So let it be said, I was against this from the start. But when the king says go here and set up an outpost, you do it, lest you find yourself beaten. Or worse, your beard shaved.
Now why he chose the edge of a lake, and not a mountain, is beyond me. All this lush greenery and wide open space makes me uneasy.
Our caravan arrived with no troubles. No goblins. No orcs. The wildlife was docile. I daresay it has been boring so far. Right off the bat though, something goes wrong....aside from the fact it was the dead of winter. Our driver, it seemed, dropped us off in the middle of a frozen lake! We were lucky to get to dry land, and managed to save all our provisions, but the whole ordeal came with a terrible price.
It gave our engineer an idea.
I had barely started taking stock of our goods, when he commandeered our miners. Before I knew it, they had managed to tunnel through the ice, to the bottom of the lake. For a few moments, I toyed with the idea of taking some of their cast off ice, and crafting an image of our king, and watch it melt in the spring sun for sending me to all this greenery and water...but I manged to restrain myself. The lake thawed a few days later, and I had thought I heard the end of it...that was, until winter hit again.
The Kings liaison met with me, and we went over the basic trade agreements. Then he did something that surprised me...he complimented me on what he thought was a wonderful idea for a project. A fortress, both above, and within, the waters of a lake? The idea was crazy, and yet what he had seen was encouraging.
It was with great restraint that I did not dash from my office that very moment to see what was going on.
Not only had my engineer tunneled to the bottom of the lake again, but he had built a stairway, and was starting on walls to enclose it. I mentioned that he would have to dig it out of the ice every year to work on it until it was done, but he just laughed, saying that was part of the fun.
To his credit, it was rather well constructed, and he used actual stone as opposed to his original idea of wood. Really...wood? Wood was for beds, or barrels, it was certainly not suitable for the stomping about of dwarvenly feet. I saw little need to stop him, not as though he would listen, so I let him continue. Although I will say now, I did not approve. A dwarf belongs below ground, enclosed within the comfort of soil and stone. Even magma is simply liquid rock. Water on the other hand, just liquid, no true substance, the stuff was barely suitable to drink. One could go as far as to say water is the bane of a dwarf. So why, by the great forge of Armok, would
any sane dwarf want to live in a room surrounded on all sides by it?!
And that was the problem, I was right. We had a few stragglers, wanting to see the construction of this great underwater fortress first hand, but they came shortly before the lake froze over. So luckily, they had the sense to keep off the ice.
The next band, however, was substantially bigger, and they came during the spring thaw. ...And that was where things went horribly awry. Nearly twenty dwarves, plus their pack animals, tromping across the ice was too much for it. In an instant, the lake claimed them.
I can only hope this is not a sign of things to come.
(Just wanted to try a fort by a lake, for no particular reason...but when I found out it would freeze every year, I couldn't resist the chance to try something Interesting with it! I was most surprised that I've gone through two years of fiddling with it, and didn't drown any dwarves. ...That was until I got a migration wave a few seconds before the lake thawed out. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Also not sure what prompted me to write it like this. I blame it on the fact it's 4am. The writings not quite up to my par either...but again, 4am...that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.
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edit: put the thumbnails instead of the full sized images...whoops.
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Topic: Egenustuth - Fortress on the lake. (Read 1735 times)