Winter has come, though it is not nearly as cold here as it was in the mountainhomes. The brook remains free-flowing, and the grass remains green.
However, as I feared, the caravan has drawn the attention of the orcs, and they arrived in force: 12 slashers and four wrestlers, one of them mounted on a fearsome beak dog.
I'll admit that I panicked a bit and ordered both the inner and outer drawbridges raised, and then panicked even more when I realized that most of us were asleep, so there was nobody to pull the levers to raise them. Anyone else in my place, seeing over a dozen of the beasts charging the gate when we had only a single trained soldier to protect us, would have done the same. Fortunately, my shouts roused Skjald and Flint enough to have them raise the bridges, and we were safe, if trapped.
The Duke questioned why we were hiding inside rather than fighting them on open ground, the way we would with goblins. A single trained warrior can stand against a dozen goblins, and between him, Flint, and Shoruke they would only have five apiece. Flint, who had seen the aftermath of battles between The Unions of Responsibility and the Orcs, vetoed that plan. Orcs, he explained, were unlike goblins in several ways that made fighting against them much more difficult.
"For one, as you can see, the average orc stands nearly seven feet tall. This gives them a great advantage over dwarves in combat that the goblins don't enjoy." He said, "Their skin is naturally tough, removing another advantage that dwarves have over goblins. As if that wasn't bad enough, they are fearless in battle and feel no pain. If we fought them, it would be a fight to the bitter end. I've heard stories of orcs losing both their legs, only to crawl along the ground and tackle soldier to allow their comrades a killing blow. They came here willing to die. Are you?"
The Duke remained unconvinced, and Flint ordered an area of the planned fortifications overlooking the brook, where the orcs were now idling, mined out while he made a handful of wooden bolts to drive his point home. The orcs began grunting at us and gesturing rudely as soon as they could see dwarves, and Skjald was so frightened by her first actual sighting that she fled in terror from them immediately, and joined Flint in opposition to The Duke's plan.
From the position overlooking the orcs, Flint took aim with a crossbow and fired bolt after bolt at the milling group, to no noticeable effect. The orcs seemed nearly impervious to the bolts, and it was not until fifty bolts were fired that they retreated behind a hill and out of Flint's firing range, leaving three dead behind. None of the surviving orcs had so much as a scratch on them.
This finally convinced The Duke that force of arms was futile against the orcs at this point, and so we began to make preparations for spending the winter as prisoners in our own fortress.
We still had ample material inside, and we began making it seem a bit more like the mountainhomes. Several large digging projects were laid out, including space for our forges and a system of pipes to supply us with fresh well water without the need to venture outside: I expect more orcs to attack, once they know the location, and I would hate for one of our wounded to die of thirst because we cannot venture outside. The siege, though, prevented any immigrants from the mountainhomes. Though I would be glad of the extra labor, I am somewhat relieved. Getting them safely inside would have been a tricky operation at best, and a total disaster at worst.
And so, while the orcs wandered outside, we labored inside. Proper rooms were built, so each of us can have some privacy rather than the communal arrangement that we had before, for which I'm quite grateful. And so, with the doors just being put into place, we pass the one year mark from our arrival here. The orcs still wait outside, and there is still much work to be done. But we shall continue on, for the glory of the Braided Lenses and the Theater of Beards!
Current maps of the fortress:
Here the outer fortifications can be seen, as well as the main entrance, food storage, and farms.
The workshops, dining room, food processing area, and the Orcish menace. The designated, un-dug area is scheduled to become a pit trap under the entranceway
Storage for the workshops, the bedroom complex, and part of the plumbing system. The bottom of the pit and the barracks are in the upper left
The lower storage, directly above where we have mined out space for the forges and furnaces. The edges of the magnetite are at the bottom of the bedroom leaf, and the large rooms with upwards stairways are going to be the water reservoirs once we can venture outside to flood them, and we've had engravers down to smooth them out.
Thus ends the first year of Lanternweb's history.
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Topic: Lanternwebs (The End!) (Read 80521 times)