Journal of Yeol Deabo Tcher, Armorer, Supreme Overseer of Gemclod AND SCOURGE OF THOSE FUCKING ELVES
24th Felsite 268
So. The last days were... hectic.
The ambush I wrote about last time was discovered by nimby, and I was kind of worried for him seeing as he was surrounded by a bunch of elves riding animals ranging from horses and unicorns to war giant lions and elephants. I immediately sounded the alarm and gave the order for the marksdwarves to take their positions on top of the gatehouse and the regular melee squads to assemble inside the gatehouse.
The elves are not particularly creative, and so I expected other ambushes, the same as they've done every other time.
Right on cue, Atomikus started screaming about an ambush to the east (near that hill which the miners still haven't hollowed out).
Those were bowmen, which meant they were pretty much defenseless against Atomikus. She started working immediately and got first blood.
But the elves weren't interested, both the bowmen and the swordsmen to the south were charging straight for the front gate. A few soldiers had already gathered at the gatehouse, so I ordered them to move outside the gate and block the elven charge before they entered Gemclod where civilians could be at risk (civilians not dumb enough to ignore my order to get the fuck inside, that is).
In the east, FebreezeNinja, who was on his patrol route, joined Atomikus in thinning the elf ranks.
Back at the gate, Dire, Zahrkon, Veinless and Vox Nihili interpreted my order to block the elf charge as "Charge the elves".
Meanwhile, behind the elven charge, nimby was busy pulping some of the smarter elves who decided not to charge the fortress full of angry armored dwarves.
The 4 idiots who charged predictably let some elves through, who made it inside the gatehouse and immediately began to slaughter the dogs that were chained there.
Why?
Well, I'm not gonna complain if the elves want to have a stupidity contest with the dwarves around here, but I'm sure Gemclod will give them a run for their money nonetheless.
Anyhow, a whole lot more soldiers made it to the gatehouse by then.
It ended poorly for the elves and their mounts. Of course as soon as the gatehouse was clear, all dwarves proceeded to charge out down the road at the rest of the elves that were coming against my explicit fucking orders, which was especially infuriating since the elves from the east were closing on the gatehouse.
Said elves were also having fun shooting arrows at ddengenha, a civilian who ignored both my order to stay inside and the elves barreling down on her while she stumbled around in some trance or whatever the fuck.
Now the cretins who charged out had chased an elf or mount or something ten Kudustdamn miles down the road and finally decided that maybe they should stop running after it.
The elves from the east started arriving at the gate, with a few soldiers opposing them. Fortunately, they were still busy shooting at their favorite pincushion, so the soldiers didn't have too much trouble with them.
At that point, the battle looked like it was pretty much over and all that was left was mopping up stragglers.
Of course it's never so easy in Gemclod, and another ambush was spotted to the southwest.
More bowmen with more mounts. Sure, if anything they'll probably charge straight at ddengenha, ignoring everything else. And all things considered ddengenha is doing well for someone lying in a gigantic pool of their own blood and with more arrows than fingers on them. Other weren't doing so well, though.
Grizzly bears do not fuck around if they get their paws on you, they mauled that soldier so bad we still haven't figured out who it is even after recovering the corpse.
Of course this death could be excused as roughly half of the military, the one that charged down the road, was busy with a very, very important task:
They'd cornered a war elephant. Now, don't get me wrong, elephants are big and scary, but they're not all that dangerous.
ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU CUT OFF TWO OF ITS LEGS, IT FALLS ON ITS SIDE, SPEWS BLOOD EVERYWHERE LIKE SOME SORT OF DEMENTED FUCKING FOUNTAIN AND IS MAKING THE WORST KUDUSTDAMNED RACKET I'VE EVER HEARD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE, YOU SUBNORMAL PSYCHOPATHS.
But no, the elephant must be reduced into a pulp capable of flowing through a standard pump, nothing short of that will do. Of course it's not like there's anything better for the military to do right now, like, say, helping ddengenha.
And then the war grizzly bear ambush came.
What? You think I'm joking or something? Eight war grizzly bears, with no elves riding them, showed up near the gate with no warning.
I think they're pissed about me ordering all those barrels of grizzly blood. On the bright side, it provides me with an excuse when I don't buy any of it come next caravan.
"Sorry, market conditions have changed." Then I point to the pile of dead grizzlies. Maybe we'll get assaulted by chipmunks too, so then I'll be able to not buy any of that from the caravan either without feeling like an asshole.
Anyhow, then I got to see a war dog get torn to shred by a grizzly. Seeing that dog just stand there looking straight ahead as the grizzly bear barrels down on him was pretty funny, I must admit.
Finally Screaming Idiot and MortuusLupus came out of the gate and decided to do something about the bear infestation.
Which is when the main course decided to show up.
Would you look at that, High Elves with halberds. Yeah, I figured they were probably behind this when the bears showed up.
Fortunately, they were pretty much caught in-between the bear extermination squad and the elephant torture squad, closing in from the north and south respectively.
One of the marskdwarves, Dizz, decided to go play with the bears, despite, once again my direct order to stay on the top of the gatehouse and just shoot from there.
The bears were hungry. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure that crossbows are one-handed weapons.
And then more bowmen showed up.
The military was busy dealing with the high elves, though, not that it really mattered since, strangely enough, the bowmen weren't shooting.
This is about when Minty finally arrived, which sped things up quite a bit, though with the number of dwarves around the elves, it didn't matter much.
They were pretty thorough.
This is about when the newly arrived bowmen went absolutely berserk and started raining arrows towards their most hated enemy.
A war dog. Of course.
But I suppose it wasn't completely idiotic, as that dog did help Gemclod quite a bit:
By spotting the 3rd Elven War Giant Leopard division.
What the hell? How many of those things did they bring?
Doesn't really matter, though. I forgot the details, but both the cats and the bowmen were slaughtered.
What I do remember though, is the elephant being beaten near the brook and making that unbearable sound.
SEND IN THE NEXT WAVE!
For Armok and Kudust! Blood for the blood god! Fortresses for the... fortress god I guess. Ok, that last part kind of needs work, but the first two thirds are pretty badass I think.
So yeah, slaughtered too.
I think that's when Boing came to tell me that one of her export ban had ended. I told her I was sort of busy and that she should be finishing that whole diplomat business. I think she wasn't too happy about missing out on the battle outside, but that's her fault for not getting this done faster.
Speaking of which, the random peon named TheNakedFantastic I'd assigned in Boing's place actually took his duty seriously and went out to fight. Didn't do to bad from what I've heard. I'll have him promoted to the city guard once this is over, and once Boing is done with the diplomat.
There were also screams for help coming from one of the dried out ponds. I think it was nimby, I guess someone kicked her in there.
I'll send someone to dig her out later.
Then something happened which I still blame myself for.
Gregen was kidnapped.
You see, she was with her mother, Ramc, who happens to be a marksdwarf. And like all marksdwarves, she followed my orders dutifully and was camped out in the middle of the western swamp. She got wounded, fell down face first in the dirt, and had her baby stolen from her by an unseen thief.
OH WAIT SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ON THE FUCKING GATEHOUSE LIKE I ORDERED. WHOOPS MY BAD THAT'S ALL HER FAULT.
Seriously.
So then I think it was more high elves with halberds.
They were discovered by some herbalist who spent the entire battle shouting about peace and whatnot. I don't think the elves were convinced.
Especially since half of the military was closing in on them.
The other half of the military, of course, was on the east side of the swamp running after a panicked horse whose rider was both unconscious and heavily bleeding.
Tactics.
Also in the east swamp, Aesop Poprock decided it might be time to go pick up ddengenha, which I think is a nice gesture.
Then the diplomat came to me about some export bullshit I don't care about.
By then the high elves weren't doing too well.
But in Gemclod, the fun never stops, this particular bundle of joy discovered by Lazy Gun, who was outside for some reason.
Pikemen.
The diplomat told me she was (finally) done, and that she was leaving immediately. I warned her not to slip on the blood or get her feet caught in the corpses. I wouldn't want her to be left with a bad impression of Gemclod.
By the time I got back to the battle, the soldiers who did most of the fighting, in the west, had reached the group of high elves. Coincidentally, this is also when the rest of the soldiers came back from Horse Hunt '68 in the east. They all joined in a big family and went after the elves.
One of them tried to flee, but he had the entire Gemclod military on his ass, with Minty in the lead.
Minty's pretty fast.
And precise.
As it is, there isn't a single invader or any of their mount left in Gemclod, and things seem to have calmed.
There was an incident at the very end of the battle were Ramc stumbled on a kidnapper. She tried to catch him, as revenge for Gregen, but in her condition she was in no way to do so.
I like to think she'll follow my orders from now on, and further punishment shouldn't be necessary.
For the time being, I've reinstated Boing as captain of the guard and given the order for everyone to stand down and clean up the mess the elves made. There's also minor wounds here and there that need to be taken care of, and our military needs a rest.
I guess they earned it.
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Alright, before anyone mentions it, I haven't named the dwarf who died, because I don't know who it is. See, a whole bunch or dwarves decided to be dumb as shit and forget their names. So we'll have a "who's this dwarf?" audience participation segment a bit later to fix that.
Also this took way too fucking long.
ddegenha wrote :-
Oral Account of the ?? Battle of Gemclod by Ddegenha, Herbalist:
Well, what happened was this... there I was, wallking in the swamp looking for some kind of suppllies. I'd just gotten to Gemcllod and wanted to see if I could ffind something that might be useful. Maybe something to make some pipes, or a reed fflute or something. From what I could see the ffortress is a bit llight on musicall instruments and it was kind of harshing my vibe, if you can get me. Pllus I've never really been to a swamp before, and I wanted to see if this was where you get rat weed from. I probablly shouldn't have eaten those mushrooms I found, but they llooked pretty good. The next thing I know I heard somebody shouting about stayin' allive and I'm just thinking that you coulld make an awesome song with that as part of the chorus.
I llooked around and then I saw llike these guys there that seriouslly hadn't been there a second before and I'm all "Whoa... that's pretty cooll, I've never been on a trip llike this one." I was trying to remember where I ffound those mushrooms ffor ffuture reference, and then those ddudes started shooting these arrows at me. It didn't really hurt all that much, but they just kept shooting me. Bunch of buzzkills, llike you wouldn't bellieve but I was okay because I've got more bllood than just about anybody. I ddin't reallize how much untill today, but I have seriouslly got a llot of bllood in me. I ffellt somebody picking me up, and then I was here in a bed. I fforgot about where those mushrooms were, but since I wasn't actually tripping when I saw those ddudes I guess that's okay.