Pfft. Beep beep!
Interim One
Wherein Harebrained Schemes Are Enacted
SHAD0Wdump
(4) Reasoning that the best way to improve a rocket is to make it into two rockets, you bolt a second rocket onto the first one's casing. You don't quite know how you attached it, actually, but bolting seems the most probable. Who knows though, really? Anyway, you now have a double rocket. Fuel usage is enough of a problem with one rocket, but maybe you can activate both for some form of turbo mode.
This will obviously consume an extra barrel of booze for +1 speed, or two barrels for +2 speed. Prohibitively expensive, but there you go.
(4) You stick a mechanism on your rocket. While you have no idea how a flamethrower works other than 'put booze in one end, activate the trigger and fire comes out the other end,' your polymorphic machine part and gung-ho mentality allow you to slap together a crude flamethrower. So long as it's loaded with a booze barrel, you need only pull the lever on the side to make fire come out. To stop fire coming out, you obviously have to whack it hard on the top in just the right place.
(5)(6)(1) You sit down with your minions and commence manufacture. This mug-making thing is really quite easy. Before long you have a sizable stack of mugs on your bench.
You look to your right. Luthor has made a preposterously large pile of mugs, and he's still going strong. He's digging into a block of stone with all his might, a crazed glint in his eyes. You can't quite see his expression through the bull skull he's wearing as a mask.
You look to your left. Roland II is nowhere to be seen, and his stone is mostly untouched. After closer examination, you find him cowering in the corner. Seeing your gaze, he points at Luthor and then curls up with his head behind his knees, quivering.
You have made two hundred and fifty dwarfbucks. Roland II is now terrified of Luthor due to some form of traumatic interaction with him.
(4) As it happens, the brewery you've been buying from has been wishing to branch out into the fuel industry for some time. It's just that dwarves don't really use combustion engines all that much, preferring to use beasts of burden instead. The Master of Booze responds to your inquiry by making you an offer. He'll sponsor you for this race by supplying you with booze at cost: that is, a fifty percent discount. In return, you'll prove the superiority of the booze-powered rocket wagon over other forms of locomotion, especially beast-powered forms, while flying the flag of the Wrathful Cups. If you significantly outperform your competitors in this race in some way, he'll negotiate with you on a long-term contract, though you must defeat vehicles powered by cats, eagles or elephants fairly comprehensively. He notes that killing power is prized among dwarven motorists almost as much as speed. He also notes that the brewery being advertised is crucial, so take good care of that flag.
Frelock
(5) With absolutely no raw materials or mechanical knowledge, you repair your perpetual motion machine despite the structural damage it has sustained. You'd think that the blackened charcoal would be all crumbly, but it really isn't and in fact works perfectly.
(1) You attempt to alter Igor once more, into a more thematically appropriate minion. His already twisted and deformed spirit outright rejects the transformation, and you accidentally break his mind slightly while trying to force it on him. He's even more unstable than usual now, which is a pity.
(1) You try to practice spitting webs. Oddly enough, you can't seem to do that. Your silk comes out the other end, from your abdomen. You end up severely mutilating your internal organs while trying to pass webs through your entire body and out through your mouth.
(2) Igor is busy recuperating from his harrowing spiritual crisis. You are unable to get him to go out into a forest and harvest wood.
(2) Since you have no Igor-wood, you are unable to build an organ. You are extremely disappointed. It would have been really cool to have an organ.
maxicaxi
(5)(5)(5) While you'd think that forced labour would be a rather poor method of instilling loyalty, your chain gang idea inexplicably makes all three kobolds fanatically devoted to your cause. They would have worked themselves to death harvesting resources if they hadn't thought they could be useful in the upcoming race. As it stands, they simply work until they fall over. You gain three granite rocks and three logs.
(3)(4) Your henchdwarves are somewhat nonplussed when you ask them to build a 'giant super-ballista' with only a couple of logs and nothing else. They look at one another, shrug, and trundle off to aimlessly carve the logs into things that look like they might possibly be part of a ballista. Simpletons.
(2) Your remaining henchdwarf misunderstands you and carves wooden bolts of the kind you use to affix things to other things, instead of the kind you shoot at things. They are brittle and break easily. He has wasted a log. Idiot.
(5)(1)(3)(1) You begin with the best of intentions. You carve a barrel out of a rock. You make a firing mechanism out of some flint and a steel pin that you pulled out of the ground somewhere. That's where everything goes wrong. How does an incendiary machine gun work? What quality causes the ammunition to burn? Booze, presumably, but how? You hit on the idea of putting booze in the centre of some sort of projectile, but how do you get it in there and keep it from leaking? How do you get it to explode at the right place? If it's supposed to burn rather than explode, how do you keep the booze from making it explode? These questions give you a terrible, terrible headache. Your machine gun project will have to be put on hold for the moment.
Errol
(6) See, it's generally a bad idea to just let cats breed. In short order, you have enough cats to build and populate a small village, if said village were composed entirely of felines and feline-based products. You are up to your ears in cats. They are, unfortunately, in your garage. This will make things difficult. You'll be able to herd some of them into your fortress at the beginning of the next race, anyhow.
(3-1)(3-1)(6-1) You spend one hundred dwarfbucks to magically restore your chassis, but all these cats make your other alterations difficult to perform. Eventually you just start reshaping the rear of the fortress into a firing platform, disregarding any cats in the way. It's a very nice enclosed firing platform with arrow slits and murder holes for shooting outwards and below, respectively. It's also covered in kitten blood, but that will probably flake off eventually, though the smell may never go away completely.
(3) Your sentient eagle visits his nesting grounds to recruit more winged servants. He and his extended family mourn the loss of the two eagles, and he recruits two strapping young males eager to find glory and vengeance in the races for you. However, he is too busy with top-secret eagle business in the Highest Eyries to do anything else.
Male birds of prey are called tiercels, incidentally.
(4) Your new nameless henchdwarf spends his time disassembling and reassembling the crossbow. He also familiarizes himself with the manual, which tells him that the machine crossbow was invented as a means of allowing any dwarf to fire as fast as a champion marksdwarf, though it is difficult to fire from the hip due to the recoil. He learns to quickly relocate the crossbow to new firing positions and how to handle it under duress. He is now fully versed in the operation of the most compact heavy weapon dwarfbucks can buy.
techno65535
(3) You strip down your vehicle and, despite not having a physical body, drag it to a small copse of trees near a waterfall. You have to drag it several hundred kilometres to find a suitable site, but that's okay because you don't really get tired anymore. You have a bit of trouble melting it, since temperatures above a few hundred degrees are difficult to reach for you, but you eventually reach a point where you can sort of sculpt the metal slightly. After hours of work, you manage a slightly more aesthetically-pleasing chassis, but it's hard to pound out the dents through strategic melting, so it's slightly smaller now. You try to make it into a steel chassis by hitting it with trees and pushing it into the river, but you soon realize that this is not how metallurgy works at all. It sinks to the bottom, immobile. You sort of manage to push it upwards by getting underneath it, which pleases you momentarily, but you end up getting yourself stuck there somehow as it starts floating down the river. It takes you a long time to sort that out. Why do you never think these things through?
(1) You try to combine your screw pumps. Again, you have no physical body, but that won't stop you. As it happens, your broken screw pump is completely broken, nor is it designed to somehow extend an existing pump. You would have to take apart and rebuild the working pump entirely even before you could enact your ill-advised scheme. While you consider this, the screw pumps become badly scorched. You throw the broken one away in disgust.
(4) Again, you are not a forge. The absolute best you can do is weld the steel together, and sort of make a couple of thingies with holes that might conceivably fit an axle.
(6) You tell your henchdwarves where you are going, using bizarre euphemisms so that they won't worry. I suppose that's considerate of you? Anyway, you head to the bottom of the nearest fort. This particular fort is not abandoned, nor have its miners struck cotton candy. Dwarves run screaming as you approach. You incinerate a passing miner and grab his pick, eating his soul in the process (you bastard). The fortress guard rally to stop you, but just end up burning themselves. They run away, and eventually the fort becomes empty. You don't know, nor do you apparently care, where they've gone. Mining aimlessly, you, against all odds, strike cotton candy, though not after digging out a significant portion of the mountain and severely undermining the fortress. In your greed, you dig too deep. Clowns swarm out of the circus. Despite bearing a passing resemblance to a fire-eater, you don't smell malevolent enough to be one, despite what you did to this poor fortress. You get out of there as fast as you possibly can, passing by the dwarves that were reentering the mountain. They are happy to see you moving out, so they move back in. You hear their tortured screams behind you as you run out the gates. Nice going, hero. Excellent work. Really great.
(2)(2)(2) Possibly due to their complete lack of equipment, your henchdwarves find themselves totally unable to gather any resources. Even the Unyielding Power of the Earth can't help. Damn.
(1)(5) Golf hits his head with a chisel. Hotel makes pretty nice mugs. A cool fifty dwarfbucks are deposited into your ETHEREAL BANK.
Paranatural
(6) You spend your dwarfbucks on some leather, bones, and gems. As you purchase them, you are possessed by unknown forces. Nice. You claim a craftsdwarf's workshop and begin a mysterious construction, emerging some days later with the Mechanism of Spiders, a fluffy wambler leather left boot. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality, and it is adorned with hanging rings of hoary marmot bone and menaces with spikes of citrine. (Frelock - 3-1) Igor has grown to like you over the course of your adventures together. Presenting him with an artifact convinces him of your friendship, and he promises not to hurt you in the coming race.
(5) You are the cat trainer. It's you. Despite starting with sharply limited genetic material, you manage to breed some slightly above average cats, training them to be both tractable to you and Reginald and terrible toward your foes.
(1) Oh, dash it all. You just end up making things worse with your clumsy efforts. You call in the dwarven repair specialists and hand them the bronze colossus head. They get it fixed up good and proper, and you stand outside and admire the giant head mounted on the cannon port.
(6) It turns out that your new rocket comes with free installation, so you turn your attention back toward your cannon. Remembering how difficult it was for Reginald to supercharge the cannon, you extend the barrel and add in loading mechanisms so that you can fit in extra gunpowder and cannonballs if you wish. You now have an overcharge ability on your cannon. Gods preserve us.
(2) Reginald is much to dignified to heckle people. His attempts at learning to do so end up pathetically weak. A disadvantage of having a henchdwarf of such noble extraction, you guess.
IronyOwl
(3)(2)(2) Once again, your attempts at controlling the elephants fail. The one with the cannonball seems a little more receptive, but he too cannot be reasoned with.
(5) Your meditation meets with more success, however. You are now perfectly attuned to your elephant spirit. This bond makes you a bit more like an elephant, and the spirit a bit more like a dwarf. Your anger is now more intense, and you're starting to grow tusks.
Comments
Damn, that took a while. See you later, all. Check the OP for the map and updated statuses.
Author
Topic: The Dwarven Race III - Race Two, start. (Read 19888 times)