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[darkrider2]

Official order from the mayor came down today, lock the caverns, I pulled the lever and the bridge went up, doesn't matter though, I hear every last tree was uprooted out of that place and stored away. One of the clothiers said he caught a glimpse of something big in the caverns, told the mayor about it and the guy got all twitchy, started fidgeting with his +cave spider silk right mitten+, eyes shifting about and what not. He can think whatever he wants, but I'm not about to question orders, that sheriff has just been itching to throw someone in the can after the mayor accused old sheriff of obstructing his order for ballista arrows... we don't even own a ballista, but the sheriff sat in jail for two straight months anyway and no one said a damn thing about it, and if the booze sieves around here are too scared to question the mayor, then I'm not about to get on his bad side.

Speaking of the mayor, think he's been trying to make this shithole look more appealing to the outsiders cause we've been eating up our gold supply, instruments, pipe sections, statues, you name it, I been down here working the forges and you can't hardly see the floor anymore cause so much gold dust has piled up, I've even started collecting some of it, maybe it'll be enough to buy my way out of here.

Huh, did you know a minecart can hold 5 other minecarts inside it? I didn't either.

Woop, another alert state, merchants came around and we just closed the gate on em since we knew what would follow, while they were still moving in a huge army rolls across the hill, like the fourth time that's happened, think they've learned to just trail the merchants to their destination.

Those gobbo's aren't as dumb as we were told as kids, saw a whole squad of em stop dead in front of the cage traps, they knew better. But don't get me wrong, they're still dumb as rocks, our archers just rained fucking copper out of the sky from that infernal tower they got built and the gobbo's just stood there staring at the fucking traps.

Let me give you a glimpse of what its like to live here, perhaps I haven't told you yet, but this is IceDangled, there ain't no ice though, in fact, there's nothing on the surface but boulders and corpses, but they blend together after a while. The designers of this place thought they could make this majestic place to live, the honor of the nation where you'd go if you were really important, and even the workers would be jolly all the time because everything was so nice.

I call it the pit.

But the forefathers of IceDangled must not have seen the mayor coming. He had everyone working day and night to erect this tower through the center of the pit and up up up into the sky he says. The others may have been fooled by this guy but not me, that things an abomination. The mayor had fortifications built in the sides of the tower, and there's archers on duty every hour of the day, but they aren't working for us oh no no no no, those archer guys are maniacal and hand picked by the mayor himself, loyal to the end he says, whenever I'm up in the pit, I can see em staring at me, some of em even train their sights on you for a bit and twitch back for a second like they're firing. I've seen plenty of people make the mistake of dropping what they were hauling after seeing that motion. The guardsman roll in and you get beat for slacking off at work, never show fear in this place, I know all too well, my stay in prison taught me better. Yeah, I violated a production order, for gold crowns, does he think he's the fucking king?

I spend more time in the forges now than ever, and you get to know the people around you, especially down in the forges where you're isolated from the pit. Direct communication with the surface is limited to notes etched in the stone being dropped down here. Old Urist was getting a piece of ore for his smelter gig when the minecart got pushed through and dumped its load about 100 floors down, and he just happened to be standing under the shaft, he was instantly killed, buried under a 10000 pounds of gold. And on the side was etched

9 statues
30 instruments
5 minecarts
10 cages
15 pipe sections

and use the minecart this time shitheads

I been talking to the miners, every once in a while they come through, and I met one of the founders. We were talking over a beer and the lady says that it was different before the current mayor, and that she had a plan that would 'put an end to my misery'. She was tight lipped about what it was though, no matter how hard I pried, and people were starting to look at us so I dropped it for a later date.

More merchants, gate went up again and once again a huge army rolls in. But it was different now, this time it was personal, the goblin leader itself showed up to lead the attack. Some porcupine demon riding atop a giant cave swallow. The merchants took on about half their army, and our guys took on the other half. We lost four swordsmen, and no archers surprise surprise. The new traps saw some use though, and that whole hallway is just miasma and skeletons, everyone refuses to go in there.

One of the archers made an impressive shot and took their leaders mount out of the sky, after falling to the ground, he just ran off into the distance to let his army die, bit anticlimactic.

Its been a month since the attack. The pit was getting expanded down into the cavern layer while I was preparing for my second date.

Then the earth shook.

The window in my room almost shattered, and I doubt even the on duty smiths didn't feel it. I rushed out, there was a huge crowd gathered at the edges of the pit, I had to push to get to the front.

The tower was gone.

And I could see down into the cavern now.

Horrible smells drifted up from the pits new bottom. I don't know what to feel, that abomination has been destroyed, but I hear the death count has reached twenty.


Its been three months since the tower dropped, and I still haven't seen her.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In reality, I was attempting to extend the central pit that makes up most of my fortress down so that it could be open to the caverns, using some tactical channeling. I was completely unaware that my up stairs wouldn't support the weight of the floors, and the tower for that matter, this resulted in copious amounts of fun.

The whole thing that I spent a lot of time building dropped straight into the caverns, taking about twenty dwarves who were hauling corpses from a recent siege with it. Most upsetting were the two legendary miners I lost.

It also killed zero archers, so the revolution in the story would have been a failure.

Interestingly enough, the dropped tower displaced some cavern water. As of now, there is a single tile of ice at the center of the drop zone (as it just became open to the outside, which is a freezing biome). I suppose that gives a new meaning to the title IceDangled eh?

I think in the coming years I'll have a memorial built around the site.

I'll try to upload a map of the fort as it currently stands, unfortunately I don't have an pictures of it with the tower still in place as I wasn't suspecting to have this much fun.