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Author Topic: Project: Most Dragon  (Read 14717 times)

Nil Eyeglazed

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #15 on: July 14, 2011, 01:17:17 am »

Vabok opened the pantry door, and there she was, in all her two-headed spectacle.  Vabok backed up two steps and then began to run, striking wildly with his pick behind him, and when it lodged in something soft, he just let it go and kept running.

But Vabok was just a stooped old dwarf.  Akul Belshibbi Ashab Rossu was a creature of legend.  She reached out with her gnarled hand and grabbed him by the arm.  A flip and his ulna twisted and split, the jagged end bursting from his forearm.  "Compound spiral fracture," thought Vabok.  "Traction.  High risk of infection."  He'd practiced medicine for so long that even now, the diagnoses came, inexorably, as if under their own will, not his.

His head went back then, hard, so fast that he didn't even see what had hit him.  "Rebound concussion.  Swelling likely.  May require treppanation."  The pain hadn't yet begun.  The diagnoses continued as Akul pummeled the old physician.  "Complicated compound fracture, calcaneus.  Blunt trauma, pancreas.  High risk pancreatitis.  Spinal cord injury, likely fracture, C3.  Spinal precautions necessary."

It took Vabok longer than it should have to realize that the hand that gripped his arm so tightly was no longer connected to anything corporeal.  He couldn't turn his head to watch, but it was over in an instant anyways.  Then Onol Fikodzoz was in front of him, drenched in blood from her helmeted head to her steel toes.

"Ms. Fikodzoz.  I will instruct you.  First, you must stabilize my spine.  Then, you must stop the bleeding.  Get two other dwarves and as much cloth as you can find."

Onul didn't seem to hear.  That's when Vabok realized that he wasn't making any sound.  His lips were moving, but he wasn't making any sound.  That's when Vabok realized that he wasn't breathing anymore.
« Last Edit: July 14, 2011, 01:14:18 pm by Nil Eyeglazed »
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He he he.  Yeah, it almost looks done...  alas...  those who are in your teens, hold on until your twenties...  those in your twenties, your thirties...  others, cling to life as you are able...<P>It should be pretty fun though.

bowie

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #16 on: July 14, 2011, 03:37:10 am »

More please  :)
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Must... Eat... Demon... Rat ARGLEBLARGH *crash* OMNOMNOMNOM
Tastes.. like... SAAAAATAAAAAAAAN!

Roboboy33

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #17 on: July 14, 2011, 08:49:10 am »

More please  :)
You MUST make more!
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SHUT UP AND ENJOY THE CATS

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ArKFallen

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #18 on: July 14, 2011, 09:36:02 am »

Posting to watch

"You're going to wrestle an ettin-- and you think the goblins have a chance?"
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Hm, have you considered murder?  It's either that or letting it go.
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I logged back on ;_;

Nil Eyeglazed

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #19 on: July 14, 2011, 01:27:47 pm »

Lol, I'm glad you like you it so far!  It's hard losing Vabok, had some hopes for character development.

Just got Dances with Dragons in the mail.  Hard not to imitate Martin's plot style a little bit, which somehow comes naturally with Dwarf Fortress.   "Foreshadow convenient narrative-- nope, he dies instead!  Hah!  Foreshadow new convenient narrative...."
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He he he.  Yeah, it almost looks done...  alas...  those who are in your teens, hold on until your twenties...  those in your twenties, your thirties...  others, cling to life as you are able...<P>It should be pretty fun though.

Nil Eyeglazed

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #20 on: July 14, 2011, 01:29:34 pm »

The rock is warm.  There is none of the troubling urgency when she is under the mountain.  There is no chill gale that whistles through her bones.  There is peace.

This--  this-- this--

This is done.

*     *     *

The log was thicker around than Kol was.  She walked with it cradled in her left arm and Urist cradled in her right.  Every season these steps seemed steeper.  "Chalk it up to the engravers," she told herself, knowing it was absurd.

Same dog, tied up happily at the entrance, barking at cavies.  Same depot.  New bloodstains, and new traders.

"Greetings, Duchess!  I am Thaci and this is Eletha--"

"You've come back!  I wasn't sure you would.  I've brought you something."

Kol hefted the log with one hand, then stopped.  Something was wrong.  Not cavies.  There weren't any cavies.  Wrong season.  Oddom ran past Kol then, already reaching for the adamant axe strapped to her back, and the other Inky Pinnacles weren't far behind.  Kol dropped the log and sank against the loam wall.  She'd never heard any alarm.  She clutched Urist to her with both hands, rocking back band forth, her face pressed against her child's downy scalp.  Murmuring, soft, while, around the corner, bolts flew and whips lashed and heads were separated from bodies and bodies from breath.

"It's all right.  It's all right.  It's all right."  A soft fuzz had begun on Urist's scalp, and it was damp with Kol's breath now, or maybe just damp.  Whatever was happening out there, it was nearly over now.  Now and again, the soft sound of steel cutting through leather, mercy for the wounded.

So quiet, it had been.  Kol had expected shouts, screams, but it was just metal on metal, like a bin of flasks toppling onto loose leather.  Only now was there a voice, Degel, of the guard:

"Sakzul?  Sakzul?  Sakzul, you can come out now!  Sakzul, it's okay now! Sakzul?"

Kol shuddered.
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He he he.  Yeah, it almost looks done...  alas...  those who are in your teens, hold on until your twenties...  those in your twenties, your thirties...  others, cling to life as you are able...<P>It should be pretty fun though.

andyman564

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #21 on: July 14, 2011, 02:38:26 pm »

love your writing style! can't wait for more!
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Yeah.  Thus why I didn't make a trap.  In it's current state the fortress didn't need a trap, the whole damn fortress is a trap.

Nil Eyeglazed

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #22 on: July 14, 2011, 05:48:20 pm »

Thank you!  I am running out of ideas for ethical experiments-- from what I can see, this stuff is just plain deadly.  Any requests?
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He he he.  Yeah, it almost looks done...  alas...  those who are in your teens, hold on until your twenties...  those in your twenties, your thirties...  others, cling to life as you are able...<P>It should be pretty fun though.

Nil Eyeglazed

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #23 on: July 14, 2011, 05:48:47 pm »

Tode Scaldedhates landed on his sandalled feet.  He wasn't sure at first why the cage had toppled, why the door had dropped, unhinged by some lockless mechanism, but he caught on fast.  It was an arena.  Not the same sort as they had at the Citadel, but still, an arena.  The curiously dusty skeleton of an elven war-giant lay slumped against a wall stained the color of raw iron.  He laughed then.  He'd done this before.  And they'd left him his scourge.

The warthog turned.  It stunk of something kept, not wild, but Tode saw the blisters, the flesh rotted off in chunks, the shape of bone, and knew it was more than that.  It was coated in a fine white powder, the same that covered the arena.  Behind it lay the door.

Tode stepped lightly, gathering the weapon in his hands.  The beast snorted, digging at the cavern floor, lifting a fine spray of dust with its maggoty hooves.  It charged, fast, rotten tendons snapping from their attachments with no apparent effect, and Tode spun.  The thick copper line leapt out of his hand, like something alive, and the boar's femur cracked, split.  It skidded in the dust, then turned, limping on three legs, stumbling as it pawed, slavering, silent, doomed, dead, but not yet defeated.

Tode crouched, his knees a pair of iron springs.  The door would open when it was done.  And he'd killed pigs before.
« Last Edit: July 14, 2011, 11:45:06 pm by Nil Eyeglazed »
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He he he.  Yeah, it almost looks done...  alas...  those who are in your teens, hold on until your twenties...  those in your twenties, your thirties...  others, cling to life as you are able...<P>It should be pretty fun though.

andyman564

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #24 on: July 14, 2011, 08:40:47 pm »

Thank you!  I am running out of ideas for ethical experiments-- from what I can see, this stuff is just plain deadly.  Any requests?

As steampunkfox said earlier, how about capturing your beast of flame and beast of lignite and locking them in a small room?
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Yeah.  Thus why I didn't make a trap.  In it's current state the fortress didn't need a trap, the whole damn fortress is a trap.

Labs

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #25 on: July 14, 2011, 10:25:46 pm »

I like this. I'll be following for more.
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I like to slip into bear caves around midnight and gently caress the carnivore inside before leaving a small cut of fresh fish and sneaking out.

Nil Eyeglazed

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #26 on: July 15, 2011, 02:01:56 am »

--nonononononononononononononono--

The magma was falling away from her.  The hot rock rushed past her, scraping, melting.   A crab grasped and then was gone.  Someone had opened a door into hell and the mountainblood was falling out.

No.  The magma was gone and it was the whole mountain that was falling.  It twisted as it fell, spinning like a puzzle box, orbiting her so perfectly that it never touched her.  Lanterndark rushed past, flickering corridors, spiraling stairs, and it wrenched at the end and she saw it beneath her, falling away, Lanterndark from above, a handful of modest towers of mixed, rough stone, the tops of the palms, the Tragic Fields, the Teeth of Flame, Luresteamy feeding the Lake of Spikes, four dwarves tracing it to its source at Lanterndark.  Roads along the land lay like stray hairs in her eyes, settlements, like flies.  It turned as it fell, as if the east were heavier than the west, the south than the north, and she saw villages racing by, cities, Glimmerpleats, Padlip, Gazecastle, where a human merchant peddled a figurine of the winged ogress Obi Duskcaverns in the agate of the Tragic Fields; and she saw Obi Duskcaverns herself, gnawing on a bone, as Squashedcoal fell past.  Here, in Veilwaves, two elves admired the craftsmanship of a slate amulet that bore the image of Listenpeaces, the axe that Oddom bore.  In Nightmarecurled, two human children fought over a thin silk sock clumsily embroidered "Sakzul."  The roads that stretched hesitantly from Lanterndark bore children.

It was all falling from her, the edges faster than the center, receding into a speck.  That's when she  spotted the roc.  It was flying beside her.  Only it was flying upside down.  In its talons it held a huge beast, crushed and limp, and covered with dust.  It released its prey and fell away from Aban, flying upside down the whole time, rising or diving.

The corpse hovered with Aban while the world fell away.  It was covered with a thick skin of leather plates.  A single curved horn the length of a dwarf's arm sprouted from its snout.  Thick feet like pistons.  A unicorn, smothered in gypsum.  It floated with Aban, then rose, and Aban turned, and the ceiling of the world was falling onto her too, a new world above her, she could see it all, and then it stopped, the world had hit hell, and she was standing on a low wall.

One side of the wall was made of hematite, the other lightning, and between the two, bones, bones and cartilage and hair and skulls, bones as small as mites, bones bigger than the mountain, and the wall low enough to step off of, low enough to reach down from.  She looked to the lightning side and it was a dining room, dark and misty, and there were a thousand dwarves, and Etur in the form of a female dwarf, contemplating.  There was a feast set out, wine purple with pulp, roasts and stew and biscuits, cave bear liver and merman steak, as many chairs as tables, as many tables as barrels, as many barrels as dwarves.

She looked to the hematite side.  The sun lay at noon.  Bloodthorns grew, here and there, and all the way to the horizon, white dust, coating the bloodthorns, covering the bright barren earth.

She turned back, ready to step down for the feast, but there was a scratching, and she looked down, and beneath the bones, a unicorn beetle.  It was working at the rough blue stone of the wall.  The bones spilled out on the hematite side where it had already eaten a rough hole through the ore.  It worked relentlessly at the stone, mandibles scraping grout with a chit chit chit.

It's going to eat the food!  she screamed.  But nobody heard, nobody except Etur.  Etur just looked at Aban with a sad smile on her face.  The dwarves ate and drank, wrestled, snored.

It's going to eat the goblinfucking food!  And then one dwarf rose, rested a pick against his throne and approached, and it took a moment to realize, but it was Vabok, standing straighter than she'd ever before seen, and he walked up to Aban but didn't climb onto the wall, even though he could have.

"I'm sorry."

No, that doesn't matter, it wasn't really even your fault.  But the beetle!

"That's not what I meant, Ms. Vontagnak.  Although I am sorry for that too.  I'm sorry-- I'm sorry that this is not not."

But

And she was falling now, or rather the world was falling because she had been falling before, know it or not, heaven or hell spiraling away from her, merchants carrying the fruit of Lanterndark across the Mythical Dimensions, and in the recess of every embossed coin, inside the piccolos, where no rag could wipe it away, she saw what wasn't there, what wasn't there yet, she saw the shine and the flat, the clean and the dust, even on flat rock or on dry wood, or on steel hammered smooth, on robes of cave silk, so sleek, yet so porous---

No.

But the mountain didn't fall all the way onto her.  And she didn't think it would, not again.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2011, 03:16:16 am by Nil Eyeglazed »
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He he he.  Yeah, it almost looks done...  alas...  those who are in your teens, hold on until your twenties...  those in your twenties, your thirties...  others, cling to life as you are able...<P>It should be pretty fun though.

Nil Eyeglazed

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #27 on: July 15, 2011, 02:06:10 pm »

Hell of a place for what what would one day be the mountainhome.  Udil chewed on the satintail.  It wouldn't fill his belly, but he thought it might help with the diarrhea that had plagued him all trip long.

"Do we have to follow the spring underground?" Zuglar asked.

"Boy, we're here.  Look around you."  Melbil was hard on Zug sometimes, but they'd never had survived the trip without her.

The towers of Lanterndark were easy to miss.  Rough stone blended with the mountainside; the foliage grew close, at least on the south side.  7 stone towers, white and gray mostly.  Zuglar sucked in his breath.  "Marble.  Towers of marble and obsidian."

Udil spit out the satintail.  "Dolomite and slate, Zug."  It was as many words as the small party had heard Udil utter until now.

"Do you know something about stone, Mr. Laroltar?"

"Laid a few bricks.  Never dolomite."  Udil hiked ahead.  He didn't feel like saying more.

"Dolomite's flux, isn't it?" asked Melbil.  Sakzul looked at her and nodded reverently.

*    *    *

Tode Scaldedhates shivered and hissed in the damp of the cage.  The cage's hood allowed little breeze, and his clothes were still soaked from the escape.  No scourge.  No shield.  Fine then.  He felt the cage shake and stretched his arms out for balance as it tipped and then he was falling.

He rolled as he hit.  Same arena.  New skeleton.  Dostngosp, covered in the same fine white dust that covered the arena.  Dostngosp was weak.  Another new corpse as well: a three-toe rat, wobbling far past its time under the dark power of the jungle that lay above.  A three-toe?  He could use his hands for this.  Tode charged.

The rat scratched, but its putrid flesh dissolved in Tode's grip.  This match was an insult.  Tode wiped his dusty gloves on his trousers, then gagged.  Something was wrong.

He tried to swallow it back, something salty, but it was too much.  The wave of vomit, black with bile,  painted the floor.

No.  Not bile.  Black with rust.  Black with blood.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2011, 02:09:22 pm by Nil Eyeglazed »
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He he he.  Yeah, it almost looks done...  alas...  those who are in your teens, hold on until your twenties...  those in your twenties, your thirties...  others, cling to life as you are able...<P>It should be pretty fun though.

Nil Eyeglazed

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #28 on: July 15, 2011, 06:31:25 pm »

Udil hadn't ever used a pick before, but it was his kind of work.  Kept him out of the military.  Rare privilege at Lanterndark, where the recruits practiced night and day on the tower roofs.  Rain or hot, blinding sun.  Udil had spent a spell in a mace unit before, had seen enough of killing and dying that he wasn't too eager for glory anymore.  Those days were long gone.

And it kept him by himself, although lately, he hadn't been enjoying the solitude like he used to.  Lanterndark was littered with buckets and quivers, more than ten forts might need, and they lay scattered through its damp corridors.  Udil carved the storerooms deep under the mountain, where he could feel the warmth of magma through the floors, and he learned as he went, surfacing only for beer or a fresh stalk of satintail.

He was working on what seemed like a pitting chamber now.  He'd seen these before.  Had spent his time at the bottom of one, working with iron mace on a poor wretch until bone chips carpeted the floor.  Not too fond of the practice, not after that, but it wasn't his place to say.  Still, mining is slow work, until you really pick it up at least, and he had a lot of time to think.  About why Lanterndark might need a second pitting chamber.  About why you'd want to drag a recruit way the hell out these back corridors to play whack-a-thief.  About what was on the other side of this rock, because Udil was mason enough to know it wasn't solid mountain back there.

He was happy when the chamber was done and he could get back to the storerooms.  The whole time he'd been working on the chamber, it had felt like somebody was breathing on his neck from about an inch away.  Enough to give a dwarf the creeps.  He swung the pick over his shoulder, then remembered the rest of the instructions.  Strange.  She'd told him to just leave the pick here when he was done.  Uzol had another one for him at the forge.

*     *     *

Zuglar had been hoping for glory when he volunteered for the Duchess.  But there didn't seem to be any glory in this work.  It was just hauling work.

Move the hammer past the door.  Lock the door.  Move the hammer into the chamber.  Leave the chamber.  Lock the door.  Pull the levers.  Pit the dog.

Everything had to be done just right, in full, sweltering armor, but it was just a hammer moving back and forth, countless doors to lock and unlock and double check, a couple of levers in a row that all looked the same.  And of course he couldn't touch anything.  What the hell did the Duchess think?  That he was going to steal a dusty old set of goblin clothes?

Pull the levers.  Unlock the door.  Lock the door.  Do it again with the next two.  Pick up the hammer.

It was covered with dust.  It hadn't been down here that long.

Unlock the door.  Bring the hammer into the chamber.  Lock the door.

That's when the goblin flew from the ceiling, almost on top of Zuglar's head.
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He he he.  Yeah, it almost looks done...  alas...  those who are in your teens, hold on until your twenties...  those in your twenties, your thirties...  others, cling to life as you are able...<P>It should be pretty fun though.

Nil Eyeglazed

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Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #29 on: July 15, 2011, 10:49:02 pm »

Duchess always called it the daycare, but Urist knew better.  Daycares don't need traction beds.  Daycares don't need restraints.

She felt guilty about it, but she was always happy when somebody in Lanterndark got injured or broke the law.  There wasn't ever anyone to talk to in the daycare, nobody except the kids.  They didn't even let the animals in anymore, not since what happened to Vucar.  Vucar's fine now though.

She didn't recognize the patient, but his leg was broken, and he kept passing out.  The new doc was with him.  Ms. Bunemoltar.  Ms. Bunemoltar spent all her time studying Vabok's books but maybe none of them explained how to relax.  Maybe that's what Ms. Bunemoltar was looking so hard for in all that paper.

The wounded dwarf passed out as soon as he landed in bed.  He was still armored, still clutching his hammer.  Ms. Bunemoltar threw a bucket of water over him, not even bothering to unclothe him.

The water spilled out over the frame and into the loam.  It left the floor white and powdery.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2011, 04:02:41 am by Nil Eyeglazed »
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He he he.  Yeah, it almost looks done...  alas...  those who are in your teens, hold on until your twenties...  those in your twenties, your thirties...  others, cling to life as you are able...<P>It should be pretty fun though.
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