I am cursed. Cursed to never see the vengeance against Treedom I truly deserve.
After my near assassination I began to see more ghosts. One even morphed from babe to child before my very eyes before walking through a wall. I would have surely considered myself mad if Commatoes and the others hadn't seen it as well.
As the final stages of my Master Plan fell into place, I was interrupted by the birth of another potential brainwashed minion of the Trees. I begrudgingly presided over its naming and gave it its first battleaxe before beating it with a Tree branch to remind it of its eternal foe.
I have no idea why its mother was so angry with me after that.
The Plan was nearly complete when I decided to check up on ChickenWing's progress. Apparently, the spirits had good taste this time.
With no more interruptions, I pulled the hidden lever in Commatoes' office, hidden behind a portal labeled "IN CASE OF GRIZZLIES, BREAK GLASS."
Deep below Gemclod, in a boiling room over the twisted heart of the underworld, a lock was released, and a small bell began ringing.
Emperor Yeol's time had come.
There were no grizzlies, of course. This was my Master Plan in action. With all cripples safely sequestered in their rooms, and all entrances to the tunnels below sealed, it was time to bring the fight to the surface world. To fight fire with fire.
To fight evil with evil.
The Trees would burn.
The first sign that the Master Plan wasn't going as planned was that the demons took several days to climb to the surface. They went slowly, lazily, almost apprehensively.
There was a huge knot of them, and yet they still moved slowly enough that one of my scouts was able to look into the caves and describe their appearances.
The second sign was that all the demons looked fucking retarded. Giant marmots do not exactly strike fear into the hearts of enemies, nor do flatulent birds.
There was only one demon that seemed to live up to the Lore, a scrawny and ancient-looking dinosaur that crawled up from the pit last. It sweated a pale gray dust that also clung to its breath, and seemed to drive the more idiotic demons ahead of it like their keeper.
Their howls echoed through the fortress after a few days, but most chalked it up to more ghosts.
As they passed the forges, ChickenWing finally began to work on his project at a feverish pace.
Finally, after days of waiting and hoping, they made it.
They were free. There was nothing stopping them from wreaking their bloody vengeance on the Trees that had sealed them, and the goblins that would serve as a gory feast.
One marmot-beast took to the sky, undulating like an eel sliding through water, and let out a scream. I howled with joy and tore at my beard at delight. Surely, this would be the end of the Arboreal Empires. I was witnessing history.
And yet...the marmot-beast kept flying upward.
And upward.
To my absolute despair, the rest of the demons followed it.
Now, there's over a dozen demons soaring in the skies above Gemclod, honking and belching and roaring and vomiting dust and silk. They twist through the air, making blasphemous patterns and raising such a racket that it is impossible to concentrate. None of them so much as broke a branch of the Trees, and they adamantly refuse to pursue the goblins below them, despite the fact that they are plain view. Indeed, the goblins remain at their camps, simply watching the display.
The gods must be mocking me.
Sirocco wrote :-
YeOldeButchere wrote :-
??/??/??
The bell rang a little while ago. It tore me out of madness' grip. A wake up call, a kind of beacon in this dark, forgotten place. A sign that life still endures in Gemclod.
But not for much longer.
The time has arrived, and I must now perform my duty.
By the powers vested in me as Emperor of All Dwarves, I am now called to pass judgment upon this world. To decide whether it is Righteous or Wicked. To decide whether it should live, or die. As dwarvenkind now stands on the verge of annihilation, as the weakness of dwarves has allowed evils too numerous to name to survive and prosper, and as those same evils now stand poised to spread across the world without bounds, there is no doubt as to my decision.
And so, in the name of Armok, God of Blood, and in the name of Kudust, God of War, immortal and eternal Masters of All, I hereby condemn this world and every soul in it to Oblivion.
Let the Legions of Hell bring forth the End and may the innocents be blessed with painless deaths.
Emperor Yeol I
Bobbin Threadbare wrote :-
Want to know a secret, diary?
I have another friend. I don't talk about him a lot. He isn't dead, either. He's just sleeping. He sings to me when I sleep at night. He sings about how much he wants to see the sky again. He sings about all the things he hears us do just outside his cage. He sings about a lever someone made to free him and his servents in case the strength of dwarves failed. He wanted me to pull the lever, but we were still strong, so I didn't. There was Mom, and Penguingo, and Commatoes, and they even let me talk about cats like I was important, which was nice. Now we aren't strong. We're weak, and if I waited too long, there would be no one left to pull it, and I didn't want to let my friend down.
So I heard who was in charge now, and I sang to him when he was asleep. Daeren's dreams sang about how much he hates trees, so I sang about how much the servents hate trees. The lever is pulled, and the servants are preparing the surface for my friend's arrival. All the suffering of the dwarves shall end.
Ia! Ia! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!