Kahdzbar’s Journal, Part 7
We don’t have any food. Our soil is hard as rock. Our water is spoiled and rotten. We’ve lost the only one of our number who knows how to use a weapon. Winter has set in, we’re out of supplies, we’ve just lost contact with the outside world, and we’re all going to die.
I think they wanted me to make a speech. After dinner, they expected it. I really did try to scrounge one up, but in the fifteen minutes I had to come up with something the best I could manage was, “Well, we’re still alive right now.” That’s the highlight, really. That’s the one thing we’ve got going for us right now. I just wish I could find some way to capitalize on that.
I got to my tent, got out my stationary, and sat there for two hours trying to draft a single order. Nothing came to me. There are no animals nearby to hunt. Farming has proven entirely pointless. Our water is bereft of fish or basic drinkability. The pointless excavations beneath the surface are complete, and we have nothing to fill them with but the stone these excavations produced.
So…that’s what we’ve got, actually. Lots of stone that needs moving. I draft a motion forthwith. Yes. Yes, that’s precisely what we need to get us through this rough patch, actually. Yes. Yes! Why didn’t I see it before! See, no, once we get the stone squared away outside, it’s all solved! That’s what we need to do! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
They took the stone out today, I guess they didn’t have anything better to do. It’s that or hunt for vermin, or sit in the corner and think and think and wait for the water to come around. Besides, it’s all squared away now, all
Squared
Away
All nice and neat, and it’s like a perfect grid and the fortress makes sense now
I did it right, we did it together and we
I got a letter today. It’s a letter from a nearby fortress. It asked me what I wanted when they came to trade again. I sent it back. We don’t need anything! We’re fine! It’s all fine over here. We don’t want to trade our perfectly good stone for their worthless carts of meat and food and
Things went so well today. There’s a lot of stone squared away, all
Squared
Away
And some people are hungry now, but that’s not new, is it? Hungriness is good. It’s the fire. It’s the crucible that makes us strong, makes us hard, like stone
we’ve got a neat little tomb here
It happened today. It happened, as sure as the sun going down and coming up and going down and going down. Smiley got up today, and she looked at her farm, and she looked at the fortress. And she walked to my tent and looked at me, and didn’t say anything, and I didn’t say anything, and she didn’t say anything, and then she left and I waited and waited and I heard the screams.
I looked out, and there was the woodburner on the ground
who will burn our wood
and she was hitting him and hitting him and screaming and gnashing and tearing and people were yelling
And we stood and we watched her, as the burner bled to death on the ground, and we looked at him with eyes wide with frustrated envy
Squared away, it’s just like I planned it.
Squared away.
Squared away.
Four of us now. Just me and Sparky and Fishy and a new guy, I don’t know him. We just sit and drink water and get rats to eat and sit and sleep and sit. We don’t talk. That’s good. I don’t really have much to say to them. I did appoint Sparky as the new leader, since he has seniority over the fish guy. Or girl, I, you know, I guess I didn’t ask. Funny, now that I think about it. Really funny.
They look at me sometimes, and I feel sorry for them.
What just happened
I…something just happened. It was important. And funny, too. I haven’t stopped laughing since it happened, a few minutes ago. I was in my tent, and I was nibbling on a fieldmouse, and I saw a guy. He was a new guy. Not the new guy, a new guy. And I asked him who he was, and he blinked, and he said he was one of the new workers.
I asked him what new workers.
He said, “One of the new immigrants.”
There were 14 more of them.
They walked to my tent. They walked to my tent, past the black water, past the abandoned fields, past the stacks of half-finished beds and the immaculate stone piles, past the bodies that sat bloated and foul in the frustrated winter sun, and they asked what I would have them do.
I knew just what they should do. It would be the best thing for the fortress. The best thing for everyone. Including me.
I got up. I gave each one a pick, and I told them to follow me. I took them away from the fortress, to a place I knew from when I was finding the place to make the best fortress ever. It was a wall. A stone wall. It looked like the others, but it was hot to the touch and you could hear strange noises if you put your ear up to it.
I told them to gather around, to cluster up to the wall, and dig just as hard as they could.
They didn’t listen. They looked at me, and I knew there was nothing else I could do here. We were done. I was done. It was over.
You know, I’m glad it worked out like this. Everything fixed itself so quickly. I was afraid it was going to drag on, but I think all of my problems are solved now. I think I did a good job. I did the best job. I can see that now.
I’m going home.
Khadzbar has gone suddenly crazy. Like, complete 180.
Awesome.
He’s dead now, right?
All Squared Away. All Squared Away. All Squared Away.
better safe than sorry better safe than sorry better safe than sorry
all work and no play makes Khadzbar a dull boy
all work and no play makes Khadzbar a dull boy
all work and no play makes Khadzbar a dull boy
all work and no play makes Khadzbar a dull boy
all work and no play makes Khadzbar a dull boy
all work and no play makes Khadzbar a dull boy
I think it’s lovely that the fort died before it was interesting enough to bring any enemies.
And 14 immigrants to a dying fort is pretty common. These are the dwarves who are least immune to Marketing.
Well, at least they didn’t freeze, or starve, or get trampled by psychotic pachyderms, or ripped to shreds by monkeys, or slain by a band of orcs, an unspeakable horror and/or devoured by a rampaging dragon. And best of all they avoided being banished to some crappy pocket dimension by a couple of pompous elves. So as far as Dwarven settlements are concerned, their’s was rather fortunate. What better way for a Dwarf to go than to be entombed in, and made one with the living stone itself?
My first fortress went about this way. I built it near a half dozen ponds, thinking all our water needs would be met. Then the first winter came, and my dwarves all died of dehydration.
It’s rather sad they can’t figure out how to melt ice.
I just started on a map with a double thick aquifer and a river. The immigrants keep walking right next to the river and getting pulled in by gar and pike. A bunch of the fish have long epic names now. The waters literally run red with their blood and the banks of the river are stained, dwarfchunks floating everywhere.
And the project to punch through the aquifer using magma cooled by water has just finished after claiming the lives of several workers who insisted on running down into the pit to clean up the molten obsidian.
I lost three of my original seven, though luckily they’ve been replaced by several cheesemakers and soapers who got past the devil fish. That’s when I realized I had set High-Traffic zones around the river rather than Restricted-Traffic. I was encouraging them to walk right next to the river.
Can’t wait to see the engravings I get from this. The long-nose gar Deathshadow the Blue Slayer of Children will probably become our national symbol.
…I just realized.
You get seven dwarves.
Like *that’s* not a reference , or anything…
So you’ve abandoned it? If so, is the next journal going to be some sort of tying-up-the-loose-ends-before-quitting? Or are you continuing on?
Also, in my first fort I died because A siege arrived and we were out of booze and didn’t have a well inside the fortress. So it was either charge the invaders or die of dehydration. It didn’t end well.
The second died because someones pants were holding the door open that would keep invaders out. 30 dead and a tantrum spiral later that fort was pretty much doomed.
Third one I abandoned out of boredom, but before that I had managed to tame a dragon, made an underground river, survived several sieges, made so much worthless crap I could buy several kingdoms, made a flood-the-world-with-magma device that didn’t work very well and managed to kill several nobles with the drowning chamber.
Well, this is a rather epic concluding, or penultimate, post. Very good job with crazy.
“who will burn our wood” was really chilling. Bravo.