>>5390549>>5390449>>5390321>>5390135>>5390092>>5390036You swaddle yourself and your ectothermic companions in as much fabric as you can collect from the dwarves and their supplies without leaving your Drow allies’ captive workforce utterly nude and unprotected themselves. It does less good for most of your kind than for the mammals, anyway, serving only to slow heat exchange with the environment; apart from yourself, thanks to your internal store of ancestral dragonfire, the amount of body-heat your fellows produce and could retain is negligible.
The snow has died down, but not entirely ceased its descent. The sky is turbulent and grey, and drifts of the accursed ice-particles partly fill the harsh crags and crevices of the Bloodrise. You leave at sunrise, finding the sheets of pristine white painted with a warm red that, while somehow psychologically-comforting, fails to reverse the chill deep in your bones. You endeavour to hurry home with your train of looted materials and your new servants and contractors… But the sheer depth of the snow, and lack of appropriate footwear, makes it slow-going. Worse, it’s treacherous—the snow hides many natural hazards of mountain-life from your eyes, and without familiar visual markers, the course you chart is difficult even with your recent journey here and the Cartographer’s aid. Only your <Danger Sense> and <Guidance> see you and your company through to the relative warmth and safety of the kobold caverns, and even then only after a soggy and frigid week. You deplete much of your rations and find your teeth chattering, your body numb, and your stomach knotted with hunger.
You think you’ve had enough of this ‘winter’.
You retreat to the depths of your mountain-home to rest, warm yourself by the geothermal vents, and to issue your marching-orders for the enterprise. When your mind clears, you again consider the Geologist’s report. In light of your recent death-march (and the sadly-spartan conditions to which you returns, relative warmth aside), you think some trade is of vital necessity. You need fabrics, furs, food… Enough to ensure you are shielded against these seasonal vagaries next year! But then… With enemies on every side, and the Green Knight ever hovering at the periphery of your thoughts, you know that annual frosts are not the ONLY thing you need to shield yourself against. You order the extraction of as many gems and as much mundane ore as possible from beneath the collapsed company-town, and for each mine thus hollowed out to be expanded, fortified, and insulated to serve as barracks and living-quarters. On the surface, you command the construction of a keep—better-situated and more sturdily-built, to avoid the fate which befell the original at your own hands.
(The Engineer grumbles something about ‘micro-management’, but begins hastily adjusting her designs.)
