Phallusballs's has finally come to an end. It was a slow, drawn out, and tragic demise. You see, the fortress itself was growing well, but for the first time in a long while, I experienced food/booze issues. Through excessive cooking, the fort had begun to run short on seeds, which lead to lack of plants, and thus lack of booze.
Apparently there wasn't enough wild plants around to keep a steady supply, and soon the dwarves were forced to drink from ponds and eat only very basic meals. This normally wouldn't be very hard to recover from, make more farms, trade with caravans, ect. But the arrival of a vampire started to cause trouble when relatives became increasingly upset about their kin being drained of blood in their sleep. This, along with kids being hauled way by snatchers every now and then, meant morale in Phallusballs was not high.
Supplies were needed desperately to keep everyone's moods high enough to continue doing their jobs, so when the dwarven caravan refused to sympathize with the fort's suffering inhabitants, I ordered a moat to be dug around the depot, in the hopes that the merchants would go insane and leave their wares to be looted for the good of the fortress. Unfortunately, the fort was shortly after hit by a bowgoblin ambush that, although defeated by the amateur militia, only worsened the already low fortress morale.
Time went on, and slowly, the tantrums died down. Even despite the miasma and ghosts around, moods began to recover. That is, before another two ambushing parties decided to show up. After slaughtering the elven caravan, they promptly slaughtered Phallusballs' amateur militia, and rampaged through the fort. I quickly made several new squads and filled them up with any dwarf I could, the end result was a bloodstained hallway, many dead dwarves, and a group of fleeing ambushers.
After that, insanity became a normal occurrence in Phallusballs. The newly created civilian militia was regularly ordered to take out berserk dwarves, while many others ran babbling though the living quarters or slowly wasted away, stricken with melancholy. The miserable, sane survivors began hunting vermin for food, and as starvation and dehydration increased, so did the miasma and ghosts. The human merchants were attacked and killed almost as soon as they entered the map. There were plenty of seeds to plant, but everyone was too busy dying and tantruming to get any farming done. Food was needed ASAP, there was no time to think about the consequences. More dwarves were lost in the assault, but in the end, supplies were obtained from the humans.
At this point, there were only a few dwarves left willing to take the time to do any actual work. Then, almost as if they knew it was the perfect time to strike, the fortress was ambushed again. Lashers and pikegoblins flanked the fort entrance. Much to my surprise, I realized they were accompanied by a human axeman. At first, I thought he had simply been a surviving caravan guard, but as I watched, it became clear that he was fighting alongside the goblins. As they cut through the surviving militia members, it seemed all hope was lost. I, Refusing to let them enjoy their apparent victory, ordered a lever to be pulled. A lever to an unfinished defense system that would flood the entire fortress. Water rushed down the halls, spreading the blood and vomit around even further, and muddying the fortress halls that had now become a battleground.
But, as fate would have it, winter arrived, and the water abruptly froze. Being without any capable miners, the fort was now sealed off from the outside world until spring, locking both the ambushers and dwarves inside. After a long and messy fight, the ambushers were somehow defeated. Corpses from both sides littered the filth covered floors, and before long, only three dwarves remained. A single baby, who would soon die of dehydration, a hammerdwarf, who it turns out had actually been the vampire terrorizing the fort the whole time, and a speardwarf with a broken finger.
The vampiric hammerdwarf lay crippled on the stairs, unable to move. He was surrounded by restless dwarven souls the entire time. They crowded around him and watched as he slowly succumbed to the infections of his grievous injuries.
The speardwarf, being the only dwarf capable of working, and soon the only dwarf still among the living, was able to brew himself a couple barrels of dwarven wine. He remained content, despite the putrid miasma and restless haunts that continued to torment him. He went about his business day by day, until at last, spring arrived. The ice melted, and he was free to finally return to the surface. But just as he finished butchering one of the remaining animal skeletons, and was ready to start tending the surface crops until more migrant arrived, he was battered to death by a ghost, before he even got to step foot out of the wretched hellhole he had been entombed in for months. So ends the story of Phallusballs the Balls of Phalli.
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