Cook's Log [by me, Yarf], 22 Timber 203The engravings in the west wing are finished. And they're fairly spectacular. There is just one problem.
Through an incredible lack of forethought, Goden ordered Forumite's body left alone... in the room being engraved... the room where we used to keep random furniture... and then where we kept livestock.
Bowie's wolf and a couple of the dogs are taking nips from the disgusting rotting body whenever nobody is watching. It's quite distressing,
especially since we're not lacking for food. I take pride on my cooking, and now we have people – well, animals – feeding off the grisly decomposed carrion that was once a dwarf we knew.
But damn, some of these engravings are just genius!
Nice.
Mrs Oassis has drawn an image of Dariush weeping, after he was briefly made expedition leader in the winter of 202. The artwork is called 'The Weak Catch', which he really was. It was only a clerical error which gave him the job, for the space of about two hours, during which he drafted a bylaw prohibiting 'the squalling of errant babies'.
She has also depicted Goden becoming expedition leader. Several times over, in fact. One is entitled “The Empty Vise”; another “The Perplexing Tool”; a third, “the Deep Muds”.
Then there's a depiction of the
really nice jug Flintus once made, which has appeared in statues, figurines, gem crafts and pictures all around the fort. Even thinking about it now, I can't believe how nice that jug was!
Mrs Oassis was also ordered to carve a picture of Squadron Leader becoming militia commander. The miner-soldier stood over her as she worked, ensuring the best quality artwork. But as soon as she left, Mrs Oassis named it “The Tick of Images”, after Squadron Leader. I'm not sure I'd have the stones to call one of our managers a parasite, but there you go.
Of course, Mrs Oassis's unique sense of humour has extended to many of her other pictures. The founding of the hamlet is shown as “The Calamitous Belly”, “The Fed Maggot” and “The Weasel of Weavers”. I don't even know.
In a fit of creative energy, she made numerous engravings of the poor beleaguered migrants those ghosts told us about, out on the surface. Said migrants are universally drawn as dying, falling, burning, or lying still with fatal illnesses.
Then there is “The Lamb of Evenness”, referring to Surray. It was originally going to be
un-evenness but then Mrs Oassis lost her nerve. The engraving portrays Surray raising up Cultdaub the Violator of Crows. Next to the image is one of Surray becoming our chief medical dwarf. Food for thought.
Finally, after drawing the humble fruitbat, her personal nemesis, she ran out of ideas and drew a strange recursive image, appropriately named The Ordered Spiral.
Other engravers tried their hand at carving, although not as many as there would have been, given the corpse lying in the middle of the room. Skink-Killer drew a nice picture of valley herbs, which she says can be smoked, chewed, brewed, sniffed, or rubbed into the feet. She also carved an image of five-pointed stars. She calls it “the Useless Seal”. It's quite a funny dig at one of Goden's more boring official government stamps. I don't know how she handles being married to that dwarf, but it's possible that, in her near-perpetual drunken haze, she hasn't actually noticed.
Squadron Leader, while ordering Mrs Oassis around, also idly drew some jagged clouds, the image of our civilisation. She called it “The Appearance of Bolts”, after the massed crossbow fire which can darken the sky like thunderclouds. Unsatisfied, she drew another one right nearby, exactly the same, and called it the
exact same thing. Weird.
In other fortress news, Dariush the ancient carpenter just proposed to Surray, the farmer of doom. She accepted.
I would imagine that after mating, she will wrap him in silk and eat him.
Or perhaps she wants him for fertiliser.
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Topic: Rockfalls the Depths of Volcanoes ~ The story of 20 dwarves in a pressure cooker (Read 70167 times)