CHAPTER 59: A web of problemsEarly 228
Dumat the BrokerAs the 31st year of this fortress draws to a close, I'm told from bookkeeper Led that we are running low on stuff to dump. Obvious stuff, I mean, like blatantly useless things and random broken pieces of crap. Obviously we could dump swords and whatnot, but I'd rather we don't discard everything we possess to stop the flying beetle of doom. We have a lot of copper, moreso than we'll ever need for anything, so I order a ton of coins to be minted. If the worst comes, we'll go full Setzer and spam GP toss down the hole. If we die, we'll die as rich bastards, or at least as rich as copper coins make you.
Outside, the situation is not quiet either. Goblin ambushes and thieves are rampaging the countryside and keeping the militia occupied, when suddenly a cyclop appears.
The whole army mobilizes, too happy to meet a foe that is both worthy of their training, without all the cursed blood bullshit. The creature dies... quickly. After thousands of goblins have besieged this fortress over the last decades, even the new recruits are skilled marksdwarves. It is good to see the legendary might of Whisperwhip's soldier in action once more.
Everyone is not as impressed as I. Before they can leave the region, the dwarven merchants both become stark raving mad, having witnessed countless animals rotting casually while still alive. I guess everyone screaming about the whole ''dump or die bullshit'' didnt help. Simultaneously, their bulls decide to sink into melancholy and begin the slow process of starving themselves to death just outside our walls. If this place hadn't become the poster child for all kind of slow and insidious forms of trespassing, I'd shed a tear.
For a moment, my heart sink. I'm told that Tun the duke has interrupted his work to rest his injuries. Mind you, I don't love Tun. Guy was mostly a puppet I put in place to control the general and assert my position as overseer. In time he was to act as a mere baron, my personal assassin in case of dire needs. But power and an instantaneous rise through the ranks up to the position of regeant of our civilisation had made the guy... harder to control. No, i cared not for his well being. What troubled me was that I had no recollection of him ever being injured. Ustuth the hammerer had had many a brush with death over the years, but not the Duke. I have him followed.
Tun ends up in the hospital, sleeping. He seems rather healthy for now, but suddenly I spot miasma coming out of his bed. Has the disease carried by the foul beast finally started to infect a dwarf? Or worse, was most of the fort infested, only the effects were now starting to show themselves? I study tun for a while, and notice a cheetah next to his bed. Maybe the cheetah is infected instead. Most of them are. Maybe Tun simply banged his arm against something. He was a moron. It was possible.
If this was truly the curse then...
Armok have mercy on this fortress.
On the opposite side of the room, rest Rovod the soldier. He too fll victim to a curse, altho his didn't come from the generator infiltrator, but from Simo. This beast he helped slay, albeit for naught, with the help of Asmel and another. Now only he remained, and although the dwarf still lived, his definitely wasn't the liveliest of existences. If Rovod wasn't dying, he certainly wasn't getting better. For over a year he had survived, between two worlds, oblivious to the outside world. Rovod was the toughest dwarvenkind had to offer. And yet, there he was, kept alive only by the nonstop intervention of our medical staff. If this new curse has infected our citizens, then...
Enough. No point in thinking about that now. Let's focus on our more immediate problems. the dumping is still going strong, and as a result the resident beetle Fensast is keeping away from the shaft, content to visit the area. It isn't wandering. it is scouting. The other beasts, those he decided to side with rather than attack, cannot fly. Only fensast is able to circunvent the gigantic mushroom overgrowing the caverns. He is doing what the others can't. He's locating the entrances to the fortress. For now, he is exploring the volcano. Two entrances lie there. Thankfully, they are submerged by magma...
Once it's done, Fensast visit the edges of the map. It isn't leaving. The caverns below Whisperwhip are his home now. Onlythe constant fall of various used items keep him from expanding its lair to the surface.
Yet more monsters show up for the party. Forgotten beasts everywhere are telling the tales of their kin, who came to this place and never returned. This fort is a mark, a bounty, that every abheration from times immemorial has set its eyes upon. It who destroys the fortress will be renowned for eons by all denizens of the underworld.
Many tales are told of this newcomer, Snang riddlepuzzle the hellish mystery. His title is truly awesome, in the truest sence of the word. Forget the kids misusing this term on a daily basis. he who hears the name Riddlepuzzle the Hellish Mystery ijnstantly knows what greatness and terror feel like, two sides of the same monstruous coin.
Sadly for us, it can fly. Thankfully for us, this beast has arrived in the lower caverns, the path to which has been sealed by the general shortly before he became basically numb and useless.
More and more animals are dying. Or simply going missing. Tough luck, kid, your cat isn't coming back home alive. We have lost so many animals, even screenshotting vast amounts of purple anouncement has lost it's thrill.
However, suicidal bulls are a relative novelty here. I'm sure those traders wouldn't mind if a few of their belongings went missing for over a week... I dispatch a few haulers. We'll need all those bags of dye and random instruments.
The son of Drokles decides to create something special, and withdraws from society. I'm informed of this in the middle of like 8 dead pet announcements. Hey, just because I stopped caring about them doesn't mean our alert log is free of them.
Right at the same time, the new year appears around the corner. Like a clock, a few venerable animals die of old age, which frankly is an achievement for any animal in this fortress right now.
To celebrate the new year, Droklesson finishes an earring, which frankly is amazing, if absolutely useless. it features dying elves, giant monsters, and the artefact throne presiding over the temple to Kadol. at least the son of our new commander has a bright future as a craftdwarf. Assuming he survives...
Hey, bookkeeper Led, do we need chains for like, anything. Because we have a lot of them lying around.
Led explains that chains are only useful for wells, or prisons. This guy is basically like an encyclopedia, I swear. Oh well, I guess we don't need 96 of them in our stockpiles.
Same for those bags, really. I mean, I'd expect most of these to be empty, but... we have like 200 bags of dye, as many bags of sand... I'm not sure why. Especially since we haven't even kickstarted a textile industry in 30 years. like, I remember sending a guy to the caverns to bring back webs once, of which he carried back exactly 2 before breaking both his legs in a cave-in. we're not exactly the China of the world when it comes to mass-production of t-shirts.
...although some of our crafters took it upon themselves to turn some bags into true works of art. Dumping all the bags would make a lot of them unhappy. and right now i don't want our resident champion to be unhappy. instead, I'll do something special in order to deal with the bags.
Ducim is a 13 years old peasant, who for now has received no job except for hauling and dumping. He's been begging me to do something more artistic, but I have zero need for more copper crafts or a 20th bonecarver right now. We could, however, spare one young boy to start a textile operation. Since every low quality or used roll of cloth has been dumped last month, we are left only with the good stuff. I tell Ducim to build a dyer's workshop somewhere in the sweatshop/dorms, and give him free reign over our dye supply. We'll get a ton of higher quality materials with which to make our own clothing, and hopefully about 200 less pointless bags lying around. Hell, if this works I migh use some of those useless plants we've been stockpiling and turn them into dyed cloths to save room.
Truth be told, the farms have been running nonstop for 25 years grabbing as much potash as they ever needed,
and i have zero idea what they are producing!I should probably get deeper into th... OH WHAT THE SHIT
It's another beast. In the caverns. What is it now, seven? In the upper caverns alone? It matters not, I tell myself, for all the paths are locked to that which does not fly. Even if webs are a terrifying ability, we won't hear about this one for a while, if ever.
But there are more than one webber in these caverns, as I would come to learn...
Meanwhile on the surface, a new Cyclop shows up, because 3 megabeasts in a season is simply too little. As with the previous cyclop, this one dies without too much of a showdown. In the background, the merchants and their bulls are slowly dying as well, despite being offered food and drinks. they just don,t care. Whisperwhip was too much for their quiet minds. I don't blame them. The goddess of death and blood couldn't stomach it and I'm pretty sure she invented the very concepts that scared the fuck out of her.
The smelters are reporting strange buzzing sound coming from the other side of the forges. It's Fensast, the beetle, still keeping an eye on the shaft, waiting for a chance to slip in. Under it, the lake is now massively infected with a strange mucus, likely created by another local resident. If this beast continues to spread its vile substance, then, I'm afraid it will travel into the fortress via the pipelines of our generator. Huh-oh. alas, there is nothing we can do about this for now... if ever.
The elves are back, but there is no trading to be done. We have no need of what they offer, because as saddening as it is, this fortress has no room for more giraffes. Cause they'll die horribly of a deadly plague.
I'm sorry, giraffes. I love you, yet we cannot be together.
They come into the fort anyway. Oh what the shit, those aren't elves these are goblins!
It's a goblin ambush. In the fortress. They are in the kitchen. How is this happening.
Drokles mobilizes the entire army. it's time to murder some greenskins before they do some crazy shit to our civilians. One of which is me. Defend me, soldiers! Oh, speaking of which, now i remember how Tun got injured. he wandered outside during the last siege. Maybe we aren't going to all die of a deadly plague.
Or so I tell myself.
Some of the goblins walk up into the guard tower. This should lessen the danger they pose, as upstairs is where the soldiers are coming from.
Some soldiers rush downstairs to defend the kitchens, the rest man the wall or run outside. Another ambush has been triggered just south of the fort.
In the chaos, a tribe of thieves are also trying to get in, snatching what they can. Without the usual guard animals, the soldiers have a hard time covering the battlefield and stopping snatchers.
Lions and dingos have always been enemies in this fort, for as long as i remember unwisely introducing them to the local ecosystem. Before they all get taken by the plague, some of them decide to lash at each other and kill each other. I would normally be mad at the trainers but... this almost feel like a better way for them to go. Like, you know a fortress has gone through some severe shit when you find yourself saying
''wow, in this time of chaos, our pets are murdering the fuck out of each other instead of defending us, what a relief'' without an ounce of sarcasm. Surprisingly, nobody dies from these skirmishes. Well, not directly.
In the chaos of the goblin invasion, everyone was too scared and disorganized to carry out orders. tun would have none of it. A failed mandate is worthy of a serious beating. The duke's goons are dispatched, and Nish the miner pays with his life. A single unfinished quern was all it took for this honest worker to meet a grisly end.
I find myself planning another regicide, when suddenly more trouble arise.
First of all, it seems that part of the stuff we've been dumping isnt melting. Instead, a pile of quartzite crap is forming at the bottom of the shaft, because apparently quartzite won't melt. This is something i should have know, since we built gears and magma workshops out of it. In the heat of the moment, we simply discarded everything without looking. Now this shit is there, and it,s there to stay because nobody is going down there amidst 7 monsters to retrieve this shit and trade it away.
The real trouble, however, comes from the other side of the volcano. The generator, like the forges, is pumping lava from the volcano, but it's also draining the water from the underground lake through 4 pipelines.
In one of these pipes, now lies the source of all this foreshadowing.
A huge hairy leech, spinning webs, is swimming toward the fortress using the water pipeline. During its watery wanderings, it has apparently stepped too close behind another resident, one which secretes all this deadly mucus wherever it goes. forgotten beasts won't attack each other here in Whisperwhip, but that doesn't mean they are immune to each other's curses. The good news is, that even if this syndrome has not killed the giant leech, it has severely injured it. The bad news is, the leech is now the carrier of said disease. and it has webs. Should it ever come in sight of our dwarves, it will lock them in place, and carry this new deadly syndrome right into our ranks. Even if all our soldiers have crossbows, the one webbing monster we faced was by far the deadliest.
Webs are no joke. Even injured, this leech has the potential to cause some serious damage to our population. And unfortunately for us, it's coming in wether we like it or not.
Between us and the beast lies one single miner. Squiddwarf came to this continent with me more than 31 years ago, by order of our mysteriously missing queen. He tried in vain to pierce the aquafier in old Whisperwhip, and only he out of 3 miners survived the watery grave. From then on he was known as Squiddwarf, for his uncanny ability to swim back from certain death.
Squiddwarf has no family, no known parents, no children. He has served faithfully as our head miner since he moved here, except for a brief period where he claimed the title of Militia commander, supervizing the escape from old Whisperwhip into the northern mountains when a titan appeared. Up until a more experienced soldier moved to this fort, he meticulously supervized the creation of our first weapons and shields, and nominated the initial soldiers. It was under his orders that the fort was locked down for a year, until that faithful day where Olin Bookdeer sneaked outside to kill two titans on her own, looking for her cat.
Thanks to this brief role as commander, Squiddwarf never took over the role of a mason like most miners and engravers. As such, he was not executed when Tun the Duke ordered a mass slaughter of what he deemed ''lazy masons''. At the venerable age of 118 years, Squiddwarf is a legendary miner, bonecarver, and engraver. Many of the glorious details around the main fort are of his doing. He has survived many cave ins, a civil war, more sieges than I dare to rmember, and somehow always made it out of the caverns alive when strange monsters or deadly animals attacked.
And today, Squiddwarf is the only person between us and this leech. He has a special mission.
In a few minutes, the generator will be activated. It is the only way to safely get rid of the leech. However, the generator is full of water. If we activate it now, it will be the last time we put this thing to work. Underneath lies many monsters, including a deadly firefly. There will be no unclogging. For the generator to properly trap the monster in obsidian, the water must be cleared. It must evaporate. This means someone needs to widen the reservoir. Only then will the water be spread wide enough to dissipate.
The leech is slow, and rotting. It is moving rather slowly. In time, it will reach the floodgates and unleash tons of water into the generator. If Squiddwarf hasn't cleared enough water, then the beast wont be killable by magma, and the generator will be lost. At this point, we will have to either seal the place forever, or risk contracting the curse it is carrying unwittingly.
* * *
OOC: A friend of mine dropped by for a few moments, and he showed me his fortress. His stockpiles were basically gigantic map-wide rooms lying around in random places. I was currently nearing the end of this chapter, and my own game was running, so I gave him a tour of the place, mostly to show him what I did with the mines, and how they were converted into fancy stockpiles with pillars. Then I explained the situation with the beetle and the dumping, and we played a fun game called spot the various forgotten beasts. It's like playing where's Waldo, except there are just
so many of them everywhere.
This game revealed two important things. First, there was a pile of quartzite at the bottom of the shaft. Second of all, there was a leech entering my water access. Huh oh. Was it not for this impromptu visit from a guy on a bike carrying a laptop, I may have spotted the leech too late. I was so focused on tracking the beetle, I foolishly disregarded the other creatures...
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