artifact I had shown them, they buried themselves in their underground libraries, poring over crumbling manuscripts.
Waving some ancient diagram in the air — splattered with some suspicious-looking brown spots — they presented me with the fact,
"This is exactly what the temple should look like!"
I glanced at the scheme of a squat building shaped like the Mercedes' three-pointed star. I shrugged. "Be my guests. Just don't forget to make a service niche under the altar. This is where I'm going to store an incredible treasure — let's call it my gift to the temple: twelve hundred pounds of mithril!"
Casting respectful glances at me, the priests discussed my offer and agreed, seeing no objections. Gifts to the gods were always welcome, especially those of noble metals such as gold and mithril.
This is how it happened that I got the legal right to bury, under Aulë's altar of gleaming amber, my trump card — the heavy GP bomb. A remnant of the long past war. Its one bang would change the hall's design, adorning its meticulously laid tiles with a 15-feet crater in the middle.
As it turned out, the temple, built in record time, was supposed to be some kind of a divine dormitory. Each of its three wings had its own altar, situated closer to the center of the star. My inner greedy pig wept as it signed the invoices for two more precious bombs. Still, the memory of the cunning Lloth and her tricks made me want to err on the safe side.
A week later, one of the wings was more or less finished. Even though the interior design works hadn't yet been completed — heavily-guarded caravans were still arriving, loaded with precious stones, granite and marble — the dwarves demanded I summon the god ASAP. They weren't happy, you see: they'd invested a shitload of money working around the clock, but they hadn't yet seen any results.
I didn't play hard to get. So far, the dwarves had stuck to their part of the bargain.
The same day the whole clan was formed up in a parade square within the north star-point of the new Temple. All buffed up to their ears as if going to war, they were wearing anything other than their dress uniforms, their bag slots bulging with vials. Even Vertebra, having for just this once succumbed to my pleas, was soaring high in the sky keeping an eye on the unfolding show. Most likely, it was simply because the Valley of Fear was her zone of responsibility. You'd be hard put to drag her out anywhere else, not with her independent character — and besides, she wouldn't leave her two chicks unsupervised, despite the fact that they'd both already ballooned to the size of a minibus with all the free mithril they'd consumed.
I had my reasons to employ such dire security measures. Aulë was a hundred percent a creature of Light. He'd made fighting evil his priority. And now he was summoned to join the forces of the Dark.
It's true that in AlterWorld, the boundaries of light and dark were blurred somewhat. But how were we supposed to explain this to the Arch Father of the Dwarven race?
The Heart of the Temple fragment pulsated in my hands as I walked through the thousand-strong formation. Seven clans, each clad in its own colors, in order of seniority: Longbeards, Firebeards, Broadbeams, Ironfists, Stiffbeards, Blacklocks and Stonefoots.
I lay the artifact on the Altar, waited for the two to synchronize, then confirmed their merging. In a flash of blinding light, the celestial spheres trembled. The world had just created a brand-new temple ready to welcome its new god.
I blinked the light from my eyes and pointed the virtual cursor at the Altar, activating its service menu. Minutes seemed to drag as I scrolled through the long list with its numerous dropdown lists, submenus and sub interfaces. Damn those Indian outsourcers! All the while, the dwarves were craning their necks striving to see the invisible, their hands closing around the handles of family axes and hammers as they watched me, a rather unpopular
Waving some ancient diagram in the air — splattered with some suspicious-looking brown spots — they presented me with the fact,
"This is exactly what the temple should look like!"
I glanced at the scheme of a squat building shaped like the Mercedes' three-pointed star. I shrugged. "Be my guests. Just don't forget to make a service niche under the altar. This is where I'm going to store an incredible treasure — let's call it my gift to the temple: twelve hundred pounds of mithril!"
Casting respectful glances at me, the priests discussed my offer and agreed, seeing no objections. Gifts to the gods were always welcome, especially those of noble metals such as gold and mithril.
This is how it happened that I got the legal right to bury, under Aulë's altar of gleaming amber, my trump card — the heavy GP bomb. A remnant of the long past war. Its one bang would change the hall's design, adorning its meticulously laid tiles with a 15-feet crater in the middle.
As it turned out, the temple, built in record time, was supposed to be some kind of a divine dormitory. Each of its three wings had its own altar, situated closer to the center of the star. My inner greedy pig wept as it signed the invoices for two more precious bombs. Still, the memory of the cunning Lloth and her tricks made me want to err on the safe side.
A week later, one of the wings was more or less finished. Even though the interior design works hadn't yet been completed — heavily-guarded caravans were still arriving, loaded with precious stones, granite and marble — the dwarves demanded I summon the god ASAP. They weren't happy, you see: they'd invested a shitload of money working around the clock, but they hadn't yet seen any results.
I didn't play hard to get. So far, the dwarves had stuck to their part of the bargain.
The same day the whole clan was formed up in a parade square within the north star-point of the new Temple. All buffed up to their ears as if going to war, they were wearing anything other than their dress uniforms, their bag slots bulging with vials. Even Vertebra, having for just this once succumbed to my pleas, was soaring high in the sky keeping an eye on the unfolding show. Most likely, it was simply because the Valley of Fear was her zone of responsibility. You'd be hard put to drag her out anywhere else, not with her independent character — and besides, she wouldn't leave her two chicks unsupervised, despite the fact that they'd both already ballooned to the size of a minibus with all the free mithril they'd consumed.
I had my reasons to employ such dire security measures. Aulë was a hundred percent a creature of Light. He'd made fighting evil his priority. And now he was summoned to join the forces of the Dark.
It's true that in AlterWorld, the boundaries of light and dark were blurred somewhat. But how were we supposed to explain this to the Arch Father of the Dwarven race?
The Heart of the Temple fragment pulsated in my hands as I walked through the thousand-strong formation. Seven clans, each clad in its own colors, in order of seniority: Longbeards, Firebeards, Broadbeams, Ironfists, Stiffbeards, Blacklocks and Stonefoots.
I lay the artifact on the Altar, waited for the two to synchronize, then confirmed their merging. In a flash of blinding light, the celestial spheres trembled. The world had just created a brand-new temple ready to welcome its new god.
I blinked the light from my eyes and pointed the virtual cursor at the Altar, activating its service menu. Minutes seemed to drag as I scrolled through the long list with its numerous dropdown lists, submenus and sub interfaces. Damn those Indian outsourcers! All the while, the dwarves were craning their necks striving to see the invisible, their hands closing around the handles of family axes and hammers as they watched me, a rather unpopular
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