kirabug's idea files

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.

17Day 677:

I got bored early this morning and started mining again, even though I knew that the zombies were still around and it was still too dark to go aboveground.

I found that under the granite was a vein of diorite, and under that was a vein of andesite, and under that was a vein of coal…

… and under that was a large cavern filled with zombies.

Fortunately (?) an exploding giraffe-zombie took most of them out in attempt to kill me. The rest I dumped a large load of granite onto, and hopefully they’re buried forever.

(Doubtful. It was a very big chamber. And they are, theoretically, already dead. So they have time to dig out.)

Anyway not long after that I prioritized getting back to the surface because I was out of food, most of my tools had broken mining or killing zombies, and I was really tired.

Back home for a long nap and a good dinner, and now I’m going back to bed.

Day 676:

I’m currently writing this from under a river.

I was mining the river for sand when I came across a vein of granite. So of course if you’ve been paying any attention you know I’m going after that granite vein.

One of the things I’m decent at is setting  up a makeshift roof under a body of water — usually the sea, in my case, but a river will do. (Rivers and seas have their own challenges , as do any mining operations involving water.)

Anyway, I created a little cavern under the riverbed and above the vein of ore… and started mining it… and lost track of time…

So here I am under the river and my makeshift watch says it’s well past dark, so leaving isn’t really an option. I have food, and some fresh water (and a river above me I can carefully get some from if I need it) and a few torches and my notebook, but this wasn’t exactly the way I was planning to spend the night.

As an added bonus, I can hear zombies. I don’t know why I can hear zombies, but I can hear them. Which means no sleep tonight.