CHAPTER 67: The digEnd of year 231 The mining operations of Whisperwhip have never been too impressive, for a dwarven settlement, let alone a dwarven capital. Tetrahedrite is the best we ever located in terms of metallic ore, wielding copper, and a pinch of silver when Armok feels generous. Most of the metallurgic industries of the Wilted sack revolve around smelting copper shields and silver spears to empty some room in the stockpiles. No iron short of goblinite, no readily available coal, and no flux stone means that steel here in the savannah is as rare as it is precious. The only way of getting it is by smelting caravn goods, and the caravans are prone to insanity, plagues and accidents. It's not that the dwarves of Whisperwhip aren't greedy, for greed is the very nature of all dwarves. They have simply been busy with constant war and the annihilation of timeless atrocities on a weekly basis, leaving little time for mining excursions. Wealth is of little importance to a dead dwarf.
Until now.
Duke Tun, high noble of Whisperwhip and regent of the Citadel of clutches, wants a crystal glass table in his tomb. short of the fabled adamantine, or maybe pure refined platinum, crystal glass is the rarest and priciest of material. The main requirement, rock crystals, cannot be traded or sold, they can only be found deep underground. Locating them is a pain, for there is no way of knowing if there are any in a region, short of finding a vein or stripping the entire mountain bare.
I have no desire to do this, but it seems that we must now dig down into the core of the planet, hoping we'll find something ludicrous and unobtainable, to satisfy the whims of a tyrannical and stupid noble. Luckily, i know where to start. When BASE1 was founded, I ordered a staircase to be dug down to the north of the main chambers. It goes downward for a few levels, then stops. It was meant as a way to compartmentalize the fortress, since I didn't want to have just one single staircase running all the way to the center of the Windy Realm. There was to be one bridge room between the base and the coliseum, one between the arena and BASE1, and another between BASE1 and this new exploratory shaft. The idea was scrapped when caverns were found nearby, locking any progress between an onslaught of goblins and the ever-present threat of a new forgotten beast.
Nowadays, the corridor intended as a bridge room is left unused, mostly filled with furnitures and random stockpiles. I order some of the crap moved, and send the miners to continue the staircase. The great thing about it, is that I know for a fact that it bypasses both cavern layers. We'll dig for a few more levels, and create some mining tunnels, just to poke at potential riches.
Ten levels below BASE1, a first set of tunnels are excavated. The miners locate no interesting stone whatsoever, until someone comes chanting with a new gem! ''I found it, I found it!''. A quick look reveals this new gem to be a rose quartz, not the fabled rock crystal we are after. Altho, you gotta admit, ''rock crystal'' is a fucking generic term that could easily apply to any fucking gem that exists...
Before we can dig more than a set of stairs and discover a gem cluster, something new and dramatic happens. Can you guess what it is? If you answered ''a new forgotten beast'', then give yourself a congratulatory pat on the head, because a winner is you!
Whatshisname gathers the soldiers outside BASE1, ready to meet the fiend in battle. Look, I have honestly no clue who's running the army right now. It was the general, then Asmel, then Drokles, then Atir, but we found Atir's parts on the river bank last month, so I'm guessing it's probably The other captain. They have similar names. Aban? Yeah that guy. We have about 15 or so surviving veterans, including Rovod and a few cripples. Good news is, If the soldiers can shoot the monster before it moves in too close, then his extract won't be too much of a problem.
Some guy named Uzol emerges victorious after tanking the creature amidst the smoke and the miasma, where so many fated battles took place previously. The workers responded quickly enough to the alert, and suspended work on the fishing ponds in time to avoid being eaten alive. Good job, Uzol, you are now the killer of a mighty beast. Like everyone here. Who is Uzol? No idea. Most of the soldiers I knew are dead now. Whenever the current millitary leader dies, they come at me for a replacement, and I lazily point at the one guy who'se name vaguely rings a bell.
Speaking of empty administration position, we still have no bookkeeper after Bookkeeper Led died horribly. I decide to promote my oldest friend Squiddwarf, for his heroism with the obsidian generator, and also because he's feeling rather lonely now that the other elder engravers committed suicide. I think he'll be a suitable candidate, since he's already recording the fort history, and bookkeeping is just that but with numbers. He's been keeping track of the forgotten beasts with some fancy drawings of late, so there's that. As a noble and founding member of the fortress, he gets one of the fancy rooms right above the kitchen, with cool engravings and his own weapon rack.
Excavation continues while the battle rages on, and soon the miners have cleared a small section shaped like a diamond. Appart from the three rose quartz mentionned earlier, this is a disappointing floor. I order the stone to be stockpiled around the central staircase, as I don,t want those things hauled back to the base one by one, and I'm certainly not going to stand there while the miners do their thing, forbidding every stone I see.
Let's go two floors down, and if there's nothing there, we'll just dig some ten flights of stairs and try our chance deeper... Initially we find some more gems, and boring stone. Just as I'm about to move to a new location, the miners announce something...
Another cavern! How dangerous, yet perfect! If there are some new gems and ores to be found at this depth, we'll be able to see many samples along the cavern walls. The place looks empty, for now. The only inhabitants we can see are overgrown plants preventing passage. I order the hole to the west blocked as soon as possible, and cancel the mining plants for this area. Instead we'll dig a single corridor to the south, which will be easy to seal in case of danger. Conveniently, it leads to a rather large plateau, devoid of most obstacles, meaning we'll be able to explore at least a little before hitting a maze of fungi and pillars.
From what I can tell at first glance, this cavern, unlike the others, is dry, instead of featuring an underwater lake filling half of it. By simply finishing the tunnels, the miners have a fair estimate of what they can find here. Emeralds, in large clusters, as well as pink tourmaline and some sphalerite, which should cover all our zinc needs, which are essentially none ever. I let them go and grab the closest of each type, so the metalworkers and jewelers can appraise them. If they are worth a fortune, maybe we'll stay here and strip this place of its riches. Otherwise, we must dig deeper, ever deeper, to get some rock crystals.
Oh, by the way, all those workers who were feverish, are apparently out of the hospital. Whatever the disease left by Amas Spithole was, most of the afflicted manage to overcome it! Good news, we'll need all the help we can get to pursue this absurd quest for a fucking table.
I'm showing our new gems to manager Stukos, asking that he gets a work order for cut emeralds, when suddenly his face starts to shiver. He storms off, talking in rhymes and dancing through the corridors, looking for a suitable workshop. He's been taken by a fey mood!
Another noble comes storming in. It's the mayor, and she has the report on the fishing operation. apparently, not only did we
not retrieve the corpses on time for them to rest peacefully, we actually failed to retrieve them at all.
''Well no, it's not that we didn't retrieve them, it's more like the whole process failed so spectacularly that there isn't anything left to retrieve.
-What.
-The soldiers, their corpses and their gears now exist in a realm outside of reality.
-No.
-I'm serious.
-I know you are, I just, this is not an answer that is supposed to exist.
-No, that's what I assumed, but somehow when the soldiers drifted through the open floodgates, they simply stopped being part of the material plane. they register somewhere on the inventory sheet, and we have a vague idea where they should be, but there's nothing there. nothing to touch, nothing to see. we just have a vague understanding of where they should be.
-...
-Also I failed to activate the floodgates correctly and all three reservoirs are filled and useless now. bye!''
Well, this happened. The corpses of our elite soldiers,
and the various artefacts they carried, along with most of this fort's steel gear, now exists in a quantum state outside of our reach. Great?
Thankfully, the miners have better news. by digging a few levels below the new caverns, they tapped into large veins of native silver and gems, and they assure me that no caverns should get in the way of mining them all out. The area to the north especially seems very pricey, filled with silver and gem clusters. It would make an ideal spot for a break room deep under the earth. The news of silver veins is also interesting; obsidian is nice, but it is nowhere as impressive as some metals like silver, iron and steel. While the obsidian generator is great to produce blocks that aren't worth nothing, I'd much prefer to use silver for statues and doors and, basically, everything ever. The miners tell me that while i was dealing with the fuck-ups of our mechanics, they excavated about 70 of these silver nuggets. Manager Stukos, get me a work order for...
Oh right, fey mood.
apparently, he decided that despite all this awesome silver, sphalerite was the way to go. He's also decided to use wood to make drawings of gems. When we just found gems. What is this, an homage to the poor and simpler days of Whispwerhip? Now that you are a master crafter, do you think you could find some spare time to fill work orders? We'll need silver nuggets smelted, nonstop, forever.
The future location of BASE2 (temporary name) is located 19 levels below the magama forges and BASE1. I feel like that's deep enough to warrant a rest area for our workers, with maybe a dorm. Once we have enough silver to create a new fort made entirely of it, I'll dispatch the miners to carve some rooms and space for a few tables. I'll make sure that we have the greatest furnitures, entirely made of silver, and encrusted with tons of bones and diamonds for this dinning hall. same for the rooms. sure, basically no one will use this place except a few miners, but I have a second use ofr it. because it is so far from the rest of the fort, isolated, it,ll be a great place to dispatch tantruming and miserable dwarves. They'll be free to get angry alone faraway from the sane dwarves, and stockpiling pricey items in a beautiful room will help them over it. for very angry dwarves, i may disable all their labors for a time, essentially keeping them here in rehab for a few weeks.
Just as im musing on this new project, the miners anounce that the level underneath contains something new. something exciting.
''Is it... rock crystals?
-No, sir. it is not. this is something you'll want to see for yourself.''
I go down the stairs, and take a look around. The miners are busy excavating the mandatory 9x9 central room where mined useless stones are stored. I see no crystals, no gems, and no metallic ores.
''What am i looking at?
-Marble, sir''
Marble. flux stone. I was told there would be no flux stone under this desert, but this mine shaft is located incredibly far north of our region. It is right underneath the mountain into which we carved our entrance, the same mountain we ran to hoping, accurately, that it would have a different geology, with no aquafier. While the rest of the area contaisn nothing suitable for removing imperfections in mettalic ore, it would seem that the edge of the mountain presiding over the Lavender Empire is leaking here, bringing with it marble.
Tun is nearby, bugging me about his fucking table. heis irritable, annoyed and impatient, and has been for many months now. He has not killed anyone yet, so it would seem that mandates and demands are different things. He'll just remain pissed forever as long as he doesn't get his stupid crystal furniture in his tomb. frankly, I no longer care. We have found something much greater here. silver, as well as flux stone.
We can make steel. We can make our own steel bars. We'll need charcoal, tons of smelted iron helmets and spears looted from our enemies, but when we do get those we'll be able to make our own top-quality items. First, go grab some trees, and retrieve every iron item you can from the...
Motherfuckers! More goblins, just as we need to go outside and grab some new stuff. Two workers pay dearly for their outside venture, as they get caught off-guard before the soldiers can gather on the surface...
Meanwhile our hammerer is down in the caverns hunting cave crocodile, because having common sence is clearly not how Ustuth rolls.
I was wrong! It seems that our current militia commander was, for a few months, that good old Orion. I know this now, because I've just been told that the militia commander is dead, and that Orion the dwarf is dead, and that both those statements are closely related. RIP, bro.
I'm running low on candidates. as some injured dwarves are dragged to the hospital after the siege, I share a few words with our resident chief ragdoll engineer, dr. Melbil.
''Yo, Melbil.
-Yes dumat?
-Your wife rigoth, she's a soldier right?
-That would be correct. She is a good fighter and...
-'Kay cool. Tell her she's our new general, next time you see her. I'm off.''
Rigoth, the doctor's wife, announces that having 13 soldiers to defend the fort against goblins and forgotten beast both is not enough, especially when half of those are blind, crippled, or in a coma for 5 years. She's gathered every peasant child she could find, and created a new squad for them to train. They'll be ready in two years, she says.
''Yo, you can't just randomly take those kids, I've told some of them to become weavers and mechanics and one of them is supposed to be a gemcutter!
-And how good are they at their craft so far?
-Well, they've been doing a lot of hauling on the side, so I'd say... dabbling?
-Level zero? Listen overseer, you'll find more untrained kids to fill the pointless jobs of this fort. I'm training new recruits.''
I look at the list of kids she took. One of them is Aristotle, that glassmaker who failed to produce pearlash spectacularly. Man, I hope he doesn't show up to a fight barehanded because someone was cleaning his sword or storing his breastplate.
Rigoth returns: ''I'm told we've begun steel production, so i took the liberty of requesting 20 steel breastplate with our reserves!''
Just as I'm about to mention how much Rigoth is the most annoying general ever, I'm told the Bronze general is still a ghost, and he's now possessing some battle-trained cook, punching people around and breaking their arms. Wait, seriously? somebody get me a slab, here and now!
After explaining how they shouldn't turn into a ghost and control cooks to break limbs after they die, Rigoth brings the new recruits to their designated barracks and starts instructing them on the rudiment of not dying.
''I've... read the flyer from the ministry of not dying horribly! says Aristotle
-Forget flyers, respond the commander. Today you learn to truly fight. Before any of you can hope to wield a sword, you'll need to get in shape. Everyone, grab a steel armor, an iron helm, and a steel crossbow. You'll be carrying those at all time, just to improve your strenght. when you can wear your armor confortably, without falling, the real training will begin, and you'll get your full set of armor, as well as a melee weapon of your choice.''
Armor knows we'll need those kids one day, we only have 13 soldiers, and many of them are severely injured from the latest siege. It will be a while before Ral is ready to join a battle again...
Rigoth rounds up the infirmary.
''Everyone able to wield a sword among you, go downstairs! The miners exploring the new caverns have sighted somne truly demonic creatures wandering in the darkness!''
The soldiers rush downstairs, to face this new creature they call a rutherer. In the meantime, the craftdwarves have finished the slabs i requested, and we can finally prevent the Bronze general from causing mayhem and fucking things up once and for all. Rest in peace, crazy old fool...
Another child is found dead, swarmed by packs of naked mole dogs. We simply don't have the manpower to defend ourselves from so many cavern dwellers at once...
It is clear that those new caverns contain riches, but also terrible dangers. Until we can gather a full squad of soldiers, we can't afford to run around in the dark while praying no goblins show up. I ask Manager Stukos to seal off this new place for the time being. Between silver mining and smelting, the creation of pricey new statues, and the beginning of our steel production, there'll be pretty of work for everyone anyway. In the light of these new industries, Tun has finally abandonned his demands, content with what we have found. ''We will be rich and impressive with these ores, crystal tables or not!''
While the dead were accidentally ejected from reality and subsequently put to rest, the living have unravelled the wonders and riches of the earth. Whisperwhip has entered a new era...
* * * * * * *
OOC: With this chapter, I now have 2 packs of a thousand screenshots compressed and archived. A good 300 more are on stand by, until I have enough free time to include them in an update. I probably have enough material for 6 more chapters right now. I've been playing a
lot in the last week, partly because I was too tired and wrecked by my allergies to leave the house, and partly because things are getting progressively more tense. Starting with the great beast megabattle to where i currently am at, the fort is walking a finer and finer line between incredible success and total eradication. The only thing preventing me from writing everything right now is that a chapter will usually take about 2 hours to write, and usually leaves me drained, so I can't really do more than once every two days even if i want to, otherwise the quality will suffer. I really want to wait and clear my backlog of screenshots before I continue the playtrough, but I just can't, because this thing is getting really tense and addictive. I'm aiming for about 3 new chapters a week for the next 2-3 weeks, unless real life gets in the way. Stay tuned!
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