Room - Wishing Well, Burrowing Monster
Beyond the catalogued crypt is another normal, generously sized, relatively dry room with a hewn alcove. Doddot frowns in pattern recognition. Surely enough, as she passes the alcove, another monstrous tongue slides out from between teeth larger than tombstones.
Borrowing from the same instinct used to sex chicks, Doddot recognizes immediately that it's a new mouth, distinct from the one on the first floor but no less patient. She does not know if they are connected. She doesn't want to.
Doddot flips a coin onto the tongue, where it lands with a moist plop.
The next room also features an impression in the wall, but even a cursory inspection tells of a different origin. It's a round tunnel instead of a squared alcove. It's been chewn, not hewn. It's sticky with a clear, viscous goo.
Doddot rubs the slime between thumb and forefinger ponderously.
Shuffling from deeper in the tunnel alerts her to an approaching mass. She hits the ground face-first as the annulated body of a massive earthworm breaches into the cavern. Easily two dwarves in diameter and making use of the Pywormagoras principle to extrapolate length, the earthworm is just too fucking big to be comfortable.
Startled by the fire of Doddot's torch searing the tender flesh of its underside, the worm panics. It burrows upward, easily chewing through feet of solid stone in its flight. It doesn't take long for each floor to give way, but it gives the mages enough time to prepare. The worms charges for the escape, the mages charge their spells.
The youngest of them, young Lihloin, swats the annelid right on the nose with an enchantment textbook. A wave of reddish-yellow magic washes over the room, and the worm falls still. Abashed, it coils over itself like an ashamed puppy. It is relocated to the kennel, and Lihloin gets promoted to 'Animal Carer'.
With caution signs erected near the holes in the floor and some planks stretched across them, Doddot returns to the depths.
Summary
- 3♠️ - Remnant: Wishing Well
- K♣️ - Formation: Burrowing Monster - A Really, Excessively, Frankly Uncomfortably Large Earthworm
Combat Summary - The Conqueror Worm
- The Conqueror Worm - 35 STR - 20 + 15 for Depth
- The Dimorc Disputantes - 4 Soldiers at 5 STR, 5 Mages at 6 STR.
- No hostiles in range for Worm or Disputantes for two turns.
- First and Last Blood - Mages for 30 Ranged, Conqueror Worm tamed.
The Hold
Buildings
- Library - 5/5 Mage Occupancy, Good Magic: Nurse's Sigil (when Units move through this square, they recover all of their STR).
- Kennel - 0/5 Hounds or 1/1 Conqueror Worm (STR 35), can tame creatures.
- Kitchen - +50% STR to units housed in adjacent squares (current: Kennel, Library).
- Forge - 0/1 Cannon Occupancy, can build traps.
Formations
- Natural Magic - Good Magic: Pawtral (May pay 5 Trade Goods to roll 1d4. Rolling a 4 gains a friendly Sabretooth, 20 STR + 2 movement, spawns from Kennel during combat. Also, lovable cats.)
- Volcanic Shaft - Dormant. For now. Intersects river of magma. Rule of cool: erupts on both floors.
- River of Magma - Liquid. Doesn't do anything. Intersects volcanic shaft. Rule of cool: erupts on both floors.
Remnants
- Wishing Well - May play 10 Trade Goods to roll 1d2. 50-50 Good v. Bad Magic on result.
- Abandoned Mine - Dormant. Forever?
- Underground Forest - +2 Resources per turn or can be felled for a free room.
Resources
- Resources - 22/50 - ( +4 from Underground Forest )
- Trade Goods - 22/50 -
- Soldiers - 4/X - 5 STR
- Mages - 5/5 - 4 (+2) STR
- Cannons - 0/1 - 30 STR, 1/fight
- Conqueror Worm - 1/1 - 35 (+17) STR
World Notes
Dramatis Personae
- Doddot Dimorc - The ostensible protagonist mining the caves beneath her family hold. A bit dim herself.
- Hamgard - The chef! He's never been a chef before, but he's figuring it out quickly.
- Sandwich - Doddot's gross white cat, hatchling of the Pawtral magical room. He accompanies Doddot on her adventures.
Historical Events
- The Cat Fight - Doddot's first significant military victory, a skirmish that took place in the Pawtral magic room. Mages and Soldiers bravely fended off an onslaught of handyman, using the ladder as a chokepoint. The Felling of Warmaster Donir - The first ancient monstrosity slain by the dwarves of Dimorc hold, Warmaster Donir was slain by an unbroken line of mages. It serves as reminder of the terrifying potential of magic to this day.
Takeaways
- Hey, guess who realized it's been 'Pawrtal' and not 'Pawtral' this whole time. I've been trying to figure out the joke this whole time. In the classic catch-22 of such moments, it's actually funnier to leave it as Pawtral now that I know.
- When life won't give you a Sabertooth, give yourself a Big Worm instead.
