Another update! Two Months have passed. We came very close to death...
I haven’t written in a long time, I feel less and less desire to. I suppose I should disclose the events of the last months.
On the 28th of Granite, Vesh lost her temper yet again and destroyed another door in the flooded sections. With her entire body rotting away in her kins' excretions she must be in excruciating pain, but alas only the spirits of her fellow forgotten beasts could possess her to ease this pain, and only the living could end it. I haven’t seen a single spirit of a forgotten beast, however. Perhaps they have no true souls, like the lesser beasts? Goblins too angry to leave (and who have broken the spell of Queen Led and thus were not drawn away to be reincarnated.) and elves bent on yelling at us about our resource usage are plenty, though.
On the 18th of Slate, a migrant arrived. He was under no possessions, and the dead demand their chances with the living, but Catalyst refused, saying this one was useful in his own right. Twobeard was the first to greet him, the lunatic. Being a ghost, the dwarf was absolutely terrified of him and Catalyst barely managed to close the gate behind him. We’ve learned his trades and he has been dubbed ‘Scaraban’ for whatever reason. He was an adventurer, unaltered by Led’s wicked ways, and hearing of Failcannon’s demise he came looking for both a challenge and a grand reward. He’s one of us now, though.
On the 24th of Slate, a zombie buzzard of Led’s design swooped down and started wrecking things, only really damaging a shale statue it knocked over. It was quickly put down by the living.
Unfortunately, it was a distraction. There was another zombie buzzard, more directly controlled by Led, which was tinkering with a floodgate directly beneath Garbage Dump A, where water flowed into a tunnel sealed by three such gates from an entirely open fortress. When DuckThatQuacks spotted it, he raised the alarm like I never thought a spirit could; all the living dwarves heard him bellowing from deep under ground and rushed to the surface to deal with the beast. That Aussie-Dwarf guy was the first to arrive, and easily dealt with it.
A crisis so ingenious and destructive, averted at the last instant. Knowing what zombies were capable of, and what Led desires, I was absolutely terrified to think we’d come so close to our own watery graves. Well, most of our graves would just be getting more damp than they were, but the living were pretty concerned.
On the 27th of Slate, the insane spirit of ‘Cheese’ Adilishen took a cave spider silk hood off a goblin corpse and hid it, yapping about how none of us would ever find it and how smart he felt. Idiot.
On the 3rd Felsite, Catalyst finally got a chance to have a mandate finished; Mormota made a sterling silver door for her.
Then on the 8th Felsite, ‘DuckThatQuacks’ finally found what he thinks is the metaphorical keystone of our world; an undecorated, foreign giant cave spider silk cloak one of the other spirits had been wearing when they died. His maniacal laughter was fully audible to even the forgotten beasts in the depths of the magma sea, but only served to reinforce the expressions of all the other spirits, seeming to say “are you bloody serious? :\”
Today is the 18th Felsite. Duck-That-Quacks-Maniacally and Cheese have gone back to moping about their boredom after realizing how helpful they had actually been by dealing with some of the trash through simply making it vanish. The living are left wandering around cleaning up the trash while the dead look for entertainment and watch for threats.
I witnessed arcangelsd making his way up to the top of his tower. He still refuses to speak to me. Mekboy also departed us, two other spirits I’ve never met before coming along with him. Said they were to look for fresh meat to send our way and any migrants Queen Led may have sent as saboteurs and break their possessions, bringing them safely to Failcannon, to labor until death, in the name of the dead who possess them. This Fortress is no refuge after all; nobody came here to live. Queen Led made sure of that, and still those who come, regardless of intention, die here in unspeakable ways when they have toiled long enough to earn our trust. They become the denizens of the Palace of the Dead, the Necropolis, which they had built.
I see now why Failcannon is the great crossroads of the universe, of every universe, as Lur Thiefwitch tells us. It is such because it is destined to be the last great battleground against the goddess of death and Queen Led. But none of those fighting will be alive, oh no. When no living soul stands in Failcannon to stave off the stagnation of ruinhood, when their labor that defends it ceases, Led and her armies of forsaken and unlucky souls will descend upon us, the last free souls in the multiverse, to decide whether the afterlife will ever again be open to the souls of the dead, and whether any soul will ever again know peace, in any world, of any god. The 400 souls here will defend, but only time will tell. Only time and willpower fight in the Wars of the Dead. We can measure our strength of will, but when is always the question.
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It wasn't particularly eventful. I haven't begun or continued any real projects, but have made it my goal to contain the insanity that lingers in our architecture. Perhaps though the Dead need a source of power, and ethereal defenses.
I really am left to think of Failcannon as the Palace of the Dead, and Failcannon itself representing as much the weapon of the last battle of the apocalypse as the labors of dwarves who refuse to die.
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Topic: FailCannon: No Rest for the Wicked (or anyone else) (Succession: Battlefailed 2) (Read 939729 times)