Already at my third 44.02 fort, after the first two became unplayable early on due to stutters, whose jury is still out on the cause. Performance concerns led me to a nice find: the convenience of playing small regions!
Xemramul, the Mythical Planes. Year 399. The Bearded Dunes, a temperate-ish, flat, arid, utterly vegetationless rocky wasteland, are home to the outpost Ananumid, founded by the last dwarves of the Ordered Diamonds. The last, or rather the first to be seen after quite a long time. Three centuries and half since anyone has seen a dwarf around, to be exact.
The Ordered Diamonds were dealt a bad hand to begin with; very little neutral mountain space available, and aggressive, expansionist, prolific elven and goblin neighbors. It was only a matter of time before they would be surrounded, relentlessly attacked from two fronts, and driven to extinction. (Note, the humans expanded in the surrounding lands long after the fall of the dwarves. Oh, that adjacent dark fortress, and the other not too distant? Thriving, each with 10k goblins.)
The war against the elves and the goblins is still ongoing, mostly because there were no defenders left around to negotiate an end.
Rationalizing the dwarves' sudden reappearance as the descendants of a secluded pocket of survivors deep within the mountains.
In spite of looking so lifeless and desolate, the dunes are quite the rich land, especially the area chosen by the mysterious seven settlers. Deep soil sporting sand and clay, abundance of flux and weapons-grade metals, and a conveniently color-coded aquifer-bearing corner of the map, for a safe water source.
Wagon deconstructed as soon as the game was unpaused, to prevent curious folks from snooping around. But, what's this? Not even three days since the settling of the outpost, that 'Dumat Cattenonam', elf bard, is visiting. Yeah, nice name there, totally elven. I can hear him mispronounce it. How brazen. How insulting! Is he trying to pass himself for a dwarf? Or a culturally dwarven elf, when our civ never influenced any of their settlements? Are we supposed to believe they spontaneously adopted our culture from our ruins? A dwarfaboo would have at least bothered to show up with a wooden axe, maybe hair tied under the face to simulate a beard, certainly not with a wood bow like the one he's carrying. Do pray tell, what do bards do with bows in their performances-
What? "Doren Eribasol", elf poet, just the day after. I see, she has a bow too. So dwarven.
I probably just wasn't fast enough in deconstructing the wagon; it worked in my past 0.44 forts to prevent unwanted visitors, I guess this time no dice. No meeting zone yet, so everyone is spreading out while the miner carves in the soil a shelter and farmspace. And if I designate a meeting zone it may attract these blatant spies. Gotta craft a door or a hatch as the bare minimum to have some barrier with the exterior.
A month has quickly passed. Secured plantations and basic accomodations, herded the livestock inside, built a depot, dug to the caverns to feed our lambs; hastily cobbled together a clay hut to cover the entrance to the fort ... looking more like a sort of pithouse than a fort so far, but functional enough. A bridge is in the plans.
Mid-spring, "Tun Egullogem", elf peddler. A peddler with no wares, but carrying a spear and a shield. If these elves weren't openly carrying I could have even believed the incredible stretch that they were translating their names in Dwarven for us. Who knows, in three centuries of no contact Dwarven may have become the fashionable dead language everyone wants to learn.
Couple of days later, "Kol Sheriksolon", elf beast hunter. Finally someone with a plausible reason to carry a bow. I have even half a mind to recruit him when the fort is a bit more estabilished, to see if he's gonna keep up the charade or switch allegiance when pushes come to shoves. Who knows if something like that is even coded in first place.
Ten days later, "Kikrost Murakducim", elf poet with a bow, of course.
Word spreading? Are they here for sightseeing, like some kind of zoo? Really, is this the first time they see a dwarf? With elves being immortal and all perhaps they were even involved in the slaughters of three centuries ago. Just to think about it-
Wait a second.
They are closing in. The Trio from The Good, The Bad & The Ugly OST starts playing out of nowhere.
In almost a decade of playing this game, with all the crazy stuff it throws at you, I've never felt so threatened.
I love it.
And yes, I'm aware it's
only a bug, or at best one of those both-bug-and-feature things. I know it would be trivial to lock the hatch and wall off the stairs until migrants come. I realize it's all in my head, that these elves almost assuredly aren't coded to attack. Spies probably aren't opportunistic assassins and are only interested in gathering data.
But they could snuff out the dwarven threat so easily. It's like one of those ambushes of old, except exploiting the duties of hospitality.
Four archers and a spearelf, versus six combat-untrained civilians and a miner; almost zero chance to withstand, even if the miner somehow entered a martial trance enraged. It would be such a bastard rotten thing to do, perhaps even allowed since we're officially still at war.
It's subtle, it's not the fact that they're currently milling about outside that is unnerving, per se. It's the fact they showed up in first place.
They know.
So close to making the dwarves extinct a second time.
I lock the hatch.
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6230294 times)