Hello all. I just finished reading Battlefailed, Failcannon, and Hellcannon, and now I've just finished reading the story of Horrorfailed thus far. And well, the stories are epic. I didn't expect it to still be going on, either. You guys are awesome. On a personal level, I also especially enjoyed SethCreiyd, CatalystParadox, and ThatAussieGuy's updates. Thanks.
I've come out of lurking -- actually just registered an account -- because I had something I thought might be worth contributing, since Andreus and Robocorn were asking for one earlier in the thread: I wrote a short introduction to the Failsaga, primarily built around the metaplot. Since the aim is to provide an overview, I've omitted a LOT of material, so please excuse me if I've left out something you thought should totally be included. Since I'm coming in from the outside, as it were, I'm also totally okay with having the story amended: feel free to take it and run with it, and make something better of it.
It's also not entirely complete. I haven't included the founding of Horrorfailed, mostly because I'm waiting to see how the story here links back to the previous three fortresses.
Prelude: The World-Tree
Dákoramlathon: The World-TreeIn the time of first beginnings
Before the first brewer
Before the first song
There was no land nor sky
There was no moon nor star
There was no booze nor song
There were only silent waters
Where slept the great world-carp.
Then from the waters a figure rose,
Then into the airs a figure screamed,
A dwarf with matted hair,
A dwarf with bloodied hands.
He had strangled the great sea-beasts
He had eaten the great world-carp
Whose carcase rose upward
And formed the first land.
The dwarf climbed up from the waters
The dwarf struggled onto the land
And he bled onto the dirt
And he vomited onto the soil.
As he lay upon the newborn dirt
From the blood rose the sapling
From the vomit grew the sapling
From the song blossomed the sapling
That the dwarf named Dákoramlathon
As he named himself Armok.
- “The Rune of Dákoramlathon” (trans.)
Commentary:
The Dwarven creation myth is that of Dákoramlathon, “the World-Tree” (lit. Tree-World-Myth, or “The Tree of Worlds of Myth”). The Dwarves believe the universe, before creation, was as a huge and formless sea, containing within in the world-carp (“Tatloshthur”, lit. Fish-Universe), which continued for a time beyond measure.
The beginning of history proper, therefore, was when the god Armok, in Dwarven form, breached the waters. Whence he sprang from is not recorded; but he bears the marks of an epic battle with the denizens of the deep. The world-carp, it's flesh rent and eaten by Armok, floated up and became the first land; Armok climbed up onto it, forever forsaking the sea. (See, in this respect, Dwarven myths as to the hatred of the sea-creatures, particularly carp, for all dwarfkind.)
Bleeding, Armok vomited upon the new land he had struggled onto. His blood, touching the body of the world-carp, caused a sapling to grow out of the newborn dirt. Armok vomited from the battles he had fought; his vomit fertilized the sapling, causing it to grow into a massive tree. And having recovered from his ordeal, Armok spoke the first word. This was the first song, and the power of it caused the tree to bear fruit. This tree Armok named Dákoramlathon.
To the dwarves, then, this tree is the bearer of the worlds: each world is as a fruit, and the Dwarves believe that when the world has ripened, Armok harvests it and makes from it the finest booze: hence, his legend-title of the first brewer. The booze nourishes Armok, and the vomit from the inevitable hangover the next morning nourishes the World-Tree.
The Story of Battlefailed
Nokzamungčgomath, “The Legend of Battlefailed”
The world of Aluonra, “The Windy World”, was one of those fruits on the World-Tree. There, the genocidal necromancer-queen Led Shakecannons, human priestess of Ura Death-Goddess, first sent seven dwarves to found a fortress by the Blueness of Malodours, an ocean that stank of piss and dead cats. It was not meant to last: Queen Led had ordered the founding of the fortress as the first step of a plan that would lead to the extermination of dwarvenkind, the eternal dominion of Ura over the Windy World, and the slow rot of Aluonra on the World-Tree to poison Armok himself.
And yet... somehow, the dwarves of what was soon to be known as Nokzamungčg, “Battlefailed”, held off Queen Led’s plans. Bolstered by a stream of dwarven refugees fleeing Led’s tyrannical rule, but weakened by their fight against the Queen, the local wilddeath, and an unending wave of goblin sieges, they perished at the hands of the Forgotten Beast Stuzang before they could complete their superweapon — but not before buying enough time for the next attempt.
The Story of Failcannon
Ungegugathgomath, “The Legend of Failcannon”
With Battlefailed lost and everyone dead, the remaining dwarves of Dastot Cog, “The Sword of Boots”, set up the twin fortress of Ungegugath, “Failcannon”, to try and do what Battlefailed could not. It stood twenty-four years, the last beacon in a world increasingly engulfed in darkness, it’s dwarves struggling to end Led Shakecannon’s rule, and undo the rot in Aluonra before it could spread to the World-Tree.
That fortress, too, perished: with failure looming, the dwarves of Failcannon took up a desperate plan. They built the Strategic Ghost Emitter, a doomsday device, which would be activated by the last dwarf left alive on Aluonra. When the Fail-lever was pulled, the last dwarf would be killed, and the angry ghosts of all the dwarves of Failcannon would rise to fight a final battle.
As the fortress finally died, the Fail-lever was pulled. Queen Led was finally defeated by the risen dwarven host, born of blood and struggle and death, but it was too late. Ura had grown too powerful. The remaining gods, led by Thoth, the youngest and best of them, were in retreat. The world of Aluonra was doomed.
The Story of Hellcannon
Shashmebzuthgomath, “The Legend of Hellcannon”
In the last moments before defeat, the gods of Aluonra devised a last plan to buy more time. They split the world: where once Aluonra hung alone on the World-Tree, it now had a twin, Xemorid, “The Mythical Universes”. The gods shut away the twin fortresses of Battlefailed and Failcannon within Aluonra, in a bid to confine the rot. Xemorid they fled to, and restored to what Aluonra might have been — a safe place, peopled as Aluonra had been before the Rot. Xemorid represented sanctuary; more than that, it represented a base from which the gods could gather their strength in the struggle against Ura Death-Goddess.
On It's Founding
In Xemorid, Queen Led Shakecannons lives: ruler of the Sword of Boots, necromancer and priestess of Ura no longer. She is worried, and for good reason: the area where Battlefailed and Failcannon would have been has gone dark. Traders have not returned. Scouts have been lost. She has sent seven dwarves to found a fortress overlooking the spreading darkness, to observe and report back — and if need be, to fight.
But the dwarves never made it. Manipulated from the beginning, unwitting pawns in a cosmic chess game between the gods and the Rot, the expedition took a wrong turn, and then another, and then another. The wagon broke down in a distant tundra the few locals referred to as The Useless Frost. Supplies were running out. There were no nearby settlements; the land was barren, and home to little but skeletal elk and reindeer. The dwarves were left with no choice. The fortress of Shashmebzuth, “Hellcannon”, was founded.
On The Tenacity of the Dwarves of Hellcannon
It has been over twenty years since the ill-fated expedition first struck the earth in The Useless Frost. The dwarven fortress of Hellcannon endures, in spite of itself. The aquifers that provided water threatened at one point to flood the fortress. Above, goblins siege the fort, and skeletal wilddeath threaten migrants and merchant caravans. Below, vast caverns have been discovered that hold Forgotten Beasts, abominations put together from spare parts in the Forging of the Worlds. Just one gap in the defences would allow any of these to enter Hellcannon and slaughter the inhabitants. And in quiet corners, the spirits of the unburied dwarven dead mourn.
And yet, Hellcannon, originally born of desperation, has grown into a byzantine mass, a labyrinthine sprawl of subterranean passages and rooms. Underground farms and breweries keep the dwarves full and drunk. Magma forges and vast workshop complexes provide the exports that undergird Hellcannon’s newfound wealth. Dwarven water reactors, marvels of engineering, provide power to the mechanics of Hellcannon. A vast array of levers operate ingenious constructions, traps and tools alike built since the very founding of the fortress, the workings and labels of some lost to memory and time.
The dwarves have survived — and somehow, prospered.
Hellcannon's Fall
Picture in your mind, in the midst of the dark and chthonian reaches of the fortress: a pit, delving deep into the earth. It’s sides are sloped, the easier to descend, to the very bottom where a bare and rough-hewn passageway, just wide enough for a single dwarf, ends before a rockwall of the truemetal, adamantium. Maintainence tunnels run along the outside of the pit, and a single room hangs, suspended, over the depths: the control room. Separated from the pitwalls by drawbridges, the sealed chamber contained the levers which would allow access to the pit, as well as food and supplies to last years.
For those supplies were needed. Hell itself lay behind that single rockwall, with its infinite horde of demons. This was the fortress’s titular superweapon, the Hellcannon: constructed by the cunning craft of the Overseers, it was meant to be an ultimate fail-deadly. For they knew of the coming battle: Hellcannon, connected somehow with the lost doom-fortresses of Battlefailed and Failcannon, would soon face the onslaught of the Rot. When that happened, the Hellcannon would be activated, and Hell itself would be breached. Whatever came would face the wrath of hellspawn riding atop a wave of superheated magma. It was a masterwork of dwarven engineering, the greatest work of cunning and dangerous minds. And if the Hellcannon failed — then the control room was meant to be a last resort, a panic room for the Operator, a place of safety for the last Dwarven soul.
But it was not to be. The Hellcannon was almost finished. The final linkage was being made. And then “Catalyst” Erushkidet, the Overseer heard the screech from the deep: the coming of a Forgotten Beast, a gigantic spider made of clear glass. And from the surface, he heard the thunder of an marching army: the goblins had come to siege the fortress. The fortress militia, sent to deal with the Beast, began to die. And the goblin invaders, fighting their way past the defences while the militia was elsewhere, brought the fortress gates down.
There was no choice. Catalyst, Armok help him, ran down into the depths, copper pick in hand — and pierced the rockwall.
For the briefest moment, he saw Hell itself: an eerie cavern, the air above the dark stone floor alive with vortices of purple light and dark, boiling clouds, with seemingly bottomless glowing pits. And then he heard the screams, enough to make the stoutest dwarves quail.
With all the million demons of Hell itself surging up towards him, he ran.
And he ran well, for he brought the hellspawn up to the cannon barrel itself. But the last thing he saw, before Death finally caught up with him, was the Hellcannon maintenance tunnel gates — left open, and with it, a pathway into the fortress. The Fall of Hellcannon had begun.
...I can't seem to get this to preview to see if I got the formatting and all that right, so I'm going to post this and hope for the best, and edit errors out from there.
Author
Topic: Horrorfailed the Battle-Cannon of Hell - Please do not feed the nobles (Read 578071 times)