CHRONICLES OF GEMCLOD

Late Autumn 262: War

quote:

Labour Update, written by the expedition leader Markus Cz. Orbsand

In the weeks that followed my third detached cousin's arrival, things quickly got crazy. His companions ZeeToo and Elswyrr proved to be good herbalists, went to the swamp and in days managed to find enough plants that could be brewed, so that our booze supply was once again stabilized. This of course mocked Vox Nihili, who some time ago said all local plants were poisonous, and also my ability to run a fortress.



Bad Munki then started acting like he ran this place, and I had to give him some kind of official-sounding duty (a bookkeeper), lest he'd take over the whole fortress leading business. This made me mad.

Slaan and Minty became our newest recruits, and since CommaToes couldn't possibly train them, they had to train under Enzer. In no time they both started joking and flirting with her, which made Leperfish mad.

This meant war!

I summoned Leperfish to my office and presented my plan: we needed to humiliate Bad Munki somehow, and we could do that by using inconspicuous Designs to hide secret meanings in the fortress layout. “I know Bad Munki well. We could capitalise on his weaknesses. For example, he fears worms, so we could make the hallways to twist like worms!”



“I too would soon hate worms if the fortress looked like this,” said Leperfish, and we had to start from a scratch. We closed ourselves in my office and starting drawing to the dirt.

Days flew past. Things happened. People came and went but we didn't notice. Enzer came in to kiss Leperfish and tell me she killed some monster called grimeling. Neither of us paid attention. A report came in that a surprised dwarven caravan found the fortress, sold us some food and left. A caravan meant we indeed settled on a frequented place but we didn't care. We were designing again, together, and it felt great!”

“How about this, Leperfish?”



“Perhaps a bit too obvious,” said Leperfish. We erased the drawing and started again.

Munki was also weak, quick to tire, had wide empty spaces between his teeth, wasn't particulary bright, and had an annoying laughter, but we were unable to put any of these weaknesses in a Design. Designing a fortress with a meaning was quite difficult!

One day Leperfish suggested we use statues instead. “It's easier to put meanings in statues,” he said, and went to chisel an example.



“What's that?” I asked.
“It's a statue of Munki's incompetence,” said Leperfish, who, it turned out, wasn't good at abstract designs either.

Then I had an idea: “Can you make a statue of monkey? You see: Munki-Monkey!”
“I can't. Monkeys are too difficult. I can make a statue of Donkey instead!”
So we made a statue of a donkey and put it to the garbage stockpile to show everyone that Munki was an ass.



We weren't entirely convinced by that either, but it was the best we could do. We almost gave up when I remembered an old saying: If you can't defeat your enemies, make them your friends.

I knew exactly what to do.



We decorated the trading post by the entrance to the Great Hall with statues depicting various situations from the life of Deg the West Trade. When Bad Munki saw it for the first time, he literally fell on his backside and started sobbing happily.

“This is... so... beautiful. Thank you!” he turned at us, eyes full of tears.



It wasn't exactly the right kind of tears but it had to do.