The Battle for the Adamantine, FinaleZanfar had attacked the walls of the adamantine for hours and hours it seemed. The pick swung of its own volition until Zanfar was gasping for breath from exhaustion. At some point she blacked out.
Zanfar roused briefly at the rumbling sound that marked the military caving in the defensive barrier. But exhaustion took Zanfar again until a coarse voice shook her out of her sleep. A demon composed of snow was standing over her. “You have failed us little dwarf. They were prepared, far too prepared.”
Before Zanfar could utter a single word of defense, the snow demon contemptuously lashed out with a foot, kicking her in the head. As the scene faded to black, she heard the demon say to the others, “There must be another way out; we are free of the adamamtine now. Spread out and start searching.”
Cog’s Journal, 4th of Opal 325We have survived. Not only that, our warriors faced the forces of hell and won in a spectacular manner. There are still a massive number of demons in the cave below, but for the moment we are completely secure.
There was a brief moment of panic when about half a dozen military members fell sick from some forgotten beast goo or something. But by the time they had wiped the stuff off and gotten up to the top of the stairs to the main fortress they were feeling much better. To a dwarf, they headed back to the military tower to resume training. The brief fever and numbness doesn’t seem to have had any lasting effect!
Thatdude and a couple other marksdwarves are down in the depths keeping an eye on things, but they report that the demons headed off to try to find another route into the fortress. I’ve ordered them to stand down for now. They’ll have plenty more work to do once we are prepared to take care of the demons. I think the monsters are going to be horribly disappointed. I personally checked the area for access points and sealed them all up. We’ll have to contain or kill the remaining demons before we can resume mining but at the moment we are safe.
The only remaining mystery is who breached the adamantine. Nobody came out of the area when the flood of demons began. We won’t be able to explore until we secure and eliminate those demons. I’ve got some miners working on a collapse to try and isolate a portion of the demons at the other adamantine pipe. Then we can start carving fortifications to kill them at our leisure.
Cog’s Journal, 5th of Opal 325It really doesn’t take long for things to get back to normal. Today I had not one, but two dwarves come into my office requesting name changes.
The first is the seventh child of Vucar and Amsel, now a young mason in training. Having grown up here, he seemed quite interested in Derm and wanted a fresh start to kick off his career. He muttered about building a massive statue of Derm. I told him he’d need to put together detailed blueprints because I just don’t have a talent for that sort of design. I asked him what he wanted to be called but he wasn’t really sure. I put Justguy down on his file and told him to let me know if he wanted it changed.
The second is one of our legendary metalsmiths. He mixes his time between the anvil and the furnaces these days. I guess he just wanted to refresh his career, especially now that we might have enough adamantine for him to start working with it instead of just the armor and weaponsmiths.
Ahh normality. It’s a shame we still have an army of demons lurking in the depths.
Cog’s Journal, 6th of Opal 325It appears I spoke too soon about the disease being contained. Rogue, one of our fortress founders stumbled into the hospital and collapsed into bed today. She was suffering from numbness and a fever. When I asked what she was doing, she said she went to do some cleaning for a change of pace. Unfortunately, that cleaning was apparently some of the demon goo leftover from the battle. She got some on her feet and that was that.
The doctor said that other than cleaning the wound, there was nothing he could do. She complained about that and headed off to have a drink.
Cog’s Journal, 7th of Opal 325Darned if Rogue’s symptoms didn’t clear right up when she had her drink. Relief doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel right now. Which is good because Asob, one of our new military members from the recent squad has also been hit with the same symptoms. He wasn’t wearing his assigned boots and picked it up when he walked through it. I hope he recovers quickly.
Cog’s Journal, 14th of Opal 325Asob’s fever broke today and the numbness quickly faded as well. So it takes about 3-7 days to fight off the symptoms once the goo has been cleaned off.
And I’ve tracked down the problem. Apparently there is some contamination by the well in the hospital. I’ve ordered it cleaned up as quickly as possible but I suspect this is going to be the new normal for our fortress. How do we clean this crap up?
OOC: As soon as I cut off their path the demons wandered up into the other pipe, killed Zanfar and just seem to be hanging out there now since they can get higher up than they can in the rest of the tunnels. We haven’t truly “won” yet but at this stage we’re doing pretty impressively!
As for the syndrome, as soon as the military washed the demon goo off, they seemed to get better. They all went back to the military tower to train! There have been some other infections, so I’m open to suggestions on how to get rid of this crud. We really dodged a bullet on this though.
I’m reopening the fortress to dwarfings now but please specify if gender matters to you! I’d say more than three quarters of the male dwarves in the fortress are claimed now. I’ll see how long I can keep this fortress going but Derm (or some other dwarf if something happens) exploring hell and returning to tell the tale seems like a good goal. The FPS has improved immensely now. Unfortunately, my spare time hasn’t!
@Just Some Guy: Not dead, just slow as molasses! But we’re alive and the FPS has improved. Your dwarf is now assigned, let me know if you want to change the name!
@Prometheusmfd: Nah, it seems the military is too tough to be taken down by something silly like a disease. They got better as soon as they washed up.
@Werty892: Welcome, your dwarf is above! Don’t fret if I don’t update often! I would say once a week is about the highest frequence you can expect right now. But I appreciate your enthusiasm!
@wsoxfan: Doesn’t appear that quarantine is necessary. It’s not contagious, just seems to be caused by getting the demon goo on you.
@Scaraban: Heh yeah, it’s been unreliable at times. :-) I’m working on it though!
@HiEv: Heh, you beat this post by mere moments. You’re right, he’s not wearing headgear for some reason. I’ll have to fix that. Most of the other dwarves who got infected were in full armor as far as I know though so I’m not sure if it’s a 100% solution. Thanks for catching that!