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Author Topic: Helmed Mystery - Fortress in the Trees - World War Beard  (Read 2074 times)

Maloy

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Helmed Mystery - Fortress in the Trees - World War Beard
« on: March 07, 2020, 05:58:34 pm »

PREFACE: This world started 1050 years old, and made very little progress anywhere because the two goblin civilizations were right next to each other and so the only thing they succeeded other than fighting to a standstill was almost entirely enslaving my dwarf civ.
Humans and elves keep each others numbers in-balance. The necromancer tower is populated by guys who are perfectly comfortable being left alone!

Before Helmedmystery we messed this all up and defeated one goblin civ and incorporated the necromancers into our empire. So half the world is goblin with most people being dead.


Year 1075 "Anything an elf can do a dwarf can do better, except for dying!" Urist
"It was inevitable" Domas after slaughtering elves

Helmedmystery was a point of pride! Elves think they can live at one with nature and what not, but DWARVES can do it better!! Helmedmystery is being built in a savage jungle with it's stone fort criss-crossing through and above the trees like an anthill's tunnel network.
Besides being great for refugees from the world war it would also be a point of integration as the Crystal of Gloves brought the elf civs(3) into the fold to join the war!

A single section of trees cut down for wood for beds as immediately the dwarves dig down for stone and wall up the aquifer. Stone blocks made building up and then building pathways and floors above ground level to immediately construct a giant dormitory for the insane number of migrants incoming.

Alright HelmedMystery let's do this!

First Migrant Wave - All war veterans with goblin, elf, troll, breakdog and various animal kills.
Immediately one goes hostile. Not berserk. hostile.
Okay? The dwarves immediately beat her to death.
Great let's get the cemetery started I guess

Next wave another hostile dwarf beaten to death in confusion
Also made a gang of Copperhead snake people in adventure mode who live here. Constantly having to butcher anything I can find so they don't starve.

another migrant wave and more dwarves beaten to death.
One migrant is necromancer who becomes mayor almost immediately. name is Bomrek and he has murdered another necromancer at some point
A dwarf who is only one years old goes berserk from not being able to make an artifact. makeshift military squad kills the baby as it is tear the broker's throat open
immediately the squad attack and kill the dwarf who killed the berserk baby. and then that dwarf dies and so on
need more coffins.

bedrooms in the trees and such probably mean this is going to go great in invasions as enemies have line of sight the whole time.

Invaded by elves. Dwarves immediately beat them to death without real gear. Necromancer Bomrek freaks out and reanimates severed hand and dead monkey. The dwarves have still not figured out they have a necromancer in their midst. Bomrek wins re-election.

With a single steel bar we start our infinite steel forges by making steel spikes and melting to produce more steel. Maybe this won't end tragically.

All the travelers to our inn are dwarven mercenaries.

Thus far one large tower like structure going up that makes up all large buildings per floor whilst bedrooms, small offices and workshops branch out through the trees.
Trap "hall" designed of 5 levels of bridges leading up to the top of fort where they can be shot at freely and dropped back to the bottom when too far.

Kea invasions are constant and causing mental instability and hiding our relic thong inside our tavern

Plan is to use burrows to force our mentally unstable dwarves underground to mine, smelt and work stone for use above ground. Will update as our labor camps grow!

Also my theory on hostile dwarves who are civilians:
This Civ was enslaved to goblins and many dwarves belong to both this one and the goblin civ(including our queen) so I think there's a perpetual civil war going on. Dwarves and goblins worship the same god of war, and so I have renamed the Prime Lancers into Armok himself who is clearly causing total war all over the map

Salmeuk

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Re: Helmed Mystery - Fortress in the Trees - World War Beard
« Reply #1 on: March 08, 2020, 12:42:37 pm »

First Migrant Wave - All war veterans with goblin, elf, troll, breakdog and various animal kills.
Immediately one goes hostile. Not berserk. hostile.
Okay? The dwarves immediately beat her to death.
Great let's get the cemetery started I guess

hahaha this is ridiculous. Can you post your save? Also post a few images for our imaginations. .
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DrCyano

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Re: Helmed Mystery - Fortress in the Trees - World War Beard
« Reply #2 on: March 08, 2020, 03:47:32 pm »

Love it! 8)

Could you post some screenshots? I wanna see what the canopylevel looks like (and your labor camp too).
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A mad scientist necromancer, a peasant with a dream, a secret message inscribed on a gem, a giant bridge.
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A documented Dwarf Fortress v0.47.xx game combining Fort Mode and Adventure Mode.

Maloy

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Re: Helmed Mystery - Fortress in the Trees - World War Beard
« Reply #3 on: March 12, 2020, 02:11:42 pm »

First Migrant Wave - All war veterans with goblin, elf, troll, breakdog and various animal kills.
Immediately one goes hostile. Not berserk. hostile.
Okay? The dwarves immediately beat her to death.
Great let's get the cemetery started I guess

hahaha this is ridiculous. Can you post your save? Also post a few images for our imaginations. .

Love it! 8)

Could you post some screenshots? I wanna see what the canopylevel looks like (and your labor camp too).



https://imgur.com/a/jrIvjWC

There is a look at the main fort! not much now! Third floor is having a new room built for siege engine training!

Here is our, not quite done, extended trap room!
https://imgur.com/a/XV2ba7k


Here is the chasm we are digging that will eventually lead to the center of the earth(maybe the circus?) we will soon be moving our mentally ill dwarves there!
https://imgur.com/a/G1v75Ww



After our last session I decided on a couple things! We would build walls around our main fort buildings, but still leave the bedrooms and other civilians rooms open to the world!
We also built a 1-z level wall on the ground! enemies can still climb over such a small wall, but I'm hoping it's presence will discourage them and they will instead choose to invade through our "trap hall"

Aaaaaaand a riot happened!
Dwarves started killing each other left and right in the tavern and a few of them had axes! several bodies later, including two of my copperhead snake people, things start to calm down. Then our expedition leader stalked a military dwarf to his bedroom and murdered him in his sleep. The rest of the militia was scrambled out and they beat him to death with fists and kicks until a hammer lord ended it.

Great! More coffins!
Four dwarves lost to cave ins while digging our chasm

Bought silver and iron weapons from humans
steel from dwarves
flails, whips, two handed swords, short swords, hammers, and a couple of steel helmets

Our one steel bar is now 24! Once we reach 100 I will start using it for proper production, but our weaponsmith has made masterwork steel spikes worth over 20k!

Any of our dwarves who were hoping to escape the world war, maybe build a peaceful different life for themselves are to be sorely sorely disappointed.

The elves have invaded. Well. not the elves exactly.
over 50 panda people with around 20 human and elves in the back of their army.
I feel terribly guilty as I am about to make pandas endangered on a second planet now

Our armorless army of 14 dwarves proceed to make them endangered with only a few deaths! Having sword, mace, and hammerlords is nice. Our manager who is both a hammerlord and a professional wrestler(WWE style) proceeds to jump from the trees, despite not being a military dwarf, and wrestle and kill a bunch of pandas! great! A whole bunch of dwarves are handed out legendary titles now!

https://imgur.com/a/nNsvETA



I'm curious to start experimenting with the dead bodies. In kruggsmash's latest video he resurrected a dwarf as a sapient being still, and our mayor is a necromancer! I suspect it won't work because this world predates the update and even though it is up to date I don't think a necromancer has experimented with making a sapient undead yet. We'll see



Our chasm(as seen in pictures) leads straight into a giant lake that refills itself. I'm going to have to trigger a cave in to wall off the part so I can continue to dig straight down to the next cavern layer

How should I build the cavern layer fort for the Forsaken(mentally ill civilians)?

We will also build a ballistae on our trap hall top floor to shoot invaders.
Next plans are to build a top level in the clouds to build a temple quarter, guild hall quarter, political officials quarter, treasury, etc.

Promise things will get interesting soon just didn't want it to seem like I abandoned this thread

Maloy

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Re: Helmed Mystery - Fortress in the Trees - World War Beard
« Reply #4 on: March 14, 2020, 01:50:45 pm »

Thikut nursed his peach wine in the cramped tavern. every inch of the room full of dwarves drinking or performing, but rarely interacting with one another.

The last few months had brought nothing but worry to the dwarf as riot after riot had to be put down with lethal force. The boys from Gutterevil had no problem with it having had to put down riots and rebellions from thousands of goblin subjects, but he simply wasn't built for it.
He hoped that Kadol Lord of the Earth had led him to HelmedMystery to find a new home and maybe even start a family, but this place seemed cursed by Kosoth God of War instead.

Outside a commotion could be heard of screaming and the sound of heavy objects, or people, crashing to the ground.
Militia men prayed for mercy or for glory from Kosoth as they rushed outside looking down to the bottom of the trees.
In the bed of a dried pond were several dwarves trapped by the Skeleton of a Yak Cow!
To Thikut the scene reminded him of the makeshift fighting pits of SadnessMalign

Dwarves had panicked at the sight of the ghastly creature and fled many falling into lower branches of the trees or into the dried pond now trapped with the beast. Including the mayor and the manager.

Militia men dropped from the trees directly into the pit screaming vengeance! Urvad Caverntrades atomized its skull with her hammer as the beast crawled over the two dwarves it had already killed!

"Kadol give my bones a home if ye do not will I have one while living" Thikut prayed. The fortress had a necromancer which was a problem.They were known in the Crystal of Gloves and even trained, but only for military duty. Whoever this was two things were clear: They were a deserter fleeing the war and their antics had killed multiple dwarves!

Back above the tavern yet another bar brawl broke out. Hopefully this one wouldn't cause a riot too.



I've lost thirty something dwarves now and was beginning to get worried before a migrant wave arrived to save our population!

I've only had this fort for five years and already the majority of the still living population is mentally unstable, and I'm not doing my usual tactic of just exiling all the bad dwarves.
We've got to hurry up and convert the cavern layer into a labor camp!

That said I have a 20 z-level layer of stone between the next cavern layer and where it currently is so my question is how cool would it be to drop those 20 levels of stone like a dagger straight into the heart of the earth? We'll find out soon!
https://imgur.com/a/01WL607
https://youtu.be/17CKHuYx51U?t=14


We had some traveling entertainers visit us two years ago and they haven't returned like they normally do for me. Is our fort that awful?

Maloy

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Re: Helmed Mystery - Fortress in the Trees - World War Beard
« Reply #5 on: March 15, 2020, 08:48:36 am »

The trap hall wasn't completed. They all knew it, and knew too that the best they could hope for was to funnel the enemies through it and hold them down while the civilians found a way to survive.

Thikut ran across the bridge that went over the tree line and saw the army. Elves, humans, chinchilla men, deer men, wolverine men(may Kosoth break them for their betrayal). Three times the number of the actual population of their fort!
There was no victory to be had here. No one else was paying attention. Just running for the trap hall.
Thikut had to do something. He stopped as his comrades ran past. He whispered prayers to Kadol, the god of the earth, and leaped from that bridge 5 stories into the waiting horde below. Id and Domas jumped behind him. Domas having become his friend and Id being a mad worshipper of Kosoth the god of war cackling as she descended.

Countless arrows filled his view and he dodged them using the trees he had learned to live among so well as a tool. Jumping around the trunk, pulling himself up its branches and descending down.
As chinchilla men charged him he broke arms, legs and teeth jumping from branches to the ground and taking a bloody tally.
Thikut fought and fought as an entire army focused on him dismembering anyone he could and scoring countless kills.

He could see some others also in the trees and even more taking their stand in the hollow tower trap hall holding the line for some of the last dwarves of the Crystal of Gloves to escape.
They all fought for literal days and Thikut collapsed under the press. He was beaten cruelly for hours on end as the elves pathetic weapons couldn't land a killing blow. As he was mashed into the earth he couldn't help, but wonder desperately "did I accomplish anything meaningful" as his dreams of having a family were smashed by elven weapons...


Bomrek was the mayor, and yes it was true that he was a necromancer. If the people of HelmedMystery learned it they would have surely killed or exiled him as a deserter for he had served in the military for many decades.
Bomrek wasn't a coward though. At least he didn't want to be. He wanted to help helmedmystery because after centuries of enslavement the most the Crystal of Gloves had succeeded in doing was building a few hillocks. This was a chance to truly create a future for his people, and create a bond between themselves and the other races.
It didn't matter now. Out of the few hundred dwarves left in their civilization around 100 would be lost today. He solemnly walked to the massive melee. The last of the dwarves reaping a bloody tally amongst the enemy, but it was an obvious end.
Bomrek was lost in despair. He raised his hands and as he did the dead rose. Dwarf, elf, animal man and human. They all rose and began to tear the living apart.
Bomrek charged in with no armor or weapons and he strangled the life out of one chinchilla man and raised it from the dead, and it attacked him. He wrestled with it and began to stomp its head in to true death. What was going on? The dead weren't recognizing him as their master
They were swarming everyone including him, but he had no choice either he had to keep fighting.
As the reality of the death of the dreams of so many dwarves swarmed him he lost himself in his rage, and fought on to the end.

More dead continued to be raised as from the tops of a tree another necromancer sat raising the death to claim this region.

Id felt nothing as she slaughtered enemies. Kosoth blessed her by taking her fear. Even as all her comrades died she fought and killed emotionlessly. The elves would never forget her. Her corpse would continue to fight after she had passed on. Collapsing a chinchilla woman's head with a single punch

Dubar was terrified. as the Last dwarf standing on the battlefield she was a swordmaster, but did not even have a sword. She beat enemies to death with her steel crossbow which was now falling apart in her hands from the countless kills, and now she was being swarmed by the dead too! Beating them down one by one. Screaming for an end to the battle, but it only continued

Although none remember her name there was a single axe dwarf. Not a veteran like the rest, but a new trainee. She held the hollow tower -alone- for days against the army preventing an advance. When she fell and the wolverine men howled their victory her body shuddered and rose, and began to kill once more. The elves remember and tell the terrifying legend of this creature: Ciraweme



All these sacrifices to save our fort and people paid off, yes? no.

So after all my military dwarves started fighting the fort had a massive riot break out, and three necromancers revealed themselves reviving the corpses. Almost every single dwarf died and the entire fort was covered in blood. Dwarves taken to the hospital to heal were killed by zombie who were in turn killed by rioters who left the bodies there.
Did the necromancers win? No. The few surviving dwarves who were rioting swarmed and killed them. An army of zombies sits outside our fort, but it has no masters now.
https://imgur.com/a/pCkzojK
No one won. The few surviving members of the elf army retreated leaving their fellows to be torn apart piece by piece by the zombie army.

Fort ended I guess!
The last 10 of 15 dwarves charged out to fight the undead army without my ordering them too and as they died the fort was abandoned so that the 5 or so survivors might go and survive.


So much for a refugee fort right?

Oh well trying something new and you break several hundred lives! No harm done! I even got attached to Thikut before he sacrificed himself(against my orders) and then was raised from the dead.
Id's corpse killed Dubar as well as many others, although their was no necromancer still living to raise her from the dead.
Bomrek died an angry hero and at the very least the fort was denied to the filthy, jealous and quite envious elves

DrCyano

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Re: Helmed Mystery - Fortress in the Trees - World War Beard
« Reply #6 on: March 16, 2020, 01:59:49 pm »

Wow! That is an epic end for a fortress! What a battle (and great writing about it)!

Will you make another fort in the same world or leave it at a high point?
« Last Edit: March 29, 2020, 05:45:32 pm by DrCyano »
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A mad scientist necromancer, a peasant with a dream, a secret message inscribed on a gem, a giant bridge.
Come witness the Saga of the Puzzling Sea!
A documented Dwarf Fortress v0.47.xx game combining Fort Mode and Adventure Mode.

Maloy

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Re: Helmed Mystery - Fortress in the Trees - World War Beard
« Reply #7 on: March 17, 2020, 10:02:40 am »

Wow! That is an epic end for a fortress! What I battle (and great writing about it)!

Will you make another fort in the same world or leave it at a high point?

This is actually my third fort on this world! Each one has been interesting!

My goal is to try and take over the entire planet, but thus far we've only succeeded in destroying large amounts of it!
I'm probably going to make a bunker fort next since my dwarves seem to be on a "last stand" kind of direction in the world

Salmeuk

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Re: Helmed Mystery - Fortress in the Trees - World War Beard
« Reply #8 on: March 17, 2020, 06:45:45 pm »

Quote
An army of zombies sits outside our fort, but it has no masters now.

This seems to be a common theme in the new version..

nice writups! a good, old-fashioned fortastrophe.

I wonder what caused all the infighting between dwarves. What worldgen settings did you use?
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Maloy

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Re: Helmed Mystery - Fortress in the Trees - World War Beard
« Reply #9 on: March 18, 2020, 04:36:30 pm »

Quote
An army of zombies sits outside our fort, but it has no masters now.

This seems to be a common theme in the new version..

nice writups! a good, old-fashioned fortastrophe.

I wonder what caused all the infighting between dwarves. What worldgen settings did you use?

I actually have a default world gen pocket sized world Max savagery and evil with max number of beasts, but a long world history that rendered them all...history

I do have a few ideas as to why though:

1.Half our dwarves also belong to the enemy goblin civ while belonging to ours so I could see them recognizing each other as enemies

2.At my first fort in this world I sent all my mentally ill dwarves to other towns to occupy them. Some of them migrated to this one, but they were mentally healthy now. Also though no one went berserk or insane or anything so idk

3. Some redditors have talked about this happening to them. Calling them mini loyalty-cascades. Like a small, but very lethal fight will break out semi regularly. Some think its a bug and others a feature since it's rarely fatal.
Only fatal in my case because of the many other problems happening at the time