Dwarf Fortress There a New Baby Quickly Get Him a Bottle of Ale
Last time on the BoC: The dwarves of the Basement discovered the concept of medicine simply in time to stop the trek'southward demise due to falling logs. Some immigrants arrived to help realise Lorbam'southward vision of an underground zoo, while Lorbam herself scraped together the fort's loose change to buy that zoo's beginning exhibit: a skinny hound.
Mid Autumn
Enticed by word of the attraction existence built below the Jungle of Hides, another gang of hardy migrants arrives at the valley, just as its floor turns red with fallen pomegranates. These dauntless new souls - an engraver, a clothier, a herbalist, a peasant and a child - bring the fort'south population upwardly to eighteen.
The most interesting of the newcomers is Vucar, the child. Although only two years quondam, she's a peachy brawler with an utter conviction in her ain importance, a complete absence of fearfulness to the point of defective common sense, and an obsession with giant leopard seals. Udil, the strapping, pugnacious teen recently appointed as the fort'due south manager, sees a real kindred spirit in this new kid.
But there's no time for proper introductions - the migrant band are hustled down to the Basement of Curiosity for a welcome address in forepart of its star (and only) attraction: a thin dog in a leaden cage. It might not wait much at present, says trek leader Lorbam, gesturing at the rough cave walls, but this identify is on the upwards and up. Even now, cages are being forged to aggrandize the collection, and furniture is being carved from the living rock, to make full a 1000 new feasting hall.
Simply Lorbam's speech is cut short by a roar from the humming fortress higher up. Moments after, Imush rushes down the stairs, near as well breathless with excitement to spit out the news: out in the rainforest, a cage trap has been triggered... they've only gone and caught that bloody weasel that'due south been loitering round the forest all year!
Late Autumn
A hasty pit is dug in the flooring of the Basement, and the weasel's cage is carried downwards the screw stairs on the shoulders of a jubilant mob. The small carnivore is hurled into the granite hole with a cheer.. and immediately scoots out again through an unlocked door, to shouts of dismay from all present.
The escaped weasel zooms up the stairs and out of the fort, only can't leave the dwarves' valley due to the palisade wall built across its mouth. And then it just scampers around the goose paddock, causing the birds to honk in panic, while dwarves frantically chase it about.
Thankfully, the weasel is eventually recaptured, as it runs straight into another cage trap. Back in the pit information technology goes, with the leave door locked properly this time. But at that place is a problem: once the weasel realises it cannot escape, time itself slows down.
Horrified past this violation of natural law, the dwarves seek a solution urgently. The weasel must die before information technology stops fourth dimension birthday. Consumed by worry, Lorbam grabs the nearest idler she can detect - Id, the vain and lustful dancer who arrived during the summer - and conscripts him to armed forces service. It'southward time for his dancing skills to exist bent to the dark art… of wrestling.
Id'due south one-dwarf squad is named "the comedic diamond(s)", and after limbering upwardly, he wades down into the pit, unarmed. Every bit the dwarves look down from effectually the pit's edge, Id advances on the furious weasel, limbs moving as slowly as clouds as he approaches the beast's weird upshot horizon. The weasel tries to dart through his legs, but he's non having any of it: Id grapples the weasel with the crook of his elbow, pinning it with his horrid bicep, and delivers a series of dream-tiresome punches to subdue it.
And so, with the casual ease of a person nifty the lid off a bottle of beer, he twists off its head. Time speeds back up with a splatter of arterial blood, and Id smirks upward at his audition.
"Pop goes the weasel," he mutters, with a crooked smile. Suddenly, information technology's clear why they call him the Comedic Diamond. But alas, the dwarves have no ambition to laugh, every bit the zoo is once again dorsum to 1 exhibit.
Looking into Id'south mind after the killing, I was disturbed to find he felt nothing except for a faint sense of horniness. In a grim coincidence, 'Id' happens to be the term Freud coined for the part of the listen which experiences brute urges and base, impulsive instincts.
Early Wintertime
Equally the valley cools down a piddling, the dwarves use the calendar's tail to strengthen their position for Twelvemonth 2 of the Basement. They're determined not to let the weasel incident get them down. Under Udil's managerial center, the wooden tower is built further above the woods awning, charcoal is produced from felled trees, and metals are smelted to produce ingots, deep down in Ingiz's growing forge complex.
The dwarves likewise get properly to piece of work on the new feasting hall: a sort of mezzanine ring on the floor above the Basement of Marvel. When finished, it will have a round pit in its heart, through which the dwarves tin can stare at their meagre zoo as they eat their handfuls of offal. Equally they dig out this new sleeping room, I notice something wonderful near the fort'south miners, Nix and Ineth. Somewhere in their voracious digging, they take become lovers.
Meanwhile, exterior the humid confines of the fortress, a winter of murder has begun in hostage. After his first taste of blood, Id is now up for wrestling full fourth dimension, and and so Lorbam has sent him out to empty the woods of life. She's ill and tired of the encarmine rattlesnake that's been malingering out at that place - at present joined by a new ophidian accomplice since the weasel'due south demise - and wants it cleared away to make room for some proper wild fauna.
DF'southward fauna populations work in a sort of 1 in/1 out basis, where new creatures tin't enter the map til electric current occupants have departed. And so in this instance, Id is being tasked with ushering them out of the map the difficult way: with his large grisly easily.
Id becomes a sort of demon before Lorbam'south eyes. She's expecting a fleck of a scrap when he engages the rattlesnake, but he just swaggers up and snuffs its life out, like information technology's aught. Immediately, another serpent appears in the mist, but he kills that likewise. And then another. Using his patented bicep grapple, he relieves snake after snake of its life, like he's playing some ghastly game of reptilian whack-a-mole.
He bites one snake in its lung, then watches it suffocate. He jams a thumb into another'south mouth and opens its head like a tin can of coke. He grabs one by the teeth and batters information technology against the ground like he's shaking out a rug. This procession of slayings is nauseating to lookout man, and information technology earns him the nickname 'Snakebuster'.
At one point during the carnage a leopard arrives, racing through the mist, and Lorbam shouts a warning - non to Id, but to the leopard. Finally, a worthy exhibit for the Basement has showed up and… oh. Never mind. Also late for that.
Afterward a cursory tussle, Id has stunned the large cat with a swift blow to the forehead, and proceeds to... dismantle it. Seriously, it'southward horrible. He takes apart the beast's caput like a drunk taking apart a Lego pirate ship. I'm genuinely relieved when, at last, he strangles the affair to decease. With his left leg. Id is terrifying.
Mid Winter
The Comedic Diamond'south ophidian omnicide continues all winter, but I won't subject you to any more of the details. Because at last, the Basement of Marvel has acquired more exhibits! Horrified at the madness being perpetrated outside the wall by Id, gentle Oddom the brewer has come up with a 'Plan B' for acquiring animals - the construction of small wooden traps, baited with treats, to catch those creatures too secretive to movement in evidently sight.
A test trap in the fort'southward food store, baited with rattlesnake tripe (pulverised ophidian meat has suddenly go the fort'due south staple food), shortly catches one of the hamsters that plague the larder, and the dwarves are overjoyed. Alas, the animal soon gnaws out of the flimsy matter and makes a suspension for information technology, merely non before a battery of similar devices are ready outside the main gate.
Oddom'south idea is a resounding success - in no time at all, the traps have caught two anoles and a skink, a wren and a trio of sparrows, two parakeets, a lorikeet, and - all-time of all - the fort's showtime primates, in the form of a pair of golden lion tamarins. They might not be the chimps Lorbam had dreamed of when she founded the Basement, but it's a start. To ice the cake, a rattlesnake slithering abroad from Id in terror springs a muzzle trap, and is thus saved from the Snakebuster'south blank thirst for death.
Tardily Winter
The captured animals are taken up to a new store on the belfry's tertiary level, while the Basement is readied to house them (dwarves are partial to snacking on captured small animals, and Lorbam doesn't want anyone casually Ozzying her new monkeys, then they must be stored abroad from hungry hands). Meanwhile, Lorbam herself builds a kennel complex upwards there to train some of her new pets. She'due south by no means an practiced beastmaster, only she soon wins the trust of a lorikeet and a wren.
As winter draws to a close, a whimsical scene plays out in one of the fort's bedrooms. Sitting on the bed is Ineth (the newly loved-upward miner), while on the floor in the corner is the seal-loving battletoddler, Vucar. Both are weeping - or at least, their optics are coated in tears.
At outset, I think the two dwarves are having an argument. But on closer inspection, there announced to have been no cantankerous words said. In fact, they've not been talking at all.
Ineth is deeply embarrassed at the country of his sleeping room - which is fair, given it's essentially a rotting palmwood mattress in a damp sand hole, and a skillful reminder of why the fort needs new living quarters. He's also remembering the land of Rakust as he dragged him to 'infirmary', which is enough to bring anyone to tears.
Only piffling Vucar? Vucar isn't sad at all. Vucar is euphoric. Euphoric, and utterly plastered on papaya vino. She's likewise totally engrossed in a game of brand-believe, and so I can only imagine her tears are tears of happiness, as she loses herself in some sort of drunken fugue of two-year-onetime imagination.
It's just two dwarves, totally alone despite sitting in the same room. Ii dwarves, lost in their thoughts, crying inexplicable tears for completely different reasons.
In other words, things are going well.
Next time on the BoC: Kobolds! Cheetahs! The fort'southward first baby is born! Lorbam starts planning a reptile firm, and some dingoes roll into the neighbourhood.
Source: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/dwarf-fortress-diary-the-basement-of-curiosity-episode-three-a-gruesome-winter
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