Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Splint]

=]M[= Odkishmomuz, "Ferncrypt" =]M[=
A Story-Showcase Fortress
We will enforce the Builder's Art
+O+O+O+ PROLOGUE +O+O+O+

=]M[ ORRUN LAM ]M[=
Roared the Stones

I cannot remain here. I have said farewell to my parents and brother and fled to a hillock to await the return of surveyors. I am gathering whatever supplies I can muster for the journey and I do not know what fate holds for me, but I am the outcast dwarf now.

2nd Opal, 280

I have finally heard from surveyors of locations. I must find dwarves willing to travel for a new life outside the mountainhomes. There are unclaimed mountains far to the east, but the head surveyor has told me to beware The Swamp of Strength. I do not fear tangles of greenery or creatures.

5th Opal, 280

I have met a dwarf by the name of Sard. She seeks passage out of the fortress. I have heard of Sard. She is disreputable and attempted to sell bags of magma to nobles. I do not understand the bags of magma or how they are possible. She insists I refer to it as bagma. If my settlement is to become great, I will need an appraiser and grudgingly allow her to join me.

9th Opal, 280

I have met a soldier willing to travel with me. He is a macedwarf by the name of Hoyt. It will be good to travel with a seasoned soldier. I also encountered the engineer Hugo, who agreed to join as well. She alleges disownment for refusing the family craft of bone carving and seeks to forge her own path.

13th Opal, 280

I have been forced to take my comrades and flee [place]. The Royal Guard was close to discovering my whereabouts and plans. I must swear others to not tell caravans my name, lest a terrible fate befall us. During our escape, a mad dwarf named Meph was found clinging to the underside of our wagon, and she claims to be fleeing from those who do not "appreciate the art." When I asked her what dwarf does not hold squares to be so, he stated I was not fully correct. She told me that while squares are the art all masons must aspire to, builder must make the materials match or it will be unseemly. He claims the wagon is of both arts, and is thus acceptable.

She then demanded to know why we were fleeing the fortress, and I told her with honesty. She did not appear bothered by this and instead appeared to be in good spirits because she "can enforce the arts."

I do not understand how one enforces the arts.

23rd Opal, 280

We came upon the ruins of a savaged cultist camp. Therein we discovered the axedwarf Pratt. Sard discovered two injured cultists and constructed sheep wool ropes to bind them with for questioning from looted supplies. Hoyt freed Pratt from her cage and she informed us of a great beast that savaged the cult. She then declared that the cult was weak, which terrified the prisoner cultists. She then declared that they had done the same of her, but their trials had made her stronger than them. I will write the words for posterity.

"They named me a weak dwarf. But they have made me strong. Now they are weak, and I will show them the lessons were not ill-taught. The weak will be culled."

Pratt looted a heavy iron axe from the corpse of a cult warrior and slew the two prisoners. The sight was traumatizing to behold! She did not kill them quickly, and shattered unbroken limb bones before spilling guts of one and breaking the neck of the other, to ensure a slow demise. I am fearful of Pratt, but she has pledged to cull the weak in the name of our future fortress and make weak timid dwarves into strong war dwarves. Hoyt did not contest her claim to leadership of future war dwarves.

3rd Obsidian, 280

Pratt has insisted upon scouting ahead of the wagon. She is intent upon finding the cult's warriors skulking like verminous kobolds. She instead has found a ruined forest hillock that is not on any maps stored in the wagon. We have made camp in the drinking mound while Pratt and Hoyt explore the ruins.

5th Obsidian, 280

Pratt was ambushed by kobolds skulking a storage mound. She did not pursue them, and claims they were in retreat of something else. She found kobolds with throats and limbs torn by dog or wolf teeth in the mound. Someone is stalking the ruins and does not appear aware of us. Pratt's discovery has made us bewared of them however.

8th Obsidian, 280

Looted two mail shirts from corpses. Corpses were burned and wore cult pendants. Looted six stones of gabbro. Looted three copper axe pendants. Buried three dwarves in dirt. Vomited from handling rotted corpses. Discussed settling the ruin.

9th Obsidian, 280

Left camp to relieve myself and discovered fresh cult corpses. Two bore teeth marks of dogs or wolves. One bore wounds inflicted by a spear or dagger. Fetched Pratt, and she informed that the wounds were from a spear. The cult prowls. Looted one iron sword pendant from storage mound. Looted three suits of leather armor from storage mound. Looted three copper ingots from storage mound. Decision was reached to continue onwards at next sunrise.

13th Obsidian, 280

Passing through elf lands. Hugo felled a tree on principle. Sard gifted her a heavy boulder she found on the road to make mechanisms from for the deed. Discovered elf and cult corpses hanging from the trees before making camp. The cult and elves appear to be warring against one another. Pratt believes it is the cult killer from the hillock. I do not know which theory to believe.

20th Obsidian, 280

We approach the mire. The pines and maples are giving way to vibrant fruit trees. These trees are the only good thing about nature. Nobody from the capital should find us after passing through here.

23rd Obsidian, 280

We have found slabs with old dwarven carved on them. Hugo claims understanding, and that they are possibly a warning, or territory marks of forest dwarves. I do not believe forest dwarves are real.

25th Obsidian, 280

Vines choke the land and bridges across rivers and streams are becoming few. And many of those we have seen are also choked by vines. There is a detestable flower smell in the air as well. Spring approaches and this is to be expected in swamplands. Discovered four cult corpses nailed to trees with obsidian-tipped spears. Discovered one cult corpse missing the left arm and right foot. It was covered in bite and scratch marks. There was an obsidian spear head lodged in the left ribs with a partial haft snapped off.

1st Granite, 281

Discovered more slabs. The slabs depict elves and dwarves being consumed by badgerwolves.

3rd Granite, 281

Narrowly avoided a cult patrol of ten dwarves. Hoyt and Sard had to restrain Pratt to avoid an altercation that would have surely ended with our deaths.

5th Granite, 281

Discovered the patrol dead from wounds. Many cult dwarves had their necks broken in their sleep. One was hanging from a tree. One had been chewed by beasts. Hoyt and Sard believe the cult slayer shadows us.

7th Granite, 281

More slabs depicting warnings of a cave exuding water or magma. The flow is surrounded by screaming dwarves and elves. In the cave mouth is a dwarf bearing a strange symbol. None of us understand this symbol.

10th Granite, 281

Discovered an abandoned campsite. We appropriated it for the night. Found a staff with the strange symbol. Meph crafted it into firewood stating its shape was not the art. I do not understand the art. I am just a smith.

13th Granite, 281

A bridge collapsed at a river fording, and we narrowly avoided the loss of the wagon. The loss of our supplies would have been devastating, but the shoveldon shattered its yolk shortly after pulling the wagon back to land, and we have no leatherworkers to make repairs to the harness.

14th Granite, 281

We were approached by a dwarf today clad in furs followed by war animals. He spoke in old dwarven and only Hugo could understand him., and not with great clarity. He appears to have left the slabs and murdered cults and ferric elves. the unmarked hillock had been his home until the cult burned it. He hunts cult dwarves for vengeance. Sard and I are in agreement: We fear the forest dwarf.

He has warned us of an ancient gate to another world that if tampered with may bring ruin. If Hugo's translation was accurate, and I have no reason to believe it not so, the massive beasts found in this mire are the ferric elves and cult's doing, tampering with a portal they did not understand. I believe it to be an ancient offering portal like those used in the mountainhomes to give us magmatic force in safe to handle forms.

+O+O+O+

NOTICE there's a few glitches that are the result of user error on my part (such as tree trunks being the wrong color,) but everything is more or less working as intended. There's also some mild transparency issues that I've encountered, but again, these appear to be due to user error on my end.  As my game is heavily modded, yours will not look like this should you consider the tileset.

Helloooooooooooooo Everyone! As Battlejudge has more or less fulfilled its role, I have, at the request of Meph, decided to start a fortress mainly to showcase his marvelous 32x32 tileset, which can be found here!
While I haven't gotten everything I want out of this location, I'll get most of it, only really missing out on the ice and likely the obsidian sets unless by some magical coincidence there's a layer on this map somewhere, and the biome is savage neutral, rather than savage good or evil. I have however made up for this somewhat by way of the inclusion What Lurks Below and our nearest elf neighbors having access to creatures from Lands of Duality. Likewise, we will have access to anything we can import from the humans, elves, or the fall caravan, as our civ (and our enemies) have access to many What Lurks creatures as well.

Uniquely for us, and included with the world I rolled, is Dwarven Bred Domestic Beasts, which for us adds a nice layer of difference. In fact, how's about a full list?

Meph's Tileset of course, the main point of this fort, by Meph.
Dwarven Bred Domestic Beasts, By Vettlingr. Includes Meph set friendly graphics.
What Lurks Below, A Cavern life overhaul mod by ZM5.
Lands of Duality, A Good and Evil Biome Overhaul by ZM5.
Musket Mod, by zaporozhets. Includes overrides for use with Meph's tileset.
Dwarven Doomsday Cult, by me, of course. They'll be using Vordak's dwarf graphics to make'em look fancier.
Miscellaneous mods, also by me.
 - New metals (Gilded Steel, Bloodsteel, Cursed Iron, and Magmatic Force)
 - Casting gold and platiinum maces and hammers
 - Slade aquistion (and blunt weapons to go with them)
 - Tribal gear Set (Hunting Spear, wicker armor, ceramic masks, totem clubs and totem mauls)
 - Misc Armors (pot, kettle, full, bearded,) scale armor, goblin scrap armor and elven knotwork armor. I think that's what I called it. As well as sword, hammer, axe, and skull pendants.

ZM's mods add all kinds of nasty critters above and below ground, many of which our civ has access to. If we opt to war our elven neighbors, we'll see those things brought to bear against us. And while irrelevant, Lands of Duality add various nasty weather effects to make your life even more miserable in evil biomes, and regular miserable in good ones as well. Definitely give'em a look.

Now, with all that out of the way, here's our embark map. Forgot to grab one for supplies, but it's got the looted goods, anvil, some ore and coal, a copper axe, iron axe, iron mace, Hoyt's bronze body and head armor, plus a bunch of drink and kea meat, cave wheat and cave grape seeds, and Rakkat's war beasts.



We're in a freshwater swamp, as you can see, and I settled there mainly just to spite Meph.

Hopefully we'll have access to plenty of materials, because I hope to go all out with this with fancy temples made of thematically correct colored brickwork, an ornate library, a public park/nice courtyard to a keep, a suitably dreary prison, intimidating bone walls for barracks, and so on and so forth, with a side plan of building a giant fuck-off tower to spite the necromancers down south, and abusing the hell out of the decorative buildings to acheive .

Now, as you can see, I'm biting Bravemule again, but don't let that stop you from adding tot he story however you like! Translation convention is in full effect so you guys don't have to write the same way as I will be. I'll be doing an unclaimed character for anywhere from a month to a season as well for updates, starting of course with our smith and de-facto leader, Tolver.

[A list of our deities will go here in the future, once I make portraits for them.]

I'm hoping plenty of people will enjoy the fort, and be able to use it as somewhere to do a bit of writing practice, as I'm also going to do this to work on drawing some, so even this OP might change as I draw more shit. Let's get this started, shall we?

[Splint]

=]M[CHRONICLES OF FERNCRYPT]M[=
Updates will be here.

Tolver, Early Spring, 281
Tolver, Mid- and Late Spring, 281
Pratt, Early Summer, 281
Hans, Summer, 281
Tolver, Fall, 281, to Early Spring, 282
Tolver, Mid-Spring, 282, to Late Winter, 282
Bolli, Year 283

[Splint]

[Splint]

=]M[The Community of Ferncrypt]M[=
Stuff you guys make or non-update/OP art will go here.

[Splint]

15th Granite, 281

Rakkat appears to have decided to stay with us, stating that "iron tree men" stalk the land and he believes us incapable of protecting ourselves. Hoyt through Hugo informed him he could not protect himself either as he lacked a weapon. Rakkat then made crude engravings in dirt depicting the murder of elves and cult dwarves, and in one a spear was shown to snap in half in a cult dwarf while a badgerwolf gnawed the cult dwarf. Hugo armed with a copper axe and felled a tree to build a work station with. We require blocks to efficiently use our materials, and I require a proper forge to create picks for Meph and Sard and a spear for Rakkat, even if only copper.

16th Granite, 281

Hugo concerns me. She expressed a desire to build a home from wood. I am concerned for Meph as well as she did not try to dissuade her and only said that it must follow the art and be all made of the same type of wood, as improper wood ruins the design, and that a "ranch" would also require windows and a pasture for animals. I do not understand what a ranch is. Rakkat has begun training the bristleback and Shoveldon how to ram and bite with tusks, and Pratt sits to observe the training. A shrewdog shadows Rakkat at all times and appears eager to murder.



17th Granite, 281

Meph cut the granite Sard gifted Hugo into blocks and I have begun constructing my forge. it will likely take another full day of labor to complete, and then three days more to make needed tools. Hoyt complains that he has lost his shield and inquired if I had seen it. I informed him i had not, and Sard informed him it was lost in the stream soon after. I offered to forge a buckler for comfort when ore is found.

18th Granite, 281

Made a mistake during forging of a copper pick and the labor has been set back half a day, as the head needs to be reforged. Sard has put forward we must name our new home, even if it is an involuntary one. Sard proposed Vineburned. Hugo suggested Granitetower as granite was the first stone cut here. Meph suggested Grandtower.

19th Granite, 281

Finished a copper pick and armed Sard as she possess the most experience in mining. Sard has also been elected broker of trade as predicted, as she has the best education of numbers among us. Pratt declared herself leader of war dwarves and was contested by Rakkat through Hugo. Pratt administered discipline until he retracted his contest. At  least she calls the beating she dispensed such. Hoyt advised Rakkat through Hugo not to take such actions again.


20th Granite, 281

Took the day to assist Meph in marking birch trees for Hugo's ranch. Voting has concluded my suggestion of Ferncrypt as the name of our new home with three votes. Hail Ferncrypt. We celebrated the naming with beer and salted kea meat.

21st granite, 281

Finished a Copper pick and armed Meph. Hugo and Meph have begun drawing plans for the fortress.

22nd Granite, 281

Carp swim the river.



23rd Granite, 281

Finished copper spear and armed Rakkat, who appeared grateful and he gave me a small amulet with an odd symbol on it in thanks or trade, I do not know which. Found slug in shoes this morning. Fed the slug to the shrewdog out of spite for the vile creature.




Okay, so. First update. Kinda lacking in details or getting anything done because I forgot to bring picks, and the copper I was going to use to provide cheap basic helmets for the militia ended up having to be used for that instead. I've also been up way longer than I intended to be.

So far no giant animals around, thankfully, since even relatively harmless things like giant flying squirrels will gladly murder a dorf dead if they get too close one time too many. No kea-related things either. Gonna need to dig a temporary store room to get our shit out of sight of the potential little thieving gits.

Dunno if I made an error in installing the musket mod graphics, but otherwise, so far so good. Next update probably later today/tomorrow, I got drawing to do for money.

[ZM5]

Definitely looking forward to seeing how this turns out - I already like Pratt's and Rakkat's characterization. Hope they both live long.

[Darkening Kaos]

     As per usual, when migrants come, dorf me as a mechanic/weapon-smith, thanx.

[vettlingr]

Now this gets me all excited!

Feel free to include me as the most unlucky of your unlucky few dwarves. A military dwarf would suit me fine, or a bone carver.

[Splint]

Hokay guys, so. Apparently even after passing my files through quality control, neither I nor two other people managed to notice a few errors in several reactions. Do we want to just press on and hope for the best, or reroll the world with properly functioning reactions and hope we get a good one?

EDIT: Okay, so the blue tree thing should be fixed, and according to Hugo I should be able to fix the worst of the fuck ups with the reactions without a regen.

[ZM5]

I'd say carry on as long as the stuff can be fixed without a regen.

[Darkening Kaos]

     Glitches and unintended accidental 'improvements' are all part of the !fun!.  Proceed at flank speed.

[Splint]

Okay, so good news and bad news.

Good news, as said. Worst of the issues can be fixed without rolling a new world, since they don't change any reaction IDs. Bad news, either there's user error on my end when i installed the musket mod or one of ZM5's mods which fucked something up or replaced a file I didn't intend to, or a fix didn't take and I have to gen a new world to get everything showing properly - and consequently rewrite everything, though I'll at least be able to reuse the portraits.

[Imic]

PTW

[Hommit]

I have to gen a new world to get everything showing properly

you can grab new shroom and tracks while you at it 

[Splint]

EDIT: Okay, I'm running into more issues that shouldn't be happening considering what I added had almost nothing to do with graphics, unless they have a particular order they have to be in.

I'm going to have to do a test, and if nothing is wrong at all with a clean gen without the added mods, I'm going to be stupendously upset. I get the point of the fort and all, but apart from the graphics themselves, there's nothing new added or featured eslewhere and for all intents, what comes packaged is boring same-old-same-old stuff and doesn't offer much to work with for a story or add anything interesting besides visuals.