kirabug's idea files

First time in a long time I’ve been deep enough to find some gold. It’s not a lot of gold, it’s a little gold, and honestly I need the iron ore that was surrounding it more than I need the gold.

But it doesn’t hurt to have, because I can’t be on this rock forever.

And who knows, maybe the locals will trade for it? Seems unlikely, but it’s worth a try. I’ll ask disappearing-llama-guy the next time I see him. Or try to ask, since all I get out of him are pitched vocalizations which, if they’re a language, I’ve yet to decipher.

Day 751:

I wonder if maybe the ducken I ate yesterday was off, because there’s been no sign of zombie pig monsters today, just regular zombies.

I finished off another chamber and discovered… well… another chamber I’d forgotten I’d dug. It wasn’t complete, which is why it wasn’t on my map, but it was definitely my work.

(I noticed there’s no other creatures, zombie or otherwise, that appear to be mining anywhere around here, thought the zombies will swing a pickaxe at me if they can find one.)

Some days I could swear that the walls of these chambers store memories. As soon as I stepped inside of this one, I could picture the last time I was in it (months ago) and remember clearly the song I’d been singing to myself while mining (A Martian Went Down To The Moon).

Then again, the lava fountain on the southern edge might’ve been enough to sear the place into my memory.

So I’ll be finishing cleaning that one up. It looks like there’s a lot of ore below it (and also, obviously, lava), so it’s a good place to keep going deeper for diamonds.

Day 750:

I thought I’d seen everything, what with the exploding giraffe-corgis, the zombies, the skeletons, the giant murderous land squid, the pony-sized spiders…

I went out into the ranch pen today and found, at the bottom of the pond, four pig-man things.

They looked like something out of a bad science fiction B movie. Big pink noses, pink floppy ears, hooves for hands…

… and if that wasn’t bad enough, they were also zombies, so “breathing the water” wasn’t a problem they were having in the pond.

Zombie pig monsters.

I guess in a sense they were peaceful. Unlike most things here they didn’t attack me as soon as they saw me. I didn’t take any chances and dispatched them anyway.

Zombie pig monsters. Just what I ducking need.

Day 749: I finished the layer I was on yesterday and dug down again today.

Spent most of the day with one of the giant land squid that walk through walls in the same chamber I was in. This is going to sound weird, but I’ve found that as long as I don’t stare at them they leave me alone.

Then again, I started the paragraph with “giant land squid…”

Anyway, I dug, it stole mounds of gravel and decorated the floor with them, I cleaned up the gravel, it did it again… I have no idea what it’s doing, but it’s not harmful so I’m just doing my best not to draw attention.

I did get my foot caught in a hole earlier and my ankle’s pretty swollen. I don’t think I tore anything permanently but I’d love some painkillers. I’ve tried chewing every tree bark on this planetesimal so far and no luck.

Day 748:

I finished cleaning up the layer I was on yesterday and started the next layer down today. The good news is I can see a lot of big ore pockets that extend another layer down, which is the direction I want to go. The bad news is they also extend in all four cardinal directions and I really want to clean them up so I don’t have to think about them.

The two most important “ores” that I dig up are iron ore and coal — I don’t care which direction seams of those particular things are going. I mean, theoretically, I can build walls of mud if I have to. Mud doesn’t burn though, and it makes a lousy pickaxe. So I pick up the important stuff whenever I see it and I pick up the rest of the stuff… well, let’s be honest, I pick up the rest of the stuff when I can’t stop myself.

Tomorrow is another layer down I hope, which will be (according to my map) the deepest I’ve been in this particular area.