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Huzzah!

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Total Members Voted: 32

[Dbuhos]

No trading indeed sounds interesting. :3
Epic story telling is epic.

[darkflagrance]

Do goblins have progress triggers under their entity file? If they don't, you can copy them back in, even in the middle of a currently running game, to get trade activated.

But a no trade challenge fine too.

[Iituem]

The memoirs of Zom Halfear, Booksmang
9th Limestone, 70

Took the opportunity to watch the raiders training in the newly carved barracks beneath the ice.  Kiku, surprise surprise, is getting kicks out of - well, kicking the others when they let up for a moment.  I don't see Yilmug, that butcher they brought, for all her boasting about her fighting skills.  She hasn't even picked up that hammer.  Don't know what she's offering Kiku, but he doesn't seem to notice it at all.  The runt slave, Ogini, is becoming somewhat adequate with a sword.  He gets the crap beaten out of him on a regular basis, but keeps picking himself up and training.  I don't think I ever see him not training.  Whether that's dedication or brute stupidity is hard to say.

It's a slow and painful kind of training, but they are at least getting somewhat better.  Once they can all wield their weapons semi-competently, Ozo might even start looking into hammering out some decent armour for them.



20th Limestone, 70
Ozo's Note Slate

Busy month, mostly just cutting out doors for the rooms.  Master's drawn the line at putting his hands on ice doorknobs, says the floor and walls are bad enough, so I beat that scrounge Skrunge into doing some work and cutting me out a few decent slabs of dolomite.  Now we have doors.  Hooray.  As much as they keep the draught out, we're living under two to three feet of ice at all times, so we actually have to leave them ajar or we suffocate from lack of air.

Master asked me if I could do something to pretty up the place, since he has that engraver slave smoothing out the walls right now.  He wanted something thematic, so I gave him a statue of polar bears.  Well, strictly speaking it was an elf queen taming polar bears.  Some historical grit, I don't know, it was Zom's idea.  Crazy bookwench.  Probably laughing her beady little eyes to tears over the fact it got me a beating.  Stuck up wench thinks she's so special she can write.  Well boo hoo hoo, I can write too.  Not like I fanny it around, I'm not stupid.  Soon as you let up you can do grit like that you get dragged into politics and it's only a half step til you find someone's trowel in your spine.

Master still stuck the damned statue in the hall on the way to the watering hole though, so I guess it wasn't that bad.

Going back to the scrounger, he and the nurse have been busy trying to rip some sort of a living out of this rock for when we eventually head back to civilisation.  Surprisingly, this ice-drench rock has a lot to be dug out of it.  Long veins of sphalerite, native copper everywhere, plenty of iron.  Easy to reach surface deposits as well.  Skrunge and Dostgnosp are only beginning to touch the surface, but with the native copper they've drudged out I can smelt brass.

And with brass, maybe I can do something better than a bit of rock cut into the shape of a naked elf riding a polar bear and touching herself.



10th Sandstone, 70

Gems!  That scrounging bastard actually got his pick into a huge vein of sphalerite and picked out no less than three clusters of gemstones at once.  Chrysoberyl, aquamarine and, praise be to Sheget's curry-breath, there's even emeralds stuck in all that schist!  Told master the news, he rounded them up and gave them an extra ration of food followed by a beating and a warning to not even think about trying to pry those gems out until we're absolutely certain we can do it without damaging them.  For now, they're holding their ground.

[Zathel]

Is Ozo a mason after all? If so, is he the only one?

If yes, I think he might just start itching to start building something big. A tower, perhaps... but only in spare time, if he gets any. He doesn't really care if he gets beaten for it, the urge to build is strong...

[Iituem]

Do goblins have progress triggers under their entity file? If they don't, you can copy them back in, even in the middle of a currently running game, to get trade activated.

But a no trade challenge fine too.

By progress triggers, do you mean the land holder triggers?  Because I have those.  If it's a different tag, possibly not.

[darkflagrance]

Do goblins have progress triggers under their entity file? If they don't, you can copy them back in, even in the middle of a currently running game, to get trade activated.

But a no trade challenge fine too.

By progress triggers, do you mean the land holder triggers?  Because I have those.  If it's a different tag, possibly not.

These:

   [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_POPULATION:1]
   [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_PRODUCTION:1]
   [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_TRADE:1]
   [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_POP_SIEGE:3]
   [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_PROD_SIEGE:0]
   [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_TRADE_SIEGE:0]
   [ACTIVE_SEASON:WINTER]

[Iituem]

23rd Sandstone, 70


Uzulek lay on the ice, still as a corpse and concealed by a blanket of trollhide, covered in snow.  Several mounds of snow lay about him.  After a while, one of the mounds muttered.

"Taking bloody forever, this," it said.

"Shut up," said Uzulek.

"It's cold," another one whined.

"I said shut up," Uzulek repeated.  "You're supposed to be innocuous mounds of snow, so stop whinging."

"Innocuous mounds of snow don't smell like freshly scraped out trollskin," pointed out the first mound.

"I kind of like the smell," said a third mound.

"Shut up, Ogini," said the first mound.

"I can't feel my fingers," the second mound added.

"Be glad you still have them," Uzulek growled, "because if I hear another peep out of any of you, you won't.  If I have to borrow the boss' cleaver to do it, I will."

"Not to be ironic," chuckled a nearby, different mound, "but can you keep it down yourself, Uzulek?  I think I see them."

"Right, Kik," Uzulek muttered, and gripped his fingers tightly around the halberd's shaft.  Up ahead, a thin line of travellers began to approach the narrow pass over which they lay in wait.



The ambush was swift, surprising and to nearly everyone's astoundment - successful.  As soon as the travellers got into position, Kiku gave the signal and the raiders swept off their trollskin cloaks and leapt at the prey, weapons bared and yelling as fiercely as they could manage.  Mostly it was yelling, as only Kiku, Yilmug and Ago successfully managed a roar, but it was sufficient to cow the travellers.  After a brief spate of resistance quelled by Yilmug's hammer, the prisoners were bound and dragged back to the complex for 'initiation'.



"So what are we planning on doing with them, boss?" Kiku asked, tearing a bit of troll steak with his teeth and chewing on it.

"Leaving them in the extra food stores until they learn their lesson," Goxa said calmly, filing away at a troll bone on one of the dining room tables.  Uzulek, who was helping himself to a bowl of trollbone soup, scrunched his nose up at the little flecks of bone left on the table.  Zom, busy noting down the new prisoner figures as she ate on a separate but nearby table, made no comment or outward expression at all in respect to the mess it was creating.

"How long will that take?" Uzulek asked.

"That depends," Goxa said.  "How many of them are there?"

"Eight," Zom supplied instantly, without looking up from her work.  After a half-second's delay, she added; "Master."

"So between two and three hours," Goxa said.

"How do you figure that, boss?" Kiku asked.

"That's about how much air they have," said Goxa with a rather malicious grin.  He straightened his face and replaced it with a falsely-meek smile.  "What, you think I'd ask for airtight doors in an underground facility for no reason?  Once they're close to passing out, we'll let them out and fit them with proper iron collars.  I understand Nako's working on those already."

The frees chuckled heartily at the thought of new slaves and knocked their cups of water together.  Zom said nothing, but to her surprise she found that she was fingering her own collar, at the point where it rubbed most at her neck.  She made her hand fall and continued with her work.



Goxa's Journal
27th Sandstone, 70

Ozo is complaining he has nothing to do.  Well, no, he isn't complaining.  If he was I'd have his back slowly flayed until he learned to shut up.  But he sits there and doesn't do anything and I'm sure he knows it irks me, plus he's built all those bits of leftover ice we have from tunnelling into a sort of pile.  I have to admit I'm getting sick of seeing them all over anyway, so I've tasked him with doing something to get them out of my sight, even if it's just dumping them in the firepit.

Meanwhile as entertaining as extra slaves are, they mean more food and water gets used.  Food we have enough of, thanks to our trollish 'companions'.  Water is the real problem, as our supplies are hardly meant for a crew of this size to survive on.  Not that there isn't enough water around here as it is, hah.  But we need a more lasting supply of the liquid sort.  I've tasked Zom with finding a solution, and she's requested I pull the mining slaves off their excavations for it.  Granted; I want our drinking problem solved fast.



----

Ahh, they have the progress triggers, but they're set later than usual for goblins.  Interesting.  I guess we'll see how that turns out.

[Iituem]

Goxa's Journal
17th Timber

Bloody kobold snuck all the way out here to give us trouble.  We gave him a bit of trouble back, but he managed to escape after all.

Another one snuck up later, probably his partner, and kicked the engraver slave something nasty in the shin.  Probably have to have it looked at.


-----


Shudubuchleelis ran through the snow, clambering over the yielding white ground as fast as she could.  Not fast enough.  The goblin was gaining ground on her, but she could see the ridge ahead.  If she could just roll down there she might gain enough distance to - crack!

Her thought was cut short by the blinding pain that wracked her right foot.  The world lunged up to meet her and she felt her chin smack heavily against the ice.  Glancing back she saw a heavy trollhide whip, barbed with copper teeth, wrapped tightly around her ankle.  She knew from the pain it was broken, but kicked as hard as she could to try and dislodge the whip.  She struggled onto her other foot and kept trying to limp away - crack!

Searing pain, this time across her back, cutting through her already ragged cave silk clothes.  She cried out, a shrill keening, and spun around to face her attacker.  The goblin smacked her hard in the gut with his whip, and she felt blood and bile rush up through her throat.  Letting out the fiercest war cry her tiny lungs could manage, she struck out at him with her dagger - crack!

The whip curled around her arm, the barbs biting in.  She gritted her teeth against the pain, but the goblin gave a hard yank of the whip - the bone in her arm crunched with the force.  Another yank, and she felt her arm pulled out of its socket.  The dagger fell from her limp hand and her arm hung uselessly from her side.

Crack!

Before she could even try to run again, here came the whip.  This time it wrapped itself around her body like some perverse tendril of the goblin, drawing tight and crushing the life from her.  The air, certainly.  The goblin pulled tighter and tighter and she could feel her ribs straining under the pressure.  Dark spots appeared in front of her eyes.

Crack!

She had done it!  Her knife, gripped tightly in her other hand, must have severed the goblin's whip.  She felt an immense sense of freedom as her bonds sloughed away from her and she fled away into the night, running faster than she ever had before, faster than she would have thought her broken ankle would carry her.  She ran across the snow and up the mountains and into the stars, and looked back, laughing with glee at the goblin still on the ground, standing with its whip over the broken form of...

Oh.








Goxa's Journal
18th Timber, 70

After all the excitement of yesterday, one of the slaves won't stop staring at the kobold's bloody corpse.  While I normally encourage this sort of thing, it's getting creepy. 

Uzulek tells me it's a gemcutter.  And apparently he's headed off to the gemcutting station for some inscrutable reason.  I told him to whip the slave back to work.  Apparently it isn't working, it's as if he's a goblin possessed.  Bah.  Zom can requisition him some gemstones if she feels like it.

Incidentally, one of the sneaky buggers made off with a pike while nobody was noticing.  We've posted trollish guards at the exit for now.  Still, the last laugh is on us.  I'm having Yilmug cut up the intruder's corpse for food as I write this.



20th Timber, 70

Impressively, that slave is still there.  No food, licking water off the walls (though I've tried to discourage that with beatings).  Well, we gave him a lump of fire opal to work with.  He's doing something with it, but I haven't the faintest idea what.




1st Moonstone, 70

It's... perfect.  Perfect in every way.  It's also bloody tiny, but he managed to pick out the best piece of the lump we gave him and turned it into something transcendent.  I am overwhelmed with beauty.

Okay, that was all a lie.  It probably is perfect, but frankly it's a lump of pretty rock.  Pretty enough at any rate that the €slaves are all in a kerfuffle about it.  They're cheering his name, demanding he be freed for his act.  I've agreed to it, so long as he donates it to the glory of, aha, 'Sheget'.  Probably sell for a bloody fortune when we get back to civilisation some day.  In any case, I'll keep it in my room.  Or at least, I will when I have a bleeding room.

Sheget's fiery temper, I wish we had more wood.  I hate having to share a bed with the other frees.  Urgh.

[Dbuhos]

Just a question, can Uzulek's room be ornamented with dead foe bodies ?

[Iituem]

Yes - When he has a room.

I'm not kidding about the wood shortage.  There are two beds, and they're shared pretty much exclusively by the frees.  The third piece of glumprong wood that the wagon was made of is being saved for emergencies/artefacts, and I refuse to dig straight down to the cave tree levels for reasons of immersion.  They'll just have to tunnel into the caves accidentally in the natural course of their mining efforts.

[Jim Groovester]

Killing a kobold in seven whip strikes seems about right for a whip's damage.

Whips are cool, but they seriously suck if you actually want to kill anything. Do a pretty good job of ripping of arms and legs, though, after enough time.

[smigenboger]

If I already didn't say, I'm watching this. Excellent storytelling! I'd recommend building a small look-out tower, to make the trade/ambushes slightly more realistic. It would be bloody hard to know someone's coming if they are all inside.

[Neyvn]

Love Kiku's Kill there, even having the Kobold's spirit leave its body to escape the Gobbo...
As I have said mate, love your writing... 

[Tastysaurus Rex]

This.....this is great! I should have found this sooner! I originally came here for inspiration for my own gobbo fort, but this is now my favorite thread.

While I'm here, did you ever work out that drinking thing? Someone else was talking about that and Fun by arbitrary dehydration strikes me as weaksauce.

[Iituem]

4th Obsidian, 70

A heavy thump drew Goxa's attention from his meal.  There on the desk was a lump of emerald, roughly hewn from the rock.  It shone in the light through the dining hall's igloo roof window, polished with spit and fine dirt water by the one who had unearthed it.  Goxa looked up from the metal to the one who had brought it.

"Found something, did you, slave?" Goxa asked.

"Indeed, master," said Skrunge, his eyes slightly downcast.  Not so downcast as normal, though.  Something about his posture set Goxa's teeth on edge.  The master shifted in his seat, freeing up the small iron blade concealed in his boot should he need it.  Skrunge did not move at all, his posture frozen into one of semi-servility.

"You are free to leave, slave," Goxa said, working with practised skill to keep the apprehension from his voice.

"It was not a gift, master," said Skrunge.  Goxa felt one of his fingers twitch.  He had a feeling he knew where this was going.

"No, it was not," he said.

"It is not your property, master," said Skrunge.

"What is yours is mine," said Goxa, forcing his voice to remain calm.  He dared not take his eyes off the slave, but he could see the other slaves gathering to watch the confrontation.  The knife pressed against his ankle, tantalisingly.  He could end this right now.

"No, master, it is not."

Silence resounded through the dining hall.  Even those who had been busy feasting on their rations came to a stop.  At the edge of the hall, Kiku began to unholster his whip.  Goxa signalled to him with a finger, raised barely an inch from the table; not yet.

"By law, the property of a slave is his master's," pronounced Goxa, and it was a pronouncement.  Even to those who had not heard it before, it was clearly more of a recitation than something made up on the fly.

"By law, a slave is one without worth," said Skrunge, in the same measured phrasing.  A faint smile tugged at his lips.

"Have you worth?"

"I have."

"And what proof have you of this worth?" Goxa asked.

"The proof lies before you," said Skrunge.  Goxa regarded the emerald.  It was a fine specimen for a rough gem, a full node extracted from the rock.

"You have unearthed many gems from the stone," said Goxa.

"This I cut with my own two hands."

"Even so, why should this prove you have wor-"

"With my own two hands!" Skrunge yelled suddenly, lifting his eyes to Goxa's face and drawing his hands into clawed shapes.  His nails bore deep marks and his fingers callouses and scars where he had scrabbled, successfully, at the rock.

Smack!

The backhand blow forced Skrunge's eyes to the ground and his face to the side.  Goxa was standing now, his chair pushed back by the force of his arisal.  He lowered his hand.

"You are not free yet, slave," he growled.  Skrunge glowered, but his hands returned to his sides and he kept his gaze lowered as he turned back to his master.

Goxa narrowed his eyes at the slave.  In the periphery of his vision, he was acutely aware of the gathered slaves, the tense air, the gleaming gemstone between them.

"The emerald is payment," Goxa declared.  There was a collective exhalation of breath from the gathered crowd.  "At the year's turn, come to the firepit's edge.  You have earned your free."

Goxa sat down again and returned to his meal.  He did not look up as Skrunge's face broadened into a smile and he strode out of the hall, head held high.




1st Granite

The scream rang out across the frozen wastes, pooling and thickening within the blazing caldera until the very rock trembled with its intensity.  Goxa pressed the miner's wrist against the blazing iron of the magma-heated anvil until the wound sealed shut.  Moments before he had slit that very wrist with his blade and poured out a libation of blood onto the anvil, a sizzling, smoking offering to the glory of his cruel Mistress.

Goxa let go of the miner's wrist and Skrunge, the free goblin, stumbled toward the crowd.  Skrunge looked upon the slaves, his friends and companions, and his lips twisted into a terrible grin.  He had earned his free.  He was worthy.  And he was beyond them.  Skrunge turned away from his former life and into the embrace of the handful of frees who stood waiting.

And above, the sky turned to Spring.


Frostbite, in the year 71