I love the artwork on the front!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry guys still traveling, no luck uploading pics with lame hotel internet. However I have many, many pics which will go up tomorrow (Armok willing) tonight just the write up.
edit: modified genders, both Asen and Greatwyrm are, in fact, women.
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Summer:
The ringing of stone echoes through the cavern. The newly established stonecutters guild, lead by GreatWyrmGold carves its new quarters, even as the secondary dining room is built. A member of the guild, a miner, went mad, and disappeared into the burial quarter. She emerged shortly after bearing a sublimely carved table. I hear, anyway, the stonecutters appropriated the table, and non-members are not allowed deep into their lodge.
I walk swiftly, I have matters to attend to. I have spoken to the respected elders of the fort. We have many legendary planters and growers here, farmers so skilled each alone can feed a fort. But besides them we have 40+ farmers. And far more plots than we need. Henceforth all farm plots in the Inn of Drowning are to be left fallow. I have not outright destroyed either the remaining two plots on the surface, nor the two below, but no crops shall grow until our plant stocks drop into the hundreds instead of thousands.
Our surface trap gives me course for concern. Nothing crosses it, our military is getting an armchair education in battle. Perhaps an arena might rectify it, but I have a better plan--after all we are not called the "Inn of Falling to your death".
The previous overseer leaves behind the array; a great carcass of wood, pumps and waterwheels which I have never understood or sought to understand. The overseer appears to have intended me to continue building another array on the surface, but his schematics confuse me, and I do not like to linger on the surface overlong, so I began work on a project that would both exploit the resources in place from the other overseers and give us a namesake--a good old fashioned drowning trap!
I gave brief orders to the miners and went back downstairs. Second dining room aside, I had a more pressing need for the stonecutter's guild.
I sought GreatWyrm, I found something troubling. The dining room was being built alright, formed from slade and orthoclase. I speak frankly--it disturbed me. The gem windows they fashioned in the center gave the room an impression of a baneful eye, and the vaulted, elaborately carved ceilings echoed most strangely.
I met GreatWyrm at the entrance to the lodge. She was most kind and friendly, offering to hear my concerns, despite my rather lowly status in the fort. Indeed the question of status has come up much late--with so many skilled craftsmen (we have no less than 4 competent diagnosers alone), few have jobs fitting their true level of skill, and almost all sleep in the dirt like low-born haulers.
GreatWyrm lead me past their entrance. I saw two statues of her facing one another, a chain elaborately carved with the god of disease, and other strange objects as I passed. A hound and a cat guarded the last door. Catching my gaze GreatWyrm explained--"Us stonecutters, we believe in a return to the basics--- the stone, the pick, cats and dogs for pets and food, faith in the gods--our entry reflects these values. I nodded, smiling, nothing I like as much as a good and tasty cat.
GreatWyrm lead me further. We entered a small dining room, one I had not known existed. Seeing my perplexed look GreatWyrm paused: "Do not be concerned my friend, it is just that many of the chairs and tables we produce are not of sufficient quality for the greater fort, so we keep them for ourselves."
The explanation struck me as disingenuous: many of the tables and chairs I saw seemed rather finely made. What really made me wonder is from whence the stone came from--our stone stockpile was perhaps the largest room in the fort--where did the stonecutters keep their stocks?
As though reading my mind GreatWyrm wheeled suddenly and locked eyes with me. "Tell me goat, as a shaman, have you studied the mysteries of our people? The mysteries dwarves pass from elder to beardling, that may not be shared with outsiders?"
I paused looking at the grizzled miner, considering quietly, as she quivered as if holding fast through a fervor that seemed to pass over her.
"You speak of the forbidden technologies--bridges turned to devices that render rock and living being alike into base atoms, training rooms that can make a peasant into a champion in a matter of days, at the cost of his sanity and the blood of many animals and children? Devices that transmit a drop of water across a room making banks of fog that delight and soothe the mind of the most tormented dwarf, Yes?"
She hesitated, considering me seriously, before nodding "Yes".
For a second I wondered if I would be allowed to leave the stonecutter's lodge with my life, and my eye slipped, unconciously to the sharp, and it seemed in the torchlight, blood-stained pick by the manager's side. Then GreatWyrm turned again, whispering "Follow me."
She lead me into an alcove, where I saw two mason shops--one made from blocks of native gold, glittering in the dark, the other; from precious kaolinite, imported for porcelain. Behind them I saw something that staggers me, and makes my head spin even as I carve these words into the soft bone of a llama. Rock. Great pieces of rock of every variety and type, piled somehow, in an impossible form that held together, occupying no more space than you or I, but limitless. There must have been several hundred rocks, big enough to crush a dwarf whole, piled together in a small alcove big enough to hold a cabinet or chair.
I staggered back, paling.
GreatWyrm looked at me contemplatively---do you see now, what the stonecutters have discovered? Do you see, why our mission must be allowed?
It took me at least a minute to respond. "To the Hells with the mayor and the laws, this matters more!"
GreatWyrm nodded, satisfied.
At that point my better judgement spoke up: "I'll need something from you, in return for my silence, though--Hatches, stone hatches and grates and floodgates, for the device upstairs".
Now it was GreatWyrm's turn to smile: "Is that all? You'll have your hatches, and the assistance of our miners and masons. However are you certain you want nothing more? You do not work the stone, so we could not extend you membership to our sacred lodge, but there is an empty chamber built outside our entrance--I know not for what purpose. Perhaps you might consider taking it for a scrimshaw shop--after all, the mayor dismantled yours, just as he dismantled our stonecarvers."
Before I could respond the cavern echoed with the screams of dwarves. We ran outside, without a spare word, coming to face a horror.
A spider the size of an elephant was in the very middle of our fort, only feet from the hospital and well. It had picked up a dwarf, a tanner, I think, and was shaking him around by the head. Ichor and webs dripped from its mandibles, and the mangled, yet living body caught in its grasp.
The spider shook the dwarf, pumping poison into his face and neck. I screamed for the militia, and saw our brave warriors scrambling up the stairs.
Unfortunately they did not come in time. The spider cast the broken body of our comrade into one of the shacks that the peasants had carved into the smaller stalactites, and wheeled to face the charge of our brave women and men. Our warriors swarmed it rapidly, chopping at the legs of the monstrosity, knocking it down. A new recruit, a woman married to another of the draftees leaped atop the spider and with a booted foot kicked inwards, through the chitin, striking some vital nerve cluster. The monster died instantly, a better fate than the one it visited on our brother.
I paused to speak with the warrior Asen, leader of our militia and vengeful death with a pick (single too, and quite the looker) She gave me a dour look "Ye have the guts to talk to me, after what you've done?"
"What have I done, brave Asen?"
"Heh, you're the dimwit who opened the cavern, since the spring thaw it's been one thing after another--we just lost a peasant to a pack of elk birds not a week ago, and had to chase off a gorlak that was trying to eat a cat.
Gods, I thought, we have hardly any tasty cat in the fort, and now I have to share with gorlaks?! Out loud I said "Gorlak? A pity, I heard they are delightful conversationalists".
"Aye, that he was, he had a lovely conversation with me pick, he did"
"What do you propose then?"
"I don't care, just fix it, afore me boys and girls get angry, put up a wall, set some cage traps, somethin'."
With that Asen stormed off. I had little worry our commander would remain as calm as stone--see enough blood and screams and suffering, and trouble just don't faze you as much. The recruits though...All had angry glares as they passed, and muttered under their breaths. If we don't get them happy, we're looking for trouble--angry soldiers in a tight space, well, I'd prefer a goblin any day, at least goblins use shite weapons, not the shining steel of our brave defenders. Last thing I want to see is that shining steel carving up our own.
I returned to work, and saw my orders carried out. The dining room completed by the last overseer was opened to the public, with food stores moved to the antechambers with the windows. Work on the new dining room, with its sinister baleful eye continued. I faced it most days, my scrimshaw shop reopened.
Humans came with a trade caravan, but nothing that they carried was in need, and we sent them off with nothing.
The fall came early this year, and three dwarven children were born within a few days of one another.
Production continued on both the new trap and the new dining room. Work seemed to have stopped inside the mason hall. Rumors said the stonecutters built rooms for themselves, the best and biggest rooms in the fort, and that GreatWyrm took the artifact table for himself, and that the mayor wouldn't stand for it, or shouldn't stand for it, or that the hammerer had been called for from the mountain halls, and the stonecutters would get what's coming to them. All just rumors, I am sure, all just lies.
It was at the very end of fall, after the dwarven caravan came, that once more screams echoed through the fort.
Ambush! They screamed. Goblins! A dwarf has been shot! And behind it, an anguished cry "My toe, oh Putrid Drool, he bit off my toe"
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tomorrow: finished traps, pics, the ambush, the dead and the angry.
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Topic: The Inn of Drowning (Read 19258 times)