kirabug's idea files

Day 611:

I hiked from the stairwell mountain to the big mountain today. It was pretty peaceful, to be honest. There’s not a lot up there. It’s very cold. Even the skeletons are wearing leather armor to keep warm.

There’s snow on the big mountain, which, I mean, of course there is. We’re higher than anything I can see in any direction.

And what I see, mostly, is trees. Lots and lots of trees between where I’m living and the mountain range. It’s no wonder I had to climb a different mountain just to find this one.

But to the east of the big mountain is something that looks more like swampland. And to to the south, some kind of plains maybe?  To the north, there was a whole lot of nothing interesting.

I sat down in the snow in my wet diamond armor and my still-not-wool socks and I had a good cry.  As far as I can tell when I stand on the big mountain there’s no life anywhere near by.

But as the haze cleared and the sun came out I noticed something a little odd…. one area to the north where the haze didn’t clear even though it should have… and I realized I was seeing smoke. Like from a cooking fire or eight.

So I climbed down off the summit of the big mountain to the north just a bit, and discovered what looks to be a village or a town north of it.

An actual village! With actual people! Or at least actual houses and some cooking fires and possibly zombies that will eat me.

But it means there may be people there who’ve seen offworlders.

(Or said group of zombies, hard to tell)

It’s hope. It’s hope I’m treating with severe caution, but it’s hope.

I clearly can’t walk there in a day from any of my current ground-level cavern entrances. So this means more tunneling or certain death via the local fauna.

But I have it on my map now and I have some idea what I want to do. And I know I need to finish those socks.

It’s been a good day.

Tomorrow I go home and start making plans. Those plans will probably start with “get this place in shape so I can go away again for days at a time” but that’s OK. I’ll have a plan.

And maybe someday I’ll have a way home.

Day 610:

I reached the top of a mountain today.

Turns out I’m south of the mountain I was aiming for — that one’s within hiking distance from this stairwell I dug. Where “hiking distance” means “I’m going to ruin a lot of boots climbing these rocks”.

Anyway, it was a very cold rain and wind on top of the mountain I was on. (I feel like I should name it. Stairwell Mountain maybe?) And the snow line is just a few feet from where I stood, above the trees.

There’s no sign of life in any direction I look.

I’m going to set up camp here for the night and then in the morning go hike the other mountain, the actual Big Mountain, and see if I find anything there.

Cold, rainy, and deserted definitely isn’t what I was hoping for, though, I have to say.

Day 609:

I’ve dug to just below the surface. I know I’m just below the surface because I just hit a layer of permafrost when digging up, and you don’t get permafrost in the places that the soil doesn’t freeze.

And it’s so cold.

And I’m so tired.

I’m home — all the way home — home base home. I need a sleep in my own bed and a hot meal that isn’t potatoes and all of those things are here. It’s way past my usual bedtime. I’m yawning so hard my eyes are watering and I keep dropping the pen.

But writing down that i’m almost there was just so important that I pressed on to this point.

so goodnight, reader, and I’ll find out where I am in the morning.

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.