III - The Morass of Petroronto

Your voice is the crackling of burning wood and with your scalding words, you communicate your intentions to your Foreman, who nods.

"I would need the CogWorks to transport back the fuel. That would leave the Furnace without guards."

In response, from your casted body, three small creatures emerges. The Foreman stares at them, before giving his approval. "Then we'll be out. We will be back with info and nourishment."

You don't need to tell him to keep a lower profile: he knows that a new born baby is vulnerable to predators and that's what your Dungeon currently is: just a baby.

While the Foreman is leading the expedition, you rearrange your Body, expanding in size: a new room, similar to your previous entrance, is manufactured, except that this one has the valves running in the walls exposed toward the entry of the room, leaking at random highly pressurized and scorching vapor. In the new room, you move your new CogWorks for protection. While waiting, you focus on your mana reserve: currently, you have enough space, considering the small trickle of Vitae that your being produce. But you will need more, in case you encounters more beings to process.

The Foreman and the Cogworks slowly traversed the misted plains near your Dungeon. Without any knowledge of the surroundings, the best plan was to pick a direction and travel to it until they encountered something that they could use. The mist of Domoter made difficult to look far, but it also meant that it was difficult to spot them.

After a thirty minutes voyage, they encountered something interesting, where they could get fuel.

The mist around the bog was stagnant, tinted by darker hues compared to the normal color of the fog. Small critters and mosquitos buzzled and whirred in the area, avoiding the unnatural flesh of your Orc. The dark waters were empty of vegetation of the normal vegetation, with only the putrescent floating woods on the surface of the water. Replacing his left arm with a shovel, the Foreman and the CogWorks began shoveling peat to bring back to their Core.

The work proceeded smoothly, until they saw ripples from the water. Suddenly, a skeleton, missing one arm, emerged from the black waters, moving against them. With a quick swing of his arm, the Foreman decapitated the skeleton, who stumbled on the river in pieces. Without giving a second thought, the skeleton was united with the previously collected peat to be returned to the Core. Maybe it would found something interesting from burning the twice unliving corpse.

After packing their cargo, they were ready to move back to the Dungeon, but the sound of voices attracted their attention. Hiding behind the rotting tree, they tried to localize their source.

On the other side of the bog, half hidden by the blackish mist, a group of ten human was searching the swamp. They were dressed in black, with their shining coats and boats treated to keep the water outside. Hats and hoods kept their face covered, but even from the distance, your creatures were able to observe that parts of their clothes were decorated with pieces of bone, attached to the hats, the coats or their strange weapons. They resembled strangely contraptions made of bone or a material similar to wood, in the shapes of hooks or claws, which they used to gather skeletons and half decomposed bodies from the deep waters and place them on the river, where the other half of them took them to what looked like a cart, almost hidden by the mist. They proceed methodically, cleaning one sector of the swamp after the other, moving together and with no one stranding too far from the others. When the occasionally undead attack them, they responded rapidly, breaking down the creature and collecting its remain.

Before the men could get too close to your creatures, they promptly decided to return before being spotted.

When they returned, you were finally able to increase the amount of Vitae you could store at the same time. The peat was good nourishment, even if it wasn't good enough as fresh humans. But you would get them in time: you don't think you can take those "Dredgers", but maybe a smaller groups of them …

You almost didn't notice when the Foreman dumped the remains of the skeleton, but once it reached your flames, your entire focus was on the creature.

It wasn't a normal skeleton, not in the sense that was a decomposed human. It was almost like one of your minions, made by Vitae, but the energies that composed it were … wrong. You can't exactly put your metaphorical fingers on what was wrong, but you would say that it was a poor product, badly manufactured.

Maybe by burning more samples from this bog, you would understand what exactly you are dealing with.

---

We are done with the first turn.
You got a new room, a new available trap and your Vitae Capacity has been increased by 2. You got 5 Vitae by your expedition, but from the next one I will probably roll for danger. So, considering the 3 for the new CogWorks, the 1 for the Trap and 3 for the Room, you currently sit at 9 Vitae
All the infos are updated in the Notion Board at this link: The Furnace Core
Setting infos are updated in their ThreadMark.

Please, vote by plan with the following format:
[J] Plan Smart
- [CREATURE] Create X CogWorks
- [ROOM] Create an additional room
- [RESEARCH] Spend one progress to Increase the Vitae Reserve
- [MONSTERS] Go scouting outside.

Vote will be open until the next weekend. Let the game begin.