Okay, the summer held three (well, four, I guess) major-esque events, but I think I'm gonna have to split them up for time's sake.
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23rd Hematite, 15~Pebbles shifted under his feet as he pressed his shoes deep into the mountainside. Bodark hadn’t hiked in a few years, not since their arrival upon the wagon back in 11. He wasn’t sure how or why he’d ended up on this expedition – Quinn had certainly been pressing his buttons, but he’d never responded so aggressively before, nor so emotionally. Perhaps it was Sam’s constant demands of him – he loved her, but he was getting rather frustrated with constantly having to keep her happy. She was impossible to appease.
In any case, it was just the four of them. Sirs Grath and Randall, the knights clad in intimidating iron plate mail, Jyrvus, the miner and smithy, and himself. Bodark. The pretense for involving him was that ‘a mechanic could always come in handy,’ but why
he was there instead of Kriega or one of the immigrant mechanics was a question left unanswered.
They approached the small gap in the cliff face, and stopped. Bodark turned back, to see his three compatriots all standing behind him. “Guys, I’m not the muscle here, huh? How about you stick in front of me for a change?”
“Uh… that webbing there, does that look thick to you?” asked Grath. The fastest of the knights was also the slowest in many regards, but there were times when he’d catch something nobody else had noticed. This was one of them. The web was thick and bulbous, seemingly coated with a muscus-y substance.
Bodark shrugged, as if unconcerned. “We’ve got phantom spiders all over the castlegrounds, Grath. You’ve seen the buggers. We get some great silk from them, not that we ever bother to weave it into anything.”
Randall spoke as well, her voice quavering slightly. Normally she was the most hot-headed of the knights, who arrogantly charged into battle without regard for tactics or strategy. It was rare to see her nervous about anything. “Bodark… what’s in there?”
“What does it matter? You’re knights! You’re tougher than anything lurking in th—”
There was a gutteral groan, loud as a lion’s roar, and then a large green misshapen mass charged out of the darkness waving a club in the air. A troll—no. An undead troll. These zombies were everywhere – the skies, the mountainside – and now from within the earth as well?
Bodark jumped to the side, barely fast enough to dodge the large blunt instrument. Immediately Randall and Grath were on him – but the brute was tough, slamming Randall into a wall. Grath struggled, dropping his sword, but finally forced the monster back into the cave and over the edge of the pit. There was a thud, followed by some scrapings. It had landed on the outcropping just below, and was trying to pull itself up.
“Jyrvus!” shouted Grath. “Grab your pick and dig me down there!”
“Down where, specifically?”
“Behind it! I’m going at it through the walls!”
Jyrvus whipped out his pick, now professional enough to wield it with a slight blur, and quickly carved a crude slope downwards. “Okay, cap’n. I make this dig, you’ll be right on him.”
“Do it.”
“Right. And here we go.” Jyrvus struck his pick forwards again, and the wall of earth collapsed, revealing the green decaying monster before them. Immediately Grath charged out at it, slamming it across the pit’s ring with the flat of his sword. The hit impacted with enough force to send bits of the troll flying.
The knight stood at the edge of the chasm, panting. Trolls were not among the usual vermin they had to clear from Mightygrips. Behind him, Jyrvus walked the now conscious but still dizzy Randall down their makeshift stairwell.
Bodark stood at the edge, looking across. This was an insane idea. He was terrified of slipping – would he ever hit the ground if he did? At the least, he’d never see it coming. The dark hole was nearly pitch-black, and seemed to continue on forever.
They continued down, Jyrvus digging and the knights charging in to handle threats. It was tortuous and slow work, and Bodark wasn’t sure why it needed to be done at all, but—
There was a wet, soppy noise under his boot. He looked down. More web.
Jyrvus looked out through the last hole he’d dug over the pit. “Y’know, there’s a lot of webbing around here. Not so thick so’s you’d notice, but it’s there all right.”
Randall suddenly tightened up, cocking his head to the side as if listening for something. He held up a hand behind him. “Go. Head back.”
Nobody moved as Randall edged his way forwards, drawing his sword. Suddenly there was a loud sponge-like sucking noise, and Randall’s foot became trapped in a giant mess of webbing. He fell back and landed on his back. “Go, damn it!” he shouted.
They didn’t need to be told this time. The monstrous creature was crawling towards them over the largest web any of them had ever seen. It was drooling from what was presumably a mouth, but had so much skin and flesh hanging out that it could just as easily have been a bloodied eye.
Randall clawed away at the ground behind him, trying frantically to free his leg from the twisted web. The beast made its way closer. Finally he ripped himself free, darting for the tunnels. He could hear the creature behind him, its movement sounding like a wet whisper. Like someone was licking its lips. Like it was
hungry.
He finally emerged into sunlight, only moments ahead from the spider. There was a quiet cry of pain, and then its legs quickly retreated back into the darkness. Randall leaned over, his hands on his knees, panting.
“That was a big spider,” commented Jyrvus.
“Big? Big is an understatement,” said Grath. As the miner and knights got into a discussion about the uses of the adjective ‘giant,’ Bodark stared into the sky, thinking to himself.
“We’re gonna catch the bastard.”
The debate succumbed to silence. “You’re… talking about the spider,” said Grath. “Just to be clear here: that’s what you’re talking about? The spider?”
Bodark whipped some gears from his mechanic’s belt. “Here’s how we’ll do it. Jyrvus, you dig us a second tunnel down, to just around where we first saw this thing. Don’t breach the wall yet, though. I set up a trap to catch the thing, and then we dig in so the only way that thing’s got to go after us is over the trap. Randall, Grath, you two are bait. Let’s get to it.”
There was grumbling from Randall. After a moment, they all shrugged a bit and moved farther from their tunnel so Jyrvus could dig the second hole. After a few hours work, everything was set up. Bodark gave the order for Jyrvus to open up the tunnel to the pit, and the two of them ran, leaving Grath and Randall to watch for the beast.
“Heeeere, spidey, spidey, spidey…” Grath whispered, hunched over and walking very softly away from the safety of the tunnel. Randall held her ground behind the trap, in case anything happened to Grath.
There was silence in the chasm, penetrated by the occasional shuffling from the darkness. Grath didn’t feel like bait, he felt like an appetizer.
“Anything yet?” Randall finally called.
Grath sighed. “No, nothing. I don’t know, maybe it knows we’re trying to—WHOA!”
A huge mass of webbing burst just inches from his face, shooting past rapidly. He turned and ran, the creature hissing angrily at missing its prey. It was just barely visible now, but moving fast and furiously.
The knight ran for the crack in the wall that signified his safety. “Where are you, you goddamned, hole, where’d you go…” In the darkness, he’d lost sight of the tunnel entrance. “Randall!” he cried. No response. Randall must’ve ran when he shouted.
Suddenly, he saw it. The beast was practically upon him now, and he dove and rolled to dodge another burst of sticky webbing. “You’re close, Grath, you’re close, let’s just get out of here,” he muttered to himself as he ran. Reaching the tunnel entrance, he went to leap the trap… and fell just a few feet short, webbing suddenly enveloping his arms and upper body. With a shout of anger, he fell to the ground.
He turned his head, terrified, to see where the beast was. From the darkness, he saw rotten limbs lunging towards him. Grath screamed and rolled his head away, heart beating rapidly, and waiting for teeth to sink into his back. There was a shriek, and then it was over.
Grath blinked after a minute, then opened his eyes and turned back. The beast, writhing furiously but ineffectively, was suspended in a strong wooden cage. In his desperation he’d managed to roll over the cage trap, setting it off on the beast.
The knight let out a long breath, his heart beat beginning to slow to normal. “It’s all right,” he called up. “We caught it.”
After a minute or so, Bodark, Jyrvus, and Randall hesitantly made their way down the tunnel. Grath had ripped off the last of the webbing and picked himself up. They stood there in the darkness, staring at the flailing beast.
“So,” said Jyrvus casually. “What do we do now?”
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We got us a goddamned zombie GCS, baby.This is an epic community fortress. It's gonna need an epic downfall as well. I'm gonna bet on a tantrum spiral.
We're already discussing the end of the fort? Mightygrips isn't even five years old yet
Incidentally, I've been putting artifact furniture into the dining room. Everyone loves life.
i remember at the start you were kinda terrified of me.
meh.
oh, just in case you forgot:
Needs two twin towers of wood spiraling around each other by the time the castle is build or will go insane and kill everyone.
It's getting really hard to incorporate everyone into updates. Right now you and Rykue don't do a whole lot, since we have thousands of logs lying around, so I haven't been using your character as much. I'll try and add her in more, though. Incidentally, I haven't forgotten your spiralling towers thing, but it's gonna be a looong time before I've got time to work on it. Hovels are the current building project.
I didn't even expect my dwarf would bring so much use for the fortress) What can I say? Epic!)
Ubik's our only archer and thus probably the most valuable dwarf in the fort when it comes to the orcs (which it always will, sooner or later). She's damned good, too-- Dwarf Companion lists her as a level 20 Marksdwarf, 15 being Legendary.
I'd love to get in on this, if possible. Could I get a Swordsdwarf, if you need any more of those? Just take one of the peasants and train from scratch, if necessary. Actually, if you do grab one of the peasants for it, could I have the guy named Urist Immortalityroad? I think it's a nice name for a soldier. Oh, and his name shall be Pawn. It's not his real name, but it's what he calls himself. You can have some creative leeway into making up a backstory for why that is, if you like, or if you want I can try and come up with something.
Urist is actually one of the few peasants I didn't draft into wrestling. There's a whole bunch of recruits (like 17) that are L5 wrestlers and just now starting their swordsmanship training-- want one of those instead?
How's Grath doing? Am I a full blown knight yet?
If I remember correctly, you were the second one to be knighted.
Indeed, and our second strongest knight currently. You and Sulvor are L14 Swordsdwarves, though Sulvor's got more exp.
Could I get the dungeon master? Please-o-please-o-please-o-please...
If not then whoever. maybe the mechanic?
Name: Datan
Personality: Depends. For the DM, I like the way you played him in the last update: irate over the distinct lack of dungeons, generally pissed at everything and everyone, all 'round Fun in the making. For the mechanic, just whatever he needs to make the plot go along.
Datan's a guy's name, and the DM's a girl, actually (seriously, about 75% of all migrants are girls. what the hell.), but you can have her for sure. Feel free to pick a different name if you like. Here's her personality screen.
Oh, and either way, he hates wood.
and towers.
and spirals.
Hehehehe. Sounds Fun.
I've got enough material for two (or even three maybe) more updates before I can actually start playing autumn out. Likely I'll have one up by the end of the night. Unlikely I'll get them all. You never know!
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Topic: The Castle Mightygrips: Cancelled. [community] (Read 48091 times)