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[DarkerDark]

The story of Agro'Malak Angerwheels, the Risks of Craziness.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some would call me an adventurer, and I say to those people that I seek no adventure, no treasures, no fame. I seek only one thing; Vengeance. My betrothed, my beloved 'Whisk of Tenderness', the only woman to have captured my heart, my dear Sana, was slain by goblins in the Fields of Kindling. They took her boots. I took their heads. It was not a fair trade.



Now, I find myself in the company of two women who share my experiences. They too have had their loved ones taken from them by the evil that is spreading across these lands, and it is in our shared mourning that we decide to form a pact with but one goal; Vengeance. We shall exact a terrible vengeance upon the evils of this world until, gods be willing, we are reunited with our loved ones in the afterlife.



We have heard rumors that there is an unholy site in the wind swept, frozen tundra to the north that harbors unspeakable evil. When we pressed the local villages for more information, we were given one name; Axehalls. "Beware the denizens of Axehalls," We are told, "They claim no allegiance but to evil itself. They are known to steal children in the night so that they may feast upon their flesh and drink their blood."

So we press north.

The arctic winds are harsh and the frozen tundra is unforgiving, but we persevere. Quite a few moons pass before we stumble across a peculiar sight. An old legless goblin has been strung up on a wooden post. To our amazement, we find out she's still alive.



"More food for those who have false names." The old goblin croaks as she acknowledges our presence

"We do not come for riddles, old witch," I reply, "Tell us where your dark masters reside and we may end your suffering."

"Masters? No one can claim to be my master, bogwart, except for maybe this old post," The goblin let out a raspy cackle and continued, "No no, you will see in the end that I will be master over you." She gestured to the array of frozen corpses huddled around her post.

"She's no use to us," My companion chimed, "Let us just end her and be on our way."

Before I could make ready my axe, the old goblin let out another cackle, "Yes! Yes! The children of the snow tell me you're here to seek the ones who title themselves with lies, yes, they are here."

"Perhaps she speaks of Axehalls?" My younger companion remarked before she pressed her spear-tip against the goblin's ribcage, "Tell us, witch, where might we find the great bridge to Axehalls?"

"Silly little girl," The goblin spat, "If you but dug into the snow instead of my flesh, you would see!"

--------------

It didn't take long before we uncovered the entrance to Axehalls. 



With weapons ready, we proceeded. The goblin could be heard cackling to herself as we entered those great halls, but soon those echoing laughs faded away as we ventured deeper into the site. The first chambers that greeted us were delicately carved, with fine engravings adorning the walls. Maybe a little too fine. We constantly found ourselves pressing up against stone doors only to find out that they weren't doors at all, but more artistic imagery. The youngest of our group found this unnerving.

"Why would they make false doors? What purpose would that serve?" She asked, eyes wide as she scanned the surrounding darkness.

"Who knows what goes through the mind of these insidious architects, but perhaps the purpose has already been explained by your paranoia?" I replied, "Stay on your guard."

The deeper we proceeded, the thicker the air stank with the stench of death and decay. Torn and shredded clothing was scattered about everywhere along with the occasional glittering artifact. We ignored them. We were not here in search of treasure, though perhaps a new weapon or a piece of armor might come in handy.

Just as my mind began to wander, there was a great howl. It echoed throughout the corridors and was answered with more excited howling. Instinctively we thought of goblins and watched for the telling red eyes that would blink in the darkness. Instead, we were set upon by tiny bearded men. Dwarves! We were ambushed!



It was clear that these were no ordinary dwarves. They leapt upon us like demons, their broad dwarven jaws hanging open and revealing sharp, gnashing teeth. We fought valiantly, I took the head of some sort of creature that looked like the unholy marriage of a fish and a man. My axe worked like a piston, hacking and slashing, but the Dwarves were too fast. I saw one get impaled on my companion's spear before she was knocked aside. Cleaving the arm off another attacker, I wheeled around and noticed my second companion had been laid low, her body broken and bleeding badly. More howls punctured the darkness. They were bringing reinforcements. In the ensuing melee, I lost track of my companions and found myself hacking at anything that moved.

Soon, the cries of battle and the sounds of metal on flesh died down. The corridor stank of freshly spilled gore, and I could hear a few gurgling wheezes as bodies gasped their last breathes of air. In the darkness a figure straightened itself and I turned to face it. It was a female dwarf. She looked upon me and pulled free her hammer from one of my companion's gore spattered cranium. I couldn't tell which companion, but it doesn't matter. It was down to just me and the dwarf.



My body heaves from exhaustion and I quickly bring myself to control my breathing. Stinging pain signals that I was wounded in several places, but I ignore it. I must not show weakness. I look at the dwarf and our eyes lock. She snarls like some sort of beast. I know I don't have the strength to lift my axe for a solid blow. My stamina is spent. It doesn't matter. In the back of my mind I can hear a soft, sweet voice calling my name, beckoning me to join her. There's only two outcomes for this confrontation. Either I smite this creature and remove from this world another incarnation of evil, or I join my dear Sana in the afterlife. Either way, I win.

[Manze]

Yeah, that's kind of awesome.

[xominxac]

My reaction to that.

[Mephansteras]

Wow....best story so far! Well done, DarkerDark.

[Eric Blank]

Ya always gots to put us all to shame, dontcha Darkerdark?

Good job wiping out the vampire army I was so proud of creating. If I'd had time to enlist them all in the militia and train them you wouldn't have lasted that long, I assure you. Sad that you sent two beautiful ladies to their deaths to do it, I suppose.

[Reilnur]

Well, after an epic tale like that I have to sign up.

[DarkerDark]

Ya always gots to put us all to shame, dontcha Darkerdark?

Good job wiping out the vampire army I was so proud of creating. If I'd had time to enlist them all in the militia and train them you wouldn't have lasted that long, I assure you. Sad that you sent two beautiful ladies to their deaths to do it, I suppose.

Oh, don't worry, I didn't completely wipe them out. Agro'Malak didn't walk away from that last showdown. So at least one vampire still stalks the halls of those old Dwarven ruins. And it turns out she's the original vampire that started all of this.

[Eric Blank]

Ah. Totally forgot about her. Not the safest woman to be around, for sure.

[Spish]

I didn't realize this was a thing, sign me up for a turn

[WillowLuman]

Well damn, how could I have missed this? Sign me up, good sirs.

Incedentally, there any human towns with temples or monasteries?

[Sappho]

Aw dang, I'm not gonna be able to live up to that, but I thank you, DarkerDark, for all of that awesome.

My turn will be finished probably by the end of today, absolutely by the end of tomorrow, and the file uploaded. I will try to get the story up just as quickly but I'll make sure the save file goes first so the next person can start.

[MrWillsauce]

That was superb.

[Larix]

Wow, impressive. A nice story and superb execution.

[Spish]

As for the FPS slowdown; it seems like player fortresses in this version of DF become buggy after being visited or reloaded to often, somehow they start attracting huge amounts of animals, vermin, and other creatures until it slows down the FPS to a crawl. The same can be seen in Sunkengem in the museum succession game. I also know several fortress succession games had to be abandoned after too many reclaims because of similar issues. I am not sure if this is the problem here, did the site have an unusual amount of animals when it was last visited?

It's not animals or vermin, it's demons in the underworld

I know because I did extensive testing of abandoned sites back for the DF2012 succession world, noticing some heavy slowdown buildup when sleeping in my abandoned sites. So I used DFHack to get a bird's eye view of the place, took a peek at the unit list, and got an eyeful of this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(and this is just a small portion of the map)

That's a very, very old screenshot so it might be different in this version (and in retrospect, I probably should've told someone about this, I figured it would be fixed by now). But perhaps you can reclaim the fortress, use DFMode to switch over to Arena Mode, and encase all the demons in obsidian to temporarily reduce the lag for future visitors. Make sure you do not unpause during arena mode or things will get very messy.

[hops]

I would love to see an adventurer manually removing the demons.