kirabug's idea files

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.

Day 747:  still clearing rubble, but now that the big chamber is done (and on my map!) I’m working on clearing the layer below, at least in the area where I was digging before. To be honest, I’m trying to avoid digging across this level right now because while there is ore here, I’m still doubtful that I’l find diamonds here and I want to dig down to where they are.

To the east of here, I found diamonds roughly 40 meters down, so I still have about 20 meters to dig before I’m in the general area of them, according to my map. And with the hope that diamonds are equally distributed at the core boundary. Neither of which have any guarantees at all. For all I know I could dig out the other side of the planetesimal at any time.

Anyway, clearing this level so I can get to the ore pockets (especially the iron and the coal) directly below me, and then on down to hopefully diamonds.

Day 746: Still clearing rubble, which is boring but makes things safer and nicer looking.

Plus I discovered that I dug under one of the ponds at some point and the sunlight is still filtering through the pond, and then down a couple of levels to here.

So actual sunlight! I know it doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re 20 meters underground and relying on a ton of torchlight to to make the place safe from monsters and navigable, a little tiny bit of actual sunlight is amazing for the morale.

I’m almost done here — I did a ton of work the first time apparently — so soon I dig back down.