You see a human sitting on the ground, engraving the wall, a dark look upon his face. As you approach he turns, a look of delirious joy and delusional hope across his face. He motions you to sit down
Look! I've been trying to recreate it! It was beautiful but then it dissapeared. Destroyed not by chance, tragedy, or the hand of Armok but by an unfortunate twist of reality. And so, since this world holds no future anymore, I will recount for you all the full history of my greatest Dwarf Fortress history so far. How the early mistakes of the dwarves slowly grew into one of the most powerful and dangerous fortresses of all time and the movement it inspired before it was all taken away. I say it here in hopes that mourning it properly will let me get back to Dwarf Fortress, as I am still haunted by its loss.
It starts in the year five when the fortress Steelbolted is founded by the Outrageous fountains. They had a military that never trained of seven mildly skilled dwarves that decided not to grab the basic metal equipment that had been crafted for them. Four of those seven died taking down the only giant cave spider of the world. The body was put on display which would eventually begin to horrify all who came to visit the mayor's office. Eventually the fortress would begin to train their first true military dwarves and they would each begin to get attached to their axes. The most well known of these axes would become The Syrup of Cacti, which would be used to slay the first megabeast ever killed by a dwarf. A hydra. The fortress made crafts of her bones, but as the tantrum spirals from poor management began to get out of hand, Armok withdrew his blessing and focused it on a single local dwarf. She knew her people had been trying to kick the Elves off their continent from the moment they had a proper military force but the land was so wild and new to her people she decided she would explore it and go see these elves for herself. After training on the local turkey population, she went into the wilds. Failing to find anything she could understand as food, she collapsed in the Elven lands, glad to see them with her own eyes. She would later become their queen and druid, brokering an uneasy peace between the races. Two decades later this peace would be finalized by the greatest fortress of all her people. For now, this was her peace. Steelbolted would be used for quite a bit more time after that, Armok trying to save the fortress, but electing again to leave before he had to watch them fall apart.
A few other adventurers are said to have come and gone in the time between these events and the rise of the Vault of Battles, but the punctuation that lead to the Vault of battles was the first Dwarven Elf Queen, massacring some of her own people and then hunting for kobolds to the south, never to return. It is believed that she died in the caverns deep beneath the earth from a failed leap into the darkness in the earth below. Armok then sought to bring about the end of the darkness that corrupted the land. To show all races that this realm belonged to the dwarves and so nothing would stop them. Nestled on the west side of a mountain range, a mere day's journey away from the land of Bitrak the Demon Gecko's goblin lands. It was settled with an attempt at a fresh start for the Outrageous Fountains. A chance to learn from the mistakes of the past and allow Armok's glory to bring about balance to the land. Of course, life is never perfect, and despite a good early start with a full squad of Steel armored Hammerlords from the ample silver veins in those mountains, the upset and angry dwarves of Steelbolted migrated to this otherwise stable location, bringing all their hatred and stress with them. Armok, fed up with these dwarves decided that he would not run from them. If this was to be the fate to his blessed vault of battles, then that was how it was to be. See, the Vault of Battles had been forged in war and began their life by pressing the other races around them into tribute. When the three demon lords that surrounded them refused to give them their just due, they began to train in a belief that they could slay the beasts if they were properly prepared.
When the goblins eventually grew more scared of the demons than the dwarves, they began to attack. This lead to the revolution in law enforcement that changed all of dwarven society. Two problems with one solution. The finest of golden chains were arrayed outside of the fortress, as gold was not useful for much else to these dwarves of war, and assigned to the justice department. Justice was swift and without mercy. Either you were slain from the beatings you received from the silver hammers or you were left outside to be eaten or go mad. Some would survive this a few times before eventually falling into madness, but every madman was easily and mercilessly put down by the local military. Eventually, capital punishment brought an uneasy stability to the fortress and a terrifying society. It is said amongst rumors that within the Vault of Battles, the word for crutch was the same as the word for club. Regardless, the Vault managed to slay all the goblins in the societies around them except for the fortresses themselves. This stalemate reached, Armok left them to their own devices but not before the Vault had captured a dragon in a cage trap and re purposed it into fortress defense by building it into a wall with fortifications and hiding it with a bridge. This would eventually prove to be a disturbing call for all of Dwarven kind.
Armok realized there were no books in the world and decided to create the first dwarven library. Dreamycoal was founded by the Distinct Swords. The first ever book was a Slatestone bound codex studded with Lapis called Guide to the Mountainhome and aside from a bored dwarf rising to the top of the military and then spiraling into madness and another dwarf bludgeoning a giant to death with their bare hands, nothing of note was happening. They found a spire of cotton candy and made Distinct Swords they sent to the mountainhome, but it was rather bland. So Armok withdrew and began to look at the fabric of the world in the year 23.
Looking at the world and particularly Bitrak, Armok came to a dark realization that he passed onto the dwarves. All the demon kings of the goblins had been raised by human gods and the worst of them all was Sath, the human god of death. Seeing this, the dwarves began to make plans to eliminate the humans in order to stem the darkness flowing into the world. Sensing the intentions of the dwarves, the humans prayed to Sath for mercy. And so, as a comprimise, Sath and Armok sent Innu, The Letter of Banes. A brown Recluse spider woman who carried four shields representing the aspects of the grave, a copper whip that would eventually find its way into dwarven hands, and one mission. She was to slay the great demons and supplant them as the embodiment of death of the Future Planes. Her first mission was to Tickwater, the goblin capital. Slaying various beasts on her way to the capital and even striking down bogeymen quietly from the shadows, she began to massacre her way through the whole fortress looking for the moss raccoon demon Thina. She would interrogate one of the goblins to later find she had been slain in the year 1 by a bronze colossus. Slaying their local leader and leaving the skull of the only Dark Man on the entire planet on her throne as a warning, Innu began her massive journey to the next fortress, to fight the next Demon Lord. On her way, she found the vault of Thina and entered it, striking down servants of Paboz, the human god of Gambling and debauchery, and Gambling Soldiers with the Iron Whip she dubbed Black Iron that she got from the goblins of Tickwater. There she took a singing metal short sword and named it the Scourge of Bloodletting. The second Demon Lord she visited was so inconsequential and effortlessly decapitated from the shadows that Innu didn't bother to remember her name. The roc she had slain to kill boredom on her long journey was of more note to her. Then she came to Bitrak, who seemed to put up an actual fight, but not much of one. The Gecko monster managed to survive the initial slice with the singing sword to his neck, but his skull was caved in the next blow with Black Iron, his many blows deflected with Singing metal Shields. She was an untouchable machine. She left the skulls of the beasts on their thrones as she had with the Dark Man skull and left a carving of the demon king that had been bothering them with an injured champion of the Vault of Battles as she passed.
Eventually, Innu found herself in Lastsin, the final demon castle. This was where she had the most interesting of he encounters. Og the Furious orange, the giant demonic Marmot. When she entered his throne room, she saw the local goblin leader frozen solid near the demon king. Curious, she snuck up behind the demon and sliced his neck clean open with her sword. This caused his essence to spray uncontrollably around the room, knocking her around and oddly causing the beast to do so to himself. After a few close calls, she embedded her sword in his head. Removing the blade, butchering him, and leaving his skull on his throne, as she had done to the rest, and walked over to the goblin leader. As the creature stood frozen and unresponsive, despite being clearly alive, she whispered that she was taking over this place and smashed his head with her whip, retiring in Lastsin to help the Goblins to spread death across the land for her god Sath.
During this time, beyond Armok's notice, the Dwarves of the Vault of Battles had been continuing their spiral and training and it was most certainly upon seeing the present she had left behind and these dwarves seeing a worshipper of a human god doing what they could not that they re-doubled their training and intensified their justice system. Armok would check on them at a later point to see they had begun to bury dwarves alive and I suspect it started about this time.
In the wake of Innu's journey, many had heard of her journeys and wanted to try and turn a profit on it. One of these was Urist the Distinguished Jewels, Dwarven god of trade. He created along with Armok, the Lorbam the Cardinal man who proceeded to go to the vault that Innu had attacked and, slowly but surely migrated what he could from the Vault of Thina to the Vault of Quests, a new fort from the civilization known as the Cavernous Tongs. They began to trade the liquid cloth clothing to the caravans that came and smelting the singing metal bars into weapons, armor and other such things. They were doing well. Upon Armok seeing the extremes the Vault of Battles had gone through to deal with bad morale and having a few unhappy migrants arriving in the prosperous Vault of Quests, an ambitious project was undertaken that would define the Dwarven system for years to come. The Drowning Chamber. Four silver chains for prisoners and a pasture for any unwanted animals. Capital punishment dealt by hand had been terrible as a public display for the dwarves of the Vault of Battles, but with a self-contained screwpump and a series of floodgates leading into a wooden chamber of medium size, one could drown unuseful pets and troublesome dwarves without anyone feeling horrified or traumatized by watching the brutality. It was merciful release. Aside from the dwarven tradition of making engravings of someone next to their coffin getting oddly disturbing, it seemed to work much better. During this time, the dwarves of the Vault of Quests had claimed all the Slabs for themselves and eventually, Lorbam would die trying to recover the rare metals of other vaults when he fell asleep in the woods all by himself. Rumor has it he lived just long enough to name all of his armor before the end.
It had been 3 years since Innu had completed her mission and the Goblins had been taking the credit for all of her work and hadn't been doing as well at spreading death as she felt she could herself. Wanting to make a point and drive home that she was still The Letter of Banes, she made a trip back to the Vault of Battles, seeking to bring the most dangerous group of dwarves to their knees. She made the trip without risk and hadn't missed a step. Fully focused and ready for what was to come, she struck mercilessly from the shadows at a basic militia captain in the Vault of Battles... and was dodged. Seeing as she had four singing metal shields, was legendary with them, was a legendary dodger, and had not met a foe she could not slay, she was confident. And this would prove to be her undoing. The very next exchange was the captain effortlessly removing her head from her shoulders. So fell the Letter of Banes in the Vault of Battles to a no note captain.
The Vault of Quests continued as it was for a time before reality ceased in the year 33. And so ends the tale of the Future Planes and the Vault of Battles, slayers of gods and the baddest ass dwarves I have ever seen. I have learned much from them and I suspect there are others who can too. It turns out that, in trying times, executions can improve morale. Who knew?
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Author's note: I think what made things worse for all of those fortresses is that it wasn't until the last 4 years of the Vault of Quests that I tried to keep a booze industry going so all of my forts were operating off a well with a contained water supply if they were lucky. If not, they had to drink from the stream and whatever I traded for.
If you wish to hear some of the shorter stories from this world, I would be glad to share. Like my Elven Ninja that settled down with the only gremlin that just happened to be female in a hunting lodge after his grand unicorn hunt. Anyway, just hoped getting this out of my head and into the world would allow others to mourn with me for the loss of a world I wanted to play until at least year 100.
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Topic: The Future Planes and The Vault of Battles (Read 867 times)