I wrote a pretty extensive introduction for a community fort I was planning but I gave up after a while. Anyways, I thought I'd share it. It's a first draft and there could be some major inconsistencies and things I overlooked, but if you have time to read it all let me know what you think, if anyone finds it particularly interesting I might finish it, revise it and start a community fort.
It is said that there was once a Golden Age. In the Golden Age there were three great dwarven nations. They were at peace with each other but they kept to their own affairs most of the time and prospered. It is said that for ages the elves had attacked our nation, The Incinerated Shields and the two greater nations whose names have been forgotten, as their interests were in direct conflict with Dwarfkind, ending the Golden Age and beginning the Great War. They cherish the lush forests and the verdant plains of this world more than any other race. So much that they refuse to kill a single creature or destroy a single tree.
Wood is an extraordinary material that dwarves have been using for as long as anyone can recall. It is light and easily manipulated, and is quite strong, and the elves hate us for the sheer number of trees we've "slaughtered." But they're all bigoted fools, they're born and die that way. Dwarfkind has created the most glorious crafts and weapons in all the world and has inspired uncountable legends because them of them. It is the dream of every dwarf to have their own place in the written and unwritten fables of the world. Many a dwarven child has wanted to create something so magnificent that they themselves would revere it, as well as every being that had the privelage to lay eyes upon it. This is the cause of all dwarves, to create, so that they may have something to be remembered by. The putrid elves insulted every dwarf that has been and will be by attempting to deny us the material we need to fulfill our destinies, and we hate them as we hate no other creature.
The two greatest nations had underestimated the power of nature when they declared war on the elves. After five years the second greatest nation had been dissolved, the capital had been invaded and the peasants all fled into the wilderness. This drastically reduced the power of the dwarven force, The Incinerated Shields is said to have withdrawn it's troops so that it could defend it's colonies, which had only been recently discovered by the elves. The fabled greatest nation had lost it's greatest ally and it's lesser ally had abandoned it because of this. Many fled the towns and cities of the greatest nation and what was left of the defense was pathetic.
It is said that throughout the war our nation had kept the location of our capital a fiercely guarded secret and it had not been attacked throughout the course of the war. After the two nations fell and every colony of ours had been dissolved, the races of the world thought the dwarven race had been anihilated and the elves returned to their forest retreats. The remaining citizens of The Incinerated Shield could do nothing but hide away in fear. After so long the futility of the dwarven race had long been accepted as fact, so much that it was taken for granted. Eventually the events of the Great War and the existence of the other races became mere stories and few people believed them. The Incinerated Shield colonized the area around the capital as fast as it could, dismissing the stories of the Great War as nonsense told by fools who were afraid of change and the unknown. Even faster than we expanded, we made astounding technological discoveries, our nation had by far surpassed the power the Greatest Nation was said to have had during the Golden Age.
The stories of the Great War and the elves became much more credible after a small, insignificant outpost on the very edge of the border of our nation was attacked by an unknown force. All of the seven dwarves there had been killed, except for a hunter, Endok Gearedpillar, who escaped when he saw the slaughter from his favorite hunting spot on top of a hill. Endok, terrified, had ran towards the nearest city for three days without sleeping or stopping to rest, and when he finally arrived he flung himself on the floor in the main hallway, screaming incoherent sentences for about half a minute before falling asleep. The fortress guard had no idea where he came from and thought he was insane, so they locked him up in the prison. When Endok awoke he explained to the guard outside his cell what had happened and that he had not slept for three days. He described the invaders as being very tall, slender and agile, with pointy ears and no beards, firing strange weapons similar to a crossbow. The guard released him with hesitation and escorted him to the mayor, who he explained the story to. The mayor didn't believe Endok and had him escorted back to his cell, where he spent another day. The news of the insane dwarf had spread like wildfire among the fortress until the fort's philosopher, Urist Admiredgirder heard about the dwarf. The philosopher was well versed in the stories of the Great War and ran with all due speed towards the Mayor's office to inform him that the dwarf which had caused such a commotion was perfectly sane, and that the outpost had been attacked by the fabled elves, who hadn't in two hundred years forgot about the dwarves. The philosopher explained that their city was in peril and they must send a message to the capital if they expected to survive. The Mayor was understandably reluctant to accept the philosopher's story, but Urist was highly renowned for his work, and so the mayor sent Urist and some other dwarves to warn the capital, and recruited Endok into the Fortress Guard so he could have revenge on the elves. It is believed that everyone in the fortress was slaughtered while the messengers journeyed to the capital, the elves could not have been far behind Endok.
The king didn't believe the story Urist told much more than the mayor did but didn't have much choice but to prepare for war. Our nation had not known conflict other than civil disruptions since the Great War and had no military to speak of, and very little military technology, only guards to keep the peace. The king focused production almost entirely on war and sent members of the Fortress Guard to the nearest and most important cities, praying that it would be sufficient. Fortunately it took the elves some time to reach the heart of the nation and by that time the king had assembled a defense. When Urist left he had quickly crammed some unique ancient designs for old weapons of war that the three dwarven nations had supposedly used during the great war. These ingenious designs included crushing traps, rooms that seal and then flood with water to drown enemies, bombs made from booze, serrated rotating discs which pop out of a wall to shred into opponents, and enormous crossbows that fired bolts the size of small trees! Urist promptly handed the aged documents to the king. This, our massive production output and the sheer number of people the king drafted to defend the border is what has kept us alive for this long, though we've lost all of the outer cities.
Even the stoutest dwarves cried out in dismay at the situation of the war: we were losing, slowly but surely. We are running out of resources and the king has sent an exploration party around The Perfect Spikes................
<I stopped writing here>
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Topic: Community Fort Intro I Never Finished. (Read 1059 times)