You are the young girl hiding behind the animal pens.

You have recently snuck away from your Mountainhome to join the Glorious Dwarven Fortress of Shielddawn, and as it turns out that may have been a poor decision on your part.

So far you've witnessed six murders, the undead walking the earth, a garbage heap filled with bodies, and you've been relegated to hauling duties. It's all starting to take its toll on your fragile dwarven psyche. Yes, you came to Shielddawn to become the Greatest Cheesemaker in all of the Three Dwarven Kingdoms, but now it's starting to seem like maybe your dream was maybe just a tiny bit...foolish.









This cow is also you; a dumb animal penned behind stone walls with no choice in their destiny, doomed to be slaughtered in some pointless and incredibly stupid fashion.

Your dad was right. Fortresses aren't anything like the Mountainhomes.










"I don't know what I was thinking," you say to the cow. "This whole thing was dumb. No one here seems to care about...anything! Not cheese, not the elves, not...me. All they care about is...I don't know. Blood? That's what the nun made it sound like. Blood and murder and corpse piles and fighting and...blood."









"Everyone always told me about how amazing the fortresses were - Shielddawn especially! - but it's like the fortress doesn't even care about the dwarves who built it! The Overseer lady didn't care that I want to be a cheesemaker, all she cared about was finishing her turn and retiring. And now I'm a hauler and the only job they're going to give me is hauling! Hauling and hauling and hauling and hauling some more and I'm never going to become a cheesemaker and dad was right and I hate everything about this place and I've been here for...what, less than a day?!" You slump forward.












"Yeah, well, try sticking around for a year," the cow mutters back.
















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