One Swell Foop wrote :-

I've got some time to kill, so here goes a little backstory...


Journal of One Swell Foop


From the ruins of our fortress,
Beards burning from the embers
Of our hallowed home and fortress
We few dwarfs arose, lamenting
In the thrice-cursed blinding brightness
Of the roofless oversurface.

Of our foes, our damned despoilers
Neither hide nor hair nor weapon
On the ashen ruins lingered
There we choked upon miasmas
Reeking charnel house miasmas
And we fought despair and madness.

After time, we set to digging
Hands and picks were set to digging
For the bodies of our brothers
For our artifacts of menace
But the fortress deep was buried
And the arms that dug it stronger
Than we few, still bloodied, broken
So we shamed our fallen fathers.

Long we sang of loss and sadness
Till arrived a band of longshanks
Wispy-bearded merchant menfolk
And discovering we stragglers
Made us gifts of food and liquor
As small tribute to the honour
Of our fallen home and brothers.

Then they spoke of distant cousins
In a blighted swamp, rebuilding
There to make a stand, rebuilding
Walls to stand our foes' worst forces
And anew a fortress founding
That the legends of their fathers
Would yet in the beer halls echo.

So resolved we then to travel
On the overworld to travel
Scorning rains and elves and forests
To assist our distant brethren
In the building of a bastion
There to carve our fathers' stories
In the hallowed halls of Gemclod.

Epee Em wrote :-

This is a -cat tripe-. Carved onto the item is a journal entry, due to a shortage of conveniently available paper or engraving space.

Coming to Gemclod at last. Bringing our people together in one location perhaps makes us more vulnerable. We will destroy them all.
Hopefully, things will be different. We have lost before, but with the assembled might of The Famous Palisades, nothing will kill us.
Our enemies will be torn apart at last. Reduced to smears and miasma.
Perhaps our revenge is nigh.

I am a butcher. My role in the fortress of Gemclod is to precisely carve the dead into food to fuel the fortress. That which is dead is useful. Surely, Kudust himself intended such, encouraging the spillage of blood. My worth here is proven with each precise cut of meat provided to the kitchens. The bone crafts of Gemclod would suffer without me to weed the detritus from the assistance of death.

The earth itself can die. Exceptions aside, stone returns to the warm death of magma. Bones, flesh, organs, connective tissue, nerves, blood itself, all dies a true, final death within magma. To be of no use in death, not even to provide sustenance to the earth, is the supreme penalty. Our enemies must face this. The eternal death will consume all, a burning surge of wrath.

Certainly, I can only speculate about the fate of my predecessors.
Had they known what I do, however, after seeing this fortress, perhaps our blood-soaked history would be different.
Only we have suffered the slaughters and purges.
Perfect. I will sharpen my cleaver and wait.



My doodles suck, but this is basically what he looks like in my head...the side blob of hair was meant to be a ponytail resting on his shoulder, but I gave up drawing the body. I DO THE ARTSY-INGS.