(Using the Masterwork DF mod for the first time, this was the - very FUN - result.)
Part I: The Founding of Cursespoke
Cursespoke. With a name like that, you'd think any dwarf in his right mind would turn right back around and nestle into some filthy corner of Mountainhome's overflowing stockpiles and thank their lucky stars for the privilege of fulfilling the King's strange mandates for Rock Salt Pants or whathaveyou.
But these are dwarves, and their often nihilistic and suicidal ways are a mystery to humans like us. They went to Cursespoke, and despite everything, quite nearly made a go of it. Yes, quite nearly indeed.
The site was the real draw. The entrance was carved into foot of an active volcano a short walk from a river teeming with fish. There was Marble for flux, plenty of metals, the river for fishing and drinking water, with lots and lots of piping hot magma to fuel the industry. A river and a volcano right next to each other - imagine the possibilities. Better yet, the goblin nation had been effectively crushed in the area, so while there might be some raids, it was considered relatively safe by the powers that be. After all, Cursespoke's volcano was in the middle of a friggin' elven forest. How cursed could it be? Safe as houses, right? So seven dwarves packed up the usual supplies and hustled off to Strike the Earth.
The project was ambitious, the brain-child of one of the miners, lets call him Urist because I forget his real name. As leader of the expedition, he set the priorities. There would be a gigantic dining room to rival even Mountainhome, a vast expanse of a space that could contain lesser fortresses, with massive stone pillars supporting the roof. At its center would be a long pool of water to wash the goblin blood from one's hammer, filled by a massive waterfall pumped from the river falling down through the center of the ceiling, and generating a pleasing mist for all to bask in. Farming, brewing and the rest would be up above, in the side of the volcano, where there was clay and soil to farm on. Everything else, below. Vast warrens of bedrooms, giant storerooms just below the entrance floor for ease of carting Cursespoke's many gems and crafts to the trade depot. Networks of workshops and associated stockpiles would fill the floors beneath the dining hall, and at the bottom of the fortress, the crypts. These would be dug deepest, to honor any fallen comrades by entombment not near the elvish surface, but in the holy depths of the earth.
Lastly, water would be channeled past the planned hospital on the way to the dining room waterfall in order to secure a well. This, and really the whole hospital, was something of an afterthought to Urist. A thousand dreams were filling his head. Epic dining room waterfalls. Magma streams fueling a chain of smelters, metalsmiths, armorers, and weaponsmiths. An invincible steel-clad militia. Yes, THIS would be what a Dwarven Fortress SHOULD be like. It would be, in a word, Epic.
And so it was, for a while. Migrants came and settled, swelling Cursespoke's numbers and greasing the wheels of its budding industries. Gems were being cut by the dozens, crafts for trade filling the stockpiles... which was good because there was some initial mismanagement of the food/seed supplies. Urist was a natural leader, but he was a dreamer too, with little patience for sums and figures. In the end, with the help of trade caravans from the humans, elves and moutnainhome itself, everything seemed to be working out.
As construction steamed along, the farming industry finally righting itself, one thing was still missing from fortress. The magma. Urist brushed off the nay-sayers that said "maybe we should finish the well first" or "we need to expand the stockpiles - you spent half of last year carving out the dining room and there's no more room for supplies upstairs." Urist was a dwarf of principal and he adhered to his vision. Being, by this point, a legendary miner among his fellows, his eccentricities were tolerated, and his assurances foolishly trusted. "Who needs a hospital, he said? No one's been injured. Don't you think we should focus on getting some armor to protect us from injury rather than a place to treat those injuries? What are you some kind of pessimist? Don't worry, we'll have magma AND a hospital... eventually. Trust me, we'll get to it." He and his fellow miner (also a legend), dug out a channel for the magma, and began working on a drainage system, in case of overflow.
Neither had actually worked with magma before, so they weren't really sure if it would work. They did their work, but Urist was a tad impatient. Goblins had begun to show up, trying to steal from them. And there had been a nasty encounter with a group of warlocks which claimed the lives of two of his best axedwarves, largely because one of them lacked an ax, and both lacked armor of any kind. To Urist, it just reinforced his argument. They needed those smelters, metalsmiths and all the rest up and running, and quick.
When his mining partner went to "check on something" Urist figured he was going On Break again. As this could sometimes take up to a month, especially if the hard-working miner got into the Sewer Brew, Urist decided it was time to pop that volcano open and pull some delicious hot magma into the channel on his own. The pick went easily into the volcano wall, and there was immediately a burst of smoke as something caught fire. Urist coughed and backed up, the wrong way. A second later, he was engulfed in flame. Another second, and there was nothing left of the legendary dwarf and leader of the fortress. Urist's partner, meanwhile, had not in fact gone On Break. He had, instead, gone down into the magma drainage hole to check over his work or something. To this day, no one is exactly sure why he was down there. The drain was finished. He was not responsible for hauling rocks. There was really no reason for him to be there. Maybe he wanted to die. Maybe he was smoking a joint. I really don't know. What I do know is that he didn't notice the magma until it was dripping down the stairs towards him. A few seconds later, and he too was a cloud of dwarf vapor.
After the two miners' tragic deaths, morale was pretty low. A mayor was hastily elected to replace Urist, and one of the dwarven children decided to throw a party in the epic dining room to lift everyone's spirits. It seemed, at the time, to be a good idea. The new mayor thought it might be a good way to get everyone in the mood to build some magma smelters and get back to work.
This did not work out according to plan. Urist, it appeared, was married. And worse, his widow was present for the party and seemed not to approve of the good cheer and all of those damned dwarves feigning happiness as they toasted her husband. Sometime after her fourth barrel of ale, she just snapped. She picked up a stone chair and proceeded to bash in the skull of a nearby leatherworker, killing him in front of the entire fortress. This caused another dwarf, a long-time friend of the miners, just barely keeping it together, to freak out and kill the widow. Both of these deaths happened during the party, right in front of half the fortress.
Thus began the epic Dining Room Riot, and a "tantrum spiral" which utterly destroyed Cursespoke. The exact order of events are confused, the only details coming from a single visiting dwarven merchant from Mountainhome who had managed to flee the rampaging dwarves before they destroyed the entrance bridge, cutting the fortress off from the world. Bodies were everywhere, choking people with miasma as they rotted in the halls, the stockpiles, and the dining hall, driving others mad as they watched their loved ones rot unburied in the halls. I found two dead dwarves next to each other in a bedroom. One had gone insane and killed the other, but in the struggle had broken his hand (probably on the other's face). It apparently became infected and he died. The flu also struck at this time, claiming more lives, but also causing people to vomit everywhere, and with no one working, it was never cleaned up.
Indeed, many died of infection, laying bleeding on the floor in the pools of vomit, as the new mayor's hastily constructed hospital was the scene of another riot. One of the patients, the fortress' most skilled hunter, went crazy and killed three wounded dwarves and a doctor before anyone could stop him. Worse, with the destruction of the main drawbridge by an insane rampaging dwarf, there was no way to reach the river or the outside world, so first wounded dwarves started dying of dehydration, and then when the booze supply ran out (as everyone was rioting, no work was being done), the rest began to fall. Some, falling to melancholy, took their own lives, some starving to death quietly in their rooms, others throwing themselves dramatically down the stairs.
The dwarves tried everything. The mayor ordered the militia to dispatch any insane or rampaging dwarves, but they went crazy too. The mayor appointed a Psychiatrist to help calm them, but he immediately began to tantrum, joining in on the "fun". The last orders the mayor gave before being murdered by one of the rampaging militia was to mine out to the river to finish the a well, but it was far too late. Everyone was busy self-destructing to do any work. The wounded died of dehydration.
When the two miners died there were still 71 dwarves.
Now there were only four left, slowly dying of dehydration and grief. Some migrants arrived, and called out over the expanse of pit and ruined bridge "Anybody home?" They waited a while, getting hungry themselves, when a parched and dying voice came from the hole in the mountainside.
"Cursed.... we're cursed. Flee... while you still can.... the madness... it's in the rock... in the... the magma..."
The spooked migrants turned tail and fled, abandoning the once promising fortress.
Chapter II: The Reclaiming of Cursespoke
Dwarves are nothing if not persistent. The last trader leaving Cursespoke, once he regained his senses after three months of severe trauma and mental distress, had given a full report about the state of Cursespoke as it stood apart from its insane (and now dead) inhabitants. There were gems, incredible crafts by a legendary craftsman, and massive stockpiles of ore just waiting to be put into one of the already constructed magma smelters. Not to mention the fact that the dwarven caravan had abandoned its entire payload at the Depot in order to better flee for their lives. Better yet, there were no threats to worry about. The settlement hadn't fallen to goblins or orcs, but to some curse that, to those far off in safe Mountainhome, seemed a little exaggerated. Urist was a dreamer and a fool, everyone knew that, but he'd made a good start. A good administrator, who cared more for his people than for an epic dining room, was all that Cursespoke needed to step into the golden age.
So it was that seven brave souls returned to Cursespoke a year after it fell to it's own madness and dwarven murder. Led by Nist, a member of the healer's guild, a dwarf of modest ambition who happened to be a strong manager, organizer, and socializer. Nist really just wanted to be liked, to do make his fellows happy, and to bask in their esteem. He would never have been ambitious enough to start a fortress quite like Cursespoke, but once it was broken he felt he was the man to fix it. He got together a few hearty souls and together they reclaimed the fortress. It did not go entirely as expected.
First, there was the unbelievable mess. Departing dwarves had tried to take as much as they could carry, fleeing over the hill that Cursespoke had hollowed. But many of them didn't make it, bleeding out or dying of infection. Others had overburdened themselves in their greed, and died of dehydration a few feet from the entrance. The reasons and stories were unclear, for there was not a single soul remaining at Cursespoke to tell the tale. The result however, was that the hillside was littered with valuable items strewn about at random. And bodies. There were bodies EVERYWHERE. Dwarves, goblins, dogs and oxen. Rotting. Everywhere.
Nish ordered his men to immediately begin expanding the catacombs, to build coffins, and most importantly, to get everything inside before the wood nymphs and goblin thieves stole it all. It would take years to complete the task. Years Nish and the others did not have.
Things got ugly fairly early, as it turned out that one member of the party was fairly unstable. In fact, Nish, being a medical dwarf, diagnosed him as Schitzophrenic just after their arrival. While he was working normally, Nish had no choice but to leave him be - there were only seven of them after all, but he kept shouting and carrying on, disturbing the others. His behavior began to quickly degenerate. Plans were made to isolate him once more dwarves arrived, but Nish hesitated, not wanting to lose a worker.
Hesitation and indecision were Nish's only real weakesses. He hated conflict, and always wanted to do the right thing by his dwarves. He just wanted everyone to get along. Hesitation and indecision would prove to be Nish's, and the rest of Cursespoke's, terrible undoing. Not THIS hesitation, but another, years later.
But first the Schizo dwarf went up to the farmer and smiled, saying "Let me show you something." The farmer backed away, cautiously, concerned for what the crazy sonofabitch was holding behind his back. His concern was not unfounded, but he was not quick enough to dodge the iron warhammer that crushed his skull. As luck would have it, the farmer's pet ox happened to be standing a few feet away. When the homicidal dwarf went to repeat the skull bashing on the ox, the ox quite reasonably kicked him to death.
More bodies for burial. They were up to their eyeballs. There were something like 80-90 bodies that had to be buried. Already, there were at least six ghosts wandering the fortress. One of them was particularly nasty, battering the living, and in one case, knocking the only skilled mechanic down a flight of stairs to his death. Nish could only conclude that the restless dead were lonely. That he could understand, so he redoubled his efforts to bury all the dead quickly. He did not imagine that the dead were already quite determined to extinguish all life in Cursespoke.
The burials went on for literally years, and gradually Nish got Cursespoke up and running again. Migrants came and settled eventually, hearing that Cursespoke had risen from the ashes. Nish turned out to be a better manager than his predecessors, and many profitable industries and new workshops were built. Slowly, armor and weapons began to be produced, a militia created, and many works of art erected for the glory of Dwarvenkind. Fearing for the sanity of his men and women, Nish ordered the epic dining room finished, with a table that could seat 40 at once, solid gold statues, a speaker's podium (to educate the eating dwarves), and display cases for the four artifacts his dwarves had created, including the fortress favorite - a spiked goblet made of gold ore. Its menacing spikes made it dangerous to actually drink from, but it looked fantastic on the stand. The people, it seemed, were finally happy.
The fortress stabilized at about 100 dwarves, more than the original Cursespoke had ever attained. The militia swelled to 25 rather skilled dwarves, and nearly all of them were well armed and armored. But not completely. Progress was being made, but it was slow. Nish hesitated to construct iron armor. He wanted to save the iron bars to make Steel from, a slow but worthwhile process. After all, the Goblin civilization had been driven off the mainland. There had mostly been merely thieves and skulking kidnappers, and the occasional warlock attack. No real threats...
Nish was wrong. The goblins began to come in greater numbers, and soon their orcish cousins joined them. At first, these unwelcome visitors caused a bit of a panic, but it was soon revealed that they were no match for the militia. Nish relaxed, feeling justified in his decision to hold off on the armor. While no dwarves were lost, the animals pastured outside had all been slaughtered by the invaders. Nish he recognized the need for a more robust defense. It would be necessary to have an enclosing wall to protect pastures, and perhaps begin the cultivation of above ground crops. He had, after all, developed something of a taste for strawberry wine. He ordered a keep constructed to protect a second entrance carved into the top of the hill near the volcano (also to prevent the fate of the last occupants of Cursespoke, who had been trapped when the single bridge had been destroyed). With near constant Goblin and Orc attacks now (and the occasional group of corrupted wizards), a few dwarves were lost while doing construction, the bottom floor of the keep was completed, its entrance protected by a pit and drawbridge. The second floor would be a pill-box for crossbow militia, and a third would be a catapult platform that could command the whole hillside. A larger wall would be built around the keep, enclosing the top of the hill for grazing animals and agriculture, but that would take more time. It might well take the sacrifice of a few masons to achieve it, but one day Cursespoke would be a safe place to live and work.
Nish would not live to see the keep completed. Just when he began to feel like the fortress might really make a go of it, disaster struck. There was no warning, like there had been with the goblins. Just a glimpse of things shambling outside the new keep. By the time the alarm was raised, the things had mobbed a peasant who was outside trying to recover another body (they were still stumbling on the original dwarves of Cursespoke from time to time). These monstrosities were clearly dead things, corpses, but they were not the kind of weak zombies the dwarves had heard of from those settling near the dwellings of the feared necromancers . No, these were not merely walking dead, but constructed walking dead. They were pieced together from the corpses we had yet to uncover, and those of animals which Nish had not prioritized removing. They would later be known among the dwarves as Necromorphs.
(I'm told that these creatures were from Dead Space, a game I haven't played. There was no paused warning. I didn't even notice them until my framerate suddenly dropped by a half and I opened the unit screen. Another FUN surprise from Masterwork DF!)
At first they saw only a few. The order was given to get everyone inside, the alarm raised. But Nish hesitated to close the drawbridges. He hesitated. He hesitated because he cared. He wanted to make sure everyone got inside safely. If he only knew what he was facing he would have closed the bridges immediately. Oh, Nish, if you'd known what you were facing, you would have known that those who were still running around outside were already dead.
So Nish got what he wanted. Everyone got inside. Everyone except the dwarves who were working out there, because they were strangled to death by the Necromorphs. But the Necromorphs got inside. Oh yes.
By the time Nish ordered the levers pulled and the bridges closed the shambling monstrosities were already inside, but only about 30-40 of them. There were at least another 50+ still outside. The levers were pulled. The hilltop keep's gate closed, although most of the Necromorphs on the top of the hill were already inside. But the bottom gate... None of the dead things had yet managed to get inside the longer, heavily trapped main entrance. If the drawbridge was closed, it might have been possible to contain this terrible threat. Cursespoke might have survived. This did not happen.
There had been no practice run for this, no emergency training or drills. No one had ever actually closed the drawbridges before now. There had never been a need. In their (my) panic, the dwarves pulled the wrong lever. Instead of closing the main drawbridge, they opened the floodgate that turned on the waterfall in the main dining room. Now, there's a good reason that the waterfall was off. It wasn't finished yet. There was no drainage system for when the water fills the pool. So, it started to fill, and instead of the gate closing up, the rest of the Necromorphs (a mob of about 20-30) made it inside.
As it happens, an elven caravan had been inside the main entrance to trade with me. As the merchants fled into the fort, the two caravan guards, bad-ass elves themselves, tried to hold off the 30+ necromorphs that mobbed down the hall at them. At least 20 other had been crushed by the stone-fall traps that lined the corridor, but there were no more traps to stop them. The guards valiantly held them back. The militia had massed upstairs, in the farms beneath the keep, and had managed to kill off nearly all the necromorphs that came in that way, taking terrible casualties. Nish tried to redirect them to support the caravan guards, but the three survivors of the militia were still fighting a single Necromorph. Nish looked closely, and saw that the thing they were fighting had once been a dwarf. It was one of the unclaimed bodies of the previous inhabitants of Cursespoke. Specifically, it was one of the axedwarves from the militia. Nish got reports of six such reanimated warrior dwarves, all of them seriously scary. Most had taken up weapons from the recently fallen. Nish watched as his last three militiamen were cut down by these reanimated dwarven warriors. The last one looked for a moment like he had the upper hand, but each of his hits only bruised the dead flesh of the necromorph axelord. He stayed ahead of his undead opponent, nimbly dancing around his axe-swings. But he could not keep it up forever. One misstep and the undead thing chopped his head clean off in a single blow.
Nish fled down the stairs, wondering where he went wrong, kicking himself for not closing the bridges immediately. He did not have long to contemplate his mistakes. No one's sure how or when he died, but it can be presumed that it was in the bloody rush following the elven caravan guards being overwhelmed. The Necromorphs, while nearly stopped in the farms near the hill-top keep entrance (the undead axelord who got past the militia from that entrance), had utterly taken the main entrance, and poured down like a waterfall of rotting flesh into the workshops, the stockpiles, the dining room, the bedrooms, and even the crypt. Strangely, the crypt, the lowest current level of the fortress, seemed to be their objective. They killed their way down to it and stood milling about inside it. This may be significant somehow. Nish and the rest never had the chance to really ask where the Necromorphs came from. Was there a Necromancer? None was seen. Was it part of the curse of Cursespoke itself? Was it the anger of the still unburied dead at the splendor being raised around them? Was there something in the crypt, some marker that they were after? No one knows. Whatever the reason, the Necromorphs found their way to the crypts and most of them stayed there.
There were two dwarves left by then. One was unconscious, bleeding to death - a farmer slowly watering his fields with his own blood. The other was the new mayor, or at least he would have been had their been anyone else left. He too was badly wounded, with a broken leg and a head wound. He collapsed behind a pillar in the Legendary Dining Room. The only other being in the room (other than a pile of fresh corpses) was a single Necromorph, rooting around the giant table and its corpses. The lever for the main drawbridge was behind him, unpulled, on the wall. The "mayor" was on the other side of the pillar, out of sight. This last dwarf considered making a break for it, but knew that the thing would see him as soon as he moved, and with a broken leg, he wouldn't get far anyway. So he waited. And as his consciousness began to fade to black, he reflected that at least he was dying in a truly dwarven room, surrounded by dwarfy things, like unusable spiked goblets. Further, he took a small consolation in watching the giant water basin fill from the waterfall. He smiled as he took his last conscious breaths, realizing that the door separating the dining room from the main stairway was jammed open by a fresh corpse, probably one of his friends. When the basin filled, as it must, the water would go right down the stairs. All the way down to the crypt where the necromorphs were congregating. Could necromorphs drown? He hoped to Armok that they could. Either way he would not live to see it.
And thus Cursespoke fell for the second time.
Part III: Return to Cursespoke.
When the Mountainhome heard of the fall of Cursespoke they were shocked. What were these "Necromorphs", these constructed undead without any known creator? Why had they come to Cursespoke? The King himself, hearing of Cursespoke's story for the first time, asked his court if there was any brave enough to try to recover the fortress. Only one man dared, a lowly militiaman named Daran. "I'll go," he said, whether out of stupidity, dwarven stubbornness, or genuine confidence, no one knew. "But I'll not repeat any of the other leaders' mistakes. No civilians this time. Just hardened soldiers." He found six other drunken soldiers to go with him, not worrying much for food or seeds, or other supplies like most expeditions. He knew that like other hardy dwarven goods, prepared dwarven meals could last up to a century in a proper stone pot. Dwarven meals were forged rather than cooked. According to the last caravan coming out of Cursespoke, its stockpiles of food, booze, and even metal and cloth were full to bursting. They just needed to get in there and take it back. He stocked up on weapons and armor, with an emergency booze supply just in case. Reclaiming Cursespoke was, in Daran's mind, definitely do-able.
Sure, Daran had heard the rumors about Cursespoke. That maybe the god of the volcano on which the settlement was built had been angered by the miners drawing out its magma like taking sap from a maple. After all, all of the madness of Cursespoke had begun with the hubris of two legendary miners. He'd heard that immediately after the second fall of that Hall, a party of humans had tried to take advantage and plunder its stockpiles of treasure. He'd heard that none had returned. (This did indeed happen, in the final hours of Cursespoke while the "Mayor" bled to death behind his pillar. They barely got to the main stairwell before they were slaughtered by Necromorphs.) But he didn't care. The King had asked it. Dwarven honor was at stake.
Still, when the six drunken soldiers he'd recruited woke up a the next day on a cart in the middle of nowhere, Daran thought it best not to tell them where they were going. "It's a fortress called 'Goldalopolis', settled by a bunch of weak, whining civvies. Had their place taken from them filthy goblins with rusty swords. We just got to clean out the stragglers and we'll all be rich." He opened the keg of ale he'd brought and let them celebrate their impending fortunes. They were drunks, but they could fight. And Daran needed dwarves who could fight. He didn't know what he was walking into, not really. No one had actually seen one of the Necromorphs. No one knew if they'd still be there.
After a long journey, they arrived to once again Strike the Earth at Cursespoke. Immediately Daran began giving orders. Burial detail, reclaiming the food stores, fixing the outer defenses. They stepped out of the wagon, and into their destiny.
Then, they saw it. A filthy orc thief skulking about inside the mouth of the cave.
The dwarves smiled and gripped their axes, hammers and swords firmly in hand. With a shout, "FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" they charged into the mouth of Cursespoke. The orc fled back into the depths, hoping to lose the warrior dwarves in the stockpiles. The dwarves gave chase, but when they saw what was inside Cursespoke it stopped them in their tracks, and they lost the looting thief in the darkness.
Bodies. There were bodies everywhere. Many of them were decapitated. Most mangled beyond words. Stray hands, feet and rotted remains were literally everywhere. Much of it was unrecognizable, but clearly not dwarven. Parts of Necromorphs, Daran silently concluded.
"What is this place?" the other dwarves asked him. They knew that what crunched beneath their feet was not the remains of goblins. Daran was silent.
Suddenly, from deep beneath them, an orcish scream. Then came the terrible sounds of scrambling. From everywhere. And all of the Dwarves knew where they were.
"You lied, you son of a bitch. This is fucking Cursespoke! We're all going to fucking die"
"Hold it together men. We will be rich, if we can hold the line. It's estimated that Cursespoke's defenses took out at least half their number."
"HALF? I heard there were hundreds of those..."
Suddenly they were no longer alone. Three shapes clattered, stinking, into the passage. Two that were made mostly out of oxen, wood nymph and goblin, and one that was ALL dwarf, with an axe somehow petruding from the flesh of its putrid arm.
Then there were only dwarven screams echoing in the ghost-haunted, necromorph-infested halls of Cursespoke.
THE END.
(This final game lasted approximately 30-40 seconds after I unpaused. I'm not joking. Sadly, this means Cursespoke is no longer recoverable. Game over.)
LOSING IS FUN.
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Topic: ☼The Tale of Cursespoke☼ (Read 1521 times)