As an experiment in, I suppose you'd call it procedural fictional narrative, I've written part 1 of Confineink, a Dwarf Fortress novel:
“So,” sighed the Queen, “There are these seven dwarves
among us who have already told me personally that they
will happily take up the challenge for the glory of Logem
Teskom. Between them, all devoted professionals, they are a
miner, a mason, a woods-dwarf, a farmer, a cook, and a
mechanic. They shall be led by Mosus,” the Queen mo-
tioned to her right, in case any of the silent council could
have forgotten who she was, “Who has over the years
proven to all of us the excellence of her thought, the realism
of her plans, and the trueness of her ambition. Unless any-
one else has any objections...” the Queen paused for a mo-
ment, eyes sweeping the council which sat in heavy silence,
“...they shall leave this place, head south-east to where the
Empty Barbs meet the forest and the Untamed Mire, and set
up a home there. If they are never seen again, then we shall
have lost but seven dwarves,” she shrugged, “Which while a
grievance would not critically endanger our civilisation. If,
however, they are successful, and I am sure you will all
agree that between my own and Mosus’ judgement that we
have thought this through, then we shall have a new portion
of this untamed wilderness to call our own, a new bane to
the goblins’ apparent heedlessness of true civilisation, a re-
minder to the Elves to keep their incessant breeding to
themselves and a new channel by which to get our trade
goods to the Menfolk.”
The Queen waited a moment for any new objections, her
bright blue eyes scanning back and forth across the table.
All were silent.
“At which point,” she continued, “No doubt word shall
spread via the mercantile network, as it always does, to our
advantage. The new fortress shall attract migrants, no doubt,
perhaps from other kingdoms, mayhap from our own fort-
resses. Who knows,” the Queen laughed faintly, “Perhaps I
shall end up moving there myself.”
The novel has no pretentions. It's not played for laughs, although I guess there're parts which one could call humorous, there's no special challenge for the migrants to accomplish (yet), and the game is played on standard Dwarf Fortress with no mods. The game is being conducted in-character. Mosus might not be making the best strategic decisions but she's trying her best. There is a back-story, but mainly the idea behind the experiment was to record, in novel format, the experience of the new outpost as it plays out in a standard game. There's some combat, romance and intrigue but the first part only gets to the first migration wave in Spring of the second year, so it really is the orientation stage of the novel (for those that know their Labov). There's quite a bit of description of the world, because the writing was intended to be accessible to non-DF players too, but hopefully its recounted in an interesting enough way to not wear on the patience of dedicated players.
If you're interested, download links are below. If there's feedback I will begin writing the series regularly. The novel is distributed under a CC-BY-NC
licence, which means it mustn't be used for commercial purposes, but you can do what you like with it provided that Tinan (my pen name) gets credit for the original. If anyone wants it converted to some ebook format then I can do that; the reason I haven't yet is that I don't possess a reader myself (and therefore can't truly check the results for myself), and I suspect that those equipped with readers should be able to convert the pdfs or the txt for themselves, but let me know if there's a format you want to see it in with the emphatic exception of Word .doc (if anyone else wants to convert it to Word .doc, though, I won't stop them - the reason I won't do it isn't just philosophical, it's because I don't possess a copy of Word and therefore would not be able to perform the necessary formatting adjustments once the filter's borked them).
Download linksDF: Confineinks Part 1, Open Document Text, White coverDF: Confineinks Part 1, Portable Document Format, White coverDF: Confineinks Part 1, Open Document Text, Black coverDF: Confineinks Part 1, Portable Document Format, Black coverDF: Confineinks Part 1, Plain Text (utf-8)
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Topic: Confineink Part 1 (Read 901 times)