For the past few days Dodok had been counting their stockpiles of food: Nearly two-hundred prepared turtles as well as a small number of unprepared ones, over a hundred plump helmets and half as many pig tails, and an astounding assortment of meats ranging from the usual horse, llama, and goat meat to the rather.. odd pile of dark strangler meat. Apparently, after the two initial sieges of dark stranglers, one of the butchers had decided on using the large pile of corpses for a source of food. The meat smelled funky, so Dodok didn't dare touch it until she had no choice.. hopefully it wouldn't come to that. As for alcohol stores, she had many barrels full of dwarven wine and dwarven ale. The alcohol won't last her nearly as long as the food though.
She had found Olon yesterday, sitting outside with his arms and legs wrapped around a large stone pot. He was dead. Died of thirst by the looks of it. When Dodok had opened the pot to see what was in it, she found nothing but goat cheese. Olon himself was covered in chalk and blood, the chalk probably being from the pot, as it was made with the stuff. The blood.. she could only guess he had rolled around in the pools of blood at the entrance to the fort. She decided to leave him and his pot out there, and not touch the cheese inside of it. Armok knows what he did with it before he died.
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Again and again Atir tripped and stumbled over the webs that littered the cave outside of her home. She knew they were there, but she kept stumbling into them. All she wanted were more plump helmets, not cave spider silk. Still, it could be useful. After gathering an arm full of mushrooms, she dug out a new room and built a ramshackle loom. How she ever figured out how to make a loom, when she had absolutely no idea how to weave, was beyond her. Nonetheless, she spent the next few days gathering silk and weaving it into cloth. There were some webs that were much larger than average, as well as being much stronger and much more beautiful. She wasn't quite sure what had made them, but she gathered them as well. The cloth she had made wasn't amazing, but it did the trick. She used half of the silk she had gathered to make various bags. She'd been needing bags to store the plump helmet spawn she had been getting from processing those delectable mushrooms into wine. She wasn't amazingly fond of dwarven wine, having always preferred strawberry wine, but it did the trick for her thirst.
She wasn't a brewer, however. Nor was she a weaver, a clothier, an herbalist, or even a miner. No, her skills were in masonry, stonecrafting and in architecture. Throughout the years she had made beautiful doors, tables, chairs, stone toys, and even amulets and other jewelery. All from stone, the most beloved material given to the dwarves by their gods. Since she was good on food, drink, and assorted other things, she decided to take a break and work on something she enjoyed. So, she built a small wall around the entrance to her home, with a single well-made door at it's entrance. From there, she built a stone floor covering most of the dirt and moss. She left a small area bare so she could farm though. She wasn't very good at farming.. just like she wasn't very good at gathering plants or weaving. But she made due.
She also decided that she'd need some traps. Engineering was another thing she barely knew anything about, but she laid a few cage traps around the perimeter just in case. Another thing needed was to get rid of the spiders INSIDE of her home. Outside is fine. But the various webs they were laying inside of her home were becoming a nuisance. Plus, she didn't want to get bit while sleeping. Or eating. Or drinking. Or doing anything else. So, she made plans to build some small traps.. that'll get the buggers.
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Normally, when you see three ghosts of old friends and acquaintances, you'd freak out. Dodok however, had seen so much death in the past few months that she didn't really care. Two of the ghostly visages she didn't really know. She'd seen them before, working on whatever they worked on here at the fort. The third was a friend of hers that migrated to the fort the first summer they were there. It was Muthkat, one of the furnace operators. They weren't the best of friends, so Dodok only gave a passing nod to it as she walked by it to get something to eat. It followed her. So did the other two. Though in her waking hours, it didn't bother her at all to have them follow her at all times, when she slept, it was slightly disturbing to wake up to three ghostly bodies floating near her. Staring at her. At all times of the day and night. Its enough to easily make a dwarf go insane. Well, a dwarf who cares. Dodok didn't anymore. She didn't really care about anything, let alone her own life. Still, she felt a small sense of duty, and didn't slip over the edge into insanity. Besides, she had turtles to eat. She loved turtles. When the turtles run out, so will her sanity, she decided.
A few weeks later, not long after winter had set in, Dodok heard noises outside of the fort. When she went to investigate, she found two dwarves sitting outside in the cold, huddling together to stay warm. They had no food, no alcohol, no anything except the clothes on their backs. Finally glad to have some company other than the various disembodied ghosts floating around, she welcomed them inside.
One dwarf went by the name Dumed “Torchsandals”. She was a beefy dwarf, looking more like a body builder than a potter that she was. She also had an annoyingly high-pitched voice. The other dwarf was Cerol “Masterpaint”. The name didn't really fit her at all, as she was a metalcrafter – an accomplished one at that. Unlike her companion, she was very skinny with no muscles at all. More like a short elf, Dodok thought.
After exchanging pleasantries and explaining what the bodies and blood were all about, Dumed and Cerol both got to work cleaning up. The three decided that no food or other supplies needed making for now, so they simply got around to burying the bodies, cleaning the blood off the walls, and uresetting the stone traps. Luckily, a pair of well made weapon traps each with five steel spikes automatically reset, but even those wouldn't protect the fort from an entire siege.
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A few months later, near the end of winter, more beak wolves showed up. Two large packs, each lead by a particularly fearsome wolf. However, rather than having sport of the various dwarves outside the fortress like last time, these wolves had to go inside the fort. And what was there to greet them also sent them packing. Apparently, when the two alpha wolves are impaled on nearly a dozen steel spikes, it does something to the morale of the rest of the pack. Rather than run past the rest of the traps as they could have easily done, they fled with their tails between their legs.
Cerol and Dumed, who had been diligently cleaning and hauling bodies these past months, decided that it would be in their best interest to don the armor of the previous militia, just in case. Two full steel suits of armor had been made, including a pair of steel shields and weapons to match. One suit was never worn by a militia, who died before it was completed. The other one.. well, that one is still on the body of it's former owner, Ezum “Wallwaded the Tin Society of Blazing”. He was the local commander of the fort's militia, and had a dozen kills to his name using his trusty steel axe. While he could easily handle a dozen dark stranglers on his own, over a dozen beak wolves were too much for him to handle. It was, however, quite a task to not only remove his armor, but to pry his axe from his clenched fist. He seemed to have gone down fighting till his last breath. Cerol decided that, as her predecessor, she would make him a special coffin and entomb him within his own small tomb. If she could get this axe out of his hand..
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“BOO!'
“AHHHHH!”
That was the last thing heard from Dumed. One of the ghosts, Sakzul, an engineer, had changed his normal ghostly routine. Rather than stalk Dodok around as he had always done, he decided to watch one of the newer ladies sleep. When she woke, he was floating just above her, his face a mere inches from her own. Her eyes had bulged for a split second before he yelled “BOO!”. It seems as if her heart gave out from the shock.
This greatly disappointed Sakzul, who was rather fond of his new lady-friend. He had been attracted to muscular women while alive, and it seems he was still so in undeath. Sure, the woman named Dodok was attractive, but not nearly so much as the one named Dumed.
After briefly attempting to grope the body of the newly deceased dwarf, and failing to do so due to his incorporealness, Sakzul went back to his normal routine of following Dodok. Though, he might look into that other dwarf.. Cerol, he believed her name was.
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And then.. there were three.. again. And a goat. But yea.. its coming along rather interestingly so far. Oh, also, picture of Atir's house so far:
Edit: OH THE DWARFANITY! Damn you frogmen! DAMN YOUUUUUUU!! Well, at least Atir is alive..
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Topic: And then.. there were three.. (Read 1725 times)