Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Loud Whispers]

In regards to these things, I just wondered about something.

They are made out of nearly undiggable stone. They are all smoothed, and the masterwork weapon implies they (the patrons) were well within capabilities of crafting and maybe even creating things ex nihilo.
They are capable of sealing away Clowns in a way that suggests they intended to return to fight, the structure is a FORTRESS and they used a WEAPON to seal them away. Their intentions were clear.

Yet there is no trace of the patrons of these constructions, the weapon's artisan is unknown. The Fortress is derelict and bereaved of all goods bar the lone weapon, and is filled with the walking dead and the very building itself is cursed to bring the dead back to the mortal plane.

Who made the Fortresses, where have they gone?

The sheer lack of evidence of any digging around the Fortresses suggests that whoever constructed them shaped the surroundings out of pre-existing rock or else created it themselves. They probably came from either far above from a volcano or a magma pipe... Or through a spire.
But then how did the undead get there?

This enigma may not be solved any time soon.

[10ebbor10]

Maybe the things are really, really old. That would allow for erosion and such to completely cover the installation.

[Naryar]

Armok did it.

[Jbg97]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well, in the beginning, Armok created the first races, the Dwarves, the Elves, the Humans, the Goblins, the Kobolds, and the Others. The Others are what we call today the Forgotten Beasts, Titans, and Clowns. When the Others rampaged across the planet crushing the barely prepared races Armok decided to diminish the power of the Others to give the other races a chance. 1/3 was allowed to roam the land above and become the stuff of legends, 1/3 was sealed underground only to be released by those great enough to find their chambers and fight them. However, the final 1/3 was smarter than the other 2/3s. When Armok let them roam free above, they presented themselves as gods, when he sealed them underground they created grand slade structures under the earth, grew their power even further and attacked the surface with their great slade weapons. Truly this was the greatest of the Others. So Armok created a realm for them, a prison, only reachable through veins of pure candy. However, some escaped the gaze of Armok and they hid themselves beneath their great slade fortresses. There they wait, for a signal to return and reclaim their lost glory.

[Suspense]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well, in the beginning, Armok created the first races, the Dwarves, the Elves, the Humans, the Goblins, the Kobolds, and the Others. The Others are what we call today the Forgotten Beasts, Titans, and Clowns. When the Others rampaged across the planet crushing the barely prepared races Armok decided to diminish the power of the Others to give the other races a chance. 1/3 was allowed to roam the land above and become the stuff of legends, 1/3 was sealed underground only to be released by those great enough to find their chambers and fight them. However, the final 1/3 was smarter than the other 2/3s. When Armok let them roam free above, they presented themselves as gods, when he sealed them underground they created grand slade structures under the earth, grew their power even further and attacked the surface with their great slade weapons. Truly this was the greatest of the Others. So Armok created a realm for them, a prison, only reachable through veins of pure candy. However, some escaped the gaze of Armok and they hid themselves beneath their great slade fortresses. There they wait, for a signal to return and reclaim their lost glory.

The thread is marked as SPOILERS.  You put your own post in a spoiler box.  And yet you still insist on using the ridiculous terms clowns and candy?

[Jbg97]

Yes, it's like putting your porn within a folder within a folder within a folder within a folder. You know it adds no protection, but you still do it anyway. Besides, who doesn't like candy and clowns? Ok, real life clowns are scary as fuck, but still!

[Greiger]

I always figured it was the demons who built the fortresses, their outposts on their invasion of the upper world where the demons found a breach through the impenetrable SMS.  After the demons built the fortresses they began to attack the upper world back when Armok still walked among us.

Armok sends his armies of the races against the fortresses, and with the power of Armok backing them they pushed the demons back to the origonal opening the demons built their fortresses around.  However instead of sending the armies down into the depths to exterminate the demons, which could very well cause the extinction of his favored races in the process, he chose to have his priests seal the opening with Armok's power.

The ritual required the priest to slay the soldiers present, and then kill themselves plunging the slaying sword into the earth in the final motion.  The sacrificed soldier's and priest's blood, all willingly given, was empowered by Armok's energies, flowed into the opening all that the blood touched was turned to adamantine, forming the barrier.  This happened all around the world at the same time, and with all of his power being used in the barriers Armok was no longer seen on the mortal plane.

Over time, Armok was forgotten, only remembered by a faithful few.  The bodies of the sacrifices, were slowly corrupted by the dark power below, the only showing of power the demons could still exert on the other side of the barrier.  The whispered rumors among the Cult of Armok is that removing the sword breaks the enchantment, that disabling the barriers returns Armok's power, and that if enough of the barriers are removed Armok will return to the world. 

However the Cult must defeat the sealed armies arrayed on the other side of each seal, or risk undoing their lord's work in bringing about his resurrection.

[Loud Whispers]

Maybe the things are really, really old. That would allow for erosion and such to completely cover the installation.

But no remains? Literally nothing? And that doesn't quite add up; reanimation preserves the corpses of all other creatures barring the super natural... The Clown theory seems plausible. Doesn't explain how they built it though, no existing slade structures exist below spire and they don't show any particular skill at crafting.

[WaffleEggnog]

I always thought it was animal men.

The story (that I made up on the spot) goes that the animal men just got tired of being pushed around by the other races and banded together.  They knew that even together they were no match for the other races, and that no matter where they went on the surface, the peace would be broken.

So they found a cave. The deepest and darkest one they could find so that they would not be followed. Each person packed their supplies induviduly, and marched into the cave without muttering a thing. It was a grand sight this was, all of the men of different shapes and sizes, going into this cave. A few turned back, going on to become the outcasts in the sewers and alleys of human towns.

They kept going deeper, and lived like nomads in the caves for years and years, banding together and trading with the native Troglydytes. After years of this the animal people had gone deeper than any other races, down to where they're ally's would not follow, to where the grass tasted sour.

It was then that they found the mystical metal that we all know well. They decided, all of the oldest and wisest of them, that this was the place to stay. The metal would keep them defended from anything that could attack, and the herbs and animals of the caves provided food. That is when they dug in.

And dug down.

A goatman miner is the one found it. He was digging away at the "candy", as his kin called it (that's were we get the term from), when he hit an opening. Thinking it was another cave, he came running out yelling "I found a cave!" to the administrator. He said "calm down, it's not like you found the circus, boy" as he walked down the tunnel. As he looked through the opening, he said "but pretty damn close" (that's were the term "circus" comes from). Looking back at him was a goat demon, not unlike the goatman that found the hole.

You might think that the demons would have destroyed them, but this is where that idea changes. You see, the animal men and the demons were not that different. The animal men were banished underground by the other races and the demons by Armok himself. The demons and animal men were quick friends. The animal men nutered them back to health and the demons provided the sheer firepower that the animal men were looking for. As you can imagine, a sky-blue glad swallowman is not the most intimidating thing.

The animal men, being the evil bastards that they are, wanted the demons help to take out the races that had treated them as outcasts.

But Armok was not amused. You see, when he sealed the demons away, he infected them with a plague to stop this very thing from happening. This plague took a few weeks to show any symtomes. The symtomes included rotting from the included, death and undeath, i.e zombies. This plague spread through touch, and living with demons, it broke out quickly.

Once it took notice, most of the populous left, returning to their nomad ways in caves, or returning to the surface, to think of what could have been. The elders, knowing they were being punished by Armok, huddled everyone inside, however something they didn't know was that the demons were the ones that transmitted it, and that symtomes took a few weeks to take effect.

The elders caught on to this, and decided "Seal the demons away to save them from this great death", claiming to let them out when it was over, but they were really planning to keep them there and stop the spread.

Needless to say, it didn't work. The milatary were the last ones left, living by baracading themselves on one floor, away from the zombie filled fort. However they went down one by one. The last one alive, the captain, with the best weapon in the fort, decided it was time for him to be die. He came screaming through the baracade, killing as many as he could. With his last breath, he put it weapon on the lever to free the demons, so that "only one with extreme greed, one who deserves it, will have to suffer this living hell".

DUH END

[Loud Whispers]

So there is literally no conceivable way Armok couldn't have had a vital role in their construction? Well. At least it's not Aliums.

[Greiger]

I just see it as everybody having their own thoughts on the lore of the things.  It isn't exactly well explained, so I'm sure everybody comes up with their own explanations.

[Tevish Szat]

Slade is the stone of the circus, therefore it is my belief that the Clowns built the fortresses.  The upright weapon and glowing floor, though, are NOT clown make -- they're a seal, clearly magical in nature, that keeps the beachhead locked off from the circus.  Those were probably put in place by gods, or perhaps unknown magical-types (magicians that are not necromancers) that existed in "the time before time".

As to the burial of the Fortress beneath unworked earth and stone... There we have the interface between Recorded History starting with the apparent creation of mortal races in 1, and "the time before time" from whence come Titans, FBs, Clowns, and possibly other megabeasts said to start wandering regions during that period.

The Curious Underground Structures indicate that there was probably some sort of society in the time before time, capable of working adamantine, which is now nearly inaccessible and, in all forms both worked and unworked, used to seal up the Circus.  Perhaps Candy was more common in the time before time, but was all consumed to put the clowns back where they belong.  Certianly, while FBs, titans, and the demons themselves are relics of that era, no vestige of the society survived.  The curious structures, along with regular adamantine veins, suggest that the entire surface of the world was probably reshaped: I find it likely that what is now the third layer of the caverns was on the surface then: The titans escaped upwards as the old world was entombed, forgotten beasts got trapped.

Of course, this means that certain forms of Caverns life might , in fact, be the last vestiges of the precursors responsible for fighting back against the demons and sealing them away.  If caverns life is a relic, it's certainly degenerated to become the likes of underground animal people and Blood Men.  It's worth noting here that in old versions, the prisons of demons could have captive humanoids of familiar sorts, indicating that at least before their world was destroyed, the precursors would have been recognizable.

Perhaps the DF universe is cyclical, with only the demons and a few, lonely creatures surviving each cycle.

[Greiger]

Now that I think about it that would be a really awesome stealth feature if it could ever be pulled off.  If the game actually kept the geological layout of the world saved in some secret location in your DF folder, and when a world is deleted and a new one generated the cavern layers of the new world had some features from the deleted world.

Imagine just happening to embark on the same x-y coordinates as an old fort of a previous world, and finding some very familiar looking mossy structures half buried in solid rock.

[Loud Whispers]

Imagine just happening to embark on the same x-y coordinates as an old fort of a previous world, and finding some very familiar looking mossy structures half buried in solid rock.

Finding your Fort buried 80 layers beneath rock...

[WaffleEggnog]

Imagine just happening to embark on the same x-y coordinates as an old fort of a previous world, and finding some very familiar looking mossy structures half buried in solid rock.

Finding your Fort buried 80 layers beneath rock...

*cough*Toady, get on this*cough*