23rd Timber, 207, Late Autumn
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Vabôk Dodókibel, former planter and now legendary woodcrafter, met with humiliation today as a fey mood wiled him to create this thing. What a disgusting, cheap--
"Zooooon!~" I heard in a singsong voice.
Oh, great. "Yes,
Mayor Asob, what would your royal majesty like
this time?"
Asob skipped over to peek at my diary. "Oh, no Zon! You've missed so much detail! You can't just make such a brief, passing mention of one of the chronicles of our history!"
"You actually like that dried out chunk of wood?"
"No, it's hideous. But that doesn't stop it from being an important part of our culture! Haven't we accomplished quite a bit since your last writing?"
"Not really... I mean, there's a lot of stuff under construction, but I normally don't write about that until it's done. Besides, I thought you were concerned about me writing
too much, and now you want me to write
more?"I
demand that you write more!" Asob did a little bounce, as if happy with herself.
"Seriously, Asob, what is it with you and these demands all of a sudden? You're getting to sound like a noble!"
"I'm a mayor! That makes me a noble, right? You got my note I left on your table, right?"
"Yes. I crumpled it."
"Crumpled it? It was written in stone!
"I'm mighty, what do you want? A physics lesson? Anyway, hope you're happy with tin bars. Cassiterite isn't easy to come by around here; so far we've only come across two veins, so you're just going to have to live with tin bars. You're lucky we have
that."
"Well, just wait until we get demands for things we don't have, like crystal glass! What'll we do then?"
"I don't know... King Minkot's orders are to keep the consorts alive, so we're going to have the take the hammer blows and hope they aren't fatal... maybe we can fool Sibrek out of her steel, or lock her in one of the bunkers until the consort forgets. You were just joking about that diary mandate, right?"
"No, no, no! You need to write about what we've been doing this season! Your last update was so brief, I hardly thought it was worth taking the time for it!"
"You've been reading my diary??"
"It was sitting on your +Basalt throne,+ I didn't think you'd mind!"
"Who gave you permission to just come in and start messing with my stuff?"
"King Minkot, of course."
"Of course....
fine, I'll show you what we're working on, even if it's not complete. Since you demanded so nicely..."
We're aggressively searching for that underground river now on level -2. When we reached the brook, I decided that we need to wall off the exit points before proceeding into the next hill to keep siegers from getting in. This provides the added bonus of giving us safe fishing spots in case we're ever trapped underground for a long period of time.
The giant eagle roost is getting impractical to build and it just feels unreliable to me, so I'm trying a different approach. Now, we're building a box out of kimberlite that will house caged wolves, giant eagles, and whatever other vicious animals we can find. When the goblins come to our door, we'll pull a lever to open their cage and the floodgate, releasing dangerous critters all over the battlefield.
This is a variation of a wolf trap created by a friend from Cometnet, a fort from another continent. In her version, the wolves were kept underground and protected by a lever-controlled hatch, and the cages could be fed through underground passages. Personally, I prefer having only one entrance to the fort, and I've held firm to this rule since the beginning. I might be tempted to break it, however, with the next construction.
We've channeled out many of the access ramps south of our entrance, and we're building a wall at the edge to prevent archers from firing down onto our troops. The siege this season revealed a very dangerous threat to our fortress by giving the enemy archers this huge advantage, so we need to take that advantage away from them.
This wall might eventually be used as part of a walkway between the two guard towers, but this presents two problems to me. Number one is that this would connect another entrance to the fort to the outside world, one that leads directly into our food and booze stockpiles. The other, which I find more serious, is that the overhanging area would create a shaded zone that the workers might think is 'inside,' so when I give the orders to stay inside some might take shelter in the little strip of grass beneath the walkway. It would be very nice, however, to not only connect the two crossbowdwarf towers, but line the inside with fortifications to allow crossbowdwarves to fire in on attackers from more angles.
The bunkers are more or less complete. We even have a well in each one! The only thing left is to link the lever to the bridge in the southern room, and to get some picks into the bridge pits. There seems to be too much work to do for the time being, and nobody is moving those picks down there where I need them! After all, we're
still cleaning up from the mess left from two huge sieges in a row.
Finally, Vabôk Dodókibel decided to horn in on the fame of 'The Deified Furnace' the adamantine buckler by putting two images of it on this stupid piccolo. There's been no end to the ridicule from the other workers about it, and I don't blame them - and for once, Asob and I are in agreement over a piece of art!
"Nicely written! Now, we need two more tin items, please."
"What?! I've fulfilled that order for you three times already!"
"Zon, we can never have enough tin."
"Tin is practically worthless! How much of it do you want?!"
"Well, we don't have a prison yet. You should make some tin cages--"
"No, I won't! We have eleven unused cages in this fort already; we do not need more! And for that matter, we certainly don't need a prison!"
"But Zon, the consorts will get upset if their justice can't be carried out!"
"I... but... we haven't had a single imprisonment yet!"
"Because there's nowhere to put them, of course!"
"And I'm not about to change that if we don't need to! We'll worry about it later. There are more important things now, and their absence isn't bothering anybody yet."
"Well, ok, just make me some bars then."
"Ugh... if you insist."
((Elizar, none of my engravers appreciate art at all... how about that? You're in luck though, the most recently appointed champion greatly appreciates art and beauty! I'll formally introduce him at the start of the next siege. Let me know if you want something else.))
Author
Topic: Severedcoils - Consort Accumulation Challenge (Score: 5) (40d + DnD 5e) (Read 130439 times)