Dwarven Expedition Base Camp, on the slopes of the Beak of Daubbing1st of Granite"Here we are," Urist Edemnokzam declared.
I know, Shedim answered her back in the only language the Cave Spider god knew.
The ground around the ruined wagon quivered violently. One of the trio clinging to the side of the cliff, Eric Nomalnicat, let out a startled cry as his tenuous grip broke and he went sliding down the side of the hill. The other two held on, while Urist and those above them threw themselves to the ground and waited the tremor to pass. The near by rats squealed in confusion and fear and the jumping spiders both skittered awkwardly across the pitching ice. Only the crundles actually fled though, the big-mouthed lizards letting out throaty hisses of terror and taking off in all directions.
There was a distant rumble from somewhere far below as the quaking came to a halt. Urist gave it a moment, then risked peering over the side again. Karakzon Oltarzeg and the "Bob" Azinoddom still. Far below them, much to his clear surprise as her own, was Eric. He had landed rather safely onto the ancient bundles of rat leather they'd gathered from Melbilmamot. The flaxen-haired miner stared up at Urist, the whites of his eyes visible even from that distance.
"I didn't do it," Erik said, his voice carrying in the stillness
"Shut up," a second voice answered with a grunt. Karakzon spoke softly by nature, but he barely whispered at that moment. "You'll call down the mountain."
The old soldier had not yet even broken a sweat as he clung to the slope. Near him, the dwarfess who called herself Bob was not fairing nearly as well, her teeth gritted and face red with strain.
"If the wagon didn't do it, nothing will," a third voice chimed in. Kiratha Okolducim was the first to his feet and offered a hand to Urist, helping her to rise. Before she could even thank him, he was off and looking over the broken stump that remained from the ancient tree they'd tied the wagon off to. He gave it a kick, frowning over it, then waved a hand. "Someone get some silk from the jumping spiders. I'll tie it to whats left of the tree and can lower them off the side to Erik. He can tie some rope to them and we'll rope it to the tree to get everyone down."
"Yes because the tree worked
so well with the bloody wagon," Zero Meboddom, the fat-bodied wagon master, said with a stomp of her booted foot. "No. No more damn trees. Should have figured it wouldn't work when Crundlebrain-Eric suggested it in the first place. Trees are a dwarfs natural enemy. This proved it if nothing else did."
"Not the tree diatribe again," mekboy Kolmeng muttered under her breath as Urist helped her to her feet. Urist agreed, though kept her mouth shut. Zero was only
more likely to go into it if someone seemed like they might be debating her.
Kiratha had the right idea though, cutting in quickly while he leaned down to softly coax one of the still-nervous insects into spitting a spool of damp silk thread into his palm. "Fine, then we'll just tie the rope to ourselves to get Karakzon and Bob down, then fine another way down the slope."
"Like we should have done in the
first place instead of trusting a
tree! Do you know who likes seeing dwarves hanging from trees?
Momuz, that's who!"
... or at least it had
seemed like Kiratha had the right idea. mekboy shook her head and tapped Urist on the arm and the two of them abandoned the mechanic to Zero while they moved back to the edge of the slope. mekboy cupped a hand to her mouth to shout. Karakzon glared death at her for it, but she pretended not to notice. "Eric! Is anyone else alive down there?"
The blond dwarf was still laying on the pile of leathers, but scrambled up quickly and made a round to the bodies scattered about the wagon. She watched as he moved from figure to figure, then hurried back to the bottom of the slope. "... melkor, Nonobots, Cheveux, Elfeater, and Firelordsky! They're hurt, but they're breathing. The rest..."
A faint wave of relief washed over Urist. Shedim had caught them in her web, it seemed. Not it was just a case of finding out if she'd let them go again. "How bad are they?"
Erik only shook his head. Couldn't say. They'd lost their only healer to a roc attack seven winters back. Bob had taken over tending to the basic cuts and bruises they had gotten since then, but none of them knew much about healing arts.
mekboy pulled one tall ear thoughtfully. "Well however bad they are, they're not going to get any better laying on the ground. Eric! Spread out some of that leather for them, then pile up the rest under Bob and Karakzon in case they fall!"
"Save it all for Bob," Karakzon grunted up at them. "I'm not going to fall."
"You'd know best," mekboy shrugged and waved to get Eric's attention. "Eric, forget Karakzon! He's a soldier! He
wants to die! Put it all under Bob!"
Eric responded with a wave, then got back to piling up the old rat leathers into a misshapen lump. Urist looked over at the fisherdwarf hanging near Karakzon, whose body trembled with desperate tension.
"How are you holding up there, Bob?"
There was a long pause, before a tiny voice gasped. "I've... been... better."
Zero and the mechanic were approaching the edge of the slope, Zero still loudly cursing anything that grew above the earth instead of below it. They each carried one of the blue-bodied jumping spiders in their arms. The jittery little things were letting out a long spool of silk thread behind them. "Kiratha's going to get you down. Just hang on a little longer."
Bob didn't answer out loud this time, only nodded. The spiders were released and went scampering agilely down the slope between the stranded dwarves. Urist couldn't figure out why Bob had tried to go over the edge in the first place. Often as her skill with a rope and rod had kept them fed on fish, a wagon wasn't the sort of thing she could have reeled in. Bob had always been the most fragile of their group, even since she was young.
Though none of them were young anymore.
The spiders reached Eric and Kiratha managed to shout the plan down to him, over Zero's raving. Eric seemed to get what the idea was, at least enough to tie the ropes around the spiders, so Urist and mekboy left them to it. The two dwarven women set off to find a safer way down the mountain side, walking along the narrow ridge in silence until they neared the rock outcropping the Cave Spider God had pointed them towards. mekboy stopped and frowned, peering at the dark mouth of a tunnel in the side of the rock.
"That's where Shedim wants us to go?"
Urist nodded, her skin crawling as she beheld the stand of stone. There was nothing special about it to speak of. They'd passed hundreds of caves just like it on their trip, though they hadn't dared go in to any. Too many chances one of the Great Beasts might be dwelling within. Yet, Urist knew that this
mekboy sniffed the air, then wrinkled her nose. "I smell crundle droppings."
"Probably wild crundles," Urist said. "They shouldn't be too dangerous unless there are alot of them."
mekboy gave her a dubious look and Urist knew why. Crundles were caverns what ants were to the surface. If there was one, there would be a hundred. "Wish Zero and Eric had taken a fall, instead of Firelordsky and Elfeater. We'll only have Karakzon if there is trouble."
"And Eric. He can handle a pick."
That earned Urist a dubious glance "Maybe
all of us should go in armed. Kiratha can put together some spears and shields from the wood we took from Melbilmamot, you can make us some armor from the rat leather."
"That might take awhile," Urist said, finding herself looking towards the pale sky. She could almost feel time racing by even while they stood there. "We need to get out of the open as quickly as we can. The engravings at Melbilmamot were full of pictures of the Great Beasts, so there must be plenty around here too."
mekboy pulled her ear once more, a thoughtful gesture as she furrowed her brow. mekboy did her best work in her head, calculating times and work schedules and planning details. Zero was wagon master by sheer force of personality, but it was mekboy who really dealt with running their fragile caravan. "Then we'll just make enough for Karakzon and Eric. If there isn't anything more dangerous than crundles, they should be enough to get us in."
Urist took another look at the cave and felt a shiver pass through her that wasn't from the cold.
If.-----
Well, I have just no luck when it comes to doing community games it seems. This is the second time I've tried one that I crashed into disaster. In this case, dwarf fortress crashed after an in-game month in and then continually crashed whenever I tried to load my back-up. Turned out from the error log that it was futzing up on a critter I'd edited in (giant ant) and I couldn't get it fixed enough to satisfy DW. So, I just ripped it out of the raws and tried to regen, only apparently the lack of that one creature was enough to distort time and space itself, as the world that generated from the exact same seeds was almost completely different.
This isn't as bad as the last time though (when dwarf fortress crashing turned out to be a prelude to my whole computer exploding), so I'm persevering even though I'm somewhat sad that the rather awesome details of the last world are lost. Don't think I've ever seen as amazing a pantheon of dwarven gods as that one. I mean, it's not that many worlds where the first king of dwarven kind ends up as the bridegroom of a Nightcreature and gives birth to the dwarven goddess of suicide. Still, I'm just going to play make-believe and claim that this new world and the old one are the same place.