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[DolosusDoleus]

!!THROWBACK FORTRESS 2!!

Spoiler: Prologue (click to show/hide)

Exerpt from the journal of "DolosusDoleus" Sibrekmomuz, Miner

10 Opal, 1596
Still can't say I totally understand what the big deal is about. It's the prince's own goddamn fault he got the snot beaten out of him, kid's the most arrogant sniveling brat to ever plague the lands! In any case, I've been tossed into the dungeon. Guard says that if I'm lucky I'll just get my hands lopped off, have one hundred hammerings, stuff like that. Can't say prison food's as bad as they say, though. Cheese is a bit hard and mouldy, but good.

18 Opal, 1596
Could 've sworn they'd have brought me in by now. To answer for my crimes, to bow prostrate before the prince, yadda yadda yadda. Whatever, it's only a matter of time before they bring me in before His Grand Illustriousness. Just glad they let me keep my journal, would probably 'ave gone mad without it.

28 Opal, 1596
Now I'm just starting to get pissed. When are they gonna let me out? If they wanted to kill me, they'd 'ave just done it already.

4 Obsidian, 1596
Guard came in today. Said the His Grad Illustriousness will see me tomorrow. Told me I should probably write my will.

5 Obsidian, 1596
That was... unexpected. Instead of killing me on the spot, His Grand Illustriousness said I'm gonna be in charge of a new outpost or whatever. Said it was gonna be called Sazirdolush, or "Bridgeborn". Also mentioned something about a portal. I'm not entirely clear on the details, but he said something about being transported to another world? In any case, it seems that wherever I do end up going, I'll be completely cut off from the Brittle Moment. On the bright side, I'll never have to look at the prince's ugly mug ever again.

17 Obsidian, 1596
Guards escorting us led us to this weird hole carved out the side of a mountain. Led us inside, and we came across this glowing purple... thing. I'm not sure how to describe it, it seemed to defy the laws of physics themselves. It was spherical, yet also flat, a cube yet also a circle, taller than the highest mountain yet also smaller than an ant. As we were all gaping over the damn thing, the guards put a boot to my ass and kicked me inside along with the other lads. We fell for what seemed like forever, and as we careened down I heard these maddening demonic voices whispering in my head. When we finally got out, we were in a land I'd never seen before.

Goddammit.

Spoiler: What is a throwback fortress, and why should I care? (click to show/hide)

!!THROWBACK FORTRESS!! was a community fort I started about a year and a half ago, with the gimmick of being in v0.23a. It was insane, disorganized, and a complete clusterfuck even by bay12 community fort standards.

When the latest version of DF came out a few days ago, I remembered that I had promised a sequel to !!THROWBACK FORTRESS!!. The difference this time is that it’s in 40d instead of 23a.

The original fort can be found here.

Oh yeah, and this version was supposed to have some custom mods, but as it turns out I really suck at DF modding. Whaddaya gonna do.

Overseer Rules:
Please accept or decline your turn promptly. I will PM you when your turn comes up. If you do not respond within 48 hours you will be skipped.

Please stay in touch after beginning your turn. If I don't hear from you for more than 72 hours at a stretch I will first send you a PM, then skip you if there's no response after 48 hours. For the love of Christ do not make me pester you constantly.

Please provide at least one in-story update every 7 days. If you need extensions on this, feel free to ask, but don't push your luck.

No massive weapon-trap hallways or weaponised atomsmashers. All other contrivances are acceptable.

No danger rooms, Spikes of Enlightenment, or similar training exploits.

Please only use DFHack to fix bugs or improve game performance. Cleaning the map, unsticking migrant traders, or pacifying soldiers is acceptable. Reveal, fastdwarf, etc. is not.

Please use only ASCII tilesets. No graphics packs. A lot of people don't know how to properly uninstall graphics packs. If you use one and our display tiles get fucked up I will eat you.

Please give in-character writeups, preferably with lots of screenshots and hopefully with effort put into the writing.

If you must cancel your turn prematurely, please upload your current save.

Rules for Everyone Else:
Please contribute! I don't care how shitty you think it is, any illustrations or story bits are welcome! Just please follow these guidelines:
> No crazy OCs. No cyborgs, no planeshifting gnome scientists, no supernaturally-empowered avatars of extradimensional beings. You don't have to make your dorf completely-average, but please don't have anything that can't already conceivably-exist in the current setting, at least not without running it by me first.
> No massive long-running story arcs unless you've done that kind of thing successfully before. I've seen things, bro. Terribly, terribly disappointing things.
> Finally, for the sake of my sanity, please try to make sure everything's copyedited and the grammar and spelling are all nice. It's not a big deal if you don't. Just think of it as a favour to me.

Please try to keep discussion on-topic! I'll keep a running list of links to fortress updates for people who just want those, but for the sake of my sanity I won't link to every cool thing everyone posts, so if we could keep digressions to a minimum for the sake of people who want to read the whole thread it'd be great.

[DolosusDoleus]

Player List / Update Links

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Finished Aborted Midway Skipped Current

DolosusDoleus 1 2 3 save
NCommander 1,2,3 4 save
Zanzetkuken the Great 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Compiled save
nogoodnames
Taupe 1 2 3 4 save
NCommander
nogoodnames 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 save
Crocatowa 1 2 save
NCommander
Xyon 1 2 3 save
Crocatowa
bloop_bleep
wierd

Dorfing List

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

~Nada a nadie

Please put dorfing requests in the form
(Name):(Profession):(Job Title):(Gender)

If you don't have a preference for a field, replace it with "None Specified"

All overseers will be automatically dorfed, and redorfed if they die.

[DolosusDoleus]

Quote Bank

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

''Fuck this place'' said an important looking dwarf. ''I'm done being the overseer.'' the overseer threw his overseer stick to the ground in disgust. Or was it a staff? It was definitely stick-shaped, and came from the overseer's hands, which made it, by definition, the overseer's stick.

The very second that winter turns to spring, a giant eagle swwops in and kills me instantly.

I don't like Bridgeborn.

Future looks promising. Maybe

Taupe IV has graciously volunteered to lead our unskilled peasant militia against the goblins

Awww fuck.

I'd like my one-way ticket to Nopesville, please!

[Fleeting Frames]

Looking around, 40d worldgen cookbook thread 404s and is disallowed by wayback. This is the only thread I found with brief search for seeds: Worldgen cliffs

So...Worldgen tiem?

[DolosusDoleus]

Looking around, 40d worldgen cookbook thread 404s and is disallowed by wayback. This is the only thread I found with brief search for seeds: Worldgen cliffs

So...Worldgen tiem?

Eyup. World is genning as we speak. I’ll probably post all the info sometime tomorrow.

[NCommander]

I'm in. I was actually thinking about this since I resurrected my own previous story, and I wrote the finale for the first one. Though perhaps we should do a glacier embark. I'd have a harder time burning it down.

We need to find a site with both candy and a HFS (neither was guaranteed in 40d) for max hilarity. HFS occurs once in a region square like the demonic fortresses in DF2010. Magma would be a bonus but it's only really necessary if we're on a treeless embark. No magma sea in 40d or caverns which means the only way to get water for farming is to melt the ice., either by cave-in or magma.

[DolosusDoleus]

I found the optimal location!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This should be interesting.

EDIT: Aargh, the location wasn't good. I'll post the actual fort location in a little bit.

I'm in. I was actually thinking about this since I resurrected my own previous story, and I wrote the finale for the first one. Though perhaps we should do a glacier embark. I'd have a harder time burning it down.

We need to find a site with both candy and a HFS (neither was guaranteed in 40d) for max hilarity. HFS occurs once in a region square like the demonic fortresses in DF2010. Magma would be a bonus but it's only really necessary if we're on a treeless embark. No magma sea in 40d or caverns which means the only way to get water for farming is to melt the ice., either by cave-in or magma.

Ye be in.

EDIT 2:

Here we go

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Supposedly there is an underground lake, a magma pool, and bottomless pits.

[NCommander]

I hate being "that guy" but most of that embark is mountain biomes which are considered impassable to worldgen, and don't have many critters. Special stuff can only spawn in mountains, but I dunno if 40d mountains are as devoid of life as the later versions are. I haven't played much if at all of 40d compared to 23a or DF2010. Without caverns, we're mostly dependent on location to get interesting things.

Also to check, goblins *can* reach the site right?

[DolosusDoleus]

I hate being "that guy" but most of that embark is mountain biomes which are considered impassable to worldgen, and don't have many critters. Special stuff can only spawn in mountains, but I dunno if 40d mountains are as devoid of life as the later versions are. I haven't played much if at all of 40d compared to 23a or DF2010. Without caverns, we're mostly dependent on location to get interesting things.

Also to check, goblins *can* reach the site right?

According to the settings, the fortress has access to all civs (Including Goblins). Turns out that it also has five bazillion undead hoary marmots.

[NCommander]

According to the settings, the fortress has access to all civs (Including Goblins). Turns out that it also has five bazillion undead hoary marmots.

So what you're saying is we're in for a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad time?

[DolosusDoleus]

According to the settings, the fortress has access to all civs (Including Goblins). Turns out that it also has five bazillion undead hoary marmots.

So what you're saying is we're in for a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad time?

We’re in for one hell of a bad time.

[MoonyTheHuman]

We're in for a quantum bad time. It's Bad, Worse, and Hell all at the same time.

[Fleeting Frames]

Yeah, I'm a bit surprised at the best embark locations you found being a choice between terrifying metamorphic mountains and terryfing sedimentary mountains with a brook. Hoary marmots in 40d...

The Hoary marmot is a small, weak, benign creature, found in mountainous areas. It can be wrestled to death by a dabbling wrestler. Such an act is greatly discouraged however, as marmots are very cute and lovable. Unfortunately for the marmots, they are also delicious.

Is there something I'm missing, such as undead marmots being deadlier than undead elephants? I see evil forests, marshes and grasslands available on those screenshots.

I'd also suggest four times smaller embark for fps, but eh, I'm not playing.

[NCommander]

Embark size was something less of a problem in 40d. Without the caverns, magma sea, or forgotten beasts, there's generally a LOT less crap on the map which keeps things relatively speedy. 23a was a 16x16 embark (granted, at 1 z level). 40d is also somewhat irritating that magma pipes and HFS are both rare and non-guaranteed.

40d is pretty much the basis for "modern" Dwarf Fortress. DF2010's big changes were caverns, was dumping the economy entirely, and revamping the military system into the present form. DF2012 was a much smaller sleep forward, while 2014->onward have primarily been making the world a living breathing place.

EDIT: For those who didn't play these versions, seiges came more or less reliably, and this well predates stress over happiness. As such, you can get some epic tantrum spirals going. I haven't had a proper spiral in DF2014 to date though Breadbowl came close when I offed a 1/3rd of the forts population in a single go.

[DolosusDoleus]

Yeah, I'm a bit surprised at the best embark locations you found being a choice between terrifying metamorphic mountains and terryfing sedimentary mountains with a brook. Hoary marmots in 40d...

The Hoary marmot is a small, weak, benign creature, found in mountainous areas. It can be wrestled to death by a dabbling wrestler. Such an act is greatly discouraged however, as marmots are very cute and lovable. Unfortunately for the marmots, they are also delicious.

Is there something I'm missing, such as undead marmots being deadlier than undead elephants? I see evil forests, marshes and grasslands available on those screenshots.

I'd also suggest four times smaller embark for fps, but eh, I'm not playing.

All of those had aquifers/no magma, and my computer's too much of a potato for me to bother generating more than 2 worlds.

Anywho, I'm gonna make the first update soonish. Drafting it as we speak.