The recent fight with the antlions had demonstrated to Rith the hidden power of those critters, whilst they were not particularly good fighters and their shells only really provided protection from fists and feet their snapping jaws and pincers had proven to be too dangerous when they did land the blows. He resolved not to attack them again with the general populace and to leave their execution to the settlement's new corps of hunters led by Kol. As he reached this decision in his mind he returned wearily to the camp to inspect DwarfyDwarf's progress with the pickaxe they had so recently aquired.
The area around the spot at which their original wagon had unceremoniously crash-landed was clustered thickly with dwarves who were watching the excavations with great interest. Rith shouldered his way through the crowd and saw to his delight a set of earthen steps leading downwards, he descended quickly, excited at the prospect of the stone which they must surely uncover any moment.
The first underground level already held two small rooms to the north and south of the staircase, which descended deeper into the earth. Sticking his head back up above the ground he gave a succession of swift orders and was rewarded with the sight of the idle dwarves scurrying to the food stockpile. It was time for them to move their little home beneath the ground as the gods had always intended dwarves to live.
As he proceeded downwards toward the second level he saw again that DwarfyDwarf their erstwhile miner had already constructed a pair of rooms mirroring those above, these would ultimately hold the surface workshops he thought. The floors and walls of this second level were comprised of compressed peat, which while taking a little longer to hew would provide them with coke once burned. Here and there clumps of some strange rocky-like clusters scattered the floor and he resolved to ask the miner about these. He wasnt nearly familiar enough with the various soil and rock types to be found beneath the surface, but had a feeling that these would be secrets the little band would learn swiftly enough. The stairs continued yet further as he had asked and he practically skipped as he descended yet again, only to bump square into DwarfyDwarf as the latter travelled upwards.
"So, how we doin?", he asked happily. His mood was jubilant despite his recent injury, things were going their way...oh yes!
"Well, theres good news and bad..." said DwarfyDwarf.
Rith's heart sank somewhat, this was a little ominous.
"Good news first please mate, we've had little enough of that." he said swiftly.
"Well you might have noticed the second level is compressed peat which we can make fuel for metalworking from, I also encountered several reasonable sized clusters of Goethite." replied the dirt-caked dwarf.
Rith tried to place the unfamiliar word but failed. His expression must have indicated this as the miner elaborated without being asked.
"It's an ore of iron...sometimes. It crops up here and there in the soil layers but only yields workable metal in perhaps half of smelting attempts. Nonetheless, its iron which is obviously great."
Rith's mood rebounded and he gave a little jig of excitement. Ores already and we're still in the soil!, he thought.
"But like I said theres bad news too..." continued DwarfyDwarf, gazing down the staircase he had emerged from.
Rith tried to follow his gaze but could not see far into the gloom, he noticed however that while the miner's upper body was dusted with loose clumps of soil, which had even tangled in his hair, the lower body was slick with a jet black muddy slime.
"I seem to have hit the water table," continued the miner. "The next floor down flooded as fast as I cut it out, seems we're sitting on top of an aquifer".
Rith gave a heartfelt groan. He had never encountered an aquifer before, Dastducim being completely constructed long before his birth, but he had heard miners back home talk of them in subdued tones and knew that this spelled trouble for his well-laid plans.
"Its a silty loam layer, practically crumbles to the touch, but theres no way we can just dig through without the shaft filling. We're gonna have to pull off some kind of engineering feat if we want to hit the rock." said DwarfyDwarf sadly.
Rith nodded and sighed. Things had been going too well of course, this godsforsaken place had it in for them, they would not settle here so easily.
"Alright," he said at length "You're telling me we're limited to the top two layers just now?"
The mud-caked miner nodded gloomily in confirmation and Rith gave another deep sigh.
"Fine, for now I guess we have to enlarge the rooms you've already dug to fit our settlement in up here. We'll have a little chat at tonight's meeting and see what options we have for surmounting this new obstacle."
As Dwarfy tramped up the stairs to carry out these orders Rith descended a few more steps to take a look for himself.
The miner was not exaggerating, Rith's bare foot squelched into slimy ooze and he saw that water filled the base of their shaft. Well, there were ways through aquifers he was sure, many a fort had done so, though probably few with so little supplies as theirs. Where there was a will there was a way, he reminded himself, and he remained cautiously optimistic as he returned to the surface to oversee the transfer of their operation to the rapidly expanding rooms on the first two floors.
"The workshops are going to floor two!" called Rith to the scurrying labourers. MetalMilitia was dismantling their still in preperation for transport, crundle was doing the same to the crossbow workshop, Fniff was working with the craftsdwarf shop and Knarfle was gathering his carpentry tools and workbench. As each construction was broken into bits a steady stream of dwarves hauled the pieces off down the steps toward what would become their new work level. DwarfyDwarf had already doubled the size of the rooms Rith had inspected down there, his new iron pick biting rapidly into the peat. As Rith surveyed the work his mind was reviewing what little he knew of water tables and mining operations, but his knowledge was too scant. It would be a matter that the whole band would have to discuss at length it seemed.
By the time the sun slipped toward the distant horizon the surface was unrecognizable from that morning. All of their little workshops with the exception of the kitchen where AngleWyrm rendered fat from hunting kills had been packed up and transported down below. What little goods they had on the surface had mainly been moved too, the last of the food barrels and handfulls of seeds had disappeared down the new stair almost an hour before and little remained other than the piles of butchering refuse, Lupusater's currently unneeded copper axe and a few piles of bone crossbow bolts. The nearby shelter stood abandoned, its furniture hocked to buy their anvil. The golden orb of the sun dipped below the distant hills and twilight fell as Rith finally turned and descended to join the others, who were congregating in a large space that DwarfyDwarf had hacked out on the first floor, chattering excitedly amongst themselves.
Everybody else was already present as Rith stomped down the stair, their faces displaying excitement at this latest improvement in their joint prospects.
"Evening meeting folks!" he exclaimed and hunkered down in the dirt beside the now silent dwarves.
"We're below ground and thats a start", he began simply. The assembled dwarves grinned and nodded happily, whilst there had been no complaints no-one liked working under the hot sun all day. (For it was still remarkably hot despite the lateness of the season, winter was just around the corner yet it felt much as it had in late spring)
"However as some of you will have no doubt heard, we've struck an aquifer just two floors below us and cannot proceed deeper right now."
There was a little murmering at this, some of the assembled company had not explored the workings fully yet and there had been little opportunity for idle chatter as goods and shops were moved below the surface.
"So. We need to find a way to reach the rock, and understand me people, we desperately need rock. We have no wood left at all and theres nothing big enough to fell for a half-day's walk in any direction. With this in mind we are left with no option but to attempt to breach the aquifer layer as soon as dwarvenly possible. And to this end I open the discussion to ideas, for I know precious little of earthworking and such issues. Anything you may have heard from miners back home, something you read somewhere, crazy ideas. All of it."
Rith concluded his appeal and looked left and right. The assembled dwarves were largely silent, though a few were whispering to each other in hushed tones. Rith gave them a few moments and then continued.
"So? Ideas please."
DwarfyDwarf was predictably the first to speak.
"Im pretty new at mining myself" he began apologetically "But from what I was taught before I left there are a couple of common methods for what we want to achieve. First, we dig out an area of the aquifer and construct pumps to suck out the water. This takes a lot of pumps to be able to remove the liquid as fast as it pours in, we then take advantage of this to construct waterprooof walls and we can dig downwards inside this protected space." There was some nodding at this from a lot of the assembled company, Rith nodded too, even he had heard of this method though had not known exactly how it worked till now. The miner was not yet finished however and presently he continued.
"Second option. Controlled cave-ins." A ripple of disquieted muttering at those words, no dwarf liked the idea of cave-ins, 'controlled' or otherwise. "Yeah, yeah I know... But the idea is that we channel out a large section of the aquiferous soil and then drop something that cant hold water into it. Its bloody dangerous but can work beautifully as we then dig downwards through the fallen soil, taking care to keep away from the edges. Those are the best two methods for doing what we need and all I can think of right now."
Rith nodded at the miner.
"Thankyou for the ideas Dwarfy. Anyone else got anything?" he asked the assembled dwarves.
After a few moments MetalMilitia tentatively raised a hand and Rith gestured at him to speak up.
"Well up north our engineers used to expose aquifers to the sky and wait for winter, when they freeze up you dig through the ice and put up some walls to protect from the thaw... But now I think on it I doubt this place will ever get cold enough." he subsided again and Rith nodded grimly.
"It's a good idea mate, but as you say, I think we're too far south for that one. Anyone else?"
There was utter silence this time, the company glancing left and right at each other, but it seemed no-one had anything else to add to the debate.
"Alright I'll sum up" concluded Rith. "As for the first idea. Pumping is probably the best bet, but we have no spare wood to build the pumps with. At a pinch I suppose we could dismantle everything to give it a shot, but if we blow it we're stuck with no workshops, still no wood and no rock. In other words we'd be fucked."
"As for plan two, cave-ins, despite their dangerous nature, would require little in extra supplies from us and may end up being our only way forward, despite the risks. And as we discussed, freezing is out. There is of course another possibility. It might be that the entire area is not all aquifer, could be we can get round it."
Rith thought long and hard for several minutes, the others sitting silently as they waited for a decision.
DwarfyDwarf suddenly gave a groan and slapped a hand to his forehead.
"Rith I forgot something... About the cave-in idea. Its usual practice to use supports to hold up the floors till they are ready to drop, trying without them has a tendancy to maim or kill the miner, which im against for obvious reasons. We'd need only a few bits of wood for supports, but thats not the problem. Problem is that the levers and mechanisms that are used to drop the floors on schedule need stone. I think that ones gonna be a non-starter."
There were groans from the group as they realised the truth of this and Rith nodded grimly.
"Good point, good point. We're really short on options then. As it is I fear your gonna have to dig some exploratory passages in the layer above. Yeah, thats what we'll do. Long tunnels stretching everywhere, sink a stair every 20 paces to check the wet layer, might be we'll get lucky." he said finally.
The dwarves nodded gloomily and Rith wrapped up the meeting.
This was not going according to plan at all, the day that had started so promisingly had ended with a plan that required fortune... and there had been precious little of that at Playfuloiled thus far.
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Topic: Playfuloiled - A community penal colony (Read 16048 times)