You pick your way through the scree and debris, curls of smoke rising from burning pits in the ground. Your boots are spattered with molten stone and acidic blood, but the thick steel protects your feet. Underneath you a rock gives, and as you skitter backwards you see something strange fall out of a crevice. It's a journal, bound in burnt, faded cow leather, the pages yellowed with the years and singed with the fires. You pick it up carefully, and after acertaining that no blood stains it's pages you open it and prepare to read...1st of hematite, 181Today I bought this journal from a wizened old merchant near the edge of town. He told me to record my thoughts in it, a obvious suggestion. However, most men don't also advise you to record your screams.
Despite his questionable sanity I can see the virtue of keeping a Journal. I am Xem Halrabin, although for most of my life I've gone by a name I invented for myself, William. My profession as a miner is dangerous work, even moreso due to the long periods I spend underground, chipping away at the stone. I feel at home there, compressed by the earth, silently working her womb into something for my people to use. It is my passion, my calling. My mother used to joke that I was half-dwarf, although there had never been such a union - and rightly so!
Still, I embarked on this journey with a heavy heart. I was to work in the mines for seven years, the longest yet. We would have seven men as well, a dwarven good-luck charm. It works for them, so why not for us? I fear that we will be taking more and more from the dwarven halls in time.
Our destination is a mere fortnight away, with wagon laden and provided we do not have any mishaps on the road. Our prospectors said that the stone is heavy with gold, which will provide a profit enough to fit a king. Glad I am to be on a expidition this promising, but I cannot shake the feeling that something dark is stirring.
I hope there are no goblins about. We have but one guard with us, and he sleeps the day away beneath the booze! Umorabin indeed.
15th of Hematite, 181 Arrival! Surely it is good to feel soil under my feet and know that I will walk there again. The constant movement of the road makes my bones ache. Our expidition leader (whom will only respond to "Cap'n", what an odd fellow) has ordered us dig downwards eight meters in a winding stairwell that will become the five-and-half level mine. Already Unzo is planting crops to feed us in the long year ahead. She is beautiful in the sunlight, though the dirt stains her face and hands. I am glad that we chose her and not fat Etdil!
Already I feel alive! Once more, it will be my pick that I send into the earth, to drag to the surface riches beyond the ken of kings! Today, I no longer walk, I dig!
19th of Hematite, 181 I have little to say of our progress. It is smooth, if a little slow. I feel as if I've gotten better at mining, although I've seen little difference. I have shelter dug from the stone, and the stairwell has been paved so that we do not degrade the steps with our feet.
It is damn hot, though. Perhaps it would have been better to arrive in the spring, as opposed to the summer. In anycase, it seems that I've yet work to do, carving separate rooms so that I will not have to stare at mens hairy backs and that I'll no longer invade the privacy of our only woman!
3rd of Malachite, 181 The rooms have been worked out and claimed, doors made from fresh wood, and the wagon turned into a table in our small mess hall. We sit on stones and eat our meager supplies, but we are happy enough. We like it under the earth, each of us, although none as much as a true dwarf. Still, the more we are like the blighters the better off we are in our caverns, eh?
I've been chipping away at the stone now for days, looking for gold veins. We've hit none yet, but there are gems aplenty, enough to satisfy the caravan we are expecting soon. With luck, they bring supplies as well as new workers.
19th of Malachite, 181 Sometimes, I feel as if something stirrs beneath my feet, just below where I dig. I feel as though I stand not on solid stone, as I should, but upon a giant bubble of rock, at any point thin enough to simply shatter and collapse inwards of itself. Of course, there is no bubble beneath me, nor will there ever be. And even if there were, why, it would only send my search into oblivion, for all the gold would be laid out for me to take with no issue! If only there were. If only.
If only that nagging thought would leave my blasted head! That damned merchant still has his madness in my brain, gnawing at it like a crazed weasel.
Nothing lives below the earth, and nothing wants to kill me! What a strange thought to have. More madness I suppose. I must get back to work. There is gold to be found!
You lean on a stone and sigh. The poor man had no idea what he was standing on, what he was about to dig up. You wonder if it would have played out differently if you had listened to the dwarves as opposed to scoffing at "fanciful tales". Perhaps the young man would have lived. Perhaps this mine would still exist as more than smoking wreckage... You read on, keeping an eye on your environment in case of ambush... This may update sporadically. I won't promise anything, but as of the time of posting I'm thinking about having Will draw a couple of pictures if he can get charcoal enough for them (If I can get my tablet working). I'm not going to outright say it though, because I'm notoriously lazy and it's possible that I won't draw or sometimes even write.
Still, I like the idea of a human mine breaching the caverns and then going completely off the deep end. So much so that the name of the mine makes sense.
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Topic: The Mines of Letogulguld: Humans playing at being Dwarves [NO_PICS] (Read 549 times)