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[Iceco]

I'm currently entertaining some friends with my own Dwarf Fortress stories and wanted to share my latest starting chapter, because others might find it funny too.
If this thread was only to share one story with you, it would be kind of stupid, so instead I'm asking all to share their starting stories. They're short(er than a fort's whole history), but still carry a lot of entertainment value, so they should be suited to share.

My story had a lot of strong and off language, but I tried to clean it up as much as possible. (It's shorter, contains less strong language and less pics.) My apologies if it's still too much.
Also, if I made other violations against forum protocol, please make me aware of them. (Yes, I did read the rules.)

Chapter 1: Striking the earth

The glorious stories of the rise and fall of the Sacks of Delight rippled through the empire of the Factional Plank.
This can be explained by the simple fact that dwarves are mostly drunk and experience little trouble filling in the blanks of the riddled story that arrived from the site, weeks of dangerous travel away from Rudolf Island -called so because of it's resemblance to a flying reindeer-, the homeland of "the Facts".

It was on one of those alcohol laden story-telling nights that the idea of another such quest ripened in the minds of some of the nations most retarded citizens.
So again 7 dwarves -rumors of a human princess following them are yet to be confirmed- set off to make their king look away in embarrassment. They called themselves
Roldethkokeb Roderagak Cabnul, a name which sounds like a dwarf suffocating in his own vomit.

Uhm, whatever. So they scoured around the map and found a mighty fine location to settle.

They're settlin in all your mountains.
They're digging your gems up.
Tryina settle em. So y'all need to
Hide your kids, hide your wife
And hide your husband
Cuz they’re freakin everybody out here



tl;dr: The fortress is called Rimprairies.

It's pitch black, after traveling through a desert the party arrives at a river. The moon is faint, but the jagged horizon tells them they're at the foot of a mountain. To the other side, the horizon flows more softly, telling of a forest.
Tired, sore and sober, the party decides to make this their new home.
What will the morning bring?
...
Upon waking up, the dwarves realize what kind of shit they got themselves into. Firstly: is this a damn swamp or something? Secondly, 't is as flat as a pancake. Where are the mountains that gave us o so sweet dreams?

Upon further inspection it was established that it was indeed a swampy pancake, the mountains tauntingly nearby, but too far to be of use. Still, expectations of this fortress were high, so thorough planning was needed. Ideally that had happened before setting out, but who are we kidding?

The party consisted of -in order of importance- 3 cats, 7 dwarves, 6 (already trained) war dogs and a donkey.
The dwarves are far from spectacular, so I'll spare you the rundown, but of note are Vabok (♂), the expedition leader and miner, and Kikrost (♀), the architect-mason.





The poor spatial sense of the miner isn't the only thing that has me worried. Notice what you'd call the slight incompatibility between the two when it comes to patience.

And this is the moment where I have to explain to you how according to Vabrok's standards, Kikrost didn't quite put enough pace behind designing the fortress.

[zephyr_hound]

Sure, here's how I imagine the founding of my current fort went.



Overheard in the military barracks of the Mountainhome:

"I am so sick and tired of these nobles and their mandates. Always hogging the good booze and good rooms, never appreciatin' the hard work of the common dorf."

"I hear you."

"Who protects the purpleshirts anyway? Us. We do. We hold the line. That's what we do, we hold the damn line."

"I hear you."

"And what thanks do we get? D'I tell you my cousin got a hammering last month? For what? For not making zinc items for some bloated purpleshirt. He's a blasted weaponsmith, what's he going to do with zinc? I tell you, I don't know why I bother to stay."

"Aye."

"I oughta just up and leave. Head on over to Tinhelm or Seawindy, or--or, hell, just found my own damned fort somewhere."

"Well, why don't you found one then?"

"Eh?"

"Why don't you found a fort somewhere else? I'd come. And I know a few others I can ask."

"...Well, Armok damn it, why not? Grab that map off the wall! All right, let's see. How about here? Nice spot, nice and flat, lots of flux stone which means lots of steel. We could have the best Armok-damned military this world has ever seen."

"That's a glacier."

"Yes, and?"

"It's called the Ice of Skulls."

"Yes, and?"

And thus, Candledark was founded, on a haunted glacier, by two ex-military axedwarves and a miscellaneous bunch of farmer/peasants. The fort is built entirely on the third cavern layer and is open to the caves. Aside from occasional zombie gremlin incursions and furnace operators getting spooked by flocks of zombie hungry heads, it's a great place to live (and does a roaring trade in exotic bone bows).

[Nighthawk]

"...Well, Armok damn it, why not? Grab that map off the wall! All right, let's see. How about here? Nice spot, nice and flat, lots of flux stone which means lots of steel. We could have the best Armok-damned military this world has ever seen."

"That's a glacier."

"Yes, and?"

"It's called the Ice of Skulls."

"Yes, and?"

And thus, Candledark was founded, on a haunted glacier, by two ex-military axedwarves and a miscellaneous bunch of farmer/peasants. The fort is built entirely on the third cavern layer and is open to the caves. Aside from occasional zombie gremlin incursions and furnace operators getting spooked by flocks of zombie hungry heads, it's a great place to live (and does a roaring trade in exotic bone bows).

Epic. I wish I had a story to tell. Perhaps I'll come up with one.

[Zaerosz]

"So we have nothing."

"Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, sir." Id scratched at his beard. "We still 'ave the axes, my pick, the anvil and the lye."

Kadol sighed. "Id. We have the axes because Catten and Kikrost refuse to let them go. Even to sleep. You have your pick because you were carrying it when everything else got stolen. The anvil's only here because they couldn't carry it. And we have the lye because...?"

Id squinted, staring at the ground and thinking. "Well, sir, one of them cracked open a barrel, took a drink and started bleeding from the mouth."

"I see. Id, tell me something."

"...sir?"

"You know all this because you were awake, yes?"

"Aye, sir."

"Then why didn't you DO SOMETHING?! Thanks to YOU, those goblins have a hundred bars of high-quality steel! Who knows how long it'll be before they-"

"They weren't goblins, sir."

"...pardon?"

"They weren't goblins."

"Well, then what were they?"

"Not sure, sir. They were human-sized, but they had jackal heads. Swear on my beard."

"Id, I think you need a drink."

---

Kadol stretched, staring out over the landscape. Dead grass, glumprongs and- oh, wonderful. Harpies. He glanced back at the wagon - which the thieves had relieved of its wheels - piled high with barrels of lye. Kadol still wasn't sure why they'd taken it.

He sighed again. "Well, looks like we're setting ip camp here, boys and girls. Stay underground unless I say so and we'll be fine."

Thus began the accidental outpost of Copperrights.