[All papers sourced from the Mountainhomes Royal Archives]Interviewee kept anonymous:
"Have I seen angels before? Yeah, I've seen them before. I think it was this year ago, way up in the mountain pass leading into this valley. Now this is going to sound crazy, but I swear that it's the truth. I saw the angels in a previous life- three of them there were, kind of indistinct humanish figures. I used to be this caravan guard- I was one of the best actually, since I was able to stay alive longer than a year on the job so they ended up firing me anyways- and we were making a routine trip through the pass when this huge chuck of rock got unstable and fell under my feet, directly into that big ass cavern we built the pass over for whatever reason. Excuse me for a second."
-Interviewee takes a drink of water-
"Where was I? Oh yeah. I would've died, obviously since no damn person can survive that big a fall, but those angels appeared all of a sudden and then, I swear it, I was on top of the pass again as if nothing had happened-"
Chief Medical Dwarf Ustat Emminkot, Report on [Removed], 93
-no sign of head injuries or anything that would explain his strange behavior. The weird thing is, there wasn't even a collapse in the pass like he described it, just a-
Liason to Kivish Masos, 67
-and they requested a load of platinum blocks for some reason. Damn things are going to be impossible to haul up into the mountains, but we're going to get a premium on that stuff so we'll give it a shot. Said they were paying reverence to some sort of local deity. And the weirdest thing is, none of them even knew why. No engravings of this alleged god, no altars, no images at all. Just an insistence that whatever they were worshiping did something for them in the past.
Journal of Cog Tosidkastar, of Kivish Masos, 65
There was supposed to be some sort of titanic snowstorm today. Worst on record for this mountain range, that would've killed us all if we didn't have rooms mined out almost the moment we arrived. The weird thing is, that our miner almost died before we even got here. Apparently, this area used to be some sort of Goblin outpost, because the fields were littered with traps. Rinul missed stepping on one by literally inches. Says he suddenly decided to avoid that spot because of some guiding force. Sounds like a load of claptrap to me-
Passage from The Elder Book, a Human Guide To Summoning
-take the chunk of pyrope and use it as the focus for your incantation. Call forth the herald, who will appear only as a shadowy form to you. If it should smile upon your fortune, you will lose your memories but gain the chance to relive a certain unfortunate moment of your life to more positive-
Kat rubbed at her eyes as she put away yet another of the multitude of tomes she had now piled up neatly atop one of the public tables set in the middle of the Royal Archives. The study of archaic lore was a lost cause, and Kat didn't even have to ask permission to deface the books as she pleased, in this case, to highlight bits of text as she felt she needed. Always a little on the eccentric side, Kat had grown with a great interest in the occult arts that had otherwise been lost to history as inane and simply incorrect. She distrusted the advent of machinery, felt that it somehow disrupted the balance in the world. She cared little for the monarchies that had sprung up in her childhood, and felt that everyone deserved the chance to equality. She wondered how she had not yet been executed by a noble's mandate.
She put down her quill and capped her ink bottle, brushing stray papers on her desk into a neat stack. Her research was proving fruitless. She would never find the secret that had evaded her for so long- the secret of her own life. She shouldn't have ever been conceived. Her mother could clearly remember her father dying before the two had even managed to fall in love, much less conceive. But something had happened. Something miraculous, that gave her father, and by extension Kat herself, a second chance at life. Now seventy, Kat had taken her mother's stories seriously growing up. She had taken to the books and ink in the hopes of finding answers to her mother's curiosities. With the two now entombed together in the Mountainhomes, Kat didn't even know why she kept going.
But she did. Kat was beginning to stack the books and papers away, into their poorly maintained shelves tucked away in a little used corner of the Archives, wondering what her next move should have been. Across the way from her, in a far more lively area of the library, a seminar was being held on the proper mechanics of crossbow construction. Warfare and machines, that seemed to be the only two things ever on people's minds nowadays. Kat internally shook her head down upon the dying of tradition and beauty in favor of more ugly and modern concepts. Perhaps if she could prove her theories, there would be a counter-Renaissance, a return to the old ways, and-
"Hey there! You, little lady! Get out of that musty old stuff and join us, will you?" The leader of the seminar suddenly jerked his head in her direction. Cog shied back, suddenly on the spotlight for a seminar's worth of people, smiled nervously as she tended to when confronted by people. She shook her head, shrunk away into the shelves before anybody could say anything. Not like she could join a seminar for a subject she strictly disliked. In any case, she was feeling hungry and felt it a good idea to get a bite in the public forum. As a scholar she was payed highly by nobles too lazy to do their own research, and she had the money to spare on luxuries.
In the forum she noticed that a bunch of people were milling around a particular eatery, so she chose out that one. She had seen hake fillet on their menu, and was excited as that fish was one of her personal favorites, when something else caught her eye. A poster put out by a noble demanding manpower. Apparently this noble wanted a promotion and so was sponsoring what he or she hoped would be a successful expedition into some place the map identified as The Languishing Desert... with a mountain range on site.
Kat suddenly felt that field work was her best option.
Not related to the movie in any way besides name.
Six dwarves left for this variant fortress. No mods. The gist of it is that I will be making updates once per season- and I will be savescumming every single seasonal update. Now, if tragedy befalls a dwarf you like or your named dwarf, or the fortress in general, or if you just plain want to; you can reset time to
any season you choose and I will replay the fortress from that specific season. Also, because the pace of this game is going to be pretty slow with the seasonal updates, I'm good with allowing you to create 'itineraries' for named dwarves of what they have planned to do in a season. Not really limited by job or anything, you can have your dwarf do anything except kill other players dwarves.
The six available:
Pick out a favorite and give me:
Name: Duh
Point Distribution: Of skills
Will do for 1st Season: Optional, can be as specific or general as you want.
Embark Items: I'll also let you pick out a few items you want to bring, if you wish. Optional.