Once upon a time there was a fort named Asobstukos, or Boardrazor in the human tongue. Boardrazor was a happy fort, early alcohol and food problems were but a distant memory, the slow but steady stream of goblin and kobold thieves were efficiently ripped to shreds by the animated steel axes that guarded the entry, and the overseer had built an elaborate system of bridges that allowed sealing the fort in time of war. All in all Boardrazor was doing well for an outpost less than three years old.
As part of the process of smoothing the entry area the overseer ordered most of the bridges deconstructed so the area under their bases could be reached, and so the seeds of disaster were sowed. While the last few bridges were being rebuilt the elves arrived to "trade" (Have their stuff seized actually) and close on their heels came the goblins, three squads of the nastiest hammer and scourge goblins ever seen. It was at this point that the overseer realized his error, he had forgotten to order the bridges hooked to the shiny new levers in the entry control room... oops.
Alarms were sounded through the fort, a top priority job order was put in for a wall across the entrance. At first it looked like this desperate strategy would work, as the goblins were chasing the fortress pets around the surface (where they had been pastured in the hopes that they would have an "accident" at the hands of some hostile), but alas, most of the pets made a beeline for the fortress entrance, goblins at their heels.
The three animated axes guarding the entrance delayed the goblins almost long enough, but they fell just a bit too soon, the masons building the wall were almost finished when the first goblin came into view, and from that point on things became very confused. Somehow the miners managed to kill enough goblins to make them retreat, but the cost was terrible, over three quarters of the population lay dead.
The tantrums and insanity that followed further reduced the population until everyone was dead...
Almost.
Minkot Sakzulatham was the manager and bookkeeper for Boardrazor, and had been for some time, ever since that "misunderstanding" about the dead hauler (Minkot was often heard complaining to himself, "Those bastards had no proof I did it, just because I was the only person in the whole fort that wasn't complaining about the lack of individual bedrooms is NOT proof!"). Poor Minkot had been locked in a small (but fancy) office just off the main stairwell for well over a year, following the same routine every day. Nothing new ever happened to Minkot, just updating stockpile records and authorizing workorders all day, everyday. His only contact with the outside consisted of deliveries of records and pickups of work orders, and that was done via an airlock.
But one day no one showed up to get the finished work orders, "The bastards probably forgot" Minkot complained to himself. But this went on for some time, until Minkot began to be haunted by three ghosts. "Hey, that's one of the miners! And that's the expedition leader! I must see what is going on outside." And so Minkot picked the locks on the door to his room and entered the fort.
Everywhere he looked was signs of a big battle, only partly cleaned up. Clothing lay scattered everywhere and blood lay in pools on the floor, someone had clearly invaded ad killed most, if not all of the population. Minkot immediatly noticed that the outer bridge on the central entrance path was closed, and a note was posted on the bridge. Minkot went over to the note and read it aloud: "WARNING: DO NOT OPEN! There are three goblins trapped in the crossroads moat and 150+ undead roaming the surface!". A quick trip to the control center showed the outer bridges on all entry paths had been raised and that the legions of the undead had grown by what appeared to be two full migrant waves and four goblin squads. Well over a hundred corpses were buried in the main hall below the fortress and around ten to twenty more were rotting in the refuse stockpile and on the floor of the meeting hall. "No great loss, most of them were jerks anyway" Minkot commented, "but they sure do stink..."
Luckily the survivors had been hard at work trying to get everybody buried before they too had succumbed, so it was a relatively simple task to get rid of the ghosts, "The rest can rot for all I care" Minkot said, "it takes far too long to make coffins and slabs for everyone, maybe later if their ghosts start to bother me" (and let's not mention those migrants roaming the surface with the rest of the undead...)
After doing some basic cleaning Minkot took some time to consider his situation. Clearly letting an ever growing legion of undead roam the surface was unacceptable, and even if he hadn't cared for Boardrazor's old inhabitants, new migrants didn't deserve to be killed is so horrible a fashion. After some consideration Minkot came up with a plan, he would build a trap to clear the surface of undead, hopefully allowing some migrants to make a dash to safety unmolested.
First a entrance needed to be made, Minkot debated whether a field of spikes or a narrow tunnel full of cage traps would be better, "Spike traps would be efficient, but the miasma would be a major concern, where as cage traps would take more time, but I may catch the vile necromancers to use in future fortress defense schemes" Minkot said, "I think the possibility of necromancer prisoners will make cage traps well worth the extra work."
Minkot dug out an extension to the main hall on the farming level and built a fancy bridge, pressure plate and hatchcover device that would only allow dwarves through, this would be the siege entrance, when paired with some doors and spike traps it would work quite well to allow dwarves in even when hostiles were outside. Next a grid of small tunnels was dug, just large enough for one hundred cage traps, as more than that would take far too long for Minkot to build by himself.
As Boardrazor's inhabitants had not done any real mining, no source of magma had been found but Minkot remembered a device he had seen used in breaching difficult aquifers, a "Magma Melter" that allowed one to make small amounts of molten rock, just the thing for a one dwarf pottery industry. A steel minecart was quickly made and a magma melter built near some clay, a few fill/dump cycles later and a magma kiln was operating. Soon a slow but steady stream of cages, mechanisms, and blocks was flowing to the site of the trap, ready to be installed.
Minkot was industriously working away at the trap ("almost a quarter of the way done!" he said to himself.) when suddenly a murderous ghost came upon him, sadly Boardrazor was never heard from again.
(what, you expected a happy ending?)
The story behind the story
The above story describes events fairly well, but there are a few details that were changed to make a better story.
Minkot (real name Kogan Clashvessel according to legends mode) was released from his office before the last "other" dwarf died (It is very likely that Minkot killed that last dwarf, but he was on a fast trip to insanity anyway)
I used "fastdwarf 1 1" after the last dwarf aside from Minkot died, it just took to long to get anything done otherwise.
I used "feature" to allow magma forges, it makes little sense that dwarves somehow magically learn to make magma forges just because they discover a volcano or the magma sea.
I was planning to make this a story of one dwarf triumphing over all odds to bring a fort back from the brink, but that !$#^%#^@% murderous ghost ruined that plan. I would have savescummed but I hit esc before thinking it through and so that option passed me by
As for screen shots, I forgot and then the option no longer existed
I guess I could reclaim, but it wouldn't be the same...
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Topic: The story of Boardrazor (Read 1762 times)