These are the only remaining memoirs of Zon Endokakum, Craftsdwarf of the Rags of Paint. They are dated circa 1003U and are written in charcoal on rough papyrus. These appear to be the only surviving pages, having been well-sealed in a high-quality watertight coffer. The rest were quite possibly the crusty wad similar to papier-mâché found nearby. I'm a humble sort. I do what I'm told. I don't raise hell or drink too much weekdays. I thought I'd found an obscure enough station not to draw any attention, and then
this happened: Doctor Enolic, who doesn't seem much capable of a bedside manner, said he needed someone impartial to keep notes on the "moods" and "behaviors" of the new inductees to this meagre hovel.
It's not like there's been many.
Where's our fucking civilization, I ask you? Sure, rebel they said. New society, they said. Yeah, I was tired of the paranoia like everyone else; the constant fear of titan beasts crushing my very home into pebbles the size of Elven testes and those spooks from The Passionate Girders showing up to "rearrange staffing." But this? At least in Lashsavior we had a community. Here we're 16 fools farting around in a monkey-infested hellhole pretending we're the New World Order. I thought we'd be making a difference, spreading a message, but we're just sitting on our thumb pointed towards our beerholes.
"Moods" and "behaviors" indeed. What does he think I am, a psychologue? Everyone's peachy-keen on the surface. Most of these guys are ecstatic, skipping around singing all Armok-damned day about their new sylvite coffer or the fact we're sitting on enough coke to smelt the moon, or at least for a dragon's wild night out.
Ha ha. Oh, these dwarven language jokes kill me. I must be lonelier than I thought to be scrawling all this to myself. I don't know what I'm going to give the Doc in the end. I'll probably just write out "Feelin' fine!" on a scrap of toilet papyrus and call it a job well done.
I guess not everything is perfect. The other day I caught two of the farm workers yanking a donkey back and forth. One was screaming about how it had to be caged and the other was saying that "someone" had insisted upon its immediate slaughter. I don't know who broke the two fools up in the end, but the fight had gone on for at least a day. The donkey's shouting woke me up three times and I nearly busted my bed in two for the noise. Cursed animals.
And the flies. The FLIES. MUST I SPEAK OF THE FLIES? If I had to work up in Eliza's farm-farm fiefdom I'd have socked someone by now. I can't imagine what she's putting in our roasts to make all these jackasses shine sunlight out their rears for picking crops all damn day but I could use a triple dose. Her husband being the manager now and all . . . the Doc again, of course, means that the both of them seem to think they can run the place. I know real leadership: our queen was a true leader. Survived fucking Osram Sizzleivory. The Doc doesn't look like he could survive a night in the doghouse. I hear they're slaughtering newborn kittens up there. Barbaric.
I suppose we're off to a slow start being a real "society" here. Catten from down here in the workshops had a kid.
Whoopee. Another mouth to feed. Pity they didn't chuck it in the ocean before it had the chance to grow up and learn to hate this place proper.
Am I getting bitter in my old age?
Some of the boys have muttered something ridiculous about a ghost hovering around a coffin in that dank tunnel that leads to the trade depot/killing floor:
Is he IN the coffin or has he just claimed it as his own? Ghost stories don't make sense. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if there was a ghost, I suppose. We killed our own kin in cold blood over politics. When that happened I wasn't sure what to think. I mean, couldn't we just send them home with an engraving of Mishthem mooning the lot of them? Why did we have to kill them? They're dwarves just like us. We all drink the same booze, y'know? I'm just glad I haven't had to get my hands dirty over this business. I've been making mugs, and they're damn fine mugs. Too bad there's nobody to give them to!
Nevermind.
I . . . well, I admit that I did help lug a stone or two to the trap we'd constructed above the depot. I keep telling myself that I thought we'd be using it on a lesser race, some elves or some fool men, but I knew in my stone-cold heard what we'd be using it for.
I got the feeling that our seven glorious overseers really wanted to send a message this time. I snuck around, really curious to see a newcomer's face just to know that we weren't all alone in the world like it feels every day. The liaison followed the doc around patiently, but I could see how nervous the poor fool was. Last caravan hadn't come back, assumed dead along the way. But then these guys show up and we're doing relatively well for ourselves. I stood outside the office door as the Doc . . . well, the Doc scribbled down his demand for one and one thing only.
I remember hearing the liaison's gulp as he read the ledger. The Doc made a whistling sound and out from the office stepped Redpanda. We regarded one another for a moment, I mumbled an awkward excuse about looking for a misplaced item and he left. Moments later the ground rumbled with impact.
I didn't want to do it, but I did anyway: I helped haul it all down to the stockpiles. I saw fellow Rags of Paint members dragging their bodies into the tunnel where their coffins awaited and gulped. Were we any better than them for this? Was this justice? I don't have the strength to ponder this too much. I'm just a dwarf. I do my job. I make fucking mugs. I just . . . how will history remember us?
The liaison was allowed to flee into the wilderness, a living message to the mountainhomes: do not fuck with the Rags of Paint.
The following couple of months passed in relative silence. I stayed down in the masonry pit and helped knock out a few doors. I wiped some blood off of a few choice pieces of crafted steel and tried to pretend it was mandrill blood. I just stayed out of sight. I told the Doc everyone was doing great. He barely seemed to care about my response. I wonder if all this is getting to him. If it is, he's not showing it. He's got a real hospital set up now. Whole thing built out of salt, every bed's got a surgery table and a traction bench.
I try not to think too hard about the place, as well-outfitted as it is. I just hope I won't be spending any time there. I like it down here in Masonry. Occasionally a real quiet type with glasses named Salmongod comes down and spends his time in the lapidary's workspace:
To ease my nerves I decided to take a stroll one day around and check the artwork that Valrandir had recently produced. Suffice to say, it didn't ease my nerves much. The guy worships Momuz, for Armok's sake. I peeked into some of the rooms of the original seven, took a walk through their dining room, and although the craftsmanship of these things was superb I found the subject matter disquieting:
What good could a god of suicide be contemplating?
Who the
fuck sleeps next to a statue of someone weeping with shame?
At least Val is capable of carving something relatively uplifting.
I'd had enough. I'd turned to head down to my room and have some "me-time" when a panicked alarm began to echo through the halls. Some time ago Valrandir had installed a system of "holes" of sorts. Tubes, sound piping, an alert system for emergencies that involved the blowing of a horn that would sound through the fort. It was being blown. Someone was shouting for everyone to drop what they were doing and head to the farming sector immediately:
I guess we're not as alone out here as I thought.
OOC
Zon was the only dwarf we have to reach "unhappy" due a bad sequence of miasma, being harassed by roaches and flies and being woken up over and over again by construction. The rest have been quite content or better.
I also need to resize my pics next post which will be later today. These giant ones aren't good for easy reading.
Also, can anyone tell me why the water by the hospital isn't being considered a "Water Source" even though I've got a zone over it? Is it too deep or are the ramps a problem or what's wrong?
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Topic: Areliton Ador, Community Fort - XXXXU: [The End] (Read 34268 times)