Note: Not happy with this but I gotta move on or we'll never finish
Karak Ungor 58
"Strange stuff indeed," you cough as you slowly come to a standing position, offering a hand to Garagrim, "You ready to get moving again?"
He studies you for only a second before nodding and taking your hand.
It isn't hard for you to muddle your way through it. Suppositions, assumptions, connecting a web of stray thoughts and observations. Drunk you may be but stupid you are not. Usually, at least. The elves do not make guns nor cannons and yet there is a noted difference between those like Teclis and Aurelion and the dagger ships that plague the seas and coastlines. There is a noted difference between the men of the Empire and the men of Norsca. You had not considered it until now but how likely would it be for even the doughty dwarfs to have some twisted dark mirror of themselves? It seems like almost everyone does in this world.
On the other hand, you've seen how dearly they take shame. Some will declare themselves slayers for a single mistake while apprenticed to a master of someone's trade. Others for worse things – it basically runs the gamut of things you find reasonable to things you find ludicrous. On the other hand they are
not human. What they take and think often aligns with humans and though they'd probably not admit it elves as well. But there are certain aspects that simply cannot be understood without being one of them. You can understand
that, and somewhat respect it. Though it is not yet pertinent you do think it would be better to know something better than nothing.
But if the dwarfs react like this against even the idea of acknowledging these dark cousins – if that is in fact what the source of that gun and runework is – then you will not press at the moment.
Instead the two of you head towards the assemblage of the army while the remaining irondrakes burn their way through the streets and buildings. Beardlings and camp followers who are not truly fighters are all over the place and if you let yourself slip into the drunken haze enough you can almost imagine that the town is inhabited again considering just how many dwarfs are here. Then you blink and see them dragging the corpses of the dead away to be burnt and marking the locations for the dwarfs to scorch where the bodies were found. Dwarfs are serious about getting rid of the taint of orcs and goblins on their things. Honestly, the amount of money they're going to put into cleaning this place likely means that you'll be long dead before they're even halfway done fully fixing it all up.
Assuming you succeed in this venture at all of course.
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(Marching Through The Underdeep: 28/100)
Things unfortunately do not get better as you move on from Boki Bolga. The next two weeks are plagued by narrowed tunnels and a total inability to get the full might of the column to strike back against the various forces that pick away at it. Both skaven and goblin forces under the Red Eye banner begin appearing from the shadows and throw themselves into the fight before retreating. Well, that is true for the latter which are often led by what the dwarfs finally tell you are called gutter runners. The Red Eye on the other hand seem perfectly willing to throw in their mutated brethren as suicide troops. It doesn't seem to matter whether or not they actually succeed in killing anyone but every time the column has to turn and deal with it progress is consequently slowed. Again and again.
They aren't even
killing the dwarfs all that often. But, every dwarf injured is one that requires another to drag them back to the insides of the column and even worse there must be further forces diverted in order to escort those too wounded to fight on back to the supply keep which is currently being guarded by what you hear is the Karak Norn throng. Every caravan of wounded means less forces all together and more supplies that are being used up not in fighting. There are no great concentrations of foes to fight and smash down and for every five ranger parties that make it back with empty harnesses after expunging their ammo into the bodies of the foe there is another that does not reappear at all. Or if they do it is while dragging back the corpses or heavily wounded members of their teams.
Eventually you are
forced to come to a halt to reassess the pace and direction of the throng – or so you surmise by the way that the camp is being set up in far more permanent manner than what you've seen before. Messengers flit out of the darkness in parties of dwarfs that number almost a hundred each rather than the scattered dozens you've seen before, each of them looking harried indeed. Rudimentary earthworks are put up but they are portable in the dwarf manner. They carry the stout short walls with them it turns out in their heavy wagons though nothing like an actual gate. The walls are not tall enough for that to make sense and furthermore would probably be a little silly.
The camp – obviously – cannot be made out of tents with stamped down stakes and the usual mechanisms due to the fact that the ground is made out of solid stone but the dwarfs have evidently long figured that out considering how most of them spend their entire lives down here. Large stone posts with tent poles sticking upwards create squat rectangular tents that do not bend and angle like tents would in the wilderness. Up until this point there was usually at least a little exposed dirt or things like it due to the fact that…well, you aren't sure why. But this is the depths of the Underdeep and such things are now replaced with gravel, crumbling dirt, and stone plates put down for more stable footing.
You find yourself at the tent version of a dwarf drinking hall more often than not.
Located at the locus between multiple branching tunnels it's not that bad of a place to send out parties through despite not being the original goal of the march. It's a consolation prize compared to some grand storage vault area. The throng itself cannot march through them all in one concerted push but must instead separate into parties that can be counted on two hands at the most due to the size. It isn't that surprising, Garagrim says to you, considering that mines usually turn into this mishmash of tiny tunnel networks at some point or another.
'You have to go to where the ore is, you can't just make the ore come to you'. Or so he says.
It makes some sense, but that doesn't take away from the frustration that the dwarfs obviously feel at being stuck here compared to…wherever else it was the plan was to go. There are fights almost every hour at areas that have been cordoned off for just such a purpose as they try to excise their jitters. Worse, the quartermasters have begun to ever so firmly squeeze out on the amount of alcohol being consumed to ensure that supplies last longer as the planned for resupply won't be occurring. All of it together points to a general pause in the schedule which can irritate just about anyone who is planning a campaign.
You yourself eventually grow a bit restless.
Why have you paused for so long? A day stretches into a week. A week stretches into two. Then three. Messengers continue to travel back and forth. The High King grows even more grim faced, his taciturn mood infected just about everyone else. Your days are spent drinking, sparring, and wandering around the perimeter of the camp. At this point curiosity has begun to mix with boredom. Especially considering how the teams sent into the tunnel network that the camp sits at the entrances to are starting to come back without injury or a word of the foe and yet keep being sent in…
This would be, you would think, good news. The High King, on the other hand, does not seem to agree.
What to do…
[] Let It Go Until The Camp Starts Moving Again (Timeskip)
[] Volunteer to go into the tunnels, it's something to do
[] Speak to the High King about
why you've been in this part of the Underdeep for a month with teams being sent into these strange tunnels. What…was even mined here in the past?
.
