Category: One Among the Dead

Day 285:

Captain Omega, one of my first captains, used to tell us that any time we saw something interesting in a mine, we should channel some steps or something to it so we could access it again when we were ready. There wasn’t always time at the beginning of a job to fiddle around with interesting things, especially if we were in poaching oar or minerals from a site. But if the time came, she said, it always helped to make it easy to find where you’ve been and what you’d come back to find.

On the western edge of this chamber I’m clearing, I can see a set of steps that I dug jutting out of the ceiling.

Which means I’ve been interested in this chamber twice, although I’m guessing that they weren’t obviously connected at the time.

I’m still cleaning up in that direction, though, so I’ll find out soon enough.

Day 284:

I spent the day making arrows with the feathers I’d plucked off the duckens that went in the smoker yesterday.

The duckens are still slow smoking, so they keep longer.

I have a bazillion tiny cuts all over my finger pads from the delicate work, which is pretty impressive when you consider how much calloused skin is at the end of each of my fingertips from the mining work.

Arrows were all I got done today. Now I’m going to bed and hoping my fingers feel better in the morning.

Day 283:

I am so tired of fish. Fish soup, fish sandwiches, filet o fish, fish jerky, fish pie, fish and carrots, fish and potatoes, fish and carrots and potatoes, fish on carrot bread, fish on wheat bread, breaded and fried fish, fish and fish and fish.

Fish.

I killed some of my duckens today. I hate doing that. It hurts to know they trust me and I’m eating them. On the other hand, if I don’t get some ducken meat into the smoker now, there won’t be any time to do so when I’ve run out of dried fish. And I’d really really like to not eat another load of fish when this current supply is done.

Ducken is just as flexible a meat as fish, and it dries and keeps very nicely. But it’s not fish, and right now that’s the most important thing I can say about it.

Day 282:

While cleaning up this chamber, I discovered a staircase coming down from the eastern side, which leads up to a chamber I dug, well, probably months ago now.

So the good news is that somewhere I thought “hey I should explore this later” has now been explored.

The bad news is that there’s probably not much down here if I’ve already been here before.

On the other hand, I already found one diamond deposit that I’d missed, so if it means having nice square chambers and a clean floor and no stalactites stabbing at me, I think finishing what I’ve started is worthwhile.

Day 281:

The latest trend in zombie fashion is gold armor, and I’ve killed enough zombies wearing gold armor that I now have a full suit: helmet, gloves, chest plate, greaves, and boots.

The boots have that shimmery glow that seems to indicate there’s something special about them, so I’m probably going to keep them. (Plus, they don’t smell of zombie. If they smelled of zombie I don’t care if they had wings, they’d go.)

Everything else is going into the forge so I can melt it down and make more watch parts. I’m sure I can get something more precise than I’ve managed so far if I just have the right parts.

Metalworking is hot, dangerous, hard work… but not as hot or dangerous as zombies in a room with free-flowing lava, so knowing when the attacks are going to start is kind of a priority.