Violenttrades has experienced... minor problems.
It all started off normal enough, with me designating some more adamantine to be mined out. After all, I was barely digging past the third cave layer: it should be safe enough!
It wasn't. Don't ask me why, but the freaking spire had fifteen hollow levels. I mined out one piece, and the fortress literally went to hell.
The first wall I tried to build to stop the demons was far too close to the adamantine, and they stormed past it before my builders had even arrived. By then, a few had already succumbed to their attacks. The second wall was foiled by an item misplacement glitch (the one where material distance is minus fourty thousand or something). By the time the dwarves started work on the third wall, the demons had already arrived, and began slaughtering everybody.
The militia was powerless against so many foes at once, and died without killing more than a few demons. Panicking dwarves were running everywhere. Parts of the fortress were actually melting. I briefly glimpsed a bunch of dwarves dashing into a smoke cloud: when it cleared they were all dead.
Within moments, only two survivors remained: the chief medical dwarf (hiding in an underground stockpile), and a random miner who got a secretive mood (scepter conspiracy!) while near the surface, and was now freezing to dead because all workshops had been deconstructed.
The chief medical dwarf knew he could not escape, for the only path upstairs was blocked by various demons and no picks were to be found. Instead, he bravely snuck into the dining room (aided by an artifact bed all demons were gathered around) and pulled the lever displayed there.
Deep underground, a floodgate opened, and a cave lake started draining into the cistern. Sadly, before he could see it flood, the chief medical dwarf had already been slain by a wandering demon. Only the lone uncontrollable miner on the surface remained.
It was then that something very special happened: the miner gave birth. Knowing that the fortress was doomed anyway, and knowing that there was no way she or her child would survive if I kept playing, I abandoned the fortress.
I later looked up Violenttrades' history. It was a fortress from 200 to 204, the year where contact with it was suddenly lost. Around 150 dwarves had settled there, and many more had briefly visited. In its short five years, it had survived two sieges and three forgotten beast attacks, had completely wiped out the evil creatures plaguing the surface, survived endless nauseating rain, and had tamed the upper caves. With its vast supplies of gold, platinum, and adamantine, it was unquestionably the wealthiest fortress of its civilization, which was more than the seven empty-handed peasants that had once founded it could ever have hoped.
Finally, I looked up the moody miner. Apparently she was attacked by night trolls twice during world generation: when the first struck she was only eleven. Many years later, in 202, she traveled to the fortress with her husband, where she continued her mining work. Little was mentioned of her time in the fortress, but I know based on timing that she must have participated in the construction of the guard quarters, as well as the excavation of platinum and the first adamantine.
The final message was a simple one. In 204, she fled Violenttrades, having apparently emerged from her mood, and began a traveling group consisting only of her and her infant, called the Moist Gold. A reference to the riches of Violenttrades molten by firey demons? Who knows. For now, I feel like this is a fitting end. May Unib Fencedagger and her child survive on the Gory Glacier, as the founders of the fortress did long ago.
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6231635 times)