Category: One Among the Dead

Day 682:

I did sleep overnight in the cave last night and this morning I had the most stiff back ever. It turns out that my body prefers a bed made of chicken skin and feathers over a bed made of gravel, especially a gravel bed under a river in some of the dampest space I’ve ever been in. I’d be shocked if I don’t have some kind of lung fungal infection after that mess.

On the other hand, I found  a huge seam of ore and managed to spend the whole day cleaning it out and putting it into trunks to haul to the surface. The trunks are heavy, but storing stuff and then taking it up during daylight is still way safer that working at night.

And because I was essentially carving my own cave, no monsters! Which was nice! I might do it again tonight just to see how far I can get with this cave.

Day 681:

Spent all day in the water again today, extracting sand and gravel so that I can make glass and arrows.

(I don’t make the arrows out of the gravel, but I have found a lot of good chippable rock in the gravel, most of which makes pretty decent arrow heads. The gravel I keep on hand for things like “pouring on annoying zombies”.)

The last time I spent a lot of time in the water, I ended up accidentally staying overnight in a cave.

I didn’t stay overnight in a cave this time, but I did find one, so I’m going to pack enough supplies tomorrow that if I end up sleeping under the river again I at least have an extra cape to throw on to keep warm.

And some extra chicken so I’m not as hungry. Priorities.

Day 680:

The rain is gone and I’m clearing the hills that block my view of my nice wood road, so that it’s harder for things to jump up and try to kill me.

(I’m also seriously contemplating replacing the back northern doors with doors that have windows because I opened them to find skeletons standing in front of me, on fire, this morning. NOT COOL.)

It’s a lot of dirt hauling and a lot of coincidental veins of ore, but that’s all still a good thing to have. Plus, less chance of death, which I’m a fan of.

Day 679

The two topics in the title of today’s diary entry aren’t really related. At least, not that I can tell.

The first is an interesting phenomenon I noticed a while ago but I’m not sure if I mentioned… the duckens are psychic. Or at least they’re extremely observant on a plane of reality I can’t grasp.

If I’m in my library with a pocket full of seeds and no duckens in the room, and I move into the map room, none of the duckens in the map room approach me until they see me pull the seeds out of my pocket.

But if I pull the seeds out of my pocket in the library, in the inner sanctum where they definitely can’t see or hear me, and then I walk into the map room, they’re all crammed against the door like they knew I had the seeds the whole time.

Freaky.

Part of why I observed this today is because I was out working on mining, as you do, when a thunderstorm struck. If I’d have been deep in a mine I would have been fine, but I was harvesting sand from the bottom of a river. And the last place you want to be in a thunderstorm is wearing steel armor at the bottom of a river while swinging a metal shovel around. So I’m home drinking some hot water and apple peel “tea” and taking it easy for the rest of the day.

Day 678:

I do really wish I had a physicist with me.

Today, while mining aforementioned river for sand–

I should name the river. I’d name it “Sand River” but by the time I’m done with it, there won’t be any sand. I’d name it Zombie River but who wants to be reminded of that? I’d name it after me but that just feels creepy when you live next to things you’re named after. For now it’s the East-West River as it’s the only thing running that direction.

–while mining the East-West River, I discovered a massive hole at the bottom. I mean a chasm. I mean from the surface of the river I can see a giant waterfall going down a significant distance. The kind of thing you definitely don’t want to get sucked into.  The kind of thing that would make the Company Surveyor call the mission off for the day while he rewrote all the plans and tried to come up with new and ingenious ways to not get us all killed.

Me, I tied a rope to a tree and then around my waist and hoped it was enough to keep me from getting sucked in.

One nice part about giant chasms surrounded by sand is that you know the sand is being supported by something solid, because otherwise it would’ve been sucked into the chasm. That’s true of giant chasms on land or water, by the way.

But the part that’s breaking my already-damaged brain is how the whole frogging river isn’t getting sucked in. That hole’s big enough to take a shuttle into. The river’s barely wider than it is. How is any water getting across?

Like said, need physicist. And possibly stronger rope.