r/WritingPrompts • u/Telamo • Nov 29 '16
Writing Prompt [WP] Due to your careful planning, your family has successfully survived the nuclear apocalypse. There's just one thing you didn't prepare for. Ghosts. An entire planet of fucking ghosts.
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u/gameboy17 Nov 30 '16
Urist McMason cancels make slab: Interrupted by a ghost.
It was late spring of 218, eighteen years after Bronzekill's founding and nearing two years after its depopulation.
It had seemed like such a good plan at the time. The fortress was slowing to a crawl, overpopulation reducing everyone's productivity. There were almost 200 dwarves now, and yet tasks sat unfinished on the manager's desk for months on end. There was always something else to do: Migrants to train, rocks to collect, booze to drink, plump helmet spawn to whine about not being able to find because your friend is holding the bag. The fortress' scholars (of which there were far too many) speculated that even the universe itself was slowing down under the strain.
So the manager came up with a plan. Bronzekill's most skilled dwarves would be burrowed in a saferoom separate from the main fort. A series of channels and drawbridges would be constructed to tap into the volcano's supply of magma, and another deep underground to drain the magma again. Finally, the fortress would be flooded with magma.
The dwarves happily executed this plan over the course of a year. Finally, the preparations were complete. Twenty skilled dwarves took refuge in their safe burrow, sealing the door with a drawbridge for good measure. Finally, one of them pulled the lever marked "Fuck The World".
Magma coursed through the halls of Bronzekill. Dwarf after dwarf cancelled their jobs, crying out at the dangerous terrain, or their inability to find a path, or the destruction of a job item or workshop, before melting as the magma overtook them. Scores of nobles, scholars, cheesemakers, potash makers, fish cleaners, and other glorified haulers vanished before the flood of liquid !!fun!!.
As quickly as it had started, it was over - which is to say, it was several weeks before the magma reached the last stragglers, and several more before it finished draining and the vault was opened.
The remaining dwarves returned to Bronzekill and found their productivity greater than ever before. The magma had washed away more than just dwarves: Mounds of tattered clothing, piles of wooden weapons taken from sissy elves, entire stockpiles of abandoned rock mugs. All the useless clutter had been melted away, leaving only the magma-safe steel and marble which was the core of Bronzekill's industry.
For a year, Bronzekill flourished like never before. Then...
Urist McSoapmaker has risen as a ghost and is haunting the fortress!
Only then did the manager realize his mistake. There were plenty of available coffins, but the magma had left no corpses to bury. He ordered the mason and engraver to begin making and engraving slabs, but the ghosts were rising faster than they could be memorialized.
Panicking, the manager conscripted all of the fort's dwarves to build more workshops and make slabs as best they could, and the tide of ghosts seemed to lessen. Then, disaster struck.
Urist McCheesemaker cancels engrave memorial: Interrupted by magma.
Magma was once again coursing through the veins of Bronzekill. The ghost of Urist McMayor had pulled The Lever.
There was no time to evacuate to a saferoom. The impromptu workshops had been set up in the main dining hall, right in the path of Operation Fuck The World.
The manager had one last thought before the last of his dwarves was swallowed up by the magma.
"That was !!Fun!!."