far back. But even nobles are no better than cockroaches. Their chambers are littered with clothes. Some of them Elfbane's. Their fornication sickens me. Not - not literally sickens me, it was flu that did that. I'm wearing a mask to keep the others healthy. I can wander the sandcastle unrecognised. Watch subjects. Investigate motives. This fortress is afraid of me. Too many failed inventions. Too many mood swings forced upon me. There was an experiment, they believe. There still is. We've all been exiled to rot in our own destruction. The magical barrier is the lock, and only I imagine the key. I am a scientist. I never wanted to be a leader. A means to an end. Whatever else, I will never surrender my ideals.
Merchants tell tales of demons walking the land. Goblins break our treaty to siege dwarven fortresses. The king elect watches us, and who knows who else has spies among our ranks. The time for dwarven destiny is at hand. So when the accumulated filth of all their mandates and party attendences start giving negative thoughts then all the nobles and idlers will look up and shout "Tin items!" ... and I'll look down and whisper "No."
"Hey, Maddy!"
Urist.
"That exhunter was asking Warla if the Haul Brigade could start stockpiling and building floors from all the stone in the mines. Short story even shorter, the Count complained about who he asked and Hat nearly copped a hammer in the face. Cookie did."
Hurm. Build it. It'll keep the idlers busy while I plan. Speaking of which. I swear, that failed construction out the front is sucking the life out of me. Take out the wood and save what you can.
"Why would I save a vampire I no longer have a stake in?"
Wh-
what? ... Elfbane, I've given you an instruction. When were you planning to do it?
"Do it? I did it 35 minutes ago."
...
"What, we weren't referencing ..."
NO! I actually don't want to spread my cold, and I'm a little bit grumpy about it.
"Oh. Well everyone
falls sick eventually. I suppose it was only a matter of-"
OUT!
Lady Ruins Practises Her Dramatic Monologues24th OpalShe hasn't given up.
From this, I can deduce a great many things, but perhaps the most important is this: The Mad Scientist has been made aware of my presence. If she was still medicated while constructing the first attempted ocean drainer, she would have realised the futility then and there. The mere idea is madness, but in her position she might have adopted the guise for the sake of the fortress; she has remained idle from experimenting too long for many dwarves to truly consider her important otherwise. To have witnessed such a spectacular failure, and yet still try again, can only mean that she is truly mad, or has stumbled upon something truly genius. Either way, she was taking the medication until recently, and I know her enough that it would take a serious threat for her to willingly forego it. And I am the only threat still not under her control.
Having the observed the quantity of water flowing into our old obsidian mines, Maddy considered the possibility of removing a path of water not by evaporation, but by flowing it directly into the aquifer. Her first experiment concluded today; a single square pit near the coast down into the aquifer. The constant waves made finding the aquifer level difficult, and the pit filled without any noticeable effects. Maddy is undeterred; she plans to try again where the waves cannot reach tomorrow.
14th HematiteOf course the moment The Mad Scientist became aware a traitor existed, they had less to lose from their position. I have been acting more openly, aware of the risk. Maddy is unpopular enough that many dwarves still loyal to Warla or the Count will appear no less suspicious. Even so, this game must end soon. The last few attacks here have been notably weak, no more than failed surveillance. True danger must approach soon. Too, I know Maddy's experiments are not entirely the madness they seem; if all goes as I expect, she will inadvertently touch the keystone to our confinement.
The flooring project was a partial success. Many otherwise idle dwarves are set on constructing each square, and Warla was extremely unwilling to cancel and later re-designate the entire area even when the labor was required elsewhere. Unfortunately Maddy is not flustered and her latest experiment still progressing. A larger and deeper pit reaching into the aquifer, with a constructed roof to contain any excess, and water pumped manually (for now) from a channel to the ocean. There were a few concerns, such as being unable to reconstruct a floor on the first pit (Maddy was muttering "edge of the map"), waves reaching into the pit when the channel was dug too early and at least one dwarf inevitably falling in.
There was an unplanned but pleasing distraction at the Trade Depot today. Steinunn accused the humans of leading several goblin ambushes. The humans retorted with accusations of bastardy. Waylon tried to make peace before one merchant noticed the remnants of the first attempted ocean drainer. It took the Count mandating more non-existent tin objects to diffuse the tension, but these dwarves made no friends today.
24th HematiteThe backlash is already starting to occur. Sarek was the first to notice it, the slightest warble of the sun's progress. Brutus was the second, uneasy that not everything was quite how he recalled. Waylon laughs that he made the water disappear, but he could feel the tremor at his feet. The ocean touches the barrier, and the barrier was not made to be disturbed. Maddy takes it as a sign of success, and it is, but. There are no consequences I cannot manipulate. And there is no success I cannot turn around. The world outside the island depends on this.
(Conservation of mass is for the weak!)Maddy's plan succeeded, in theory. The water did vanish entirely as it reached the aquifer. The current pit is useless, requiring dwarfpower, too small and too far from the ocean to do much. Still, she is pleased with herself, and has begun the construction of, as she puts it "The FIRST phase of the SECOND mark of my LAST project to turn those blue SEVENS into ZEROES. THREE through SIX, I don't even care." It will be a wider pit right next to the ocean, more carefully constructed bottom up with a hatch cover to keep out water, and water pumping will be automated by windmills.
1st GalenaIn a way, it is truly sad. For years I've worked silently, finding secrets, growing in power, removing foes, and yet the one woman I find with the understanding to undo everything I have worked for ... is mad. She doesn't even know who hides among her ranks, but here I stand and almost consider her a rival. I, the only sane dwarf, pitted against the most insane. Ah, but it would be too strong a word. Maddy has raw genius, perhaps, but she lacks dedication; soon it will be her undoing.
Last month a fisherdwarf went insane because The Mad Scientist forgot about him. Even Warla was too busy to attend to the matter, if only through managing several shops. I hear Kibeth's ghost was less than impressed. While digging the Ocean Drainer Mk2, Hat came across the discovery there was no aquifer near the ocean. This discovery did not please all the dwarves who had waited and worked to bring stone out through the caves. Maddy insisted it had been worth it to defeat the gremlins. In any case, a passage was dug from the pit south to where the aquifer began; only a few square metres were dug before the pit began to flood FROM the aquifer and the dwarves fled in terror. The OD2 is nearly completed now (after several lengthy delays from waves pushing objects) but most dwarves are unsure if it will still work or not. The last axel is being ordered as I speak.
5th GalenaAnd so, from a sandpit struggling to function to a glass-wielding experimental prison, the stage is set. From those shunned by fate to those who grasp time in their hand, the pieces are in place. Above a lava field, beneath a goblin prison, before an angry world and beside a deadly ocean, the true madness begins. What else could I expect?
(Beyond epic - beyond stupid epic - and beyond just stupid - you reach dwarf.)A Page From The Diary Of Elfbane Chaotika6th GalenaWell diary, it's hard to aptly describe the scene in front of me right now. I'm writing this from outside the fortress, and I can see the ocean literally being sucked away into nothingness as it rolls in. The whole seaside just dips, it's like anti-wave or something. And this is only the beginning. Maddy showed me her plans this morning, and get this: First she's going to dig a tunnel underneath the ocean. Then, starting as far away as possible, the miners are going to poke holes in the ocean floor. POKE HOLES IN IT. I love that, I can't write it enough. Convincing the miners they're not going to drown literally ever step of the way underneath the ocean might prove tedious, and they might be a little risk when doing the poking, but still, it'll be worth it!
Madness does have its downsides though. Maddy nearly lost several teeth after a miner exclaimed they had struck pineapple opal. She accidentally ordered a hostile camel placed in the TARDIS too, while the military were elsewhere. It harmlessly ran wild. Strife tried to catch it when he returned but ended up lost in the workshops. A few hours later Sarek found it hiding in one of the unused ones and nearly had a heart attack.
P.S. Here's the first draft of my commemorative poem:
The ocean breeze blows.
What memories of dolphins
linger in its sand?
17th GalenaSomething distinctly ominous has been happening in the last few days. It sounds crazy, but time seems to be slowing down. All the water rushing from the ocean, just thinking about it makes every minute feel like an hour. And that's not all. The beer has been tasting strange too, and Cookie is sure it's the water rather than the plants. There have been several small earthquakes, and Bahl has been acting a bit buggy. It's times like these I'm afraid to be the comical sidekick.
Anyway. Three miners braved the run to poke holes in the ocean. It worked almost perfectly, nine out of the the ten planned holes were poked in time. One of the miners made it out safely and one was trapped in the flooded tunnel and only just escaped before drowning. His mule wasn't as lucky. The last miner escaped UPWARDS and ended up standing in the drained ocean with no safe way back to the fortress.
(This? This is what you don't GET in commercial games.)The miner spent a while running back and forth, then realised he could hack more holes in the ocean from his position. With each extra hole, the water flowed away faster, and he could walk out into the ocean a little bit further. After a while the water was refilling too fast from the north and he was feeling thirsty, so he headed back to the beach and dug himself an up staircase between the pipes. Just another day in the life of a dwarf.
23rd GalenaMy fellow unappreciated entertainer Waylon has been taken by a mood! He ran off very slowly towards a forge, and very slowly constructed The Price Of Murdering, a copper sarcophagus with no decorations but bands of copper. Warla very slowly laughed when she was asked to appraise it, yet I can not help but feel Waylon truly appreciates the nature of our fortress. Maddy even had it very slowly carried to the tombs and very slowly designated it as Waylon's.
What the heck is very slowly going on here?
2nd LimestoneBahl has refused to continue mining, spitting out errors from all the tremors recently. The rest of the miners soon followed, afraid of what might happen if they continued digging in these conditions. They're all masoning now, constructing the floor and unwillingly starting the next phase of Maddy's OD2. The design is crazy, long pipes and windmills pumping water from overhanging paths far out over the ocean, supported only by a few squares on the beach. I'm not sure if they're more afraid of it collapsing or of it WORKING. If these
The recovered document ends here. The rest was lost to flames.[Author's Note: At this point the minimal FPS became too frustrating to continue. The next chapter and final chapter for this fortress will be entirely fictional. Well, more so than before.]
(DF physics are estimated to be 15 times more awesome than ours.)
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Topic: All Dwarves Are Bastards (But Some Less So Than Others) (Read 91695 times)