Welcome to Scorchedgravel - Home Of The Final 7
===So, I've been inspired to try doing a community fort with a twist. Is it possible to survive/revive as a civilization with only seven dwarfs, no migrants, no trading, and enemies all around? Let's find out.
We're in a badlands volcano with access to all ores, but we're a dead civilization, and the game has been modded to prevent any trading of any kind. We're currently on 43.03, and I will update as new DFHack versions become available. Our goal is to survive, birth the next generation, and perhaps reclaim our greatness in the world. I plan to play until this story gets a satisfying conclusion, either win or loose. I may retire the fort and run adventurers depending how the plot goes or what not.
I will also take dwarfing requests, though with so few, its first come, first serve and RPing is welcome. That being said, let's not recycle names, unless its in a bloodline (i.e., NCommander II can only come from the parents of NCommander I, and I'll be using nicknames shown in the "middle" in d_init.txt
If the plot requires it, I will use DFHack to make things happen in addition to bug fixing. The save has already been DFhacked to make sure dwarfs will marry (as generated, I got six straight dwarfs who won't marry, and one bi dwarf who would marry That's been changed into six dwarfs who will marry, and one bi dwarf who would marry).
Table of Contents - Introduction (this post)
Year 550-560 -
The Final Seven + Breeding Mechanics -
Caverns -
Survival Plan -
Towards Winter -
Marriage Among Buzzard Problems -
The Next Generation -
Of Forgotten Beasts and Hammerdwarfs -
Road to Atlantis -
The Swimmaster -
Digging The FuturePrelude
---This is a masterwork dog leather journal owned by Kogan 'NCommander' Kelnakuth. On its covered is adored images of seven dwarfs. The image related to the founding of Scorchedgravel, the last Dwarven settlement.---
1st of Granite, 550Rigoth keeps bothering me to fill this stupid thing out since he found it, since as our leader it's my duty to leave records. Do I look like a record keeper? I'm a weaponsmith for Usen's sake. Or at least, I was before we fled.
Yes, Rigoth, I'm filling it out, yes, I know you can read over my shoulder. Fine, I'll explain how we got here.
Micromanager ...Let's backtrack, in our world, there were four sentient species. Dwarfs (that's us), humans, tall upright apes driven by ambition and greed, elfs who the legends tell us fought to protect the woodland, and goblins, who worshipped the demons below.
My grandfather told me that in the years before the blight, humans, elfs, and dwarfs for the most part got along. Sure, we had our differences but we could trade, mingle, and let bygones be bygones. Dwarfs lived in mountains, humans claimed the planes, and the elfs had the forest. We all fought the goblins. We had balance.
About two centuries ago, something changed. The elfs said the rythem of the world had changed. Those of us close to the earth, well, we called it
The Blight. As my dad taught me, evil can only take root where there is discontent, hatred, or worst of all, ambition. As such, when the Blight began to sweep the plains, it found the most fertile soil of all: the human heart.
What had been cities and keeps began dark pits, and towers. Wars began to rage across the land. The elfs were first to go, slaughtered down to the last man, woman, and child. Then they came from us. As hillock and hillock began to fall, we tried to fight back, we thought our dwarven steel would be no match for human's copper and iron weaponry. We were right, but for every human who fell, two more took their places.
Faced with an unwinnable battle of attrition, our last king, Urist Othilmorul, had the entrances to our last mountainhall collasped, in the hope that we could hide and protect ourself. For over half-a-century we remained buried under tons of stone. Our enemy however was willing to dig us out.
The attack came early in the morning when human miners breached the cavern layers from above. None of us had known what was happening. In the confusion, I ran deeper in the cavarns and hid. When I finally came back, all I found were humans and corpses. By the grace of Usen, I was able to grab some supplies, and snuck off. By chance, I stumbled upon a tunnel built by the Roads of Roaring before the blight. That's where I met Rigoth.
Rigoth was a mason from the fortress of Grapemachines. They had been attacked at nearly the same time we were. Appartantly the humans had coordinated their strike to wipe us all our in one fell swoop. Although I would not find this out until much later, he was a distinct relative of our current king, a trait that would be helpful later.
As we moved away from Grapemachines, we found others who fled the attacks. Some had supplies, another had a wagon. Knowing that no existing fortress was safe, we ventured into the uncharted depths beneath the earth. At our height, we were over 30 dwarfs.
Repeated attacks by forgotten beasts, jabberers, trolls, and other horrors have dwindled our numbers. After a month, we were down to just 12. We eventually found a natural cave to the surface. I argued that the caverns would kill us. We took to a surface that I hadn't seen since I was a kid.
Using old charts, we've headed south, away from any known settlements. I think we're close to the edge of the continent.
In the year since we've gone topside, we've lost five more. Only seven remain.
I fear we may be the last of our kind.
15th of Granite, 550
===Disaster! As Solon tried to navigate around a sunken volcano, our one wagon cracked and broke! The wagon began to slide down the hill before falling into Armok's sweet embrace.
Rigoth and Solon proceeded to having a shouting match over this stupidity that I had to eventually break up. I don't know if it was her fault or not, but yelling is not going to help. Both sides are still rather angry.
Until someone goes through our supplies, I can not say for sure much we've lost, but I can tell that our sole anvil, as well as both a pick and an axe survived. I do have an accounting of what we had before the wagon went over though ...
Wherever we are, we're going to stay ...