I, by no means, am what you'd call an "experienced" DF player. I've been around, and had a few fortresses survive for a good, long time, and nearly become self-sufficient. As undwarven as it sounds, I never played with a "magma release" or any of the other fun magma-y goodness, but one particular fort had become quite, well, legendary. Sitting between two large cliff sides, this fort was legendary- for someone of my caliber. It was self-sufficient, and well protected. Given a few more years, it could have been a grand and legendary fortress.
A certain forgotten beast had other plans.
It all started when I began an expansive mining project that was simply labeled "catacombs." The layout of the entire operation was like a maze, 3-square wide hallways that were soon littered with traps. It had been too long since I had hit a cavern, having only seen one after many, many levels of digging. Some said my beard sense had been tingling.
I had been right. The "project catacombs" ended with an abrupt fall 5 Z-levels onto hard ground. The three miners who had been digging had been reduced to two, as the first to break into the cavern broke both legs on impact. The other dwarves scurried away, as a message appeared... A Forgotten beast had reared it's ugly head, looking for blood. It was a one-humped camel creature, made from microcline.
I had forgotten to tell my dwarves to cancel the rest of Catacombs until it was too late. Seeing as the creature had no wings, it wouldn't have been able to get inside... until my dwarves made a staircase to ground floor. I noticed that they had continued when the second Forgotten Beast showed up, in a different cavern little more than a few squares away. This one was a winged gecko of granite.
Both beasts began their charge through the catacombs. Trap after trap was proven useless, as these monstrosities managed to twist their way straight to my fortresses main floor.
My army had been stationed along with a hastily built Ballista. Behind that was a single lever. I had already assembled a last stand, and everyone else was either locked in their room or in the statue garden. The fight started with every crossbow in my army firing, to little avail. The beasts were just too strong. They charged up into the front lines, the gecko all the wile randomly spewing toxic gases. The camel was content to spit globs of death from a slight distance.
The army rushed in, and the ranged units gave it their all. The combined syndromes, however, soon brought a stop to my entire offensive- the mixed poisons had caused a slew of effects, from paralysis to unconsciousness to severe necrosis. As my army lay dying, I commanded the last man, the Ballista operator, to pull the switch.
Five iron floodgates and an artifact slate floodgate opened, spewing water from their maw, washing away the toxic feild, all the accumulated gore, a few still breathing dwarves, and the wingless camel. The camel fought the current and came back up, the water depleted and the last attack proven useless. The forgotten beasts couldn't destroy anything to leave, and my dwarves had begun a tantrum spiral after so many died. Eventually, the great fortress of Carnal Triangles was lost.
---Adventure Mode Followup/ Carnal Triangles II---
The legend of Carnal Triangles was a simple one, that you could hear in any tavern in the land. It was a great monument of Dwarven capability, daring anyone to try and breach it's walls. It was another story of the dwarves releasing a horrible creature and disappearing never to be seen again, and as an adventurer in a nearby town, I decided I would be the first adventurer to explore the fairly recent ruins.
The doors were wooden, but the rest of the walls were solid rock. The door, surprisingly, opened with a single push. I found a farm that was still fertile, though the plants were long gone. There I saw the staircase down. I tightened my grip on my longsword and plowed on through.
The hallways, at first, were just basic rock. The further I went, though, they smoothed out, then they were carved with most of Dwarven history. The workshops themselves looked like ancient technology, despite how advanced it could be. I found leftover Steel armor, but I couldn't wear it. The only bad thing about Dwarven armor? It doesn't fit.
I had thoroughly explored the fortresses upper floors, finding nothing interesting save a statue-filled room with what looked to be at least 20 dwarf skeletons. I assumed that this was the room of their final stand against whatever cave-dwelling freaks that had pushed them out of their own earth. I trudged on deeper, wondering what it could have been that caused all this carnage.
I found what looked like a graveyard or soldiers en-masse. Compared to the other room, the smell of death here was less strong, and I quickly noticed why. Trickles of water leaked from all but one floodgate, all of them having damage that was irreversible to all but the finest craftsmen. I followed the trail of water for little more than a few steps before I heard a sickening outcry, like stones being smashed together and screaming of children put together.
Out of the darkness slinked a massive lizard with wings. I drew my sword expecting a dragon, but this dragon was just an oversized gecko... made out of granite. Immediately, I saw clouds of gas erupting from cracks in it's body.
I moved away and began firing over and over with my crossbow that I had looted earlier in hopes of killing the beast, but the bolts did little against the stone body. I thought I had still had a chance, when a glob of some vile material splattered over my sword arm. Standing behind the rapidly advancing gecko beast was a giant blue stone camel, looking as though it was ready to spit again.
I turned and ran, trying my best to outpace the gecko. I dropped all my loot, leaving just the armor I had on and the sword I carried on my person, which gave me just enough speed to escape it. I ran and ran, nearly reaching the top floor, when I felt myself grow stiff. I tried to force movement, but it was hopeless. I looked at my shoulder and noticed that the slime had managed to cause some pretty bad swelling. It also caused paralysis. i figured. I was trapped, just like the dwarves were. The gecko got closer, closer...
-This is a superior quality engraving of the adventurer, Lockshaft, in his adventure to the fortress of Carnal Triangles. On the image is a forgotten beast shaped like a gecko. On the image is a forgotten beast shaped like a camel. On the image is a carving of cheese.-
And a much shorter, less lore-involved bit.
I had just gotten my fourth immigrant wave when one of the metalworkers goes crazy and takes the one forge I have ready. I had plenty of bars from a very great set of four intersecting veins, and this dwarf calls upon all his great and amazing engineering ability to give me a grand steel sword, adorned with rings of silver and menacing with spikes of (more) silver.
On the sword, there was an image of cheese. That was the only thing on this sword, named
"Lusthorror the Inch of Justifying."
I immediately handed it to the first dwarf with any competence with a weapon at all and told him to go kill a few nuisance badgers, the same ones that kept stopping my dwarves from moving my booze into the new stockpile. He rushed out, and pretty easily slaughtered the whole lot... until a Giant Badger showed up. I figured it would be easy for Mr. Cheese Sword to kill it, even with his lack of armor, but I was so horribly wrong.
Urist McAwesome (I didn't get his name, sadly) rushes the badger, but somehow misses. From here on in, they're locked in a ballte to the death, an occasional limb flying to armok knows where on the map. I looked at the battle every few steps, and saw that the badger was winning by a long shot. It had minor damage.
Urist McItsJustAFleshWound is missing both legs and his non-sword arm, and he's still (barely) alive, and STILL FIGHTING.
He manages to DECAPITATE the giant badger the very next second, then dies of blood loss the very next frame. The sheer amount of blood covered nearly a screenful of squares. I later made him a proper memorial slab, sealing that in a room of solid gold, engraved with pictures of awesome and containing the last worldly possession of Urist McDead, Lusthorror.
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Topic: Your Dwarf Fortress anecdote - Illustrated! (Read 104434 times)