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The milker and I had a chat today. I passed her heading to the food stockpile with a double armful of plump helmets. At first this didn't make me take pause, as Chyla carries as much on a regular basis, but the young dwarf who arrived just the other season stumbled in the mud-covered floor, and tossed shrooms all over the place.
It seems her name is Rhenaya, a clerk from a backwoods fortress to the northwest. She has taken up farming to try and help out, even though she has very little skill to it at all. Her glasses fell off with the mushrooms when she fell, so I spent the next hour gathering mud covered fungi, and looking for rock crystal spectacles in the mud.
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I was passing the sleeping area when I noticed that one of Ankas' hunting dogs was breathing oddly at the foot of his bed. Cerol was pregnant and gave birth to a single puppy. I've decided to leave this one to roam, if it survives I'll train it into another hunting dog so it can work with Ankas and its mother.
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Bad news today. Working on the stock records like I have been for what seems like ages, I spotted Rhenaya lurking just behind me to the left. When I lifted my head to ask what she wanted, she rushed over and told me that there was a caravan of Elves outside. I quickly ordered our dwarves inside the mud hole and put both military squads on standby.
By the time I had made it outside the elves had reached the trade depot we had rebuilt near the stairs. It seems these elves were traders, and they obviously were not happy at the amount of forest cutting, or of the clearly wooden trade depot they were standing on. But in any case it seemed they only wanted to trade. I relaxed a bit and gave the all clear, as well as instructions to move some trade goods to trade with them.
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As we were loading the goods into the trade depot, a large pack of mandrills decided to attack. However, Xonara and Hexed who happened to be outside at the time took it upon themselves to defend the camp.
The miner plowed into the group of them, scattering them, letting Xonara take shots at them with his crossbow. Several of the marauding apes were injured, and two were shot down straight. Xonara seemed to have a blank look on his face as he reloaded and shot the crossbow. I'd say it was almost a trance-like state. I'll have to ask him about it later, monkeys shouldn't be something to get that worked up about...
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I was about to talk to the elves when even more mandrills showed up. This time in force, with blood in their eyes. There must have been over thirty of them swarming poor Xonara and his partner marksdwarf.
When the fighting abated for a brief time, we found Xonara's head in the scattered mess of body parts that the beasts left behind... Aparently they didn't take too well to seeing the marksdwarf wearing a mandrill skin leather curiass.
I've given the order to dig a small graveyard along the brook to hold bodies, until we can cobble together some coffins. I will preside over the funeral myself when the time comes. But for now, we must remain practical and continue with pressing matters.
The marksdwarf's partner by the name of Bim was also attacked by the pack of mandrills, but made it away unscathed. Neo's sparring partner was not so lucky, suffering a broken leg and several smaller wounds. It will be some time before the swordsdwarf will be active in the barracks again.
I have some pride knowing that the mandrill who we named Egenistrath for his attack on Xonara was itself taken apart by my own war dog Erush. Egen's head now sits rotting in the refuse stockpile, along with a good dozen other mandrill corpses, and scattered body parts. Hexed has mentioned he is going to make a totem out of that one's skull to place in Xonara's coffin.
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This day just keeps getting worse and worse. The remnants of the mandrill pack were joined by a group of chimpanzees and are still roaming the area. Bim was swarmed by the chimps, and one of the remaining mandrils took a nasty chunk out of his thigh. He bled to death before we could get him inside to rest.
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All of this was a bit too much. I let Hexed and Chyla convince me that I needed to rest and the Elves would wait, and we all went underground to take a nap. Meanwhile the monkeys still raged outside, and corpses were scattered everywhere...
Oh, and Chyla's war dog, Edem managed to give birth to a pair of puppies during the monkey mayhem. They seem healthy enough, I've given the order to have them added to the cage with the others.
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More puppies, this time three of them. I'm debating sending a group of them to slaughter for extra animal products, but assuming we work the monkey corpses before they rot, we should have plenty. So for now, I've ordered them caged.
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The elf from Cereyamimale introduced themselves as Thele. I don't even have any sodden idea what gender they are, the elf being so abnormally large. I decided not to worry about it and look over what they had to trade.
Unfortunately there wasn't much at all. A bunch of wooden toys, and overly large useless wood armor. I traded some of our cheaper bone crafts for a couple empty bags, two handfuls of berries, two bins of cloth and some cheap booze that we really didn't need(but who turns down booze?).
I ended the trade with a sober nod, I didn't even have the energy to comment on the elf tree-love. The past few days have been /that/ bad.
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We are /still/ cleaning up the mess heralded by the arrival of the elves. Bobby mentioned the other day that the elven caravan could have just been a distraction sent by the monkeys to weaken our defenses. I didn't pay much attention to the thought at the time, but seeing as how the monkey attacks have stopped for now, it may end up being true.
One of the vermin hunters has given birth to kittens. Speaking of vermin, it seems one of the wooden bins we traded from the elves, contained a full sized cage with a tiny hedgehog in it.
Since we don't have any smaller cages for the wee beast, it will have to stay there for the time being. I don't even want to know how something that small can scare an elf into thinking it needs to be caged /and/ put into a bin to trade away secretly. Then again, we are talking about pointy-ears here.
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As cleanup and monkey butchery continues, I took the time to make a record of just how many kills we managed to deal against the ape army. Not counting the unknown amounts the war dogs tore apart, we know that Xonara killed two mandrills and wounded many more. His partner Bim killed two chimpanzee allies before a mandrill gave him that lethal bite.
Neo however took a firm stand against the monkey hordes, killing a total of four mandrills as well as eliminating the one we named 'Bonegrind' for his mortal wounding of Bim.
I seriously hope Ankas recovers soon. His list of hunting kills is impressive, six full sized gorillas, five chimpanzees, and at least as many other random monkeys. Along with a single giant jaguar and one elephant that he must have taken down between his hand injury and the broken rib. We really could have used his crossbow prowess during the last attack.
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Taking a break here, it's only the 27th of granite early spring XD Sheesh what a mess. But it's fun to try and deal with it all. Took me a good 15 mins trying to figure out how to explain half my dwarfs saying oh well, mandrils and chimps attacking everywhere, time for bed.
Oh here's what the refuse stockpile looks as I take my break:
The part to the left was me expanding it, as the normal one was full to the brink mostly with mandril parts.
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Topic: Zasrimtar, The Crystal Castle {Community Fort} Now with flying Elephants! (Read 17877 times)