Would anyone care to explain all the lore and things behind this? It looks rather overwhelming... and fun
So, Something Awful (the forum) decided to do a let's play of DF some years ago. The first one they did was Boatmurdered. That inspired in turn another one, which set itself sorta-within the realms of normalcy, and was just a standard let's play, with a few unique things to it. This was
Headshoots. Here,
Holistic Detective and
Nemo became the champions of the fortress. They were notable because they managed somehow to drastically transcend their skills beyond Legendary. Nemo's highest stat was 86, and Holistic Detective's was 77. This is where Legendary is 15. Holistic also made a name for herself twice: she wore an artifact adamantine chain mail;
Trailmachines the Fellowship of Right, and waded across lava to attack her foes, without injury. She also got into the habit of using a backpack as her weapon.
As the fortress fell, I can't quite remember who did it; maybe Vox Nihili? changed Nemo and Holistic into these evil skeleton-like beings. They destroyed most of the remaining dwarves, before Nemo tried to strike Holistic down, injuring her greatly but dying in the process. One dwarf survived Headshoots, by hiding in the Room Outside Space (an area that no one could find on the map without a dwarf already occupying it).
Following this, was
Syrupleaf. Vox Nihili created the Spawn after the final event of Headshoots.
It is said that when the god Nemo fought the fell god-beast Holistic Detective, Nemo struck off both her hands, then slashed her face open along the mouth with his obsidian blade. Holistic Detective then used her now horribly enlarged mouth to tear Nemo in half, then descended to Hell, taking her rightful place at the head of the demons there. Now, her horrific descendants plague the land, conquering fortresses and towns alike, breeding madly like animals and consuming any who oppose them.
Numerous notable things happened in Syrupleaf. Among them:
- A guard once punted a horse out from underneath its frost giant rider.
- Overseers built a gigantic monument that could extend its middle finger as a "fuck you" to the Spawn.
- Tehsid was so strong he once grappled and threw a spawn over a hundred metres away.
- The Spawn of Holistic time and time again sieged the fortress, but were repelled nearly every time until casualties mounted, and the fortress fell.
- Like in Spearbreakers, there was all sorts of "sci-fi" elements within the story; most were quickly abandoned.
- By the time Syrupleaf falls, there is nothing now holding back the spawn from overrunning Everroc. The gods hit a reset button and "obsidianise" the world, and all of the dead dwarves ascend to heaven.
Then came Spearbreakers. This was Bay12 coming up with a sequel to Syrupleaf. It was pretty hard to establish where we were, considering that the ending of Syrupleaf was that the world got hit with mass obsidianising, but we retconned the ending and had it simply as "the spawn overrun the western continent, refugees flee and establish new colonies on the eastern continent".
Fischer and Dauros swiftly became our Holistic and Nemo in terms of strength. Mr Frog was responsible for recreating the Spawn's raws, as they were lost some time ago for reasons I can't remember. These spawn were slightly more hardy in some areas, but more vulnerable in others. They lost their weakness to stomach injuries, and gained the ability to infect other dwarves using the (at the time) new interaction system. They also lost the ability to martial trance, which is probably what made the Syrupleaf spawn so very lethal.
Spearbreakers had numerous little story threads intertwining. Some had "mary-sue" type characters, some were quite well written. In any case, there was interdimensional megacorporations descending upon Everroc (out-of-game) to attack and take control. These two were "Ballpoint" and "Parasol". Neither were "good" or "bad", it was very much a case of "grey and grey morality".
Within our game, the newly buffed Spawn were even more of a threat than before; a dwarf who was bitten stood a pretty sizable chance of Spawn Fever, if the skin was broken by the bite. This required special setups and fine toothed combing of the combat logs to ensure no one abruptly transformed. Several dwarves were infected by Spawn Fever throughout this game. The only indication that they were infected was a mild fever that lasted for a long period of time, before rapidly transforming into a new Holistic Spawn.
That said, the Spawn Fever never got much of a start due to the stringent safety procedures enacted by Overseers as well as the fact that the Spawn were just too damn lethal to transmit it effectively. Kind of like ebola in that regard.
- Stova - the overseer's love; transformed without warning and had to be killed by her peers in their squad.
- Softa - A soldier, infected in combat, sent to a quarantine chamber. She transformed, and was locked in for the rest of the game.
- Ashsaber - As with Softa, infected in combat and sent to a quarantine chamber.
- Mad-Dok - Infected in combat, very nearly transformed before he got to the quarantine chamber.
Spearbreakers faced multiple threats throughout its reign; necromancers, evil weather, and the Spawn of Holistic. It finally fell in the end in a rather anticlimactic fashion, and most if not all of the story threads were tied off.
I forgot to mention: Spearbreakers has an extensive
TVTropes page as well as its
very own Wiki, with illustrations and writeups!