Let's Cover the Lands in Progress: Gold Release Community Colony

Despite not knowing where they are from, I loved the name changes you did in your first turn, and I wanted to put them back
In fact that's what the initial part with ''a knot of events, dates and reports that I can’t disentangle!'' was all about.
I changed another name, but I'll leave it as a bonus to whoever finds it out.

 

@ Cthulhu_Awaits again I thank you for changing their names back, it was such a fun surprise to see when I read your post about all your comings and goings with the colony and Unforked's as well.

Now I am curious as to your name change and am on the hunt for it

 

I am glad to see that the colony is pulling through. Also, can we maybe get some decor in the laboratory? Help out the doctor for a bit?

Edit: Paging @Puzzlemaker!

 

So @Puzzlemaker is MIA. @Alephred, you're up!

 

Okay, I'm on it!

*edit* Days 54-56 are complete, video will be up in a couple hours, after I render and upload.

 

I've uploaded my turn in video form again (it should be viewable shortly):



The food situation is precarious, I suggest assigning any new workers to prepare the wheat fields. We have a skeleton crew working the Mine, but that's okay for now. I didn't have an opportunity to decorate the Laboratory, so Professor Plumb will continue periodically going insane. Most ominously, there are persistent rumours of cult activity outside of town. I've tasked our Vicar with investigating it.

 

Ooh @Noratoxin has a nice juicy cult to deal with. Exciting times!

 

Hahaha, I was about the write the same thing, yes, fun times are ahead

 

@Noratoxin is officially MIA. @Jagwithtude, it's your turn for Fun Times.

 

Oh shoot, just my luck I'm on it, wish me luck.

 

Is it too late to get on it? If you've already started, then carry on. I'll be on it next time around.

Caught up on all the write-ups. I'm glad to see how much the colony has grown.

 

@Noratoxin, I haven't started to play yet and since it is your turn, please be my guest and have fun with the cult event

 

Thanks, I've never actually experienced a cult event, so this is going to be interesting.

 

I've made a few posts about it. Turns out you can have more than one cult, and they don't work and play well with each other.

 

The Narrative of George Wesson

I'd heard many strange tales about the colony, as rumours of it had create quite a fuss back at the Capital. For a month, the colony had gone unnoticed as just another of the Queen's settlements, but some four weeks before my arrival tales about the Queen's famished subjects and the resulting worrying happenings begun leaking. We all ignored these tales, calling them humbug. It was only after out of the blue a Capital's newspaper started printing stories of awe and praise about the colony. The Capital had just suffered through a week of thick grey clouds and plague crawling across our southern shore. We'd been paranoid about good news. And as if our mistrust hadn't been enough, another newspaper had let into print the article "A Look of Truth at the States of the Colonies", which had centered around that one colony. The newspaper company had been shut down after that, or rather lost to fire, if that's what we are to believe. And along with the company itself, its papers also seemed to disappear. And though we all remember that article, none of us can find a copy of it anywhere.
It was only after that event that my brother from the Colonial Ministry finally answered to my letter, asking for the facts about the colony, in the form of a call. He invited me to sit before my own fireplace in my own living room in my own estate. I've never bothered with my brother on the issues of transgression. He doesn't listen. On that dark hour, he cleared my mind of many a curious imagining. My brother revealed to me that the Colonial Ministry, in fact, had not been surveillancing the colonies. "How else could it have got so bad?" he said. "You cannot honestly believe those rumours! My own brother!" I nodded. My brother never lies. I'm sometimes worried about him. He has always visited the wrong parlours.
After that confession, he had asked me for a favour. The Colonial Ministry had been in dire need of colonial bureaucrats, who wouldn't publish their lies in the Capital's many newspapers and my brother had suggested that I was a fitting candidate for the time until the Colonial Ministry would find someone more suitable to take the position.
I do not remember my motivations, but I had agreed and so had been sent off in an airship the very same night.

Day 57
I arrived with the sun already high above, shining with such strength of spirit that the light, which the airship's balloon reflected, blinded the eyes.
I think, even as I was just beginning to land, the tendrils of the colony already began setting into me. A creeping emotion, a trick of the mind, which I could not put my finger on.
Upon surveying my holdings, I detected many missteps of industrial planning. The mine lacked stockpiles for ores, someone had queued up jobs for clearing terrain, clearly a waste of time.
When I entered the church to control whether the right doctrines were being preached, Vicar Goldencowl pushed me back out. The mans hand trembled and pulsed in a horrible way. When he released my body, I ran off, away from the chapel. I returned in time when I found out what the vicar had been about.


I ordered the foreign office to strengthen our ties with the Novorusians, from whom cheap material could be bought off. When asked how I would go about doing so, I took into account or options and responded, "Nothing is just business. Everything is relations. We must infiltrate their culture and I propose a riddle!" Everett Chainbreaker, the one responsible for foreign relations, asked, "A riddle?" To which I responded, "Yes, and I've got a good one. Listen..." The riddle was sealed off in an envelope and delivered there by one of the Novoursian spies lurking in our settlement. At least that was what we thought as the envelope just disappeared from my desk. Nonetheless, we soon got a response, indicating our success. They wrote some riddles back. "Which came before? The chicken? Or the chicken's egg?" A good riddle indeed if also a confusing one. I decided to riddle with them some more.


After that, my eyes fell on wheat fields, but a few labourers had been set to till the soil, a job too cumbersome and too profitable to be left like that. I removed farmers from the cabbage fields. They were glad to work on some real crops for once and the thought of any solid food-items besides vile meat also inspired them. Harvey Mudgrass thanked me for the additional workforce. He mumbled something about having felt odd working so near to the forest all alone.


I was then informed of a fight between two of my colonists. Turns out that in such situations the colonial bureaucrat is called upon to solve everything. Or perhaps the colonists had just placed faith in me.
I didn't delegate the job, as I do not trust the pious and brutal. Now perhaps the bartender could have taken care of it, but I'm certainly no worse a talker than she.


At evening, I was finally invited to return to the chapel. I find Goldencowl sweating, the trembling seemed to have got worse. His veins had turned a purplish colour. He'd done research, listening to the whispers of the colonies, the echoes that bounced from one oddly placed wall to another. He whimpered irrationally, as if he'd received a vision from Cog itself.
Goldencowl collected himself and, placing the hands upon the altar, he started, "I've realized the terrible thing that they worship." They? I remembered the article I had read. "A Look of Truth at the States of the Colonies". Was there really occult activity in the colony? Goldencowl's eyes locked with mine. "Quag'garoth," he whispered, lips bouncing together, eyes struggling to stay from shutting.
Just as I begun to comprehend the situation, Goldencowl pushed me outside once more.


Eugenia Steelhatch, the carpetner, was maddened by despair. She preached the end times to her bed and anyone else who would listen. I let her scream and shout and cry into the night, but it cost me my sleep.

Day 58

Somehow, I survived the night. With the break of dawn, another airship breaks into view from across the tree line. It stops and hovers above the Queen's Square. The ladder fell down, whipping through air. I do not understand, how the immigrants reached the ground without suffering any injuries, but they did. With those three immigrants, the colony broke fifty and the Colonial Ministry rewarded us for our diligence. The labourers were set to work the mine.


My speech to the arguing two had failed the previous night and my assistant, sent by the Colonial Ministry, informed me of my failure. At first I felt embarrassed, but then I grew confused. Why did the colonists not appreciate my speech in honour of industry. I concluded that the could have been no other rational explanation for that than the lack of the said industry. I decided to show them the power of steam.


The smithing forge will become the glory of our colony. Pansy Uxter agreed with me on the importance of industry. With a good swing in her step, she headed off to the forge and struck into existence some iron pipes. "What did you want these for?" she asked, with a heavy accent common in this colony. "You'll see," I said, "and you'll taste, too." I wink and she nods in understanding.


There had finally been a moment to rest. I had set my feet spread across the floor and set to fire to fireplace, but my idyll was interrupted by the rude vicar. The pious have got no taste for peace, but call themselves peaceful. Well I'm a pacifist, but that doesn't mean I have to be a great worshiper of Cog. Industry is what drives peace. And I worship industry.
Goldencowl stops his trample before me, having left stains in his wake. "It's Eugenia, our dear Eugenia." The same carpenter who had cried through the night before? Goldencowl didn't want Eugenia to get hurt and proposed to arm wrestle with her mentally. Foolish!
At that moment my assistant rushed into my room. It seemed as if he'd been listening to us speak, as he knew well what we had been talking about. He crouched beside me and whispered into my ear, "Let it slip. This is just a test. The colonial ministry has got it all figured out." I slapped him across the face and stood up.
I found Colonel Mustard and his reds training on the outskirts of town. With a pat on his back I whispered, "Eugenia Steelhatch." No more needed to be said, as Colonel Mustard activated just as a steamknight would. His head twisted and he called out to his squad, "Frontier justice! Eugenia Steelhatch! Go!"


Their efficiency was brutal to watch. Eugenia attempted to hide in the public house, but only found more bullets in her body. She ran from town, at least having got the decency to run towards the graveyard. Just as she was about to hide behind a graveyard stone, a bullet struck her in her abdomen. She still continued, but knew full well that no limping, no matter how fast, would ever save her.
Lelan Ironflood, a commoner, was the man to deliver the killing blow. With hands he'd finished what Colonel Mustard's squad couldn't have. Perhaps we should consider promoting him.
I can only hope that eliminating Eugenia was the end of weirdness in our town. But I believe that she had already laid the eggs of corruption in our colony. Now they just have to hatch.

 

Without her leadership, Eugenia's cult fails to accomplish what they had hoped to. They fled from the summoning grounds before any of them could have been identified and arrested. Perhaps they had seen us, but what had made them run had been the trembling of the ground. Goldencowl hid behind a rock as I ran closer. Turning back to look at him, I saw him clambered to Eugenia's gravestone.
The ground begins to crack. One of Quag'garoth's minions bursts into vision. I had never seen such a thing and neither do I wish to see such a thing again. I'd heard tales of hovering monoliths, but this one seemed more natural than that, as much to the sanity of my mind, it walked on four legs.
I ordered Colonel Mustard to meet it. He left me with a look of heavy horror in his eyes.


The walking monolith completely ignored the squad and walked past them. It did not lay destruction around itself, it did not make the ground quake. Rather it was headed for something. I do not know what, but I suspect it sought to dig into our mines and return to the earth whence it came. Such things are not be understood. The bullets seemed to do it no harm. As a reverse, not even attacking the colonists, the thing seemed to emit some wave of madness, sending them running in despair. I observed it with great curiosity, so did my assistant.


Its path ends in a crater around the corner. No one had seen it happen, but the Quag'garoth's minion had just disappeared.


With the crisis averted, the colony willingly forgot about the horror the cult had set about. It had left no lasting effect on the state of things. I began to realize the falsehood of the article I had read. "A Look of Truth at the States of the Colonies". No wonder they had been burnt down.
Chainbreaker had also taken interest in riddling. In the evening after everyone had left, he invited me to his office. We riddled until midnight, our letters disappearing from the counter through the hands of the invisible spy.

Day 59

A new day began with the construction of a road to the mines. I had had terrible dreams the night before and in the morning I decided that all darkness around the colony should be eliminated.


The rest of the town gathered in the chapel for some kind of emergency meeting. I do not know what they actually spoke of as Goldencowl had been preaching too loudly. The room smelt disgustingly and I soon ran off, only wondering what had brought them all together in the chapel.


Traders arrived. I gathered up the dormant spores around the forest and sold them to them. It had been rubbish anyway, but they were glad to accept it. I bought wood-based items off of them due to our dwindling stock of lumber.


In the evening, the iron cooking ovens were finally constructed. I was glad to see them smoke. The kitchen now needs less labourers and can produce food with greater efficiency.

Just as I was about to leave the town, thinking it in slumber, my assistant breaks through the window of my bedroom, warning me of the false assistant, who had been walking around our colony for the last three days. I nod, thanking him, and he leaves.
The assistant familiar to me then returned, calling me along to inspect the exotic sounds in the night.

I do not care about the Cog, but only the one true god of industry. Cog is not the true god of industry, there have been others before it. Other races have really discovered the real industrious divinity. Our race is soon to follow.
Despite my trust in him, I am worried about Figaro Carnifex, who I had left to stalk Mudhooke Road behind the kitchen.

 

Er Why had a Colonel Mustard ,a Queen fully commissioned military officer been demoted to the post of NCO,which is an abbreviation for NON COMMISSIONED OFFICER and is not,using his proper rank and name ,which could be as low as lance corporal Mustard.

Just idle curiosity.

 

Ah, that was my doing but it has nothing really to do with the real ranks in the military but with the board game Cluedo/Clue which is still a favorite of mine, hence we also have a Professor Plumb in this game. In my personal game, my cook is Mrs. White and the man that works in my foreign office is known as Mr. Green, my chemist is either known as Doctor Spock or Doolittle depending on my mood and lastly if I have 2 NCO's the second one often is named Colonel Klink. 10 points to anyone that knows which tv show had a Colonel Klink?

@Noratoxin lovely post, how did you like you first cult event? Well, this means that I am up and will play later tonight and post soon after that. Anything I should know about before I start playing?

 

Hogan's Heroes, of course!

"I know NOTHING!"

Edit:
Brilliant write-up @Noratoxin! Especially enjoyed the riddling sequence.

 

And we have a winner I loved that show and Get Smart.