The Swampy Knoll
1st Sandstone 267, Mid Fall
My eyes swept the council room. Boing has shown herself to be completely loyal. Commatoes? Barely conscious, and then kept busy with his duties. Vox Nihili? No, while we had our disagreements, he values Gemclod too highly. Kaboom Dragoon never even gets a chance to leave his clinic. Teledahn and Repelex are model soldiers and captains. YeOldeButchere, I doubt she would so quickly collapse her only support. Markus… hmmm. Markus did go missing that one time. And he was seen speaking with Leperfish, who I have never seen speak at our meetings. I must have an eye kept on those two.
“Dwarven brothers and sisters.” They suspect. My voice must have given it away, a tinge of worry, a bit of fear. Completely foreign to my voice. But then, no other time has the evidence been so concrete.
“There is without a doubt a conspiracy amongst us.” Boing smiles smugly, no doubt feeling validated from all the rumors that persisted her rule. Markus seems surprised, but I am not completely sure it isn’t an act. Leperfish is as inscrutable as ever.
“While I always had you wary of infamous elven tricks, I myself must admit I never thought they could actually corrupt a dwarf against his home. But recent evidence has convinced me this is indeed the case.”
“More and more, the Regal Mechanisms are coming across graffiti etched into the walls. They were first dismissed as the musings of idle dwarves, until it was discovered they were all the same message. ‘Screamin’ Beakdogs Rule!’" Boing's nodding stops. A flicker of worry. A ghost she thought she had memorialized?
"We were confused. What could this mean? Well, reviewing the records, I remembered it was beak dogs that the goblins used to such fiendish effect in our last battle. 'Screaming' obviously refers to a battle cry. And ‘rule’ is apparently the hope of the conspirators that these weapons of the enemy will destroy us. “
“The frequency and the number of these messages rule out the work of a single writer. The fact that they can move within our city unseen rules out that it isn’t a dwarf. At this point, I can not rule anyone out of this plot. But, I must ask you all to once again keep your eyes and ears sharpened, and report any nefarious activities.”
Who could I trust? Who could I talk to?
I glance upon Vox Nihili, and an echo of his crosses my mind. I am talking about the one stolen from me, stolen by one who sits at this very council! The tomb which is ornamented with the name of a council member! Wait, Locomotive Breath had already been removed! He was trying to warn me even then!
YeOldeButchere wrote :-
Journal of Yeol Deabo Tcher, Armorer and Weaponsmith of Gemclod
Busy, busy, busy. Where to start?
Oh, right.
I've been granted a seat on Minty's "council". As odd as it may sound, at first I was uneasy about how sudden this was. Not that I don't deserve this seat more than anyone else in this fortress, mind you, but it was unusually well-timed. I thought that maybe, somehow, Minty had found out about my... ambitions... and decided to give me that seat in order to buy my loyalty, seeing as more permanent solutions would have left the fortress without an armorsmith and at the mercy of outside forces. Could it be that I had seriously underestimated him?
Of course not.
Seconds into the first council meeting I attended, that idiot Vox Nihili decided to bring up the issue of (what I can only assume to be) his tomb to the attention of Minty. Seeing how Minty could have removed just about the only thing I can use to gain Vox Nihili's support right there and then, by giving it back to him, it's obvious he's as clueless as I'd expected.
Truth be told, if anything I may have overestimated him. During the last council, he started by telling us that there was "a conspiracy amongst us". Conspiracy. Such an ugly word. Now, I've done nothing of the sort, but I can see how to someone who's not too bright a few of my actions could sort of maybe kind of look like one, and so I was slightly worried. Turns out he was referring to graffiti or something equally trivial.
I think it's safe to assume I'm not dealing with a scheming mastermind here.
With foul-play ruled out, this does mean that more options are open to me now. If I can find a way to be nominated as the next overseer, then that would certainly avoid problems and make the transition of power much smoother than my original plan. The problem is, I have no idea how Minty will choose the next overseer. I suppose I can wait, and if he chooses someone other than me, I'll go with my original plan. But for that to succeed, I need more support.
Vox Nihili has exhausted all other options, and if he wants his beloved tomb back, he'll have to support me. Commatoes and his cripple brigade are irrelevant for obvious reasons. Kaboom Dragoon, Teledahn and Repelex, I don't know enough about to have any leverage. Boing is... unpredictable, and therefore unreliable. And I still intend to make her pay for what she's done to my forges. As for Leperfish, I can't think of anything I could use to gain his support, except maybe have Markus convince him.
Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure I've heard Markus mumble about "flaws in the design" and "broken pillars" a few times. Maybe there's something there...