This is the journal of Talvieno Violencelashes, entry number four. I'd like to state for the record that I'm fully aware how far apart these entries are... In my defense, our engravers are decorating the walls so quickly now that I don't quite have a chance to have my jounral entries engraved in a single area of the fortress. After all, Fen won't use the wall unless it's smoothed, because dictation simply isn't fast enough otherwise. On another note, I'm beginning to recieve criticism from the others - especially Mr Frog. He says I'm not doing it correctly, and that journals ought to be kept in books. But... as to our current situation... we're doing pretty well, I suppose. We've had a lot of unfortunate things happen since my last entry, and although it seems to have straightened itself out for now... I don't know. I'm just stressed out, I guess. Why don't dwarves ever feel overworked, but we do?
Six months ago, we were arguing over what to do about the elves. Spring came, and some of the shorter trees within the walls began to flower, which cheered some of us up. We began to envision orchards of fruit trees, and some of us began to try to make it a reality, but found that planted seeds refused to grow into trees. But the flowering impressed something more important upon us - the elves would soon arrive. At that point, we made up our minds - we were going to begin. The elves needed to be captured and put into cages - a lot of us liked the idea of having nude elven women caged in our bedrooms as prisoners, anyway, and most of us wanted humanoid test subjects. Aztong, our only captive goblin, was caged in the dining hall. We'd fought over him at first, but as we only had one, it was decided that no one should have him.
Work began on our plans. I assisted, being a relatively skilled mason. It was determined that we should make walls around our trade depot, forcing the elves to walk over cage traps as they left. At the same time, we wanted to pull down some of the walls next to our fortress's entrance corridor, placing fortifications there instead, for our archers to shoot through at invading enemies. We had a lot of work to do - and not enough cages. Even with our three parttime carpenters - Splint, Stil and Urist McUristson, we could hardly get enough made. At least we had no trouble with mechanisms... we'd crafted several hundred in the past few months.
I suggested we dig a pit in front of the corridor fortifications, to keep enemy archers from coming close. This idea was voted against strongly by HmH, our secondary military commander, who gave the reason that not all sieges contain archers. However, RAKninja said he thought it was a good idea, and I began work on it. The pit protecting the fortifications led to a 3 meter deep pit I'd dug out just inside the entrance. The idea was that a retractable bridge could be placed over it, and we could draw it back beneath the feet of enemies, dropping them into the pit. Once inside, they would have to walk through a long tunnel lined with cage traps. Of course... this required the construction of more cage traps... and another problem - we had no idea how to build a retracting bridge.
In Dwarf fortress, retractable bridges simply disappeared when activated, as if they no longer even existed. In real life, that obviously wasn't possible. We'd gotten the raising bridge to work - we even had to build a second, smaller one in the north wall to allow access to the forest while we worked (Miauw dug the pit for that, not me). Unfortunately, the raising and lowering of the bridges was very slow. Lacking ideas, we asked our 15 or so dwarves how to do it instantly. "Dinnae what ye mean, laddie," they said, almost choking on their booze with laughter. "Cannae be done! Armok's beard, ne'er heard o' such a thing. Disappearing bridges?"
We of The Twelfth Bay refused to accept this as fact, putting our minds to the task of creating a bridge that could retract faster than an elf could run - or anything else, for that matter. Our nine mechanics got together in a monumental brainstorming session, determined that if we couln't build a working vacuum-tube supercomputer, we were going to get this to work. (I simply refused to spend a few decades of my life digging out the room for the tubes, and the other miners backed me up on this. Wierd refused to make so many glass tubes, as well, backing us up.)
After much thought, our engineers came up with a possible solution. Using the idea of the dwarven pump we'd built close to a year before, they designed a hydraulic pump of the same power output - and then they improved it. The dwarven screw pump, as I understand it, is capable of applying a force of 22.5 metric tons per minute. With this in mind, they designed a pump capable of applying 50 metric tons of force per a minute, using a combination of rotating axles and electricity coming from our windmills (we found that bridges won't from just the flicking of a lever - it all requires power). Those among us skilled in architecture - Wierd, Eric Blank, Zaerosz, M4davis and Reudh - quickly designed three of the pumps to be attached to the bridge.
This... sadly... was when the elves arrived... Early Spring. We'd hardly gotten anything done. The walls around the depot were still unfinished, and 90% of the traps were lacking cages. We hadn't expected them so early, but now... what could we do?
They sang as they walked down through the mountain pass on the south side of our fortress, leading two packhorses carrying an obscene amount of goods (packhorses carry items the same way cages do - their packs are bigger on the inside, and changing how much you put in doesn't affect the weight nearly as much). Some of us stood at the mountain entrance, and from our perch, fifty feet above the southern plain, we could see them pretty well. We tried yelling instructions to them, as the main entrance was temporarily out of order, but they couldn't hear us from so far away. Finally, reluctantly, Loud Whispers went out (by popular demand) to lead them in.
As the elven maidens turned the northwest corner of the fort, they looked across the brook and saw the dark forest we'd been chopping trees from. The stumps remained, sticking up from the ground, reminiscent of a graveyard or a battlefield. According to Loud Whispers, they'd gasped and paled when they saw the sight. Even so, they continued onwards to the depot, straight over the traps we'd laid (as we had to lead them, they saw how we stepped over them and copied it). finally reaching the trade depot, they began to unload their goods. At this point, most of us were still greatly desiring them as prisoners, but we didn't see how we could manage. That's when Karakzon called us together for an emergency meeting. He pointed out that we didn't want them to get away, and explained his theory that the best way to capture them would be to build a wall blocking their line of sight to the secondary gate in the north wall. When that was completed, we would surround the entrance with cage traps - ones they hadn't seen - ones we hadn't led them over. Traps that would actually work, as they were unknown to them.
I have to admit - we really enjoyed this plotting and scheming. Our goblin prisoner, Aztong, overheard us and said we'd probably make good goblins. Some of us thanked him for that proudly, taking it as a compliment.
Construction began, and the production of beds ground to a complete halt to speed the process of producing enough cages. Meanwhile, HorridOwn4ge ordered that we bring fifty or so mechanism to the depot. This, he explained, would instill in the elven traders the faith that we weren't planning to attack them, so they wouldn't leave early. The wall took quite a while to complete, but it was finally done. At that point, our many mechanics began setting up the traps. This was where things got nasty.
The elves hadn't brought a single exotic animal. Well... they did bring an eagle, but it was of normal size. It hardly counts, in my opinion. KodKod wanted to just kill them and get it over with - I'd dug out a large "temple" for her underground, and she wanted to utilize it, sacrificing the "hippie witches" at the altar. Many of us shared this sentiment, but again, some of us - Gizogin, Girlinhat, HugoLuman, and Eric Blank (especially him), for example, wanted prisoners in our rooms. Eric Blank had different reasons, however. Most of the rest just wanted the elves for experimentation purposes. Nevertheless, we traded with them, filling our pantries with wines and fruits we'd never seen or tasted before. After all, we were going to get our mechanisms back after we captured them.
At night, when the skies darkened and the stars faded into view, the elves played music on their instruments, camping out under the stars. They didn't need bedrolls or tents - they loved nature. Altogether too much for our tastes. Though they didn't know it, it strengthened our resolve. I'm not completely sure, but I think I saw Cusi out there from time to time...
Anyway... the elves finally left, and Karakzon ordered RAKninja, our primary milita commander, to attack them - just briefly. Just enough to get the idea across that we hated them. And so he and his squad did. It was Sabreur who reached them first, warily avoiding the horses' hooves and getting a strike in, cutting the beast down the side. Several of the packs fell to the ground, and the elven women screamed in terror, hastening towards our north gate. Sabreur and the others retreated, waiting for everything to take its course.
But it didn't go according to plan. The elven women walked in a wide arc around the traps, avoiding them completely, and then walked straight over the few traps that were still missing cages, and left. It was ordered that our marksdwarves follow and kill them, but as they'd left through the thickest parts of the forest, we didn't see them again. The elves got away... and all we had was food, booze, and an eagle.
Of course, this made us angry. We'd spent such a long time planning to capture them, and they'd arrived too soon. We hadn't even finished the walls around the depot. The retracing bridge in the entance corridor was finally finished, at least... but too late to use. At least it retracted nearly as fast as we'd wanted it to. Nothing standing on it could possibly get away. But it wasn't enough. We were angry.
Before fights had a chance to break out, we heard a yell from beyond the north walls - it was Saltmummy, and the cry was "Goblins!". They'd killed Dishmab - one of our dwarven men. Girlinhat ran screaming towards Saltmummy, yelling, "My test subj... husband! No!" Despite this hilarious outcry, RAKninja immediately scrambled the military to guard the north gate, ordering his forces to hide in the thick underbrush and attack if anyone drew near. It was only baby snatchers, he said, coming to steal the babies our migrants had brought with them. Even so, everyone was ordered inside the walls, as we couldn't afford to lose anyone. But our fears were ill-founded - no more snatchers appeared, and it was over as quickly as it began.
The days grew longer, and summer rapidly approached. One night something remarkable happened, though. EmperorJon and I were on the night shift, and had been assigned the job of digging out more bedrooms. The walls were composed of microcline and orthoclase, and the pale blue against the pale orange-yellow looked somewhat inspiring - I almost wanted to compose a bit of poetry. EmperorJon, on the other hand, scooped up some of the loose pebbles and held them in his palm for the longest time, before throwing his pick aside and yelling, "I have it!" He ran back down the rough, stony hallway, dodging the haulers that were gathering boulders. I ran after him, trying to call him back - I didn't want to finish thirty bedrooms by myself. However, he finally halted in front of an empty mason's workshop, staring up at it with a smile on his face, before hauling several boulders to it from the stockpile. Then, without warning, he stopped short. "I need bones!" he yelled at the top of his voice. After pausing a minute, he yelled it again... and again. But we didn't have bones. We didn't have cattle. We had nothing to slaughter besides puppies and a kitten, and nobody would kill them. I began to worry about EmperorJon's health and mental state - I'd grown to be good friends with him.
Immediately following this event, we received migrants - human migrants. And not just any human migrants - migrants from the old world. The list was long: Afroscotsdwarf, Fourmite, Archeron, Koremu, Broseph Stalin, Random Spark, MetalHead, Mr Frog, JJtoocool, Silverbit and Exolyx, and they all arrived at once, cheering when they saw our faces. After some informal introductions, we joyfully accepted them into our ranks. We weren't quite as joyful when we discovered that three of them dabbled in mechanics, but as most could do something that the rest of us couldn't, everything was fine. They said that news of our fortress had traveled far, and upon hearing of us, they wanted sent here. They'd come from the dwarven mountainhome itself, and seen the king. Unfortunately, they'd also offended him... but we figured that was perfectly all right. We didn't really care - we could do all right on our own, and besides, the little matter had been settled, they said, and everything was fine. They'd only gotten themselves exiled from the capital, which had caused the king to send them here. It was a bit of a gutsy move, in my opinion, but it worked.
One particularly warm Spring day, the gentle breezes from the west ushered in a flock of keas. Unlike those that had killed Captain Crazy and Forumite, these were small, and easily dispatched by MetalHead, who was a pretty good shot with a bow, having practiced since he arrived. Unfortunately, the keas were deemed diseased unfit to eat, and we wouldn't touch them. Not that we needed food - we had more than plenty. I was just worried about EmperorJon, who was still crying out for bones.
And then it happened... tragedy struck. Zaerosz, our hunter - the one who had felled a giant kea with a silver bolt - returned badly wounded from a hunting trip. His toes had been crushed, and he was bleeding profusely from a gash on his side. We rushed him to the hospital, and Gizogin called up his staff. When Amallar couldn't be found, Gizogin ordered strawberries and cream be brought immediately, as the patient's life was in grave danger. We hastily obeyed, none of us wanting to lose our friend. When Johuotar returned with the food, he found to his dismay it was too late - Zaerosz had breathed his last. Gizogin ate his meal solemnly, and declared he needed to perform an autopsy.
We never did find out what killed him.
Everyone gathered in our finely-engraved mausoleum to have a funeral service for Zaerosz. Girlinhat refused to attend, saying she had experiments to perform that were "vital to the well-being of the fortress". Though attendance was considered mandatory, she was excused from doing so, as there weren't any of us who didn't believe her. The service was touching, and though many of us had something we wanted to say, we left the speeches to Karakzon, who delivered one that was, frankly, fitting of a king. With this, Zaerosz was laid to rest - gone, but never to be forgotten. Fen set out to ensure this, leading our engravers to craft beautiful works of art depicting him doing various things throughout his life, in several key places in the mountain halls. Fen is actually engraving this next to one of them.
All of this shocked me into the realization - this could just as easily happen to EmperorJon. With this in mind, I went to beg one of the dwarves to butcher a puppy or a kitten for his sake. Honestly, I knew I wouldn't have the heart (or lack of it) to do it myself, or I would've tried. The dwarf I chose, Olin, looked at me in surprise. She said of course she'd do it, and she called me a wuss for not having the guts to do it myself.
And so, in the late summer of our second year, EmperorJon got his bones, working furiously in the privacy of his shop. The newness of strange moods was beginning to wear off, but it was still exciting to the rest of us, and we made bets on what he would create. After about a week, he flung open the doors, exclaiming loudly that his magnum opus was complete.
It was an orthoclase bed. All craftsmanship was of the highest quality. It was encrusted with rectangular microcline cabochons and decorated with dog bone (or puppy bone, really). It menaced with spikes of orthoclase. On the sides he had engraved images of pear cut gems. As you would expect, nobody wanted to sleep on a rock bed with spikes, so it was put up on display in the dining hall. Oliolli promptly organized a party to take place there in celebration of its completion.
Before the party was even finished (it lasted for days), the human caravan arrived. We rushed out to meet them, wondering how humans of dwarfworld looked, and how they dressed. We weren't disappointed, though interestingly enough, they seemed to be encountering kobold thieves as they advanced towards our depot. I went out to get a closer look.
The kobolds were hiding in the grass and bushes, sneaking forwards when they were sure nobody was looking. While this worked at a distance, at close range it was pointless. Many of them got away, but I was able to scare one of them the opposite direction, and using the moving caravan I was able to corral it into one of our cage traps - which snapped shut, trapping it inside. We had a captive kobold. That wasn't possible in the game... if I'm remembering right, anyway. But that was a week ago. KodKod has taken it upon herself to train it to worship her as a deity, and has named it Corai. The taming/training is going beautifully so far - Corai follows KodKod around everywhere.
What worries me is the fact that a few of us are beginning to look... pale... as if drained of blood...
Fen, thank you, that's enough for now, I think... It seems an absurdly long entry, anyway.
the text ends here with the artful signature of Fen Wheeldreamy in microcline and orthoclase.
Author
Topic: If Bay Forum were a Mountain Hall... (Read 434577 times)