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[King Zultan]

I like that my new title is Stalking Justice, makes me sound like some kind of Batman like superhero.

[QuQuasar]

Oh, wait, crud. I hadn't realized she was stark raving mad. That rather changes her voice a bit, I think. And makes me disappointed, because I was hoping to make her useful. How do you even characterize an undead abomination who is simultaneously incapable of experiencing emotion and also running around babbling?

[recon1o6]

93000 stress by Armok how has solon not broken yet?

Hilarious to me that Elpho is stress out of his goard. He doesn't do anything! What is he stressed about?!

The last overseer taking a turn for the elf hating? that or someone collecting information on behalf of Deler Cogthikut

[Radiofort]

I think it's me, actually.

Oops, sorry and good luck then. I think my real brain took a small overload, as I haven't wrote that much in English for years.

Hilarious to me that Elpho is stress out of his goard. He doesn't do anything! What is he stressed about?!

Booze shortages, miasma and small tanrum spiral at the end of spring. What else dorf need for going emo?

93000 stress by Armok how has solon not broken yet?

Beats me. I expected he would be lost at the end of autumn, yet he still somehow holds his shit. Well, except all that toppled traps and levers.

By the way, I mentioned in my last post that Dastot went insane again. Don't ask me how.

[delphonso]

I think it's me, actually.

Oops, sorry and good luck then. I think my real brain took a small overload, as I haven't wrote that much in English for years.

I know you had a bit of reluctance earlier in the thread, but your posts were excellently written. I'm glad you decided to give it a shot.

[recon1o6]

Some info from legends as of the save

-Smallhands seems to be getting a surprising amount of migrants from the Hillocks of "Nutmined"
-Dastor Endokilid is the same dwarf Recon sent to die attacking dimplesteal as punishment for tantruming constantly. She got rescued by a begrudging Recon years later and has destressed approximately 7000 since she was imprisoned.
-The current King of dwarves is Queen Amost Tradedhandled. Fitting she's a merchant.
-In 171 the mountainhomes kicked the goblins out of an elven retreat and took it over
-in 170, the goblins literally had to get a demon to overtake Staffhoisted because the dwarves there kept winning
-There are multiple artifacts in possession of some elven princesses (and one prince) over at Glimmered Sanctum, and several more including what appears to be The One Ring over in Dimplesteal (naturally in possession of the demon there)
-The elves have literally lost 3 of their 4 sites, which are also now in possession by the dwarves

finally: theres two levers on level -8, one is the front gate, the other is the arena gate. You might want to pull those quick if/when gobbos come. Apparently only one of them is labelled
In addition to what radiofort said below: you need to look at the military, i noticed our gear is set to over clothing instead of REPLACE clothing. so no wonder we're armoured as paper

also while testing to see if its possible to go to the vault, I ended up having recon fight in the siege. Holy shit she's brutal, begins by parrying the pike with her bronze axe, then hacking a single goblin's lung out, broke its knee, punched its own fist and hurt its wrist, joint locked and snapped its right foot by pushing down in a grapple, chopped off a hand, several strikes to the head, gut strikes with the axe, scratches its ear so hard it flies off in an arc, began hacking and fracturing the left leg bones, bites its chest through iron mail, chopped off its right foot and finally chokeslams it to death and kills the goblin by suffocation

[Radiofort]

I know you had a bit of reluctance earlier in the thread, but your posts were excellently written. I'm glad you decided to give it a shot.

Thanks. Maybe I'll take another turn in a future.

-Dastor Endokilid is the same dwarf Recon sent to die attacking dimplesteal as punishment for tantruming constantly. She got rescued by a begrudging Recon years later and has destressed approximately 7000 since she was imprisoned.

I kinda hoped you would notice the Amontillado joke, heh.

finally: theres two levers on level -8, one is the front gate, the other is the arena gate. You might want to pull those quick if/when gobbos come. Apparently only one of them is labelled

I strongly advice to use them next second after loading game and stay sealed for a while, as their retaliation army is on our shoulders already. I played solo for a few times, and every time they came in a range from exact moment to a few days. Looks like I hit a nerve with that razed hillocks.

There's also four levers (two gray and two blue) near the gate control room. They're operating the smashers in a Goo Hive.

An important note: fill the vacant position in Swamp Hunters with anybody, as it seems the ghostly Siege Breaker who joined them in the raid holds it now. Don't know why, but that renders the whole squad unusable, as they cannot be alerted/ordered.
Also, an important note: increase the amount of combat ammunition for Swamp Hunters, as now they for some reason have only 100 on a whole squad. Forgot to do it myself.

[QuQuasar]

"Are you sure you wish to do this?"

"I don't particularly care one way or another. However... she would have."

"Very well. I am ready to begin. Speak, and I will record your words."


Spoken by 'Quasar' Endokilid, Dwarf Bone Carver forlorn ghoul

My name was Dastot, and my story is an unhappy one. If you wish not to partake of tragedy, now is the time to leave.

I never knew my parents. Indeed, I have very few memories of the time before I settled here. I cannot say if that is because they were uneventful, if they were something I repressed, or if they never existed in the first place.

Regardless, I do remember my husband, Kubuk Adiludist. He was a brave man, a good man. Now, he is a dead man. He travelled with me to Smallhands in 158, when I was a mere 69 years of age. I think, perhaps, we were happy then. My recollection is not what it once was. A side effect, perhaps?

Unfortunately, it wouldn't last much longer. The first thing most notice about Smallhands is the heat. A sweaty, cloying heat that can never be escaped, not even were one to swim in the cold cavern pools or bury themselves in snow. The curse of Smallhands, the eternal fever. I can't exactly blame the fever everything that followed, but it certainly did not help my state of mind.

Two years after I arrived, a severe wound cost me my mental fortitude. I became a nervous wreck.



As the stress began to pile up, I tried many things to cope. I tried humour...



... it didn't work. I tried altruism...



... it didn't work. I even tried thrill seeking...



Obviously, it did not work. Once one reaches such a state, bringing them back from the brink is all but impossible. The rules of the world, as written in The Sea of Twice Addition, do not allow it.

Kubuk saw my ever increasing burden, and he became fey in his desperate efforts to turn my mood around. He claimed a leatherworkers workshop and made a grand artifact.



He claimed Secretpuce as a family heirloom and gifted it to me as a symbol of our love and family.



I recall being touched by his act. In hindsight, it would have been more productive to have publicly struck him with the useless thing for wasting a perfectly good strange mood.

... Kubuk was a naive fool, but I loved him with all my heart.

I wouldn't be allowed to do so for much longer.


The burden of stress began to overcome me. I began lashing out, striking dwarves, toppling statues. The stress had to be appeased. The ritual of tantrum must be completed.

Eventually, my actions lead to consequences.

The overseer at the time was Recon. She summoned me to her office and stated in plain terms what she intended to do. I told her she was a monster. She told me this place makes monsters of us all.

Cliche or not, she was not wrong.

Kubuk fought against it, of course. He insisted I disobey the overseer's orders. He told me he'd run away with me. Anywhere I wanted to go. But I knew that would only draw him into my suffering. So... I obeyed the order.



I was supposed to die in honourable combat, but instead the foul creatures captured me. I'll spare you the details of the next 10 years of my life. Goblins are not smart or creative creatures, but when it comes to inventive forms of torture they have no equal in this world. Even now, even in my emotionless state, I have no wish to speak of the the things they did to me.

We had tea parties. They made me drink LEAF JUICE!

There is something I must share, however, because I saw in person what we are up against. The mistress of The Seduction of Goo paid a personal visit to the prisoners. The blind demon Ikud Masterlegend the Unremarkable Idol. A gigantic eyeless iguana twisted into humanoid form. It spouts gibberish periodically. Its russet scales are small and close-set. Beware it's fire! Ikud was associated with thralldom.

Ikud's horrific eyeless face came close to the cage in which I was held as if looking into my very soul, and she laughed and spouted gibberish at me. Occult words that made no sense, cursed stories of matter and energy, ones and zeroes, of space and time being the same thing and of cats and dwarves both alive and dead, screaming as they rot away in their tiny boxes. And I, who had survived years in the pit, choked as those nonsensical noises wormed their way into my mind.

But I could not allow myself to die. I blotted out the world and focused on the only thing that could possibly have kept me sane: the knowledge that Kubuk was waiting for me. The love of my life was safe back in Smallhands, and he would live on. I would die in this place, sooner or later, but his love for me would not.

Suffice to say, I was wrong.



I was barely concious when The Little Picks rescued me, malnourished and hideously sober. But I remember hearing that Kubuk was still at Smallhands. That brought me back. I would see him again. Slowly but surely, with the aid of rations and booze and hope most of all, my stress began to alleviate on the journey home. Surely, it was over. The worst was behind me. Surely.

And then I found out the truth...

...





...

Not two years after I was captured, Kubuk had surrendered to despair and refused water until he died.

He should have been allowed to rest, but the overseers of Smallhands had had other idea's. The thought process went that if necromancers could enslave the dead, all we had to do was enslave the necromancers. And so, Kubuk came back to Smallhands.



But even a child could see that something was missing. Kubuk's mind and memories had come back, but his soul? His feelings? His connections to those around him?

His love?

The monsters of Smallhands had torn everything from him, leaving nothing but a hollow shell.

That was the final straw. I screamed incoherently for days on end, screamed until I was hoarse, screamed until I coughed blood and then screamed some more. I refused to drink. I refused to eat. I only wanted the suffering to end. And, after far too long, it finally did.

I died. Finally. After so much suffering, I was finally at peace.



For about a week.



None of this seems to matter to me anymore. I remember most of it, and I can recite the events in detail, but the emotions are gone. The pain I felt when my soul and mind were torn asunder, one to ascend to the afterlife and the other to return to my rotting corpse, seems remote and irrelevant now.

Still, I respect that my former self would have found something romantic about me and Kubuk both becoming forlorn ghouls. I will take it. Satisfaction-by-proxy may be the most I can hope for in this new existence.

And then the overseer sent Kubuk away to raid Stableville, and he came back a ghost to justifiably torment it's inhabitants. Frankly, by this point I wasn't even surprised anymore.




"Okay, that's transcribed. Is there anything else you want to add?"

"No. The rest will be recorded in the history books."

"History books? Heh, what, are you going to go overthrow the fortress for the sake of revenge or something?"



"... or something."

[QuQuasar]

Okay, what's going on here? I can't cancel these repeating orders. Every time I do they get recreated and suspended.





I thought the vanilla work manager just wasn't being used and therefore the entire fort had no automation in it, but I think there's actually some DFHack autolabor stuff going on that I don't understand.

[Radiofort]

Not sure about plant processing, but the glass production orders was given simply via furnaces (I never used DFHack in my life). Though I may suppose the source of last is our jailed surgeon Urist, who was assigned to glassmaking. Maybe for some reason he tries to do his last job and then suspends it being in custody.

In my opinion, just roll with it, as Smallhands is already full to the brim with bugs & glitches, and affected orders isn't crucial. Though it will require a detailed investigation if that problem will spread to more important tasks, but I doubt it.

Moreover, that was quite a badass quenta for Dastot. Will be waiting for updates!

[recon1o6]

damn, that was some amazing writing. I feel a little bit sorry for sending her to die, and Recon the dwarf would too after hearing of some of the tortures. Regretful though? not a bit. I couldn't save her in my turn as she was fevered and as such couldnt produce masterworks in order to destress so I sent her to die. Perhaps in 47.05 she could have been saved though.

Still... fitting that Recon was also the one sent to free her after 10 years.

There is something I must share, however, because I saw in person what we are up against. The mistress of The Seduction of Goo paid a personal visit to the prisoners. The blind demon Ikud Masterlegend the Unremarkable Idol. A gigantic eyeless iguana twisted into humanoid form. It spouts gibberish periodically. Its russet scales are small and close-set. Beware it's fire! Ikud was associated with thralldom.

The big bad of this saga is WeevilMessiah god of Thralldom. With NoGood's sacrifice, Smallhands was freed from WeevilMessiah's influence, and this thing is his top enforcer.

[Spriggans]

These "dead" work orders coming back to life are very fitting to smallhands, I must say.

Iirc, you can remove the glitched work orders by first pressing R, S, and only then C
Only pressing C brings them back for some reason
If that aint working, you can always deconstruct the workshop...

[delphonso]

Excellent storytelling so far! It's rare we see a critical look at Smallhands. Looking forward to more!

[QuQuasar]

On the first of Granite, 174, I declared my intention to overthrow the monsters of Smallhands and reign undisputed as it's coldly-rational, unfeeling lich queen.

On the first of Granite, 174, Radiofort responded with "sure, you can be next" and handed me a rock with "OvrseR" scratched on it.

I suspect there was some form of miscommunication between us. Frankly, I was expecting overthrowing the government and installing myself as supreme ruler to be harder. And also, why a rock? Smallhands has stockpiled a great many quires that nobody seems to be using.

Apparently it won't even be the first time a forlorn ghoul has lead this fort. I'm not sure whether that happened during my imprisonment, or if having my mind torn from my soul, shattered into a thousand pieces and painfully reconstructed within the decaying brain of a corpse has had some adverse effects on my memory. I would be concerned, if I was capable of it anymore.

Regardless, since my goal of conquering Smallhands and reigning supreme over the peasants within has now been achieved, I must focus my efforts on reforming it, on bending it to my will. None should have to suffer as the one named Dastot once did. I will crush this fortress's cruel streak beneath my iron boots, break the back of it's meanness over my unholy knee, trample it's shriveled black soul into a bloody pulp of kindness, and instead of a dark lord, you will have a QUEEN! Of niceness. A nice queen. I will be nice.


First things first: Duke Salmeuk has evidently been failing to prepare the paperwork on a regular basis. After an extensive search, the only thing I could find was a another small rock with the words "Mill plants x40" scratched on it.



This is inefficient. I no longer care for Salmeuk's noble title, and while I can empathise with his history of suffering, the fact remains: if he cannot even manage the production of basic consumables, I will have him relieved of duty. Even heroes must obey me, or perish.

This will not do. I have gathered many of the quires and set about listing a series of tasks to be addressed regularly.

I have also ordered the construction of a new screw press, since I was unable to locate the existing one. Since Smallhands is in possession of two seperate artifact-quality mechanisms, this will likely be the single most expensive screw press in dwarven history.





I have also been unable to locate a functioning garbage disposal system. This will be added to the list.


Former-overseer Radiofort came to me while I was working on the new list to inform me that the outer gates needed to be raised. Apparently, reports indicate a goblin siege force is approaching.

I was unable to find the reports he referred to, however. I have to assume they were provided verbally, to him, which means there are still dwarves answering directly to the previous regime. They will have to be found and crushed like pineapples in a pineapple crushing workshop.

I do not trust those who once ruled this place, but I will close the gate's nonetheless.


OOC: North lever is linked to the inner gate. South lever is linked to the outer gate. Jet lever is unlinked.

On an unrelated note, Auze is damn lucky I happened to be watching the doors, because he very nearly got himself pancaked and/or gobbo'd.




The information provided by Radioforts mystery informants was accurate: the goblin siege forces have arrived. I will have the drawbridges of the Goo Hive destroy them utterly. There is no reason to subject the sensitive dwarves of Smallhands to hauling all those corpses for the sake of some meltable armour and a few troll-fur loincloths.



I'm sure the regular thumping of the drawbridges and the terrified screams of the servants of Ikud as they watch their comrades die instantly would have brought my former self some much needed catharsis, but I now see it as little more than a necessity. I will occupy myself with more important matters while they perish in the dark.


I finally found our glass furnaces, hidden away in what appears to be a maintenance shaft for the now-dry water reactor. I've ordered the facility expanded with enough space for 4 furnaces and a stockpile zone for sand bags. The former overseer's goal of providing glass furniture for the dwarves of Smallhands was a kind one.

The greenening will continue.




The work orders are done. I have given the quires to Duke Salmeuk for validation. With this, Smallhands should no longer want for food, drink, soap or clothing unecessarily.




The bulk of the goblin forces are fleeing. The goo hive is a formidable weapon indeed. However, a few loyal soldiers still hover around the entrance, too loyal or, more likely with goblins, too scared of the consequences to abandon their caged leaders.

They underestimate the consequences of not doing so. I order the Siege Breakers and Vile Goo to the outer courtyard. My ghostly husband Kubuk accompanies them.



I would wish them luck, if I cared. The lever is pulled and the forts entrance crashes open.

Things immediately go sideways. One of the goblin kidnappee's is a speardwarf, and the moment he see's our fully armed and operational steel-clad militia crash out of the fortress at a dead run his eyes flash green and his movement becomes terrifyingly fluid and precise. A martial trance.



Battle is joined, and blood flies.

In the middle of the melee, 'Nezclaw' of the Siege Breakers suffers a heavy blow to his arm from the enemy speardwarf and drops his battle axe. Even so, he declares himself unafraid and throws himself at the enemy once more. A brave, foolish and above all futile move: a dwarf in a martial trance is not an opponent so much as a force of nature. It cannot be defeated with mere pluck, and elegantly dodges Nezclaw's desperate tackle, landing a heavy punch in his face. Nezclaw collapses to one knee, bleeding badly, still shouting that he will not lose hope and striking out wildly.

It's no use. The indoctrinated soldier blocks his swings and, with a cruel smile, pulls back his spear to deliver the finishing blow.



And then...



Another flash of green. 'Nezclaw' has also entered a martial trance. Suddenly, it's once again a fair fight. Nezclaw may not have an axe anymore, but he has his steel shield, his fists, and two forlorn ghouls backing him up. The tides turn in his favor and the enemy dwarf is pushed back.





He loses a foot and falls over. Then he loses use of a hand, and drops his spear. Fear begins to show even through the martial trance, as his allies fall to the militia and blow upon blow rains down upon him. The dwarf finds himself backed into a corner as the last of his allies dies and 'Nezclaw' advances, shield in front, the entire militia of Smallhands behind him.



"It's over. You're done."

The green light fades from the other dwarfs eyes, and he sneers defiantly at the dwarves of Smallhands and says something in goblin as the forlorn ghoul axe lord Rakust Asdugolin steps forward and raises his axe.






"It's over. You can relax now. You did it, man! You got him!"

"Yeah! That was amazing, Nezclaw!"

"Haha, yeah! We killed them all thanks to you!"

"Well, all of them except for that one over there..."

[camera pans left to bring fleeing goblin hammerdwarf into frame]

"..."

Spoiler: ULTRAVIOLENCE (click to show/hide)

"Where were we? Oh, right. Hurrah for Nezclaw!"

[QuQuasar]

OOC: Oh look, Solon reached the 100k milestone. Congratulations Solon! Hashtag-like-and-subscribe!