By sprinting ahead of the gremlin pack I can spend at least part of my time outside of hearing range of the goblin jokes, making the journey a lot more pleasant. I have made a worrying discovery however. It appears that the gremlins that I left behind at the museum and other sites have all dissapeared, and I can only conclude they must have been unable to survive without me, or the rest of the gremlin pack. There is no trace of them. 31 gremlins are lost and only 350 remain.
I should have predicted this. It is a common problem when trying to reintroduce species back to the wild. Creatures bred in captivity lack the training and experience necessary to survive in nature, or in this case civilisation, and quickly perish. It was a mistake to abandon them so quickly. I must prepare the other gremlins better, and the only way to do that is by spending a long time training them.
They are truly gone, no trace of them when exporting the populations and sites, or when embarking over the sites where I left them behind. I decided to spend some time building a fortress to allow the remaining gremlins to apply for citizenship, which takes two years, maybe that will fix the problems? )
I talked to the dwarves at Waterdeep, a fortress at the source of the Purged Loot. I need them to assist in constructing a fortress for the gremlins, where I can prepare them better for their future. I hate dealing with dwarves, but only they are allowed to build new settlements.
As expected the negotiations went far from smoothly:
“So mr. SquareWheel, you want to make use of our services to build a fortress for you? First of all, who will be going to live there?”
“The gremlins, and me. There's a lot of gremlins, but they will assist during the construction of the fortress"
“Gremlins?” That is not possible I am afraid”
“What do you mean?“
“We only allow intelligent creatures into our fortresses as inhabitants or visitors. Gremlins are too short, it is well established that you must be this tall to be intelligent” (The dwarf pointed to a height somewhere halfway his beard, indicating the height of a kobold)
I responded angrily: "I’m two heads taller than you, it may be better to drop the argument about heigth and intelligence”
“Stop insulting me, mr SquareWheel! You will have to enter all of the gremlins in the animal category instead. They will not be allowed to work and must at all times behave behave like proper animals.”
“Master dwarf. I did not mean to insult you but we simply need them to work or we will not be able to feed 350 gremlins and provide them with clothing.”
“Clothing!!? Mr Squarewheel you know as well as I do that clothing a gremlin is strictly against regulation DF0.47.05!! We can provide clothing for any creature of a variety of sizes that is listed in the appendix of the regulation, but even though it covers a lot of creatures such as elephant men, undead and even rodent men, it is clear that gremlins are not listed. We simply can not allow this. In fact, mr. Squarewheel, I can read your thoughts, and I will assure you that none of the creatures that are listed in the appendix are even remotely as small as the gremlin, so do not even try to work around the rules by seeking a substitute."
I finally accepted a deal as I had no other options. According to my calculations it would take two years to uplift the gremlins to full citizenship, at that point they should be able to make their own clothing. After the main contract was done the dwarf handed me an enormous stack of paper sheets. "Please sign a form in triplicate for each gremlin" He demanded. "Without it we can not leave!"
I will spare you the details of my time spend in the dwarven fortress. It was terrible, and a complete failure. The seven dwarves that were assigned to the mission were as strict on the rules as the trader I spoke to earlier, and we simply could not provide enough food for the gremlins. I knew they were carnivores and had assumed that they would happily eat eggs or prepared eggs and had planned accordingly by ordering a large number of turkeys from the trader. In no time we had thousands of eggs. I had ordered the dwarves to work full time in the kitchen to boil those eggs. But the gremlins would only eat raw meat,and did not touch the eggs. The horses and yak cows that were brought along were devoured in no time, and the seven dwarves could simply not work fast enough to butcher the turkeys in time and there were only keas to hunt. The turkeys would also only have lasted a month or two at most. It was simply not possible to feed 350 gremlins with a working population of seven dwarves. I decided to leave with all the gremlins when the situation grew desperate, as I knew they were able to forage for their own food outside in the wilds.
So now I find myself again in the wilds, with a horde of starving, desperate and angry gremlins.
So as long as I stay with the gremlins they'll be fine, even when retired. I'll adventure a bit more before finding a spot to settle down
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Topic: Museum III, adventure succession game (DF 0.47.05) (Read 473216 times)