1004U - SUMMER
Stiric was, quite possibly, the most bored dwarf on the planet. All around the dining room and down the hall it was a sea of labour and chaos.
"So as I was saying," murmured an exhausted Aaronius, "I've been trying to develop a new solution for slap-together bedding, paying close attention to the different sections of the basic frame. I think if I cut notches into the side-planes to create a kind of suspended fitting zone for the two main platforms, and then get one of the carpenters working on some small plugs . . . they could carve them out of end-pieces if they've got nimble fingers. I think I could really change the way bedding works: dwarves could make their own beds without me having to hammer pegs into pre-drilled holes all day. You might be wondering how I'd deal with the issue of creating an easy-to-construct base, especially when the corner braces are so hard to-"
Stiric stared at his pick. The end of it was worn down and the sheen of the copper had long since passed. Aaronius was talking with her eyes closed and looked ready to fall off of his chair but the words kept coming out of her mouth. The demand for beds had taken its toll on the woman. Nobody around had time for cards. It had been the most boring and busy month he'd ever seen. Five dogs trampled through the dining room barking at full tilt as Ineth the hunter came running after, throwing a quick apology to Blasty who'd been porting some clothes through the hall and had nearly sent them spilling into the dirt which, at one time, would have angered the doctor. Nowadays nobody ever saw the doc, so cleanliness had been allowed to slide a bit. The outdoor dump was completely full of mussel shells and rodent corpses and hadn't been expanded.
"Corner braces," mumbled Aaronius, "I've . . . got an idea for . . . better corner braces . . ."
***
Lekza's plans for disposing of the excess trash by crushing it into a compost-like paste had been set aside for processing goods in an attempt to keep the elves to stick around for long enough to buy up their cloth. The dyeing centre had been at the core of the labour chaos for the better part of the season. She'd implored Doctor Valrandir to stop making blocks for just a spare moment and go trade with the elves for some hide root and rope reed seeds.
Somehow she'd actually managed to get through to him. He emerged from his quarters one day with a glazed-over look heading straight for the depot.
"Blessed bloody be," he'd grunted at them in his best elf-tongue. The liaison looked shocked to see someone approach.
"Oh! Ah! Fine day to you as well, blessed be the earth. My graciousness, what a pleasure it is to finally be acknowledged. The last two times we'd visited with the intentions of trade, well, I thought that perhaps the spirit of the wood had struck us invisible to your eye and scented of only moss. Never hurts to try, of course, as your kind are known to offer us
something every now and again."
"Yes, charmed, I can see that. I hope you're short on household foof and pandy-fackle because that's all we've got to offer. Granite earrings, schist earrings, jet earrings. Think there's some hornblende earrings in there. Maybe a necklace. Statuettes."
The elf eyed the goods with a furrowed brow. He concentrated hard on the figurine in his hand.
"Ah . . . yes. Most . . . delightful. "Schist" indeed! A most, euh, magnificent pearl of the earth, although I can't quite make out the subject. This here, who is this sinister looking fellow?"
"Xan Ashburials."
"Ah! The dark horror, I recall the dreadful tales of his time stalking the earth. And, er, this fellow? Is that . . ."
"Mawada Scrapebeards."
"Ah! Of course, a historical, er, ruler of ours. Many songs were written about him So, then, the dark horror Xan is the one who is, er, eating . . . our former king?"
"One-hundred percent historically accurate. It'll cost you twenty."
"I . . . see. Is that one of
your dwarves eating from our sack of fisher berries?"
Lekza was treated to a sack each of hide root and rope reeds. Her apprentice Melbil the Stained set to grinding down the hide root with their pair of newly installed querns while Rev occasionally popped in to help harvest. Lekza began making bags to hold all the dye.
The doctor returned to his rooms to make sure nobody was touching Oltudeth with their grubby fingers and to get some more blocks kicked out for good measure.
***
"Wow, is that a
real sword?" the kid asked, wiping his face on the tablecloth.
"Nope. My real one's over there. This one's not for cutting 'em up. It's just for practice-likes."
One of the goblins who'd been eyeing the kid the whole time began to wheeze and bark, pounding his fist against the wooden bars in an attempt to break them. Crazyteddles swatted at her fingers with the training sword and she retreated back into a corner of her prison.
"These're the fools who didn't make it in here to snatch your little wispybearded buttocks up. Have a good long look at 'em, son. They're the enemy. These gobbos would've loved to grab you up in one of them sacks and drag you off."
The kid's eyes bugged out, "Off to
where?!"
"To their tower," Crazyteddles said as he pulled off a quick slash & thrust maneuver, "Armok knows if you'd ever be heard from again."
"This is scary. I want my daddy," said the kid.
"Just think, we had 'em climbing in over the walls just a week ago. Construction oversight. Coulda' run off with one of you kids easy."
"We chased the first one off and he ran right through a gaping hole in the wall."
"There was another one too. Dogs nearly got him but he used his big nasty knife to stab the poor pup in the foot."
"Didja catch him?! Is he gonna get me?!"
"No . . . and no. We plugged the hole. Now yer safe . . . but just think of what coulda' been."
"When I grow up I wanna be a gobbo basher just like you," said the kid as he dismounted the stool and walked over to one of the cages. Its occupant growled and spat in his direction which sent the kid running to cling to Crazyteddles' leg.
"Haw! You'll have to train up yer bravery first, son. Now get on with you, we're letting these doomed fools loose in a minute and you won't want to be around when that happens."
The kid vanished into the fort. Moments later, IPunchFaces stormed in looking like a boiling pot of piss and vinegar.
"Somethin' up yer arse?" asked Crazyteddles.
"I haven't pummelled something alive in months. I'm going out of my mind here. Every day it's just training, training, training. I need to punch something so bad it hurts inside. And these confounded rats, I
hate rats. I can't stand rats and it's like every time I turn a corner it's 'Oh
look! A rat! Hey there, how's it going! I know you hate them
so here's a bloody kegload of them!' Enough to make me want to split the sky, it is!"
"Yer in luck," grinned Crazyteddles, "Greymist just hooked up these cages to spring on my command and we're about to pull the lever on these insufferable kidnapping bastards. I'm sure you wouldn't mind lending a hand, would yeh?"
VICIOUS GOBLIN BEATING - COMBAT LOG: As soon as the cages popped open the gobbos did a beeline for the closest exit: an unsecured ramp to the roof from which had been sealed off from the hillsides. IPunchFaces took the initiative and barrelled after the both of them, focusing his attention on one female goblin who he pursued and struck out at from behind. She had all off her initial strength and made for good chase leaping away from his attempts to get her in a hold.
It couldn't last, though. After circling each other for a good few minutes he managed to pull a fake-out and land a solid one right in her belly. It knocked the wind right out of her and sent her to the ground. Once she was up she dodged a pair of light jabs and even tried to land a blow of her own that IPunchFaces easily sidestepped and countered with a sudden springing charge combined with a claw-fingered palm strike to her ribs. Caught off-guard, she took the blow at full force and lost some flesh in the process. As she went down his weight toppled onto her foot-first right at the spine with a loud crack.
Crazyteddles took the opportunity to come down hard with his wooden sword and whapped her across the arm while IPunchFaces clawed at her hand before she could try to get a grip on their legs.
The swordsdwarf spun around and tagged her again on the other arm hard enough that, had his sword been real, it'd have flown clean off of the tower.
Wasting no time, IPunchFaces got her by one finger and put her in an incapacitating twist while Crazyteddles bashed her in the eye with his heel. The pain caused her to her shriek and lash out with all the fighting spirit she had left in her, bashing IPunchFaces in the leg hard enough to make him back off for a moment before coming in again with a hard left hook. Crazyteddles knocked her off guard with another strike to the leg, hobbling her and putting her off balance just long enough for IPunchFaces to pull a full spinning roundhouse to the head that drove her nose bone straight through into her brain. She was dead before her body hit the ground.
Meanwhile, the other goblin had been looking for some way off of the tower. Ignored, she was trying to gauge if she could make the leap from the lip of it to the cliffside and freedom before IPunchFaces, now blood-crazed and ready to kill again, leapt her way. She stepped aside nimbly and sent him sprawling to the floor. He retaliated by balling up his fist and snapping her toe with a solid hammering blow
She hopped around in pain as IPunchFaces rolled to his feet. Crazyteddles moved in, dodged her clumsy backhand, and then clobbered her leg with all of his might giving IPunchFaces the time to disable one of her arms. With fluid motion Crazyteddles used his pommel to bash her once in the pelvis before spinning clockwise to avoid a kick and smashed her straight across the mouth again with the butt-end of his weapon. Her tooth flew straight off of the tower and landed deep enough in the earth to take root.
The goblin was hurting bad and it showed. She was slowing down, unable to focus on delivering strikes and doing her best to dodge in an attempt to avoid further pain. Crazyteddles took the opportunity to begin practicing his swordplay. With lightning speed he began pulling stance-and-drill with her as the target dummy, moving from one technique to another.
IPunchFaces helped out by getting her in a vicious twisting toe-hold and pre-emptively battering away any attempts of her to strike back.
With a deft circular motion IPunchFaces looped up between her legs and tossed her right on her back. Once down they administered a harsh beating with fury, scratching and battering as they went.
IPunchFaces backed off once she was down so that Crazyteddles could finish her off. Seeing that she was nearing the end of her rope he slammed her in the eye socket with the edge of his shield, counting on her to catch her final wind and come at him with what energy she had left. Her rage, already predicted by him, made her attacks reckless and easy to avoid. He got in two more hard blows on her before she ran out of fire and collapsed to the ground in agony.
Seeing that she'd given up he gave his blade a spinning flourish before slamming the flat of it down on her nose. Like her comrade before her the bone tore right through and ended her miserable life once and for all.
The two soldiers exchanged a brief brotherly hug before taking five. IPunchFaces told Crazyteddles to call him up to the tower when the second batch was ready. They'd both learned a lot from the brief scuffle, things that couldn't be taught in training. It was a renewing experience that reinforced their confidence in their skills.
Aqua, although having not taken part in the slaughter himself, was enjoying his training hours with Jacen and his new apprentice Skeweri. Being unable to catch the snatchers had bothered him and he resolved to be more observant in the future.
Spera spent her time training up her marksdwarf skills alone with newly made bolts, learning the intricacies of gravity and wind direction on a solidly weighted spear of flying bone. It was a good life.
***
Down below, many a dwarf laboured as hard as those above. Tetrahedrite had been found while excavating the masonry and mechanics zones and it was ferried over to EmperorJon. Smith Junior turned as much of it into copper bars as possible, but they hit a snag when charcoal ran out.
"Why in the bloody hell are we out of fuel?" raged EmperorJon.
"Why in the bloody hell are we out of logs?" asked PBD.
The two of them stared at each other for some time before turning to the wood stockpiles. Completely empty. No URISTs were cutting trees.
"Well I
was going to make some axes . . . but look at this."
Just then a URIST came running through shouting "HAIL! HAIL TO HER MAJESTY!" Confused, the both of them tracked him down to question him.
"Majesty who?"
"Why, the new mayor of course! Praise be to the new leadership!"
EmperorJon slapped the man's cheek with the side of his hand saying "Get a hold of yourself, man! We don't have a mayor! I think this one's gone stir-crazy from being in the mines."
"No! I swear! We've got a new mayor! Look, I've even got an official-looking notice here!"
AN EXECUTIVE ORDER ON BEHALF OF AXLE & ASSEMBLY
We have deemed this fort of suitable size and profit to be declared an OFFICIAL OUTPOST of the Hames of Wealth.
The duties and responsibilities of MAYOR must be granted to a suitable member of the fort
and we have deemed it necessary to appoint a member in the absence of the correspondence of consensus.
In accordance with Section XI, Page XIV of the UNIFIED TRANS-GUILD CHARTER
we take upon ourselves the duty of appointing DORNA SINTHADRITAS to the position
as of 16 Malachite, the Summer of MIV (1004U)
Mafol Doduktherleth, A&A Administrative Bureau
" . . . the hell?" muttered PBD and EmperorJon in unison.
Dorna hadn't been seen in months. Once the control room had been properly dug out she'd sealed herself inside working. She'd only come out once to assist in the construction of a mechanics workshop, looking worse for wear.
She didn't take long to get to her duties, however. Another URIST shortly thereafter brought up a mandate order requesting something in cave spider silk.
The rest of the underground work had been carried out by Mipe, Johnnydigs, RTiger and many URISTs. The new workspaces and new rooms had been dug out over three months of back-breaking work. The gem-cutting stations were thankfully created just as a dwarf had secreted himself away, handing out cryptic sketches of his needs.
What he ended up making was a giant spiky copper door.
***
Autumn arrived with the completion of Bayar's gatehouse . . .
. . . and the arrival of humans on the horizon . . .
. . . as well as two more fool goblins attempting to enter the fort to snatch up the kids.
Doctor Valrandir, the self-appointed leader, hadn't exited his office yet to make comment on the fact Dorna's guild was attempting to subvert his leadership. Either his devotion to rock blocks or something else was in the works.
In any case, Autumn of another year had arrived on a wave of violence and change.
THE FORT AS IT STANDS
A few notes: I've only logged seven apprentices right now. PBD has one, Aqua has two, Crazyteddles will get one next season, RTiger has one named Nish "Fiddles," Lekza has Melbil, and EmperorJon has his right hand. I may have missed some requests for apprentices so you may have to repeat them if I don't find them scanning the thread. We have a giant labour base right now so you can grab some if you like. The fort has a massive majority of women over men.
Note that although Dorna has suddenly become the mayor it does not need to stay that way. Elections can be held now that the position is available according to Section XII, Page IV of the Unified Transguild Charter.
I'll upload the DFMA map in a few minutes. Next season's orders can commence.
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Topic: The Hill of Deceivers .25 - A Community Fort of Treachery and Treason (Read 77838 times)