Act II Scene 5
Setting: a narrow mineshaft. Swinging picks hew a stairwell from the living, multicolored rock below the miners’ feet. Above, the others remove the vibrant stone stairs, with their organic swirls of ore and color, and replace them with perfectly smooth and uniform stairs constructed from shiny but sickly green olivine.
“dig do still we Why? already another breached cavern We. and full It mud of vermin was webs. down find further more only We’ll.”
“We have no choice. Analog was right. We must strive for greatness. Since we cannot expand outwards we must focus below our feet and above our heads.”
“But disorderly down here it’s so.”
“You know we’re working on that. Just look at the stairs up there.”
“are beautiful They.”
“Yes, they are. And imagine what we can do once our glass furnaces are up and running.”
“Yes. is that What?”
“What do you mean?”
“pick Your…”
Graebeard lifts his pick and strikes the native silver floor one more time. The pick passes through the richly veined stone as if it were a wet tissue.
“Is that water I hear?”
“Äs Dear! The smell!”
Through the hole the dwarfs make out a zombie serpent man fouling the cavern waters below them.
“it Seal!”
“Wait, do you see that blue glint over there! That’s a vein of adamantine!”
“Äs Praise! But is that what? built curious that structure Who?
Hearing the conversation from above, lolghurt hurries down the mine shaft, her ponderous weight moving unbelievably quickly.
“CLOSE IT YOU FOOLS”
“What? Wait, why…”
“MOVE THERES NO TIME”
“But we need to find out who built that…”
“NO THEY COULD GET IN FLOOR IT NOW.
Hesitantly, Graebeard floors over the breach, sealing away both the riches beyond and the makers of that temple-like structure.
“We keep our distance for now. But someone made those perfectly smoothed and even walls. We WILL find out who it was. I have a feeling they’re just like us…”
And with that I finish my turn. I took way longer than I wanted, but it was really fun trying to capture the turn in dialog as much as I could rather than in a journal format. I hope it all makes some sense.
Here is the
save and the
map with lots of POIs.
My first focus was on using up the quartzite we'd dug out to build the spiral up. I also wanted to open the fort to traders in order to lure some immigrants in, but the kobolds ambushed the elven traders as soon as they arrived.
From there I decided to dig down. We've reached the second and third caverns and the magma sea. The caverns are sealed, and the magma industry is ready to start churning out metal and glass. I meant to flood the bottom most floor with magma, but I forgot to channel through the wall before my turn was over.
Also, in a fit of real OCD I replaced the annoying orthoclase and microcline stairs with olivine. From there I just decided to make the entire central stairway green. It's really satisfying in a ridiculously petty way.
Analog, looks like you're up! Knock em' dead.