1003U - WINTER
When the liaison stepped up to the office he found himself faced with three doormats.
"Wipe your feet before you enter. On the mat. No, not that mat. The other mat. Yes, that mat. Dust yourself off before you enter. Plump helmet counts seem too high. Must be the local humidity. They grow in bundles 2 - 5 per season, meaning . . . a projected count of . . . no, no. That's all wrong. Erase."
The man at the desk threw a crumpled piece of paper behind him which bounced off of the liaison's nose.
"Start over. Okay: sweet pods. Didn't we embark with 25 spawn? Where in the hell are all of our sweet pods? Are the morons in the farms cooking their damn seeds? No, kitchen reports state that we're conserving them. So why in the hell do we have nothing but dwarven wine? I'm sick of dwarven wine. Everyone's sick of it. I can't imagine going another day drinking the same . . . damn . . . booze," Valrandir paused for a moment, tapping the nub of his graphite against his chin.
"Doctor Valrandir?" the liaison said whilst waving his hand around to attract some attention.
"Come back later. I'm sure you've something more important to do, like carving out a real living space for us. It's been three years, you'd think we'd be living in stone caves by now rather than dirt ones. I'm busy. Don't we have a beekeeper?"
"Solon from Ezum Limar. I'm here on behalf of Silvertongue," the liaison was clearly inexperienced at telling when he was being ignored, "Trade agreements time, you know? I'm anxious to begin agreements. First time on the job! I can hardly tell a peridot from a peahen! Ha ha!"
"Barrels. Why do we not have more barrels. Ah, here we go. Carpentry is our choke point there. Only six stations. Can't churn out 120 bins fast enough, even without food or drink?"
The liaison moved to take a seat nearby the doctor but as soon as his butt neared the floor he was met with a gaze solid as slade.
"Use a CHAIR if you're going to loaf about in my office. I'll not tolerate filth-ery. Filthery? Is that a word?" Valrandir turned back to the paperwork literally spilling off of his desk onto several cloths he'd laid out near his feet, "Ye gods, labour requests for coffins? We're not importing corpses, are we? No, no corpses. You don't export corpses now, do you?"
"Er, no. Only, uh, meat. Meat is technically a corpse. Well, part of a corpse. Except not rotten, no foul gases or anything. Funny story, actually! I was in negotiating class just a couple months ago and we were having an argument about the price of goat's milk and my classmate said 'A goat'll eat anything if you leave it on the ground' and another classmate . . . a portly one. The fat one of the class. Besmar, we call him. We'll, of course we call him that since that's his name. But anyways, he lets out the most terrific belch at the moment and that other classmate who I haven't named turns to him and says 'And then they give milk like Besmar gives miasma!' And we all fell about laughing. Aye, good stuff."
It was only then that he noticed that the doctor's ears were plugged full of beeswax. Nonplussed, he slowly backed out of the office and began searching for someone else who might be able to help him.
***
Inspiration had struck.
It took him by surprise, and in turn he took a workshop by force.
There were certain . . . things he needed. Things that couldn't just be plucked from the ground. They were special things. Inspiration had no moral bounds, there was only you and
it, whatever it was that needed to be freed from the confines of your booze-battered brain.
After many days of relentless work and toil it was finally born.
One day a hero would have need of The Mired Author, a splint with which his leg could truly write a new page in dwarven history. After he got out of traction, of course. And the squares? They represented . . . um, squareness. The squareness of all things. The squareness of life.
With this out of the way, Bayar lumbered off to the farmer's workshop to get something more practical done.
The cheesening had begun. ***
The first days of winter for Blasty had gone fairly routine: leash the dog, rub blood and meat on the peacock dummy, let the dog loose, throw him an extra yak eyeball if he tore the thing up good without ruining the hide or eating it himself.
Some of the kids around the fort had seemed impressed by his handiwork. They followed him around in a gang cheering when he got a dog to "do a neat trick," which meant "beheaded another animal." They started calling him "Blasty the Wolf-man." He didn't care for the name much at first, since he didn't work with wolves and didn't even think he ever would, but it grew on him over time due to the sheer enthusiasm they'd shout it when he did his job.
After he'd trained up all the animals he could, which was all the dogs minus four caged puppies, he took the kids into the dining room to tell them some tales about the great tiger tamers of the old days, who could even tame beasts so massive and terrible that a hero soldier would have cowered from their might.
In the middle of his stories one of the kids pointed over his shoulder and said, "Hey Blasty Wolfman there's a lady watching us."
"What in the name of . . ."
It was a female dwarf, floating there in the air, moaning. He looked down at his mug of lukewarm wine, blinked, looked back up and she was still there. Water was pouring from her mouth as her hands waved in circles slowly, painfully. She grabbed at her neck, her eyes bulged out of her skull, she coughed up water and mumbled something. The kids all ran against the back wall of the dining room and watched her from afar as Blasty stood frozen in place, unsure of what to do.
"Hey . . . uh, hello. Hello there. Who, uh,"
"Vrfrrrbrllragghrhrhgh!" it tried to scream but only water came out.
"By Armok's beard," he mumbled, "We've got a bloody ghost in the fort."
***
Mipe, Johnny Digs and Stiric slept harder than any dwarf had in their lives. The sounds of their snoring echoed throughout the temporary bedchambers. Even at rest they knew what lay in store for them when they woke up: more mining. And the next day after, more mining. And some more mining after that. Johnny Digs was starting to shape up but Mipe and Stiric already had arms the size of thick tree branches and could shatter four bedrooms out in less than a day. They were so bulked up from mining that they almost glowed with strength. Their might was practically, well,
Legendary.
***
Finally, some metal. EmperorJon's first act of love towards the smelted copper was making Crazyteddles a short sword and a shield, and supplying Aqua with an actual iron spear. Jacen, unfortunately, was left with a wooden one in the absence of more tetrahedrite having been mined out and smelted. As EJ worked the forge he thought "wouldn't it be nice if I had some pipe tobacco? Yes, it would."
His zinc statue of cave crocodiles, the only statue existing at present to fulfil the doc's original blueprints for the fort, stood in the dining room.
Would some steel be too much to ask of from the next caravan? Would the doc actually
trade with the caravan this year?
***
Aaronius' complaints about the conditions in the carpentry workshops fell on literally deaf ears. Some guy named Solon, who looked like he wasn't from around here, had come up to him and asked if he could talk to the "auxiliary broker" while reading the line from a manual marked "Trading Amongst Our Kin: The Everydwarf's Guide to Being a Merchant." Aaronius shrugged and hoped the guy wasn't trying to do business with Valrandir since the doctor had all but vanished now that he had a new office.
The carpenter's shops were no less than slave-driving hovels. 120 bins plus the buckets Aaronius had been churning out, plus the need for cages, plus the sudden need for beds in the wake of the new housing: the URISTs were working days without sleep, drink or food just to keep up.
And all for what?
***
Dorna and Greymist had forged a sort of friendship in their mutual distaste for the crudeness of the fort. An order finally came through that required their skills: trapping the palisade entrances.
Both of them were waiting still on their personal workspaces. Thanfully for Dorna the control room was now on the miner's agenda. Greymist, however, would have to wait until the mutual masonry, soap-making and mechanics workspaces were carved out for her own office to be established.
"Have you heard that we've got a scientist from the guild in here? Dr. C is his name. Haven't seen much of him around."
Dorna smirked, "Scientist, say? We'll probably be swimming in magma by next summer."
***
That tiger needed to die.
No, it
really needed to die.
The hunting dog that had found it had turned it into its new play-toy. For a week, somehow, the dog had kept the tiger alive while gnawing on various parts of it. It had gone on for too long and Aqua needed to set things right. Hearing from Blasty that Vladina's ghost had been seen in the dining room had enforced the sense that he had a duty to fulfil. The tiger needed to be put out of its misery, an act of kindness and redemption.
He mounted the hill and found the spot where it lay, skinless and too out of breath to yowl, so that he could end it.
After the deed was done he felt that at least a small step had been taken towards redeeming his carelessness.
***
IPunchFaces had also found himself a bit o' combat in the form of an uppity peahen.
He practised some holds and pins on it for a bit while it screeched with fury.
Put one of its eyes out.
And then gave it the
coup-de-grace.
It seemed contrary to his usual manner, but who was going to argue with a guy named "I Punch Faces?"
***
PBD had found himself a new apprentice. She was utterly unskilled in anything practical or concrete but stated that she had a lot of experience with, well, learning. They got to talking about building design, of which she was interested. When the topic turned to her personal life he found out something unexpected about her.
Two of the fortress' children were hers,
and she had a husband.
A bit frustrated with his poor luck, PBD went looking for another apprentice. On the way he found some carpenter sleeping on top of his project.
He booted him off of the pole and told him to get back to work. His project was finally progressing at 4 dwarf-heights tall, but apparently it looked like a bed to the labourers.
In the dining room PBD checked the labour report for a more suitable, that's to say
single, apprentice. One stood out amongst all others.
Good with routines, laid back, single and a competent pump operator? She was in.
***
Crazyteddles' goblin tower was a joint effort between himself, Babalos, Jacen, and RTiger. Babalos and Jacen, apparently bored with churning out rock blocks, lent a hand towards its construction. It was positioned right outside of the beekeeping, kiln and temporary forge area with no access to the outside. The lot of them chatted about guild matters and the paucity of good booze while they worked. Jacen was highly annoyed with the lack of a metal spear. During construction he shouted to EmperorJon, who seemed to be napping in the forge, to make him one. The response was "Go wake up the miners and tell them to knock that vein out."
Once the tunnels had been sufficiently mined out, RTiger switched from building duty to smoothing. After all, he had a
lot to smooth just by himself.
Just inside, Blunderbooze was trying to get someone to make some Armok-damned ash so he could get suitable pots for holding the honey. It wasn't going to go in anything else and the hives were ready to harvest. He wanted sweet, sweet mead just as much as everyone else. By now his bees were counted in the dozens of thousands.
***
Rev needed some damnable seeds and he wasn't going to wait. If necessary he was going to rip the whole damn hillside up if it meant not drinking dwarven wine every single damnable day.
URISTs flooded out of the fort to assist him, affirming his faith in the ability of dwarves to get things done. As fruit began to pile up he moved to a ledge just above the fort entrance to establish his new farming grounds.
He chewed his nails with anticipation at the thought of fresh river spirits.
***
When you're out of bolts, you get by. The labour drain caused by Valrandir's need for bins and RTiger's requests for pottery had left Spera with little ammunition and no workshop. She'd taken her wrath out on a peahen over it. After she was finished she tromped back to the fort to arrange the construction of her own personal workshop so that bolts could be produced.
***
Vabok McSoapmaker was the second tragedy the fort experienced in 1003.
Without a workshop, Vabok had been restless. He had helped lug a few things here and there but the lack of proper soap-making facilities and the general clutter and muck of the fort had driven him to restlessness. Everything was so dirty and there was so much tallow from the elephants just lying around. He'd gone down to ask how the mining was going but they kept saying the same thing "Still working on the bedrooms. Still working on the bedrooms. Still working on the control room." Over and over.
On his way up from the mines, around mid-summer, he noticed that some of the URISTs were working on taking down a stray segment of wall where the aquifers had been breached. For lack of any better task, he decided to assist. They were pulling nails, digging out the foundation of the wall and generally disassembling it back into usable lumber. In spite of the mud he did his best to assist. It was in the name of fort beautification, after all, something close to Vabok's own dwarfy heart.
Then, without warning, an entire tree's worth of lumber fell on his head.
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He died instantly on impact. The URISTs stood dumbfounded for a moment before running back into the farming zone shouting "Murder! Destruction! Death! Mayhem! The end of all times!"
Like the death of Vladina, there had been no witnesses present to the event besides the URISTs. The miners said that the wall was completely unassuming and not at all suspicious: no strange construction work had been spotted on it. No signs of tampering or sabotage. And yet there he was, Vabok. Dead.
Id Mirroranguished was given the temporary title of "Undertaker" for the job of ferrying Vabok into a crude stone coffin and having him put to rest.
RIP, Vabok. May your guild have another proud soapmaker appointed who may campaign for hygiene in your stead.
***
Everything was in neat piles when Valrandir finally noted down the last count on the last sheaf of stockpile counts. He rolled his wrist, hearing it pop and crack, before turning around to find a stranger dozing on a bedroll in the corner of his room with a rat staring at him.
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"Who . . . what in the blazes is going on here?" he asked. The dwarf stirred and said something indistinguishable. Val removed the wax from his ears and said, "Huh?"
"I said, 'The dwarven wine here is excellent.'"
"Who are you?"
"My name's Solon. I'm your roommate! Well, not really your roommate. But I had to sleep somewhere and I figured you'd want me out of your hair as soon as you had the time."
"How long have you been here?"
"Oh, lemmie count . . . one . . . two . . . eh, three months now, I think it is?"
"Are you daft, man?"
"No sir! Not at all! I just, well, this was my first trade agreement and I didn't want to return to the mountainhomes empty handed. So I, well, I uh . . . got a cloth and a pillow and decided I'd wait it out. Here's . . . wait," the young merchant scrounged around in his sack, "Here's the requisition sheet. And here's our needs for the coming year."
As the man broke camp the doc forced his aching hand to mark down a few needs: drinks, gypsum powder, steel and sand. He handed the sheet back to Solon who carefully gathered up the last of his things and smoothed out the dirt where he'd been sleeping. He gave Valrandir a salute before departing, with the parting words of "Oh, and before I go, I think someone died last month. You might want to, er, look into that."
THE FORT AS IT STANDS
Vabok has died under mysterious circumstances, crushed to death while deconstructing a wall! Ye gods! imperium3, please let me know if you would like another soapmaker to replace him: perhaps a suspicious guild member come to investigate his death?
RathOfSTS, kzel, and UristImiknorris will be dorfed in Spring. Projects are actually underway now. We have a lack of booze which was my fault but it'll be fixed.
Restate or state your orders, labours and suggestions for Spring! 'Tis the season of rebirth and festivity! And let me know if you want DFMA updated!
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Topic: The Hill of Deceivers .25 - A Community Fort of Treachery and Treason (Read 77888 times)