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Chapter 8: Stronghold
Journal of Thrakha'zaguul.
Moonstone 252
The clan builds sentry towers, but peasant-masons struggle with fear of the savage wilds. The military stands with them and drive away the giant kingsnakes. Once the foundations are laid: miners connect the towers to our keep with underground tunnels and masons continue their work from the inside. Gunners return to patrol the perimeter of the central keep, and keep the surroundings clear. This allows the peasant-woodcutters to harvest trees, which we will need in great quantity for longboats.
Miners delve more rooms as living quarters, and a great space for training grounds. For veterans: barracks, armory stockpiles, and archery targets. For new recruits: weight sets and blood bowl pitches. At the Weight Set an orc can lift blocks to build wrestling skill and strength. He can also use up training weapons, bucklers, or armor to practice other military skills. At the Blood Bowl pitch an orc can use up leather to build basic physical skills. Orcs will get more out of their normal military sparring practice and avoid unhappy military thoughts once they have some foundation in skill.
The training center also has some totem poles. Warriors can stop here before battle to cast voodoos on themselves, such as the Rite of No Pain. Any orc can go to the totem pole with an instrument and begin playing music which inspires their nearby clan-mates for a while. I assign our clan warrior-poet Dohon to play tamborine drums, which enhance the speed of all warriors. Battle horns clear the mind of warriors and allow them to potentially enter a martial trance, as Uruks do. The Rites of Bravery are most useful for civilian siege operators. Scribe Keita sets Workshop Profiles to manage the use of these stations in the Training center.
The clan council meets, for the time has come to export destruction and fire! Firehawk speaks: we need revenge upon the elves! and elven bows, and shiny arrows! But the clan-mates reply: the elves are already repaid with their own doom. Gamerlord speaks: let us raid upon the humans and take their muskets! The clan-mates wonder: if we spend our money on musket-balls then can we still afford more raids? The council debate goes on. In the end it is decided to strike the humans and dwarves first, but also to greatly expand capacity for raiding in the new-year.
The factory begins to mass produce cheap weapons for the raiders, and the forge mints a few thousands of silver coins. An extra freelancers' guild is needed to change silver coins to rusty iron shillings. An extra drydock keeps up production of weapon kits and longboats.
Opal 252
The miners are idle, so I allow them to delve some test-mineshafts about 30 levels down: one under the western forest and one under the foothills. The forest-mine strikes an expansive cavern with a lake, but no interesting minerals sighted in the walls. We seal the shaft for now. The mountain-mine strikes a silver vein with mithril clusters. Demonbutter and the other craftsorcs prepare to work mithril by placing a damasc forge. We can obtain powdered mithril by grinding ore, or perhaps a small amount too by grinding the melted elven bucklers. We will need to use our supplies of steel as well as the mithril if we decide to craft some fine damascene swords.
Obsidian 252
A vile force of darkness is sighted! But it is just a scouting detachment of tigermen, led by a tiger-captain on a giant moth. Firehawk leads his boworcs to climb to the foundation of the eastern tower and rain arrows upon them, while the gunners shoot down the moth steed. The blade militia fall on the wounded tigermen and butcher them in moments. Dohon gains a title in the battle.
As the year closes, we have two successful longboats return from four raids.
Boss! speaks the raid captain. The human town had a fancy factory building fulla steam gizmos and cannons! Amazingly the raider managed to sketch a workable drawing of the site.
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Topic: Ghoshash Snazaga, "Cleaver of Ignorance," a ¤MDF Orc Fort¤ tutorial (Ch 22) (Read 105230 times)