Part 27: Jazzimus Prime: Prologue 3
Syrupleaf - Chapter V Prologue Part 3
23rd Timber 141
After a couple more months of travel, the weather has cooled off a bit.
As we set up camp late that night, I notice that the stars overhead are not as I remember them.
"What happened to the stars I used to know?" I ask Phrederick.
"I believe we've crossed well into the southern hemisphere. The stars are different here. It's kind of a long story, I'll explain it during tomorrow's journey."
At least the temperature here is comfortable. We have been foraging for food, which is abundant here, to refill our supplies.
"So, it's kind of nice here. I think I just might like this Syrupleaf place. Are we almost there yet?" I ask.
"Pumpinglemma is the one who knows where we're going. Hey, Pumpinglemma, how much farther?" calls out Phrederick.
"Uh... well... we're more than halfway," Pumpinglemma nervously replies.
---
21st Opal 141
We are now in a trackless white land. Over the last couple of months of travel, the weather has gone from pleasant, to cool and pleasant, to cool and damp, to chilly, to cold, to this.
"What the hell is this cold white stuff all over the ground?" I grumble.
"You mean the snow?" replies Alius.
"What the hell is snow?" I ask.
"It's this white stuff on the ground. This is what rain becomes when the weather is this cold."
"This is such bullshit," I mutter under my breath.
---
14th Obsidian 141
After a few more weeks of travel, it is even colder than it was before, if such a thing is possible. The ground has become hard and slippery. Alius says that we are walking on what he calls a "glacier". I would write more in this journal, but my hands are getting numb.
---
29th Obsidian 141
Our supplies are exhausted. We have had to slaughter and eat most of our pack animals.
Pumpinglemma claims that he can see the spire of the mountain of Syrupleaf in the distance, and we should be able to reach it in a couple more days. I can't see a damn thing myself except for a bunch of this "snow" blowing all over everywhere. Alius helpfully describes the weather as a "blizzard".
We don't have this blizzard shit back in the jungle.
---
1st Granite 142
I may be hallucinating, but I think we have arrived at our destination.
We make a beeline for the fortress entrance, too cold and miserable to wonder why the hell anyone would have established a fortress here.
Idles wrote :-
Date Unknown, 140
Diary of the Miner 'Idles' Workrains
It'll be a nice place, they said. Staggering mineral wealth, they said. Lots of work for a strong young miner, they said.
They could have at least mentioned that the "fortress", if you could call it that, was buried under a league of ice! And leagues from nowhere...
Fortress recruiters be damned. Still, not a half bad adventure.
At least their last claim was correct. Plenty of mining to be done in this place--the manager Skullbuggy gave me a month long work order as soon as I stepped in the gate. Maybe I'll find something good buried under these frozen wastes.
Break's over, back to digging.
Date Unknown, 140
Diary of the Miner 'Idles' Workrains
I'm beginning to think that my family name wasn't just plucked from the air. The mining team is working triple shifts--we've got to finish these utility tunnels soon.
You see, the genius who decided to settle here didn't bother to check for the presense of farmable muck or liquid water. The brook is frozen through year round, and all the earth in this place is dry and icy.
It's a good thing one of our exploratory shafts struck warm-rock last... damn me if I can't even remember how long ago that was. Must have been digging for weeks, and we're still not done. The plan is to divert magma near the brook to melt it, then divert the meltwater back towards the fortress. I don't know if I can take the pressure--the whole fortress is waiting for the completion of this work.
Gods, and those things outside... if thirst and starvation do not kill us, those things certainly will. I have not yet seen them, but they make noise enough that if I press my ears to the rock, I can hear them. Now is a time I'm glad for the work of a miner. I'm as far from those things as you can get in this place.
Break's over.
Date Unknown, 141
Diary of the Miner 'Idles' Workrains
Thank the gods for the blood of the earth. The plan worked. We thawed just enough of the brook to supply a well and a few large farm plots. And now we also have working magma furnaces. When I came up to make that first report of flowing water, some dwarven lass I had never seen before nearly removed my beard with her affections. Alas, a miner's work is never done.
In other news, those beasts grew tired of beating on our gates and left. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders--although, the things will surely be back. They have probably just gone to hunt some of the woolly mammoths that roam nearby to sate their blood-thirst. Egh. Just thinking of the things gives me the willies.
Someone needs to come up with a plan for dealing with those things. Everyone knows that they will return, sooner or later. And what does our overseer do? I'm instructed to excavate one of the most elaborate, undwarvenly jails I have ever seen. The plans show that the cells will house beds! Beds! It wasn't even until last month that I was assigned a proper bedroom. He is setting himself up as the sheriff, once his term as leader is over.
Back to digging.
Date Unknown, 142
Diary of the Miner 'Idles' Workrains
One of the other miners brought down word that 'Jazzimus Prime' a new overseer has arrived, as well as the Dungeon Master in a large caravan. More work from those two, I'm sure. Perhaps I will be recalled from my current task.
We have extended a passageway above and across the bottomless chasm, searching for mineral wealth on the far side. I was promoted for my find of bituminous coal. Steel shall now be plentiful in our fortress with this supply of coke--we shall no longer have to burn imported wood.
As much as I yearn for the chance to find even more precious deposits, this part of the fortress is very trying on my nerves. Endless tunnels, crisscrossing each other, like a maze. The screeches of batmen and the grunts of troglodytes pierce the thin walls near the chasm. They chill my bones almost as badly as those fiends beyond the gates.
Perhaps, perhaps our new leader will decide on a plan to deal with those, 'Spawn of Holistic', as they have come to be called. What a thrill it would be to dig out the instrument of their destruction. Perhaps I will be relocated from this part of the fortress. I can hope.