Aw heck, wrote something up.
CHAPTER 3: MEET THE DUNGEON MASTER
The king sat atop his throne, listening as an advisor reported the goings-on of the mountainhomes. ‘Twas the usual drudgery; peasants cancelling drinking and fey moods aplenty. However, one bit of news caused him to sit up, for it was most unexpected.
“M’lord, a group of traveling merchants reported trading with a dwarven settlement in the Horn of Fragments region.”
The adviser continued, “Your majesty, forgive me but I did not realize we had sent settlers there… after all, isn’t that land a death-trap? Perhaps we should send…”
“This news displeases me,” spoke the king.
After giving the matter some thought, the king commanded a page to summon a dungeon master. “Right away, your majesty!” the page responded.
Somehow Sally’s group is still alive? That’s impossible. I ought to send someone trustworthy to spy on ascertain the situation and spy on the settlement if the rumors are indeed true. Of course, the aristocracy is treacherous at best… if I am to trust my spy’s reports I ought to send someone from the royal family. The page returned with the dungeon master. “Sire, allow me to present Lady Alice.”
Dungeon masters like Alice are the masters of manipulating both dwarf and beast. They control their captives through obedience and make everyone else very uncomfortable by their revealing and exhibitionist uniforms, a uniform they proudly parade, as it is a symbol of their rank.
“Daddy!” the dungeon master exclaimed. Yes, sending a member of the royal family would ensure dependability, and so the king would send one of his more expendable daughters to oversee the rumored dwarven outpost in the Horn of Fragments. Of course, he didn’t like the way the page was looking at his daughter.
The king really did wish Alice would wear more than a cape and hood when she was in his audience, as he’d told her a thousand times, her dungeon master uniform made him extremely uncomfortable.
His daughter’s questionable attire aside, there was business to attend to. “Alice, my dear, I have an important task for you.”
“I know, I know… you want me to clean up after my pet hydra. I said I’d tell a peasant to do it later!” she whined.
“No, no. This is a task of much greater importance. On its shoulders resides the fate of our nation!”
“Oooh, that sounds cool!”
“Indeed. I want you to accompany an expedition to the Horn of Fragments. There you will find a dwarven settlement; I want you to join that settlement and monitor its activities, then submit a report to a liaison that will accompany a merchant group visiting the fortress in the fall. Be sure to keep your report a secret. And for Armok’s sake put on some clothes!”
And so it came to pass that Alice and an expedition journeyed to the rumored outpost.
One morning, Higgins was working in his office when suddenly Doc entered to inform him that a group of migrants had been spotted on the horizon. Great, even more mouths the fort can’t feed.
Higgins walked to the second story of the castle, the construction was progressing at a snail’s pace, and spied… egads! They had a dungeon master with them! Nobility had deigned to arrive in the Fragment of Horns? Surely they deemed the sight suitable for superior habitation! What fools! Sally had been right, the nobility’s judgment and sanity were questionable indeed. That said, the dungeon master’s presence was a great honor… and perhaps the greatest honor the misbegotten settlement would ever know!
When the migrants finally arrived at the castle, most of them were sent to work in the plump hemet fields. More eyes watching the plants grow would surely help stave off starvation. Meanwhile, Alice met Higgins in his office.
When Alice asked about the settlement’s status, Higgins reported, “Well, as you’ve probably notice our castle is still under construction, but manages to protect us from the vicious wildlife—both breathing and non-breathing varieties. And do you mind covering yourself? Ahem. Oh yeah, and the castle’s built on top of a den full of necromancer cave crabs and their skeletal abominations. We’ve also assembled a large cache of useless trinkets for trading, though it seems the autumn traders don’t like us too much and tend to leave in a huff every trading session. And could you please quit jiggling those? It’s distracting. Anyway, our militia is small and lightly equipped; hopefully no goblins or ornery gophers will attack us anytime soon. No, no, they’re quite nice, please don’t be offended… look, I… ugh. Well, lastly, our food situation is… unsettling. In fact, at our current estimation we’ll run out of food before summer, begin the great vermin hunt by August, and resort to cannibalism just before the autumn caravan. Of course, with the presence of yourself and your group, that time table has been sped up a bit. And put some clothes on darn it!”
Of course, someone of the nobility was automatically deserving of the best quarters a settlement could muster, by virtue of their noble birth, of course. So Higgins assigned Alice an empty storage room right next to the barracks for her quarters. He hoped she wouldn’t mind militia dwarves taking a shortcut through her room on their way to the food stockpile.
To make proper use of the new farm hands, Higgins ordered an outdoor farm plot built so the castle could eat something other than plump hemets for a change. Within a few weeks, it became evident that throwing more bodies at the problem was yielding greater yields, and Higgins was pleased. He didn’t fancy the prospect of elf kebobs.
As summer arrived, a civilian was swarmed by a horde of skeletal hoary marmots, but successfully fended them off, but as he soon realized, the horrific encounter emotionally scarred him.
One day Higgins received some shocking news, the elf, Fortis, had been taken by a fey mood and was holed up in a craftdwarf’s shop. Even with Doc yelling at him to stop being crazy and get out, Fortis remained in the shop, gathering materials. He gathered some stibnite stone and hematite ore and constructed a scepter!
A hunter fended off a skeletal goat attack.
One day, Higgins was working in his office when suddenly he was disturbed by the jubilant cheers of a crowd. He rushed outside to see what was going on.
“Oy, what’s going on?” he asked a nearby peasant.
“Doc was elected as the new Julius!”
“All hail Julius III!” the crowd chanted.
“Eh, wot!?” exclaimed Higgins, “I don’t recall ever authorizing a democratic vote… this is clearly an act of revolution and if you think…”
“I authorized it,” intervened Alice. “Last month as a matter of fact… Oh, I forgot to tell you, didn’t I? I thought your lack of campaigning was a little odd… darn it, I always forget details like that! Sorry!” Alice then turned to the crowd and announced, “Julius II, Sid thanks you for your years of service. Under your leadership Sid has gone from a hermit’s burrow to a society of sustenance farming. Good luck in your retirement!” Cheers arose.
“Eh? Whose Sid?” Higgins asked.
“Not who, silly! The settlement, we voted to name it Sid City that is!” (Author’s note: “Sid” is dwarven for “charred”)
“This is ridiculous, why I...!”
“I’m going to have to ask you to calm down, sir,” Doc warned Higgins. “I’ve taken on the job of Julius III in addition to my current duties of sheriff. If you don’t behave yourself, Citizen Higgins, I might just have to place you under arrest.”
“That’ll teach you to tell me to wear clothes!” Alice hissed as Higgins skulked off. Boy, she could sure hold a grudge. Alice sure was a nasty nudist.
Doc then addressed the crowd, “Citizens of Sid City, I pledge to you that our humble settlement will prosper into a great metropolis under my tenure as Julius III. Law and order shall be the basis for our great society, and as such my first act as Julius III is to commission the foundations of a new prison tower to house violators of production mandates!” This news was met with scattered tepid applause.
The dwarf that had fended off the skeletal hoary marmot swarm was outside the castle one day, sleepless from a night filled with nightmares of the tiny terrors, when he was suddenly attacked by another hoary marmot! He broke its body, but it broke his mind. The dwarf could no longer stand the fear of the soulless hoary marmot abominations all around him, there was no hope for Sid City against these menaces, they were all doomed! At first he tried to fight his creeping madness, raging out at the world around him. But soon he descended into a melancholy depression and withered away.
A giant cheetah was spotted by the castle’s entrance! The Routed Arenas raced outside to protect the civilians from harm. Speedy Vari was the first one on the scene and engaged the ferocious creature. Vari suffered light wounds. The cheetah suffered dismemberment.
As the Routed Arenas returned to their barracks, passerby noticed Scuubs 2.0 was tenderly dressing Vari’s wounds. Gossip had it that the two were a couple, at least that’s what Doc said and she was a friend of Scuubs’s.
Autumn came and Alice came under attack by skeletal hoary marmots outside the castle. “Aw, isn’t he cute!” Alice exclaimed as she went to pick it up. Luckily, some crossbow dwarves stationed on the castle sniped the creepy critter and Alice was unhurt.
Soon after that, traders and a liaison from the mountainhomes appeared. This time, Higgins did not do the trading, a task Doc instead delegated to a random passerby. The random passerby traded the large pile of useless rock trinkets for four dogs, some cloth, and a lot of food. The merchants were happy. “Hey, its been good trading with you,” a merchant told the dwarf, “You’re not repulsive like that other guy, haha! Whatever happened to him? He get mauled or something… I mean besides his face? Oh, burn! Haha!” While the dwarf at the trade depot was distracted by the chatty merchant, Alice quietly handed her report engraved in leather to the liason.
Meanwhile a dwarf was taken by a fey mood and made a ring.
A hunter fended off most of a herd of skeletal mountain goats, then tried to run from one of them after running out of bolts. After a long chase, he finally stood and fought off his final tormentor.
Meanwhile Scuubs 2.0 attained the rank of axe lord and a dwarf was sentenced to 26 days in prison for some crime or another. Since the prison tower was a long ways from being built, Doc had a rope tied to a microcline statue in the barracks and tied the perpetrator to it. There was something poetic about the chaos of the barrack/prison/brewery.
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Topic: Settling in the Horn of Fragments was a Good Idea! (Community) (Read 4869 times)