I've been writing on and off for some time now' so here's part 2 of Nom's log. Enjoy!
(also' after some consideration' consider me interested in playing another turn)
5 Granite, 755
After several days’ journey, we made a stop at a small village of Seedwatch, not long before sundown. As there seemed to be some sort of commotion, Èrith decided to scout ahead while I awaited her return in a hut at the outskirts. When she returned, she was drenched head to toe, which I found most puzzling, since the sky was clear. Could the humidity be so high? Perhaps it is so. She asked that we depart immediately, and I obliged. The local weather could well exacerbate my rheumatism.
Apparently’ Swordgleamed is not the only place with the bandit infestation problem’ although the asterisk ran away somewhere as I entered fast travel and I was in no mood to follow it. Honestly thought I was a goner there. Immediately as I spawned in the middle of these lot’ they went into non-lethal fight mode’ and I only escaped by ‘y’ielding and bunny-hopping away as they kept spitting at me. There was no way I could win this fight’ tired myself out just by dodging away from all the flying saliva.
Following the rising moon, we reached Muffincasket, where we intended to stay the night. But fate had different plans for us, for when we knocked on the door of a hillside house, an abominable brute burst forth, emitting a piercing howl, and I might have spotted a horribly bloodied carcass in the corner of the house as the door opened. Èrith had the presence of mind to grab me and leap of the slope, and so we fled without looking back. Would you imagine, dear reader, that for the first time since leaving the familiarity of endlessly looping caverns, was I truly afraid? Èrith seemed quite shaken by this also, thus we went on in silence, deeming it unwise to stop until we found a more placid locale.
A second brush with death in a day; didn’t even take a screenshot because I was too panicked. A howling freak actually charged at me from inside the house. Took a leap of faith down the nearest non-lethal slope hoping it would make him lose aggro’ and it did’ so I was able to fast-travel away. Else we’d likely have two more characters killed courtesy of a night creature.
It was only in the darkest of night that we managed to reach the town of Pricerings, a large, yet sparsely populated settlement. The bitterly cold, long nights seem to have pushed the locals to embrace the macabresque; I shan’t forget the twisted grimace of a garden-gnome that emerged from the snow in front of one of the houses.
Scouring the town, we met a well informed goblin, reputedly a representative of the municipal government. He and Èrith immediately took to each other, and discussed the local surroundings, interspersing their conversation with moderately savoury jokes. However, when I attempted to show some appreciation for his help, the pesky little varmint spurned me!
Bah! What pests those goblins are. I have never been so offended since our departure from Mischiefpit! Nevertheless, we have been greatly enriched by the information concerning local and regional geography. After discussing the matter with Èrith, we decided to split temporarily in search of Cheese, with me staying behind in Pricerings to probe the few locals for more information, and her, being apparently more suited to parlaying with goblins, leaving for some of the more promising settlements in the east. Sincerely I hope that there are some civilized beings in this wretched backwater.
8 Granite, 755
Oh, how mistaken I was in thinking that Pricerings is but a husk of a town! As I familiarized myself with the locale, it became readily apparent that the surface-town lies upon a bedrock porous with tunnels, not unlike a fine specimen of yellow Cheese. Those tunnels are host to a variegated community of deep-dwellers, a veritable melting pot, bustling with activity from many ichthyic, reptilian and amphibian folk, as well as some goblins and humans. They even have a pet troll they are trying to teach how to speak and keep playfully asking of him to identify himself! How droll!
As I was writing these words, Èrith actually came back from her eastern expedition, and with more a spring to her step at that. It seems that various activities in the goblin settlements have energized her before the journey ahead, as well as allowing her to purchase new, superior equipment. It really is so that Èrith is capable of negotiating good transactions with those ornery greenskins!
Erith is actually quite skilled in gunboat diplomacy.
Unfortunately, none of us were able to obtain even Cheese dusting to diversify our diet of shortbreads and wombat jerky, therefore we opted to set out north, cutting the great loop of the Purged Loot. With a greater density of settlements, this region will likely be the most promising for us.
12 Granite, 755
O woe! How a few uneventful days of journey can lull one into a false security, only to have cruel fate rear its head again!
Before you learn my predicament, o dear reader, I find it only proper to educate you about nuances of gorlak culture. It is oft forgotten that we consider girth to be a mark of affluence and social standing, so it is not uncommon for the finest of us to roll instead of walking. This in turn plays a part in the noble sport of gorlakball, in which many of our finest participate, not always unwillingly, as part of intercultural friendship celebrations shared with our brethren, the blind cave ogres. I, myself, while never able to attain such a feat, have always prided myself on being of considerable heftiness. Imagine my grief, o dear reader, when I found myself reduced to a fraction of myself, to the stature of a pauper, a beggorlak!
And how, you ask, did it come to pass? So it was that one evening, we spotted a curious parallelopiped of oily black stone and decided to try our luck and shelter there for the night. To assure our safety, we scoured its halls, whose silence was only sparingly broken by the crackling of flames, which seemingly were growing on the stone itself. In one of the corridors we found three sparkling dice, similar to those used by augurs to communicate with the gods. And so we rolled, to little immediate effect. Suddenly, I felt dazzled, and soon I found I could no longer speak, and that my body had become twisted and reshaped into that of a giant slithering monster.
As it turned out, the curse was brief, and I am eternally grateful towards Èrith for keeping her composure and not putting me down as I thrashed about; and yet, as I turned back to my old self, I found myself robbed of my robust, cultivated form, my skin sagging and my complexion pallid.
Basically went from this:
To this:
Transformation will mess you up.
I’m tired. A month’s trek and not only did I fail in obtaining any Cheese, I can’t possibly show myself to my gorlakkin without becoming a laughingstock. I only have Èrith now, as my mirror, my light, my comfort and my true guide.
16 Granite, 755
After passing by a string of largely unremarkable settlements, excepting perhaps the wayside auberge of Healerlashes, where, after spending a pleasant afternoon and conversing with local dwarves, my spirits lifted somewhat after the unfortunate incident with the dice, we were fortunate to reach the castle and town of Boltspumpkin. Reputedly a place of fabulous wealth and fame, as the boorish goblin bureaucrat in Pricerings suggested, it is indeed a most interesting locale. The eccentric local potentate had his attendant show us around his kunstkabinett, which contained a number of pieces pertaining to natural history, ethnography, and, being perhaps unsurpassed in this regard, phrenology. In addition, his manor hosts a large, if somewhat sloppily managed library, and a well-stocked wine cellar. After our tour concluded, I inquired about the regional caseiculture, while Èrith shared a joke and haggled a bit with local serfs.
Giving the single most deadly person in the world a crown made out of what could’ve well been his grandmother doesn’t sound like such a good idea now’ but it’s very much in character for Erith to do.
She also helped herself to a quantity of the fine red wine, to the joy of our hosts, but I declined to do likewise, having already imbibed my fill.
Admittedly, I was also a tad disappointed by the lack of fine Cheeses to go with the drinks, but, as it seems, even the noble lords and ladies can hardly afford such rare delicacies. This does not bode well for our search.
To repay the hospitality, we left some curios collected along our trek, those being a worn-down helmet, which, according to expertise, bears the emblems of the Armored Confederacy, once a great civilization, on par with the Creamy Confederacy and the Empire of Peeks, now reduced by necromancer incursions to nomadism and banditry; and a wreath of kobold teeth, a rare mark of a dying species. We also offered to bring more interesting items in the future, should our paths align that way.
22 Granite, 755
Reinvigorated by our stay, we struck north, stopping by several goblin settlements, which Èrith would visit for more negotiations. Finding little luck, we pressed on to find a somewhat promising cave in the piedmont. We entered the tunnels to a somewhat lukewarm welcome, or more precisely a rather tepid (ha!) corpse of a dicephalous monstrosity, slumped against a stalactite and clutching its chest.
So it seems like Luckyowl did actually manage to kill his ettin’ although it took 43 years for the suffocation to set in. The game managed to register the item with which the killing blow was delivered (an iron shield) but forgot the arguably more important thing of who struck the blow.
Bypassing it, we entered into a more spacious chamber deep underground, where we came across more talkative inhabitants. An elderly lady, bearing arms, named Sekur, and her daughter Uzu. The patriarch of the family, one Tohwot, had died only weeks before our arrival. As it turned out, they had been calling the cavern their home for several decades now, ever since a friend named Thon led Tohwot and Sekur to this place. Following his departure, they decided to commit to marriage, apparently acting as their own priests in absence of ordained clergymen, and soon afterwards Uzu was born. The women informed us of a rather nettlesome neighbour, and Èrith agreed to talk to them on their behalf.
“Them” remains the most appropriate pronoun, as the neighbour in question was of the same stock as the carcass in the entryway. A somewhat awkward conversation soon led to a minor fisical altercation, in which Èrith emerged victorious.
In the end, however, all surviving parties were content with the settlement, and a minor celebration ensued.
This is about how far my master plan of making a vampire infestation got.
Taking possession of what the neighbour had forfeited (no Cheese), we bid farewell to our hosts and turned back south, reaching Boltspumpkin in a few days. There, we left a lion’s share of our spoils, and decided to head northwards next. The wealthy lands of the High Confederacies and other realms beyond may prove more conducive to our search.
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Topic: Museum III, adventure succession game (DF 0.47.05) (Read 473186 times)