First update, 1/2
Well, my mountainhome was getting a tad unlivable – that being, turning into quite the dictatorship. I had nary a drop of booze to myself, my room consisted of a communal barracks, we occasionally had to eat vermin to survive and I was excepted to work under these conditions! Says I, ‘Fuck that!’ It’s all I could do to hold from throwing myself into the fires of my own metalworking furnace. I began a project of my own. I built myself a genuine water-faring boat, and taking some booze with me I found the nearest ocean and set off for a new land.
Looking backing on it, it was quite possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but Armok must have smiled on me that day for only after a short while’s travel I struck land. And not deserted land either, no, inhabiting this island was a troupe of dwarves looking to establish their own home in the rock, just as I was! Gods be praised, I’d found a new home.
The strange thing was they didn’t seem to be doing too much mining or working. No, they just seemed to be milling about their wagon, slowly consuming their booze and meat supplies. It’s not that they weren’t trained, they had a two miners, also skilled in masonry, a farmer, an engineer and me, the metal smith. There is also one who considers himself a "robot", and no one can really give me any detail as to why. But no, it wasn’t the lack of skill so much as the lack of leadership. I approached them with a friendly greeting, and they quickly informed me that since my voice is funny (my native accent, I’m sure) I get to be in charge.
Well, I’m not one to put down a challenge. I scouted out the surroundings, while constructing a vague plan in my head. I’ve jotted down a few scribbling here; I hope you can make sense of em.
I’ve marked where I’ve decided to strike the earth. The ground formed a nice plateau, so I figured it’d be a good basis for an entrance.
But, before I struck the earth, I got to work on the preliminaries. An organized fortress is a well-run fortress, it’d make no sense to simply start digging willy-nilly. I ordered the wagon deconstructed, and the stores organized into separate stockpiles. Now, here is where I hit my first snag.
After giving the order to the woodcutter to fell trees a plenty, I realized there was not a single stick of wood on this island.
Now, I’m no Elf sympathizer, but I do know that even a dwarf needs to use wood. A rock bed simply won’t suffice – it needs to be a comfortable wood. And, more importantly, you can’t make a barrel out of stone! I had a short panic attack as I realized this. I ran over to the supply zone – With the barreled supplies we had, if we emptied them out, we’d probably be able to make them last. That was a good thing – I told the dwarves around, do not use more than six of the barrels for food! We needed them to brew booze…
Precious, precious booze.
Well, with that problem postponed for the while, I figured it was time to strike the earth. After only this short while, I found myself proud to be overseeing my own fortress. I hummed the national anthem of my homeland as I saw the first rooms carved. The main hallway was excavated, and a bedroom and dining room was hollowed out. A bedroom to fill with what, I don’t know, but a bedroom non the less.
Now if there is one thing I don’t like, it’s a fortress littered with stone. I told everyone just to dump it out to the south, get it out of the way.
With that out of the way, I wanted farms up and running. We dug down and out – searching for dirt to accommodate underground plump helmets. My predictions proved correct – we struck dirt only a short distance from the main hallway, and it was going to prove invaluable to this fortress.
What I wanted next was for our supplies to come inside. I’d seen many a horde of trickster-monkeys swoop down and run off with food, weapons, clothes and booze alike – and with wood supplies the way they were, we couldn’t risk loosing even a single barrel.
That project was quickly finished, and now that we had the essentials down, I considered what to do next. I really hadn’t thought this far ahead. Well, there was bound to be problems with moral as we had to sleep on the cold stone floor of our barrack, so I considered that, but suddenly a much more present danger sprang to mind: the volcano central to this island. How I had managed to forget it in the flurry of activity I don’t know, but I had a very vivid mental image of the story a friend once told me about those exposed volcanoes erupting and spewing magma all about. Surrounded by water and with nowhere to run to, I didn’t want to be cought in the Lava God’s anger, should he choose to cast it upon us. I considered a defensive mechanism, something to keep us safe from any possible explosions…
There, the first step of safety. When the full project is done, I’m sure it will yield calmer thoughts for me. More on that later – I’m sure the volcano won’t erupt immediately, so I designated some other tasks to be completed.
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Part 2 coming soon!
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Topic: /v/'s potentially fail, fortress succession thread! (Read 37715 times)