"Golly, Deon has a (WIP*) Morrowind mod? Gee whiz, how could I have not seen this?"
So I click the download link, fire her up, and gen a new world. Wasting no time at all I jump into adventure mode head first, eager to skewer swarms of cliff racers and hordes of bandits in search of Fun. What I found however, was far from my initial expectations. I found myself in some nameless town smack dab in the middle of buttfuck nowheresville. I wandered the streets looking for peasants, brave, stupid, suicidal, or any combination therein to join me on my quests for glory and power. However, I kept receiving messages about a named villager falling in and out of consciousness. I ignored it, continuing my search for suitable meatshields. Not long after, however, I found the source of the messages. There, in a pool of filth and his own blood, lay a dying Khajiit. I examined him, his wounds were much worse than I had suspected and he had little time left before he would join the choir invisible. I was lucky enough to get the chance to talk to him as he floated in between awareness and unconsciousness. I asked the bloodied man about his family, he had a plethora of brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts. All of them had died, most of them went in particularly gruesome, violent ways. I pressed my inquiry, surely he must have some surviving family members? But no, all of them had been killed one way or another, either by bandits blade or beasts maw. This carcass which may have once resembled a living person was the last of his line, and here he lie in a pool of blood mustering the last ounces of his strength to relay his tragic tale to a complete stranger. As he breathed his last, a single chord rang out, barely audible. It was Dwarf Fortress, plucking at my heartstrings, and though it fazed me relatively little, this is DF. We gleefully send kittens to the slaughter and use their bones for bolts to wage war with peaceful tribes of Elves armed with nothing more than sharpened sticks. But this dying peasant, unknown and unloved, evoked the tiniest bit of emotion, and my rotted apple core of a heart grew three sizes that fateful day (only to shrink five more when I murdered the defenseless villagers in their sleep that night).
I begin to wonder if this is an isolated incident, or if anyone else has actually felt something bordering on pity during their sessions, if so do feel free to share.
*Not sure if it's been completed, I haven't played it for months.