Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6

Author Topic: Project: Most Dragon  (Read 14713 times)

RAKninja

  • Bay Watcher
  • Beware his deadly fusion cannon!
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #45 on: July 22, 2011, 09:40:36 pm »

ah, ive been waiting for you to get to the blue.  great writing, as i believe i've told you before.

i love the attention to detail.

perhaps, once my fortress has run its course or survived long enough, i'll so something in a similar vein.  i'm not so good with narratives, so i would stick to something like a history.  with more color and life than the dry facts of legends, of course.  a "saga" perhaps?

but enough about me, tis your thread.

Logged
Goblin Fortress (NOW UPDATED FOR 34.02!
magma on his bed when he is sleeping, works every time

Nil Eyeglazed

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #46 on: July 24, 2011, 07:37:07 am »

I'm glad you like it!  If you do end up writing, please let me know about it.  The game ends up being so fertile for fiction-- and then when you're playing it, somebody will engrave something, and I'll be like, "Oh my god, I just wrote about that!"

So my interest is flagging a little bit, but there are a few things I want to catch up with in the fiction, after which I'll probably slow down a bit on my game and maybe take some stupid risks :)
Logged
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

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #47 on: July 24, 2011, 07:37:28 am »

Tunem Sampivicu looked uncomfortable in the schist throne.  She tapped her fingers on its rough arms and looked around at Kol's office.  "Such a pleasant place you've carved out for yourselves here."

"Yes, thank-you," Kol replied, too quickly.  There was a certain ritual to it than Kol had never fully understood.

The human diplomat turned her head left and right, neither uncomfortable in the silence nor looking at anything in particular.  She was huge, nearly six feet tall, and part of the point of the office was to be a place where the humans could be comfortable, where everything was in their scale.  Like all of Kol's demands, there was a reason, even if Uzol was too dense to understand.

Kol sucked in her breath nervously in the long silence, then broke it first.  "I'm sorry about the shrubs.  We had a miscalculation.  With the well.  But I think they go well with the decor anyways."

"Oh, quite.  Pleasant."  Tunem smiled her stupid gapped-tooth smile.

It had been a difficult day for Kol, full of meetings.

First there was Udil Laroltar, the miner who wouldn't dig.  He was unyielding.  That put Lanterndark in a difficult position-- there was no other dwarf that Kol trusted with excavating the adamantine mountain depths.  Kol had never had the chance to get the know the miner very well,  but it didn't take her long to realize that he wouldn't be swayed by bribe or threat.

But Kol knew how to deal with dwarves like Udil.  She had offered to put him in charge of the whole operation.  Just like a guildmaster, and Udil wasn't even an apprentice.  He hadn't said yes or no, but Kol watched the way his head tilted as he walked through the door, chewing furiously on a satintail stalk.  He would be back in a week with a sheaf of absurd plans and a day's worth of words, another day wasted on meetings, but after that, he'd be willing to dig again.  Kol was certain of it.

Kol's mind snapped back to the meeting, suddenly afraid she'd shown her distraction.  The only conceivable point to these yearly visits was to give the Stoked Empire an excuse for war, an excuse Kol was careful not to give.  "Some wine?  I've started a strawberry plot."  Planting season was almost done, with barrels of seed left to sow.

"No, thank-you.  Strawberries, though.  How pleasant."

Then there had been Oddom.  Oddom could be infuriating.  Ostensibly, Oddom had wanted to talk about surface plans.  There'd be more refugees soon, as word of the fortress spread, and they would be needing to build more towers soon.  But it seemed like Oddom was more concerned with showing Kol how little Kol's position meant.  If Oddom wanted the title so badly, she could have it!  Kol didn't want it anyways.

Kol looked across her desk.  Tunem was scratching her neck.  Kol wondered how Oddom would handle a situation like this.  It would probably involve an axe.

Oddom wanted something unusual.  Kol had already been thinking about the next tower, envisioning an eventual castle for the surface, a great wall with a single point of access, but Oddom had said they didn't need a wall, they needed a funnel, or rather, several funnels.  Kol hadn't thought about that, but Oddom might be right.

After all, they already had a wall, the strongest wall possible, in the form of the surface of the earth.  The problem wasn't in defending the fortress, it was in defending those travelling to and from Lanterndark.  A wall keeps out siegers, but it also keeps out caravans, refugees, diplomats.  Kol wondered what the Empire would do if Tunem Sampivicu were to be the caught in the crossfire during an ambush.

So Oddom was probably right, but Kol still needed to think on it.  Kol hadn't shared all of her thoughts with Oddom yet anyways.  There was the issue of building material.  It had to be strong, yes, but beautiful as well.  It had to demonstrate that the Mechanisms had risen again, symbolize everything that had come before, and everything that was to come.

Tunem stood suddenly; at what cue, Kol didn't know.  "Our fortunes rise and fall together.  Until next year, Duchess Itonvudthar."  She stumbled on the Dwarven vowels.

"Must it be that long?  I so look forward to your return.  Bring us more of that fine Empire copper to study!  Exquisite craftsmanship!"

Kol didn't even know how to raise the subject with Oddom.  It had been too ambitious even for Notchedlabors, and Lanterndark was still just backwater, a desolate duchy where the children went barefoot and the meeting halls rang only with the echoes of the smiths' work.  Kol wanted to raise the towers of Lanterdark in blocks of shining steel.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2011, 03:50:52 pm by Nil Eyeglazed »
Logged
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

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #48 on: July 25, 2011, 02:01:29 am »

Oddom lay on her back and kicked the hatch.  It was built well, good and springy, nice heft to it but counter-weighted, and it hung in the air nicely, then came back down, and she kicked it up again.  She could just see Zulban at the end of the long corridor, if she pushed her face to the stone floor.

There was a goblin up here, hissing and spitting between the bars of its cage.  Oddom had no idea how long it had been here, but there were rat weed seeds in its cage, and it looked about to die of starvation anyways-- of course they all did.  It was still alive, a miracle, its legs just stumps but no sign of infection.

"Don't worry, No-Legs.  Not today."  The goblin just hissed.  Oddom wasn't even really sure they were capable of speech.

She was more interested in Zulban.  She felt safe here, a good seventy yards away, peeking through the hatch.  More than safe-- Oddom felt a little cowardly.  She watched Zulban breath, in and out, weak and slow, no ribs but that bronze carapace rose and fell, and there was the dust too.  She wondered how far she could make it during one of Zulban's breaths.  The length of the corridor?  Impossible, but the dust never travelled that far.  Could she snicker-snatch the thing's brain from its body before a breath?

She didn't need to, of course.  Zulban was contained.  And there were always the spikes.  The lever wasn't far from here.  A couple of pulls and it would be over.  Oddom had watched Vabok do it with the leech that had followed him in.

She was just looking.  It was an off month for the Pinnacles.  There wasn't a lot for Oddom to do on off-months.

They probably wouldn't have needed off-months, but Kol had asked her to put Urist in the Pinnacles.  Oddom had been offended, of course-- she ran the milita, not Kol-- but the truth was, it was time for a new squad anyways, with all the children growing up, and the kids wouldn't ever learn anything if nobody showed them, not in twenty years on top of a tower.

Oddom thought she knew why Kol wanted Urist in the pinnacles.  Kol had treated that child like a princess, at least until she'd had her second, and a recruit would be safe in a seasoned squad.  By the time a recruit made it to the fight, the fight would be over.  But that wasn't the way it was going to work.

Zulban looked skinnier than last Oddom had been here.  Older, too, somehow.  It wriggled on the floor on three pairs of broken legs, more worm than insect now.  At least it wriggled when it moved.  Most of the time Zulban just lay there.  If you didn't look carefully, you'd think it might be dead.

*     *     *

After her hair was cut, Urist tried on the helmet.  Too large before, now it nearly slid forward across her brow.

She'd waited all of her life for her armor, thinking, "Now, now it begins," but Erush hadn't even recognized her when he handed the pieces, mismatched, ill-fitting, lighter than silk, and bright blue.  Urist hadn't said anything.  She wasn't even sure what she had been expecting.  She'd seen the Guard occasionally in their steel as visitors were brought to the daycare, but she understood that steel must be too valuable to waste on a recruit like herself.  Even Oddom, who was now duchess for half the year, as Oddom had put it, was mostly clad in the weightless blue plate, with only scattered bits of steel.  Lanterndark was supposedly chosen for its steel, but Urist hadn't realized how precious the gray metal was.

It had been hot in the daycare, but it was hotter on the towers.  By day, the sun battered harder than training axes, there above the foliage, and by night, the towers acted as a chimney for all the heat stored in the mountain.  Urist had learned better than to complain.  "If the sun's too bright, then get your back to it!" as blows rained on her.  "If it's too hot, then work up a sweat!"  And the sweat had run down her hair, sticky on her forehead, hair in her eyes and she couldn't fix it, not under the helm, and when she'd lifted it, that spinning flint had drawn blood, nearly knocked her down.  "Helms on when you're under the sky!"

"But what about Tosid?!" she'd cried, exasperation and pain getting the best of her, that, and the sense of injustice.  Oddom had thrown again then, but Tosid's mailed hand was at his unhelmed face before the stone was, batting it out of the air without even looking, and he was back at his mustaches.

Oddom wasn't even particularly fast.  Urist could get the better of her, almost half the time, and that with just a few weeks.  Tosid should be leading the Pinnacles.

Urist looked at herself in the brook's rippling reflection.  She hadn't even thought about it, but her hair looked just like Oddom's now.

*     *     *

Oddom laughed, raised her boots to lay them on Kol's desk, then winced with pain and thought better of it.  Axedwarves weren't supposed to get arthritis.

"Steel?  And what will we face the goblins in?  Sterling silver?"

Kol was serious.  "Sterling silver's for the buckets.  We have the adamant now."

Oddom was dressed in the blue armor herself, except for the few pieces she couldn't bear to give up.  "Kol, we can't keep on like this.  You know what they say about Workpuzzles.  I don't know if it's superstition or not, but I'm not eager to find out.  Steel's good enough for goblins."  She hesitated, not sure if she needed to say it.  "But not sterling silver."

"Superstitions?"

"Deep mountain screamers, Kol.  You know what I'm talking about."

Kol turned her head to one side, eyes at the ceiling.  Another one of her poses, for when she wanted to let you know she was thinking something over.  It infuriated Oddom.

"I want to show you something, Oddom."  Kol rose from her throne to the door, reaching on pointed toes for the crossbow that hung above it.  "Gremlins, sometimes," she explained.  "You coming?"

Oddom rolled her eyes.  It was always like this with Kol.  Couldn't just tell you straight out.  But she rose, with that eerie echo of adamant against adamant, and followed.

It didn't look like the kind of path gremlins might take.  Oddom followed Kol deep into the mountain through locked doors.  The last, a shiftwall, Kol lowered with a lever, then beckoned Oddom in ahead.



It was a prison, or a private zoo.  A storeroom, filled with cages, and curiously hot.  It smelled of the sea that Oddom had once visited.  Great bonfires burned from the corners, but low, so the shadows of bars flickered across the floor, the wall, the ceiling.  Oddom saw the cages then, bars of lightning, and cursed quietly.  Adamant arms were dangerous; adamant furniture, debaucherous.  Was this what Kol was wasting the mountain on?  A private zoo?

It spoke then, with a child's voice, from the cage nearest.  "Oddom Rigothroder Etnarfesh.  I am Nekgistrib.  There isn't much time--"

"They'll lie to you, Oddom."  Kol spoke loudly, to be heard above the prisoner.

"—But you can stop this right now, if you open the cage.  We can stop her."  The fires' light twisted and Oddom saw the thing in the cage, a face pressed almost against the bars, a white granular face, a gaunt thing of salt.



Voices from the other cages repeated musically, a chorus of children, "We can stop her."

"It has to stop, Oddom Rigothroder Etnarfesh.  We don't bleed."  They echoed the last sentence, an unholy harmony, "We don't bleed," and then again, all together, "We don't bleed."

Oddom turned, paying no attention to Kol's crossbow levelled at her chest.

"Can I wrestle one of them?"
« Last Edit: July 25, 2011, 02:05:30 am by Nil Eyeglazed »
Logged
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.

monk12

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sorry, I AM a coyote
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #49 on: July 25, 2011, 08:40:19 pm »

Oh my.

I must ask- how did you catch them?

RAKninja

  • Bay Watcher
  • Beware his deadly fusion cannon!
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #50 on: July 25, 2011, 10:07:24 pm »

Oh my.

I must ask- how did you catch them?

seriously, that's a lot of trapavoid in cages.... have a GCS farm by any chance?
Logged
Goblin Fortress (NOW UPDATED FOR 34.02!
magma on his bed when he is sleeping, works every time

Nil Eyeglazed

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #51 on: July 25, 2011, 11:42:21 pm »

I tried to hint at it earlier when Kol discovered the caged dwarven corpse-- when I got the silk farm, I knew I wanted to conquer the underworld a little bit differently than it's been done before.  Wasn't all that interested in the silk after a while-- didn't seem to protect any of the goblins from walking in the dust, anyways-- so I converted the silk farm into a demon trap room.  Actually pretty hectic-- a lot of bait animals and a lot of bridges, trying to control the demons so I could retrieve and reload the traps, and the demons had some tricks up their sleeves that I hadn't been expecting, like melting iron bridges that they passed over, and pathing strangely, and deconstructing even admantine drawbridges by walking over them at inopportune moments and such.

I'll let Udil explain part of it for the next piece, whenever I get around to it.  This last entry was kind of my chance to brag a little bit :)
Logged
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.

RAKninja

  • Bay Watcher
  • Beware his deadly fusion cannon!
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #52 on: July 26, 2011, 02:36:37 am »

I tried to hint at it earlier when Kol discovered the caged dwarven corpse-- when I got the silk farm, I knew I wanted to conquer the underworld a little bit differently than it's been done before.  Wasn't all that interested in the silk after a while-- didn't seem to protect any of the goblins from walking in the dust, anyways-- so I converted the silk farm into a demon trap room.  Actually pretty hectic-- a lot of bait animals and a lot of bridges, trying to control the demons so I could retrieve and reload the traps, and the demons had some tricks up their sleeves that I hadn't been expecting, like melting iron bridges that they passed over, and pathing strangely, and deconstructing even admantine drawbridges by walking over them at inopportune moments and such.

I'll let Udil explain part of it for the next piece, whenever I get around to it.  This last entry was kind of my chance to brag a little bit :)

well deserved bragging.... you trapped a whole lot of the untrappable.

now, to see about catching my own spider...
Logged
Goblin Fortress (NOW UPDATED FOR 34.02!
magma on his bed when he is sleeping, works every time

monk12

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sorry, I AM a coyote
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #53 on: July 26, 2011, 11:09:55 am »

Ah, I thought the caged dwarven corpse was insanity-related.

gumball135

  • Bay Watcher
  • [ROBOTS]
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #54 on: July 26, 2011, 01:38:40 pm »

I like this a lot. Keep up the great work.
Logged
You could start a zoo and end up with a natural history museum, I'm sure no one would mind.

Moose

  • Escaped Lunatic
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #55 on: July 26, 2011, 05:12:47 pm »

This has been a great read so far, and I hope there is still much more to come.
Your writing style gets me to care less about what is actually happening in the Game and more about the little Details with which you furnish your text. After reading this, I'm itching to write about one of my Fortresses - sadly nothing of note seems to happen whenever I play.

May the Writer's Block keep his ugly hooked Talons out of your head and may you continue to weave your Story for many pages to come.
Logged

Nunzillor

  • Guest
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #56 on: July 26, 2011, 05:46:36 pm »

Your writing is superior.  Seriously, this is some of the best writing I've seen on these forums.  What you've done is awesome.  Keep it up!
Logged

Reverie

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #57 on: July 26, 2011, 10:01:42 pm »

I am so enthralled by your writing style! Your talent is definitely not commonplace, and I hope that Tarn eventually reads it. We all thank you for the work you have put into this.
Logged

Nil Eyeglazed

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #58 on: July 27, 2011, 12:55:08 am »

Thanks everybody for reading and for the kind words!

It's getting long, and I wish I could advance the plot a bit, but after that reveal, I figure I have to let Udil brag a little bit too.  (And to think I almost just sacrificed him....)
Logged
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

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Project: Most Dragon
« Reply #59 on: July 27, 2011, 12:56:11 am »

Duchess's plans had been pretty good.  Could almost forgive her for leaving him out of the loop.  A lot of shiftwalls and a lot of levers, Lanterndark would be safe from anything behind the blue ore.  Udil himself?  Maybe if he could run fast enough.

Udil had asked Erush what the best material for shiftwalls was.

"Iron's good.  Hold up to magma flow about a hunnerd years."

"Nothing better than iron?"

"Steel's harder, but iron's hard enough.  Steel melts a little easier, not enough to matter though.  Some imbecile that don't know things' value might waste adamant on shiftwalls, I suppose."

Then there was the matter of the levers.  For one thing, a wall's no better than the lock on it.  For another, Fikod didn't understand why Udil needed three of the guard on lever duty-- "Three dwarves can't pull a lever any faster than one can, Udil.  I don't want my best marksdwarves going caveblind on lever detail"-- but when he saw the Duchess's seal, Fikod just shrugged and made the assignment.

The dogs too.  Didn't like dogs, always underfoot, licking and cuddling with work to do, but there were some vicious ones left from Reg's day.  Might buy a minute, maybe more.

Udil figured he was safe after that.  Wasn't even sure there was anything behind the blue, not until the pick came down and he heard the wailing, something like a thousand babies needing changing, and then all of the preparation was for nothing and Udil's instincts took over, dropped the pick and started laying rock over rock while the crying got louder, fast, fast enough to change pitch, and when he was done with that wall he made another one and another one.  Didn't even notice his hands bleeding, didn't even notice that he was using the raw blue, thought it was cinnabar, but of course there ain't no cinnabar under Lanterndark, only one thing rocks run red with beneath the jungle.  Ast told him not to dig again for a month after she saw his hands, but there was more ore to excavate and no one else who knew a pick from pitchblende.

Must have been a part of Udil that thought that would be it, the wall was up and it was safe now, because he should have been expecting it on the next vein.  Oozed out through a void smaller than Udil's fist, smaller than it even if it hadn't have been all swollen up and wrapped in three layers of cloth, Ast changing the layers every night while he winced, until he could barely hold the pick.  It wasn't crying or screaming, not making any sound, hell, Udil could barely see the thing, just a mist and the heat shimmer of sun on black sand.  Udil ran that time, come sneaking back when he wasn't even sure if it had been real or not, to both his dogs dead, hair sodden and flesh boiled, in a puddle of water, no sign of the steam thing but maybe the dogs had got it before they cooked.  Udil walled that hole up and spent the next week in terror that the steam demon still stalked the long tunnels under Lanterndark, but the thing had never shown, and the terror went away after a while, mostly.

The third time had been the hardest.  For one thing, he'd come to love those stupid dogs, and he didn't want to be involved in the caging at all.  "Just get 'em all in a cage and get 'em down there with a lever.  Don't want to hear nothing about it until it's done."  But he had to walk past the cage for the dig, hear them whining in their confine, every last dog they had.  One of them tried to lick his hand as he squeezed past and Udil cursed it, kicked at the cage violently but he was crying too, stupid dogs, at least he was alone down here.

They were talking behind the wall.  Could hear if you put your ear to it-- the ore carried sound better than air if you could get flush with it.  They weren't crying anymore.  They had the voices of kids, cheerful, before they'd seen nothing die.  Couldn't make it out at first, then he realized they were talking to him.

"Udil Laroltar, you don't get it, it's really important.  We don't bleed.  You've got to get this wall down, Udil.  Before it's too late."

Udil had raised the pick then.  "Be taking care of that shortly, miss."  And the wall had come down easily, and the things that had spilled out, Udil wondered how they hadn't ripped it down themselves, but he didn't get much of a look because he was running, and screaming for Fikod's men to pull the lever but the shiftwall was already coming up in front of him and the dogs were squealing as the cage fell apart, barking and whining, he was crawling over them to make it over the shiftwall before it came up, and there was something burning.  He squeezed through, heard the iron groan and crash behind him as it fit into the mountain walls but he kept running, there were more shiftwalls and one might not be enough.  He knew each one by the sound his feet made as he raced over, gong for steel and dull for iron and that queer singing for the adamant, and kept running and didn't stop until he was caught, tangled, something holding him, and he struggled in terror, certain that one had made it through, he was a kitten in the river in that moment, then he tripped the cage in his struggle,  bars falling like a great toothed jaw around him.

Stopped struggling then.  Could barely hear, with the pounding of his heart in his ears, but he could see through the bars.  It was the silk farm, and the last blue shiftwall was up, still singing from his footfalls and its casement, but not from any hammering on the other side, not that Udil could see.  He had made it.  He tried to catch his breath, failed, pulled out the satintail folded down his esophagus, tried again to catch his breath.

"Done!"

He felt sixteen years old all of a sudden, felt like turning cartwheels.  He hollered again.

"Also, caged!"
Logged
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.
Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6