I'll be posting this in chapters, as I write them. I don't think I'll be including pictures unless I'm feeling arty and put my tablet or pencils to the test.
It's loosely based around a fort I'm building, though it might break off fairly soon. The setting is a DF-inspired universe I'm imagining, with various tidbits of information. Note that the story is written from a dwarven point of view, so the fact that the text may not point out little 'obvious' things is intended. "Everyone knows what an Urist is, why should I, the narrator, have to explain it to them. It's not as if you're writing this for elves...right?"
Enjoy.
Chapter I
"Strike the Earth!"
The words rung out from the middle of the plains, hanging amidst the trees, then drowning in the bustle of the water currents nearby. A landscape worthy of a future monarch was there to greet the phrase... vast green plains, rich soil, rolling hills in the distance, blue skies and three winding rivers intersecting nearby.
In the middle of the whole scene a small wooden vehicle lay battered and almost destroyed, topped with an incredible amount of goods... leaking barrels, glittering metal ingots, assorted bags and huge fungi. The animal pulling the wagon collapsed on its side, heaving and coughing severely.
Looking rather confused, seven rather scrappy fellows were gathering in front of the site, scratching their heads and leaning on each other. One of them stood out slightly, standing taller and looking less dirty overall. He was dressed almost as well as the others, from what anyone could tell, but the grime and dirt that had gathered on his clothing had dried and been brushed off, either voluntarily or accidentally.
His charcoal black beard was neatly combed and tied with a piece of cloth, contrasting with the others and their wiry, unkempt beards. His arms and palms were burnt badly, and his eyebrows were almost inexistent. There was no doubt about it. He was a blacksmith.
Within the mountain-homes of the dwarves, blacksmiths were feared men, labouring day and night in their stone homes by the glow of the magma flow, coming out only to deliver newer and more complex goods. Most ended up stark raving mad within a dozen years, eventually jumping into their own magma feeds, hoping "the drums would stop". No-one knew exactly what they meant, and by the time the newer forge recruits began mumbling like them, they were paranoid enough to not share what they're so afraid of.
This particular individual didn't seem as asocial or paranoid, especially since at that point he was doing the one thing blacksmiths can't imagine themselves doing. Public speaking.
"I need all of you to get all these foodstuffs off of the wagon and into the opening you two will be digging." he spouted while pointing at two of the dwarves. The pair jumped, running to grab a couple of metal tools, some rather peculiar pickaxes. One of the ends of the picks was coated in mud, and the other was scratched, probably from heavy use against a hard surface.
"I need you to dig a square room, about five or six Urist in length." he told them, gesturing towards a nearby tree to show the rough approximation. "Make absolutely sure you make some stairs so you can get back up." The two nodded and dashed off excited, swinging their pickaxes at the air ineffectually.
"It's okay, Shorast, you can do this." the dwarf mumbled as his expression returned to a moderate smirk, and he began looking around. "We have plenty of supplies, the site could be better, but it's not bad at all, and the workforce is willing.." he chanted, rotating slowly, ending up looking at the wagon once more. The other four dwarves looked at each other startled.
"So...what do we do?" one of them asked, looking towards Shorast. He shook his head, stepped into the middle of the group and began working out their new jobs. It would be a rocky start, to say the least.
* * *
Three days had passed since the travel ended, and the work was still only just beginning. The appointed cook, Ezum, had since set herself up a small room outside the food storage in which she would work her magic without anyone interfering. She had made a point of not having dozens of dwarves hanging around her war zone. The others had all laughed at this, considering there were barely a dozen of them there.
The miners, Zulban and Kadol, originally seemed like humans poured into a dwarf mold to the others, since their attitude was generally to try and eat anything they see and, if that didn't work, to proceed to lick it. Several times. Shorast laughed as he remembered the trek through the glacier on their journey.
The fact that one of them was a female, and that she didn't differentiate between dwarf meat and wagon wood made for some rather uncomfortable moments when she was looking for things to enjoy. Shorast still remembered the time she had waken him up with an oddly-placed licking. He had considered at that point if they would have a future together, but decided to leave the thought alone until they got there.
Of course, they had recently demonstrated their uncanny talent with arts, the male miner playing a mini-piano he'd brought along, while the female used her pick to carve an impressive drawing of herself engraving her friend playing the piano right on the mini-piano. If Shorast were more knowledgeable, he would have complained about recursive engraving, but that wasn't the case.
Slowly walking through the winding hallway, he hummed a little tune, causing an outburst of frenzied banging in the rooms around him. The dormitory was never silent, being almost next door to the storage facility where they kept their spirits, but that never stopped the half-asleep dwarf from complaining. Dropping the bed he had been carrying, he jumped into it. The wood cracked, then heaved, then finally settled into a peculiar shape, somewhat enveloping the smith. A slight snore began ringing through the hallway some time later.
The scenery was already changing at the site. The wagon was still barely in pieces and filled with goods, but the important things had already been stashed away underground, where no slithering kobold could try to snatch it.
Dwarves weren't inherently against kobolds, but kobolds being what they are, they'd constantly try to dwarfnap babies. The criminals didn't think or talk much of it afterwards, besides the obvious screams of pain and pleas for help. It's a wonder they're so persistent.
Dwarven architecture is an incredible sight. Tall halls of granite extending far past what any eye can possibly see, complex mechanisms made of stone that open unbelievably heavy doors, rivers of boiling water passing above a channel of magma, waterfalls that exist for the sole reason of keeping most beings below their melting points, and seemingly floating rocky islands, tied to ceilings or walls with only one reality-defying metal latch.
The new settlement, of course, was nothing like that yet. There was no real impressiveness in the soil that composed the walls of the underground camp. Unless you're Avuz Isonerib, farmer by trade. He had joined the expedition only looking to find a place to farm in peace. He half-expected the mountain-home to send them to a place so devoid of fertility that even the seeds he brought along would wither and die.
And he was half-right. The place had soil, too much of it by any standards, but it was so infertile that he had to irrigate it manually. Manual irrigation for any dwarf means making a device that would complete the irrigation for him, considering he took the time to actually power the machine.
An elf would argue that a bucket would work better, and Avuz would agree whole-heartedly, but Shorast had deemed the buckets needed for other projects.
Luckily, Avuz was also an impressive mechanic, and managed to fashion a simple pump with slight help from Reg, the appointed carpenter. Reg wasn't really all that good of a carpenter, and he struggled even with paying attention too long. However the quick jobs he did were pretty thorough and the small wooden cases they used for storing items were very effective at keeping the clutter away.
* * *
A dozen days passed, the small settlement growing steadily. The evening sky, amber as usual, seemed somewhat darker for Shorast...almost magma-red. Things seemed to be looking up. He had intended to tell the mason to decorate his room with some dark stone, but then he remembered that the other dwarves looked down on such personal requests. That, and the mason told him that there's no dark stone to be found at the moment.
They had neglected to make an interior meeting hall, so the afternoon caught him lying down in the grass, listening to the rumble of the river, and he ended up sleeping there through the rest of the day. He woke up with a start, noticing the cook sitting across from him, looking at the sky.
"Morning, Ezum." he yawned to her. She nodded and kept looking at the sunset. The mountains stood atop the hills menacing and stoic, like dwarves above goblins and kobolds. At one point they met and the landscape merged into a beautiful visage, Shorast remarked to himself, but shrugged the thought off.
He looked at her, sitting down in the grass, leaning back on her arms and looking at the clouds gathering above. She didn't seem as blunt and eager as the rest of the lot, and once things started to settle down, she took the time to clean herself up and wash away the layers of grime that had coated her body.
The cook had even washed her hair and tied it up behind her head, the few strands still dangling loose on her forehead giving her an almost...intelligent... look. From the way she seized the kitchen, he had considered her a feisty female, just like most of the ones in the mountain-homes, but now she seemed rather calm.
"Is there something on your mind?" he tried, pushing himself up until he was leaning on one elbow. She clenched her fists, then threw her arms around her knees and brought them to her chest. Ezum was never one for talking niceties, nor was she really interested in socialising. This seemed odd to Shorast, and to herself as well.
She opened her mouth, stood like that for a few seconds, then closed it. Shorast blinked, and shrugged, looking towards the sky once more.
"Can.." she managed. "Can I be given another job?"
Shorast got up to a sitting position, looked to her, then brought his hand up. She jumped back, closed her eyes and reached to her belt, but her trusty kitchen knife was nowhere to be found. Looking at him, she paused and sighed, quickly returning to her former position. He was scratching his head absentmindedly, deep in thought.
"Sure, I guess, but I'm not sure- OH. You can be the manager." She looked at him with somewhat teary eyes. "I'll send all my notifications and job orders through you. All the outposts have one, and we should be ready." She nodded, got up, and left.
"At least she's more straightforward than the lot of them."
He leaned back and continued sleeping peacefully.
Meanwhile, Avuz had once again flooded the farming area trying in vain to make it fertile. He started out with a couple of handfuls of seeds and was down to half that only from testing. The farm complex was a simple room he had the miners dig, straight towards the river. Unluckily, the pair ended up breaching the side and almost fell into the water.
They quickly put up a few supports on the sides and kept it as an opening to the river, possibly a fishing area if they need it. Once he got wind of this, Avuz jumped for joy, realising that he could put the pump up right next to the shore and irrigating directly. Trying this the first time, the pump had caught a few fish and shot them onto the ground in front of him, causing the farmer to run out of the room instantly.
Dwarves were, of course, as afraid of fish as they have ever been. Something about the movement of those scaly, slithery fiends appealed to the terror center in their beards, causing them to run towards the nearest exit, no matter where it may lead. It was actually the lead cause for dwarf injury in the southern mountain-homes, combined with the architect's love of doors that open into huge chasms filled with lava.
After the water drained and the fish had jumped back into the water, Avuz tried once more, making sure to borrow a knife from Ezum before-hand. She had wanted to offer herself as an assistant to throw the fish out, since she didn't really care for them, but gave up when Avuz asked her what it was she wanted. None of the aquatic critters attempted another assassination then, but he made a mental note to keep the pump off-limits to untrained personnel.
Irrigated for the fifth time, the soil was finally ready to be sown. He could almost feel the seeds vibrate as he sprinkled them onto the soil, dancing around excitedly. The farmer gave one more look to the door, making sure it's locked, then jumped into the air and spun around, one leg off the ground. The groundhogs across the river looked at the prancing dwarf, vomited briefly on some nearby shrubbery, then ran off.
* * *
The month had come to an end as busily as it had started. The dwarves begun exploring the terrain, finding a huge reserve of magma deep down, and several natural caves. When they had breached the magma pool, the three present were Kadol the miner, Ezum the cook, and Shorast. As the glow and the heat broke through the hole and reached the three, the miner coughed and left, mumbling something about a drink.
Ezum looked inside the cave, smiling at the light coming from the molten lava. Shorast had never considered her like this, but right then, he thought she would make a fine fisherwoman. He had no clue why it struck him just then, but he thought it would be just the thing the settlement needed.
"Hey, do you want another extra job?"
She looked back, smiled and nodded.
Tearing his hair out, the farmer looked at the food storage, amazed. There were a few barrels left, though there were still enough meals to go around. He started counting them, on his fingers. The fact that he didn't need to use his toes alerted him that something was amiss.
Running down the staircase, he tripped over a grinning miner and crashed into the smith.
"No...DRINKS."
The look of panic on his face spread to Shorast, then to Ezum. Eventually they recovered and ran upstairs to assess the situation. Kadol was in the room, and was preparing to jump into a barrel of wine to drink it. The others had told him that the mountain-homes decided they had to forbid barrel-dipping for health reasons, but he just claimed it was another case of 'those damned humans butting in'.
He immediately went amber, put the barrel back, then left the storage area. Shorast imitated the earlier counting by Avuz, stopping with two fingers to spare.
"We have eight barrels left. Ezum, get brewing. We'll talk about that new job later."
A grim expression caught his face, and he ran to the dormitory, to cry himself to sleep. Alcohol was the only thing keeping him going, if he lost that, he might end up going mad, just like the others.
* * *
Shorast wasn't one to worry about ending up with routines, but for the past week, he had been going to the farm daily, just to watch the mushrooms growing. The small purple tops had just recently formed, and were beginning to grow, Avuz prancing about happily through the plot. However, the smith wasn't as happy. They were down to a couple of barrels of wine, and the harvest was weeks away.
The farmer crept up behind the dwarf grinning, and pushed him face-first into the mud. Getting up slowly, Shorast kept staring straight at the mushrooms, as if he could somehow make them grow faster just by sheer power of will. Looking mildly disturbed at the scene, Avuz left for a lunch break, leaving the distresses dwarf to his own devices.
Before closing the door, he noted that this was the first time he had seen the smith covered in mud, both fresh and dried. Shrugging the thought off, he sped off towards the storage area.
Social life in the settlement was calm, to say the least. The two miners had obviously hit it off, their comparable talents and attitude paving the way for a rocky relationship, and the leader and Avuz had become friends since Shorast's elongated breaks in the farm. Ezum hasn't made any real relationships past her odd talks with Shorast, and Reg was just...Reg.
The smith had obviously come to fit the image of a leader, however with the alcohol shortage, all that could change with one simple push.
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Topic: A Tale of Silent War (Read 974 times)