Sirocco wrote :-

Yeol's brow was furrowed with concentration. Isolated in his hall he was mostly unaware of the comings and goings of his fellow dwarves. But now when he pressed his ear to the wall he could hear the distant plodding thumps of some enormous creature in the fortress. What could be going on up there?

He listened again, and beyond the great reverberations of the monster... what was that? Some sort of lullaby?



Emperor of us All



music by Sirocco
text by Maugrim

Sung by Krysmphoenix:


Just music (arranged by YJT):


Just music (arranged by Kikka):






"Under the stones of Gemclod
Deep in her carven hall,
Down where the magma surges
Against the darkstone wall,
Under the stones of Gemclod
Far from the demons' thrall
Bides she until our passing,
The Emperor of us all."

"Trappings of war surround her
Forged of her own great hand,
Tireless she works the anvil
Alone beneath the land.
Far from the Bears that plague us,
Far from the Goblin band,
Far from Elves our Emperor
Awaits our final stand."

"Last of the famed Palisade,
Last of the chosen few,
Tireless she works the anvil
To forge the Dwarves anew.
Repelex, Minty, Enzer,
Clad all in armour blue
Stand at her back in judgment,
Hard warriors and true."

"Under the stones of Gemclod
Biding until we fall,
Poised to return in vengeance,
The one they call Yeol:
None shall proclaim her passage,
None but the mountain tall
Death will foretell her coming,
The Emperor of us all."





Sirocco wrote :-

The Emperor Of Us All

Key: Bb
Metre: 4/4
Overseer: YeOldeButchere

Lyrics by Maugrim this time, accompanied by a nice little setpiece of a mother singing to her baby about how awesome Yeol was when she was overseer. I think YeOldeButchere pointed out later that such fond reminiscence is at odds with his dwarf's character which is amusing all by itself.

This piece is a very simple little organ piece. I've written a little about it before, so I'll just copy/paste some stuff over:

Maugrim's depiction of the setting mentioned "the cadence of a hymn" (known as a plagal cadence if anyone's interested) and it was being sung to a baby like a lullaby so I had two things giving me ideas there, the result being a hybrid between a hymn and a lullaby.

To that effect, I left out usual organ norms like the foot pedals and four-voice harmony since I wanted the melody to be very simple and plaintive. The harmony is kinda stilted with some fairly dissonant chords flung here and there to give a subtle sense of how the fort is collapsing into disorder. It wasn't very time consuming to write because a lot of it is just repeats - my original intention was to have ambient sound effects in the background to represent Slitheredlow murdering people in some distant part of the fortress, but after some mucking about online for sound effects and playing about with my software I could tell I was only going to frustrate myself so I put it aside. The ambience would have given the song a better dimension of development.