Well, this definitely could have gone better. I worked so hard on the moat only to realize that I have no real way of fighting over the moat.
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And so begins another beautiful day working on the soon to be arena. The pidgeys are chirping in the trees, the caterpie are rustling around in the trees, a vile force of darkness has appeared over the hills...
Welp, lets see if my fortifications will do us any good, because I realize now that I probably should have removed the ramps leading into and out of the moat. All fighters to the southern bridge, archers stand guard at the northern edge of the area inside the moat to see if you can pick some of the goblins off as they come by. Speaking of which...
It seems that there is a traitor within their mix. Oh well, we'll show him some dwarven justice when he gets close enough. As the fighters file out to their positions there are 11 enemies, surely to grow as the fight progresses.
Yup, now we're up to 15, 21, 26, man, they're all going to fall into the river if they keep crowding together like they are.
31 goblins and they still have made no attempt to advance, maybe I'll have the marksdwarves station at the northwest corner of the moat instead to see if they can entice them a little. 43 goblins and the first poor sucker has wandered into a cage, which reminds me that I should probably pull the moat lever before any goblins learn that we actually have a bridge.
The marksdwarves seemed to have taken my last command as 'go hide in the main building', so I've moved them to the top of the tower that has the fortifications. I can only imagine that this room was never built to actually see combat, but it's going to be put to the test pretty soon. 51 goblins and we've only just caught our second one in a cage, this is going to be a hard fought battle with only 30-ish of our own, maybe only half of which are actually competent with their weapon.
58 goblins and they are only now beginning to trickle to the east over the literal mound of dead goblins that the citizens have yet to throw into the pit, presumably to make it around the moat.
We've caught a total of four now, but it seems that they're still pouring over the hills. Okay, the bridges are up, so I'm going to undo the burrows for a few minutes so that I can bring some of the hundreds of stray joltik we have to the surface to aid our forces.
And by joltik it more turned into 'move every pokemon that isn't a pet to the surface', I expect massive casualties.
One of our marksdwarves finally gets within reach of the goblins, only to have a massive volley of bolts shot his way.
The marksdwarf has yet to be hit, and will hopefully exhaust the ammo of the enemy before he fires his own.
Unfortunately, many of the bolts fly downstream into the waiting mob of our fighters. Most of them miss, but Azalea is pegged in the chest with a bolt. It bounces harmlessly off of his armor, which for some reason causes him to enter a martial trance. I order the fighters to wait indoors until the enemy is close enough to engage. The lone marksdwarf also takes a few body hits, bruising a lung and his guts. He slouches over to vomit amidst the storm of bolts.
While twiddling my thumbs waiting for something to happen I notice that Beirus has an infection on his left wrist.
Poor sap, he probably won't last until the end of the month.
Another fighter has a bolt bounce off of their chest, only to be put into a martial trance as well.
Why won't you idiots just wait inside until you're needed? Our entire battle formation has now devolved into the hokey pokey as the fighters attempt to dodge the hail of bolts, maybe I should build some fortifications around the moat once this is over. Luckily the obscene amount of cage traps I had built around the moat are coming in handy. Of the 58 invaders currently around the fort, 11 of them are caged, and we only have 7 active crossbow/bow goblins skulking around.
A poor Decidueye who got stuck on the wrong side of the moat is now getting bashed to pieces by a mace goblin.
The archers, I mean, the singular marksdwarf that's doing a fucking Gaelic river dance in bullet hell of goblin arrows, still refuse to return fire. Why, I don't know, but it's gotten to the point where I'm just going to lower the bridge once most of the ranged goblins have been captured. So far our only casualties are that decidueye, a stray joltik, and a war ampharos that is probably going to die from the bolt currently lodged firmly in his jugular. I'm not a pokemon anatomy expert, but I would imagine the fountain of lifeblood exploding from his neck isn't a good sign. Along with that about half our fighting force is outside the front gait in various martial trance poses, busily swatting arrows out of the air with the tips of their beards. It seems that many of them are also engaged in a dance battle circle. A few civilians have made an attempt to follow my order to bring more pokemon to the surface, but most of them now lay on the ground throwing up from the sunlight. The remaining ones are poppin' and lockin' through the arrow storm like a leaf doing a martial trance break-dance on the wind.
The plant types pastured by the southern gate have been making a valiant attempt at fending off the goblins wandering around that part of the moat, shooting leaves at anything that moves. Many of them have bolts sticking out of them like pins in a celluostic pincushion, and one venusaur is in a fetal position in the corner of the building crying hysterically.
"GET UP YOU FUCKING PANSY AND FIGHT FOR YOUR PEOPLE! I bellowed at it, only succeeding in causing the venusaur to soil itself and cry harder.
Add a stray leafeon to that list of dead, but it managed to kill a bowgoblin before it went down.
Somehow, we're down to only 50 goblins, 18 of which are caged, and the remaining goblins seem to have run out of arrows, maybe. Welp, we aren't going to rid ourselves of this problem just standing here. Alright guys, everyone on the southern bridge, send a runner to lower it, I tire of this charade.
It seems that I spoke too soon, because despite out front yard being turned into an arrow collector's expo some of the bowgoblins still have arrows and are now firing on our formation. In response to this about three more dwarves entered a martial trance.
Another stray leafeon has died defending it's home, I'll be sure to cremate it in my fire place to warm
up my room, I mean, to send it to Valhalla. Fortunately, about every goblin on the southern line has most of its limbs broken from the constant rain of leaves.
Right as the bridges are lowered a macegoblin falls into the water to the east. Instead of swimming back he decides to swim across instead.
The military quickly reduce him to a red smear on the grass in their arrow fueled martial trance blood lust.
As I order the fighters across the bridge, the marksdwarf that was using the light reflected off the perpetual swarm of goblin arrows as rave lighting for his one man dance moshpit for about the entire fucking battle without shooting a single bolt finally fires a bolt at the enemies as he advances, a wooden bolt that doesn't even scratch the goblin's armor.
The fighters have no problem slicing anything that moved across the bridge into more skin confettii for their martial trance rave, but behind them a stray fire type decides to use a fire attack over them...
A leafeon is the first to be incinerated, with the flames slowly catching up to a crippled greninja.
A long line of excessively slow dwarves try to skirt past the fire in their attempt to cross the bridge. A particular animal trainer isn't fast enough, and is trapped behind the wall of fire.
Apparently, said roaring inferno was enough to cause every still living, not caged goblin to run back the way they came, over the mound of their long dead to the north.
I hope you guys like waiting outside, because it's going to be a while until this fire dies down enough for you to pass.
And by wait, it seems that half the people outside heard 'try to rush past the fire and go inside', too bad the fire is now inside as well, hopefully it will at least burn up all the vomit and dead elves.
Our plum wood bridge has caught on fire with a number of things asleep on it, and several dwarves have fallen asleep directly in line of the fire.
You know what guys, most of our competent fighters are asleep directly in the way of the fire, so if you want to try to run inside, be my guest. That order was answered with a number of dwarves trying to run past the fire, then falling asleep before they could get out of danger. The rest of the fighters just staid put on the wrong side of the river.
One of the sleepers happened to be Paddywagonman, who is now a cloud of delicate, murderous ash floating into the heavens. He's dead as fuck, in case anyone needed me to specify. You know, I might as well look at the list of 'missing' inhabitants while I'm waiting for the fire to die down.
Let's see, we're currently missing Paddywagonman, a stray totodile, a granbull, Vutok the lye maker, Tekkud the dyer, Ushrir the hunter, a luxray, a gengar (probably the one who died during the fight with the forgotten beast), a Quilladin (who I can see from where I'm standing, is a pool of gore at the bottom of the trash pit on the surface), a haxorus, and Thob the potash maker. Hopefully these guys will wake up before I have to increase this list.
I've ordered another bridge made, because the last one has finally collapsed into a smoldering heap into the moat, this bridge will be made out of clay.
It seems that someone else has burned to death in their sleep, Azalea is now deader than dead because he couldn't stay awake for five more fucking seconds so he could have at least passed out on a stone floor away from the fire.
The fire has cleared enough for the fighters to return home over the secondary bridge, and people are now outside 'finding' that the people who walked straight through the fire are not as okay as they thought they were. What a shame, the fire didn't even burn the bodies that were already laying outside.
And after all this, what is the first thing that the civilians do you might ask? They go out to start reloading cage traps, walking over the wounded and dying still out in the field. And I don't mean just one or two, at least 15 civilians shoved their way to the surface with cages in their hands the second I authorized movement on the surface. God, I've made an impact on the people of this place, and I only intend to do more from here on out.
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I was going to try some live arena testing today, but then this happened.
On the bright side, we've now got more arena fighters than I could ever hope for. I'd appreciate it if you guys could start thinking up some potential matches we could put together, and if someone could remind me of the weird key combinations I have to do to get workers to remove the items from a caged goblin that would be great.
I also left the images big so people could see the details of the carnage, if you want them smaller I can make them smaller.
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Topic: But You Still Gotta Catch 'Em All - Succession Pokemon Fortress of Goldsilver (Read 79645 times)