Print

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

[SlyStalker]

Now that the undead have bolstered their ranks with more corpses, it's probably safe to say that this hovel will be lacking in fresh, living migrants for a while yet.

[Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum]

Well, that was interesting...

[heydude6]

can someone explain to me why the war trained grizzly bear was so incompetent? It's a grizzly bear for god's sake , how could it lose to a dwarf?!

[Slogo]

can someone explain to me why the war trained grizzly bear was so incompetent? It's a grizzly bear for god's sake , how could it lose to a dwarf?!

Lack of discipline is probably what made it run away initially. When it encountered the dwarf... well the undead have boosted strength so the difference in power isn't as much as you'd think. On top of that the grizzly's attacks are more suited to tearing flesh and bruising muscles and bones rather than severing or pulping. Meanwhile the undead dwarf doesn't tire and feels no pain so it just needs to trade blows until it gets in a lucky hit that cripples the grizzly.

I did some arena testing to illustrate the point... it's not pretty:

(Bears were sent 1 at a time against the same undead dwarf and then a finale of 7 grizzly bears at once)

---------

As for migrants... we'll have to see. Most of the new undead are on the southern end of the map while my fortress entrance is on the northern side.

[EinsteinSatDown]

Entertaining thus far.
The writing style is engaging and informative.

I ardently await to see what other horrors will befall this fortress.

[PsychoAngel]

This is insane and amazing and I love it.

[Amperzand]

Just got finished reading the story so far, and look forward very much to seeing how you run this!

[Illogical_Blox]

Will you EVER reclaim the top? With these merchants and migrants swelling the undead ranks, you'll need to pick them off one-by-one. I recommend eventually a tower of fortifications. Bolts pouring out onto them ought to at least weaken them, even if you use wooden or bone bolts.

[Tacomagic]

This is easily the most entertaining and interesting Story embark I've read in a while.

I eagerly await your next entry.

[Slogo]

Will you EVER reclaim the top? With these merchants and migrants swelling the undead ranks, you'll need to pick them off one-by-one. I recommend eventually a tower of fortifications. Bolts pouring out onto them ought to at least weaken them, even if you use wooden or bone bolts.

I have some ideas on what I may be able to do, we'll have to wait and see. So long as Clashedplunges is standing right over the pit things are going to be hard. Dwarf climbing is both a curse and a blessing, if I try anything risky and a dwarf gets spooked they're likely to climb up and out of the aquifer breach.

[Amperzand]

You could get someone mining until they have high stats, then danger-room him, then give him the best of whatever equipment you have. Would it be enough?

[Minepow2]

You could get someone mining until they have high stats, then danger-room him, then give him the best of whatever equipment you have. Would it be enough?

I can just feel the story potential oozing from that one. 

[Tacomagic]

You could get someone mining until they have high stats, then danger-room him, then give him the best of whatever equipment you have. Would it be enough?

A good idea that, with some tweaking, could evolve into something workable.  The real trick is that all this cast-off stuff probably isn't going to cut the muster, and most of that is on the surface anyway.  The thing that really needs to be secured is an anvil (if not secured already; didn't see reference to such).  Hopefully there's one laying on the surface somewhere and not near any of the zombie clusters, and if there isn't one currently, there probably will be one eventually.  It would be worth the lives of a handfull of dwarves to get an anvil down into the safety of the lower-fort.

If/once the anvil is secured, then achieving the magma sea becomes priority.  90% of the time, once you hit the sea, you also find candy.  With any amount of luck (in short supply, I know) that candy will also be in the stone layer.  30 pieces of candy is enough for one dwarf.  Even without a legendary candy cooker, it is probably the best bet of reclaiming, and more importantly holding, the surface.

...

You know, a crazy way to possibly get the anvil just occurred to me and it would have far fewer risks than running across the surface to drag back the anvil.  Now that the area area below the aquifer is controlled, a cave-in could easily be staged!  The only dodgey bit would be channeling the surface.  That would have to be done fast and possibly while there was a diversion (migrants).

Dig out an area under a caravan remnant that has an anvil and then collapse it into a fully enclosed chamber.  The aquifer will quickly form a water barrier preventing any zombies from following it down, not that it would be a problem.  Now, wait for winter and it'll freeze solid (or at least solid enough to easily drain out anything that isn't frozen).  From there it's just simple ice-reclamation digging.

[Onod Itlud]

Urist looked on in horror at the foul beast that had once stood among the living. The remains alone seemed to dwarf the size of any normal living, breathing, buffalo. The soulless sockets where once proud eyes had rested now watched eternally as the Dwarves in the pit worked down below. Urist often came out and stared at the beast, he would kill it one day, and the beast stared back. The two were bound by fate it seemed. He had arrived here scarce months earlier. Promise of a chance at a new life with his friends and family. He hadn't been there but a few days (yeah yeah, was longer, a little embellishment never hurt) when two brave souls had given their lives in order to ensure that the rest of the migrants would get to the (relative) safety of the fort they could feel underneath. The beast moved like death, sudden and sure, with all the inevitability of it. Everybody was sure that nobody would be able to fell the beast and as such nobody had wanted to take up defense. Nobody except Urist. He'd been a cheese maker before this trip to their little corner of hell. Lived a nice life in another fortress getting too small for its own inhabitants. He was the first of his family to come, but he knew he wouldn't be the last, he couldn't sit by and let them get slaughters.

At first he was at a loss for what to do. Nobody wanted to spar with him, they sad it was pointless, that he wouldn't last a second up there, that he should just go back to work trying to keep the dwindling food supplies from vanishing completely. He tried for weeks before giving in and returning to the fields. He took solace in his only friend, an engineer that had arrived with the rest of the group, they would work together and after work get a drink in the meeting hall. Each day they would share a story, the first of family, then of friends, and finally they ventured into their professions. Onod talked of marvelous mechanisms, ones that made the earth shake and the fortress itself fluid as stone. Ones to keep beasts out, and most importantly ones that killed the ones that got in. Urist was suddenly stricken by a mood, and a strong one at that. He pulled his new friend aside and consulted the one who'd taken charge, explaining how there was no way an ordinary training routine was going to get them through this. He spoke of a room so dangerous that to walk in it unarmored would invite death. One in which those left inside it would be forced to dodge, parry, block, and absorb hits constantly, or die in the process.

Urist talked of how such a room was needed, how it would ensure that a dwarf unlocked that potential that only a few had witnessed but many talked about, a oneness with weapon and armor so great that no foe could match them. How eventually the ones who came out would be far stronger than any unliving abomination could hope to be. The leader was unsure at first, this dwarf seemed crazy, even his friend wasn't sure of the plan, but with this strange mood came a risk. If it wasn't fulfilled there was no telling what he could do to the rest of the dwarves down here, and locked away in his room he would at least be kept from the general population. The leader conceded and the project started. Rock was torn from the walls by pick and brawn and molded into the machines that would power this contraption. Elven weapons were piled together and locked into holes in the floors that would project the sharpened wooden weapons and try and skewer the dwarf inside, swords slashed through holes craved from the walls, maces crashed down from the ceiling and struck at anything in their path.

After days of sweat and blood finally the room was complete. They gave him all the armor they could scrounge, he may have been insane but they didn't want them dead, and locked him in his room. So it was that his days for the next few seasons were filled with missed blocks, sloppy parries, and a little more absorbing than he wished for. He could not force himself the speed to get out of the way of the weapons, and so the bruises formed from the weapons sticking the layers of cloths and patchwork armor. By the end of the first season he could barely move for the pain, yet he forced himself to, knowing that it may well be the only way for his loved ones to survive. By the second season he managed to block and dodge at a quarter of the blows, and those that he couldn't he found that he could tolerate much more. By the third he was scarcely getting hit, what he couldn't block he could dodge, and what he couldn't dodge he managed to place correctly on the little armor he did have. Finally by the forth season there was little the room could do to harm him.

His wounds started to heal and his skin had become tougher than anybodies he'd ever seen, his days of blocking and dodging and swinging his weapon had broken down his muscles only to build the up again. He was stronger, faster, and more aware than any of his family before him. He spent a season training others should he fall, and learned valuable lessons against opponents that lived and breathed as he had against those as quiet as the stone around them. Finally he was ready. He gathered the best equipment the fort could put together and a pick, instructing the masons to seal him on the surface in case everything went wrong.

One last time he looked into the soulless eyes of the beast, and one last time it looked back, no matter what happened no was their time. Legends would be made of this fight, for good or bad, with the final blow of the pick axe the path to the surface opened, even as the masons bricked up the last possible chance of escape. With a feral cry the dwarf charged forward to meet his destiny. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Yadda yadda yadda. Truth be told there is no story without potential as long as a skilled mind weaves it. I am not that skilled of mind, but the forums harbor many, many, of such minds. A danger room is hardly even undwarfy in my opinion, but you are all entitled to your own and by no means does that mean I endorse one in this case.

[SlyStalker]

Danger rooms are OK if the spears are metal and no armour is worn.