Category: One Among the Dead

Day 608:

More mining, more ore… the problematic piece of mining like this is that usually I chase the seam and turn that into a chamber, but when I’m building a stairwell the last thing i want to do for efficiency’s sake is start changing the size and placement of the steps. People like them to be consistent, you know? I mean when do you go to a shopping satellite and have all the stairwells out of alignment and one running into an empty wall? Pretty much never, it hinders movement. And it’s fine for chasing ore seams but not for stairwells.

So it’s a lot of backtracking to where I was and where I think I’m going (up). And that makes for long somewhat boring days.

Day 607:

Found some very nice granite, which is good because that’s what i’m planning to make the next floor of this place out of. And that led to some andesite which mean snow I have plans for the floor above that one… and that led to some coal, which is good because I like burnin things… and that led to a zombie. Whom I dispatched.

Day 606:

There’s a reason when you see someone building a new building they’re usually building the stairwells and elevator shafts first, and that’s that you really want those particular things to be rock solid foundations for the rest of the building. They’re like chimneys in all the ways you don’t want them to be, too, which is why you don’t make your staircase out of wood.

Especially if you live on a backwater asteroid in the middle of nowhere where the wildlife tends to explode or catch fire.

So unlike a ladder, which I’ll gladly throw together out of wood because around here a 3 meter fall is called “Tuesday”, building a stairway to the heavens is something I’m willing to take my time on.

And oh frog is it boring.

I mean, every room looks exactly the same, they’re stacked one on top of each other, the most exciting thing you can hope for is some interesting ore. And I’m two floors above where I started and I haven’t even found any decent dirt yet.

Day 605:

The duckens like to block the rails.

I don’t like to kill the duckens, but I don’t mind a hot lunch either. Which is a fancy way of saying that I’ve gotten back to the place that I’m going to dig a stairwell, and I have a nice hot lunch to show for it.

Day 604:

I’ve dug far enough that I spent today extending my rail network so I don’t have to walk as far to get home.

It’s so far from where I usually am that I’m considering adding another mattress out there so that maybe I don’t have to come home every night.

I mean, ok, let’s be honest, I don’t come all the way home to where the duckens and the sheep and the cows and pigs live, every day. I already have a spare bed out about a two hour walk from there because. And another bed that’s close to Bed 2, but about eight floors down, because some days that is also a two hour walk, and it really is uphill. (The inside of the hill.)

So a third bed a two hour walk from Bed 2 would probably be good.

As it is I only go back to “home”, “the farm”, whatever I feel like calling it any given day, every few days to make sure all the animals are still alive and the crops are still growing.

So far so good.

Or when I need fancy tools I’ll head back. Or I want to store something important. The things you use a home for.

I don’t know what to call these other caverns. Camps? If so, this one’s going to be Camp UnderMountain, because I’m pretty sure that’s where I am. And that means I have a whole lot of digging straight up to do.

It’s time to build a stairwell.