1/27/2020
This has some spoilers, if you do not know what terms like “clown” and “candy” mean, please play until you do and read this later.
I’ll be writing some anecdotes detailing the odd misadventures in my dwarven fortress of Kissgears. In a place known as “The Absolute Universe” with very high savagery, civs, sites, and high mineral occurrence alongside an early starting year of 125, I embarked on this settlement in a rural place two days walk from another fort I built earlier and its twin mountainhome. This fort is running on version 0.44.12, using meph’s tileset. This civ is now turning 79 years old and is comprised of three self-sustaining towns. One is above, built up a ginkgo tree, ascending to the top of the skybox and expanding horizontally, filling up the sky and constructed from the top down. It’s comprised of four burrows and 187 dwarven citizens. The second is just below the crust, the old town area tracing back to the original pioneers first settlement down below. There are five burrows and 517 dwarven citizens, the highest populated and the acting industrious core of the entire civilization. The final colony is deep below with structures going straight into clown college. This community acts as the military core of the fortress, being the barracks, practice chambers, and functioning with two burrows and a population of 126 dwarven citizens. Some of these stories have been told in the unofficial discord but I was told to put them in the forum. My recollection for some of this isn’t perfect because it's been a month or two since this story began but I’d like to think it’s a pretty accurate retelling since I’m using legends mode for assistance.
Occurrence #1 -
By the 61st year of Kissgear’s operation, construction of a tree fort began. During this time, a giant otter began wandering around my map before a problematic daschund started attacking it. A few bites later and the giant otter ended up falling straight into my 5 z level deep dry moat. After a week passed, I decided to build a ramp down and neutralize it for its fur, meat, and bones. I sent one legendary wrestler down. They fight for a while, the wrestler loses a few toes and a lot of blood, before grievously wounding the otter who soon after became unconscious and soon after he, himself fell to exhaustion. The giant otter came to, began biting his assailant’s throat, and suffocated the legendary wrestler. Thereafter, he gained a name and reputation as a historical figure: “Omerthgorob” (might be misspelled).
Omerthgorob ran off the map, disappearing for the time being. Months pass, spring turns to summer, and things heat up. Omerthgorob returns. I send a military squad and before long four legendary wrestlers beat him unconscious. They keep at it until passing out, covered in otter blood. Omerthgorob comes to and bites off one’s head and tries again with another, throwing them around and sending him straight into the dry moat to meet death on a smooth granite floor 5 z levels beneath in a spray of blood, bones, and skin. The other two were suffocated, and he walked off with five legendary dwarven wrestlers on his killing record.
It took 2 years for him to return, but in the 3 years thereafter, Omerthgorob’s seasonal returns would take the lives of my dwarves, legendary and peasant alike, once creating a surreal attack where I never saw him move but I would find his unconscious body in a different corner of the civ, every few hours, with more dead dwarves around him and more wounds. After two weeks of this, Omerthgorob vanished off the map.
Kissgear’s 64th year of operation brought along with it the production of muskets, a civ that rarely experienced violence now required some the finest weaponry to solve our issue. Omerthgorob’s next visitation came around the finished production of the first, so a well armored, legendary marksdwarf was sent for. They met at the old fort floor hatch. First shot gets him in the front paw, taking away three toes, he charges the marksdwarf and the musketeer finds himself knocked down, a missed shot and his right hand is bitten off, making him lose his musket. Another bite takes an ear, then an eye, finally ripping out his throat. Omerthgorob flees. More musketeer would be waiting for the next attack.
Winter fell, He came, and two more legendary marksdwarves were sent with muskets on the encroaching otter. Omerthgorob slinked down to the locked down Old Town entry chamber. He was met with a shot to the head taking away his left ear. Omerthgorob charges, misses, scrambles, and unsuccessfully bites at one’s armored legs before dodging a shot which accidentally hit the marksdwarf opposite’s groin, causing him to crumple. The marksdwarf prepares another shot and is bitten on his one unprotected foot, before having it ripped off, and being charged into a wall flooring him. Omerthgorob began biting at, then crushing his head, fleeing to surface and hiding in the wilds.
The passive route was being taken for the upcoming season. The moat was connected to the river and the bridge was raised. All fully armored, legendary marksdwarf musketeer units were positioned in wait at the entrance in case he made it over. Omerthgorob came around and jumped into the water. After a while of prodding the walls, he submerged and ended up finding the secret passage deep below leading to the underground waterfall and reservoirs for my fort. He came out at the waterfall landing of an indoor lake leading to the oldtown manufacturing and tenement housing district. Omerthgorob crawled out of the waters into town, while I redirected my positioned units to attack. All units were stuck by the surface in a sphere of pathways completely opposite of the direction necessary to reach old town proper, as was done intentionally for invading forces, causing militia forces to spend over a day running to the manufacturing quarter to reach it. Upon their arrival, they found the town already falling into chaos.
A pet rottweiler took to fighting a giant otter in the street only to have its skull crushed in its mouth instantly. The owner was near enough to witness this and came to its aid only to find herself crumpled to the ground with a ruptured heart. A group of family and close friends witnessing this brought about an aggressive cascade ending in 6 peasants and 2 legendary craftsdwarves with throats and limbs missing. Omerthgorob outmatched everyone so far, but was covered in bruises and cuts from what few successful kicks and punches landed, so he fled up into some tenement housing and curled up by some empty rooms. A few dwarves coming home to work happened upon this, reacted with fear, or aggression, and soon seven more lower-working-class craftsdwarves’ heads were crushed with blunt force against walls like clams on his tummy. Right on time, militia began raiding this tenement block and Omerthgorob took a tunnel path to an adjacent building and ran out to the streets.
Some context for the fort at this given time, as it is important. Old Town, and especially the lower class sweatshop factory burrows, is on its 65th year of operation. Decades of building, restructuring, condensing, and advancing, have made for a complex of narrow, winding alleys,
and convoluted pathways making for an extremely overcomplicated pathfinding nightmare in an overrun, sometimes decrepit, mess.
The militia units began getting split up and scattered throughout the assorted buildings and pathways, missed musket fire smacked onto hardstone while Omerthgorob scurried down an adjacent lane lying perpendicular to the last. A few more turns and my marksdwarf finds himself running into a dead end before being bitten from behind and bashed until dead, never having fired another shot. Repeating this method of scurry and turn around, Omerthgorob singled out and killed all 20 musketeers. He was fast and losing sight of him in this bustling city was far too easy. Omerthgorob retreated back to the reservoir and traveled down a waterway to the cave pool below, before crawling out and escaping off into the caves to not be seen for a while.
6 months later he returns with a long list of forgotten beasts and other cave dwellers on his kill record. This attack would count, 30 of the finest legendary axdwarves in full adamantine armor and ax came from the town down below, all being HF veterans, they’d do better than any of this half assed attempts made to wipe the slate clean of an underestimated enemy which is usually fairly easy to kill. They bleed out into the upper caverns and to the nearby lake. A few descend to the lower caverns by the lake body. Omerthgorob ambushes one, charging him straight into the lake. Together, they both fall in. Omerthgorob bites the drowning dwarf, shakes him around, and drags him 3 z levels below, where his last water filled breath was taken. The giant otter crawls up the walls and into a passage going straight to a central stairway to the magma forges below. Being inaccessible directly from the caverns, all forces scurried around trying to follow him. One of my seasoned HF veterans, Id, happened to be in the barracks nearby and was the first to enter the magma forge. Omerthgorob used blunt force attacks to defend against the barrage of barely dodged ax swings and ended up breaking Id’s leg. Biting into his knee and shaking him about, Omerthgorob finally charged his prone body straight into the magma pool below.
He ran up the stairway only to be met with more adamantine axes, dodging and jumping away, Omerthgorob ended up trapped in the magma room. The first dwarf in misses and has his arm latched onto and broken, but a second came in suiting and cut his skull open, severely injuring his left eye.He fled down a back staircase to a series of air lock structures that had been opened for a recent mining excursion in HF. Omerthgorob ran straight into the depths of hell until I couldn’t see him anymore. I decided to lock off the HF section and draw the adamantine bridge acting as the dividing passage. All military training and adamantine mining was suspended until further notice.
6 months passed, it appeared soldiers would be safe from Omerthgorob and could continue demon slaying. I reopen HF and operations resumed as they had prior to this giant otter crisis. Another month in, summer came, and so did Omerthgorob from the depths of hell. With long aged scars, some I’m not entirely sure I’d done myself, he charged into the secured mining camp, smashing an unsuspecting miner until he fell into a deep hole noone has ever seen the bottom of. Up from the camp into the military/magma quarter Omerthgorob scurried until he was cut off by all 110 active duty soldiers sent from the training barracks that lie directly a floor above. Outnumbered but brave, he went to ripping out throats and any unarmored body parts, scratching, fighting, and bashing with brute force all the while he’s being smacked around like a baseball, ax to ax to sword to mace to pike and so forth. All attention being directed at Omerthgorob made for an unseen invasion of demons straight from hell bleeding into the doorway, the swords smacks soon turned away as a flood of gnashing beastly abominations. The swarm redirects all attention, emergency reserves are drafted and 125 legendary soldiers quell the raging war below. A magma beast arises at the perfect time, making for a considerably more overwhelming ambush. All forces withdrew to higher ground in a large opening in the mine shafts above, constructed intentionally for last stands, before traps and zoos of permanently hostile animals become the last layer of resistance between HF and Kissgears. All trained warbeasts and pet alike storm below to hold off the attack. By battles end, there were 62 deaths and every other survivor was grievously injured, crippled, or otherwise mentally broken. HF was suspended indefinitely. After, I realized too late, Omerthgorob’s corpse wasn’t among them. He had run off and disappeared, was off the map all over again.
A few weeks pass and the final muskets necessary for production are finished, and five marksdwarf military squads are fully armed and begin rigorous training.
A month later an old pasture in the upper caverns has all of its livestock slaughtered by Omerthgorob, alongside two animal caretakers and the local farmers. I send down the marksdwarf squads but Omerthgorob ends up retreating beyond the caverns and out of our reach.
It’s Autumn, and although Kissgears is too warm to show any signs of it, the seasonal arrival of our dreaded companion marks it all over again. This year he climbs up a dry tunnel to the old town reservoir, drops in, crawls out, and ends up descending the closest stairs acting as a direct route to the surface (it goes down, through a series of misleading pathways to the lowest settlement, which then follows up to a central stairway system that branches out to a surface tunnel through a maze). Omerthgorob finds firing squad rows blocking off the central stairway, sending him back down, another blockade forces him to the magma forge where all marksdwarf forces cram down the stairs, forcing him into a dead end room. For once, his advantage with mobility was done for, his achilles heel had been struck. The giant otter was dead still for once, pressed hard against the farthest wall.
Musketeers lines up in a row, took aim, and began to fire. Omerthgorob jumped and sprinted off into the 4x4 2 z deep pool of water placed 1x adjacent to the magma pool. This pool acted as the final stop in my water tunnel system and was intended to be used to flood the room if any issues arose with magma beasts/flooding by releasing a floodgate above. Soldiers try finding a good angle for a shot when a fire beast emerges from below. Considering the scarcity of soldiers a more offensive method was chosen. Soldiers backed up and water began pouring in, causing overflow. Soldiers took crippling shots sending him into the pool of water to drown. Omerthgorob jumps out. He charged a soldier, knocking him down and nearly cast him into the magma pool beside him. The otter bites and latches onto his leg, snapping the bone in half, and shaking it around. Soldiers backed up, took aim, and began firing rounds straight into Omerthgorob’s backs and limbs, some taking the soldier he was latched onto, another set of rounds blast from the line in unison into the struggling pair. Both take to stumbling and pitching over into the steaming pool of hot magma mixing with the flood of cold water from above. Omerthgorob comes out of the magma burning, melting, he flipped into the pool of water and fell unconscious. He had done too much damage to deserve a quick death by firing squad. We
caged him, and took him to be trained and well taken care of. He was soon to become a warbeast.
More to come later.
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Topic: Kissgears Occurrence #1 (Read 1139 times)