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[King Zultan]

Darn demon sneaking into the fort while you were gone, at least you were able to kill them before they killed to many dwarfs.

[StrikaAmaru]

I think I know why Lokum didn't become a necromancer. She's a goblin, which are biologically immortal in the raws (i.e.: they have no MAXAGE token). Going off my experiences so far (and this Imgur album I found), necromancer secrets seem to require a creature to be capable of aging to learn the secrets of life and death; consequentially, necromancer experiments, elves, goblins, and the like will never be able to become necromancers, whether by reading a slab/book or in worldgen.

EDIT: To clarify somewhat: they will show up as necromancers in legends mode/LegendsViewer, but never actually display the necromancer interactions in their 'acquired power' menu or in gameplay, preventing them from actually raising the dead.

Bolded for emphasis, because that's exactly what happened. Lokum the goblin did read the slab, but she didn't learn anything from it. And she is NOT listed as a necromancer in fortress mode, even if she is in Legends.

[EDIT:] What really grinds my gears is that in worldgen there are no problems with goblins becoming necromancers -- ol' Morul had several goblin students (one of whom went on to kill his grandson).

[Secretdorf]

Damn, thats a huge army. I can only imagine dwarves charging to murder goblins/FPS. Though I think the demonlord of goblins might easily take out your army in offsite battle. But if demon come in goblin sieges, he won't stand a chance then.

[StrikaAmaru]

Year 5 (150)
Well, actually the mid-summer of year 149. It’s been four years exactly since the great dwarven training program has begun, and results are… mixed. The lords are still lords, obviously, and the two squads that had some skills are edging towards Legendary status. However, the 7 squads of unskilled traders have experienced some very haphazard growth; some are at level 10-12, others barely edged on 3, and most are in-between.

Lokum the goblin adventurer petitioned the mayor in the summer of 147, and officially joined the fort. As was planned, she was enlisted in the second axe squad, and is now Legendary +5. Man, she does not piss about.

At the other end of the spectrum, one spectacularly infuriating little shit has somehow managed to remain a dabbling spear-dwarf, after all this time. Four years removed from all jobs, and he barely acquired half the first level of skill. If you’re curious, he’s currently in the tavern listening to a story. It’s very tempting to make a new squad from the worst-performers, and send it to die against a vault or goblin stronghold. Still, that would be even more micro-managing for me, so in the end their laziness remains unpunished due to my laziness.

Unpunished but not necessarily unscathed, as we will begin military operations, come hell or high water. And in this fort, both are a real possibility, especially if I decide to build some water cistern thing or irrigation infrastructure from the river above us.

For the dwarves (and one goblin) of HopeWork, there is one great goal: to end the Age of Goblins. The three goblin civilizations on Sil Kodor will have to be either broken, or have their demon banished back to the underworld; probably both.

The Taut-Omen Seductions (more commonly known as the tossers) have greatly aided us in this goal by attacking first. As a result, they have gone from 6,000 citizens to 750, and lost all their holdings except their first fortress, BadDabbled. Said dark fort then bled most of its citizens at some point in the adventurer’s journey, and now oscillates between 75 and 100 inhabitants without any discernible pattern. Their skink demon resides there as well, and he hasn’t moved even after being deliberately insulted with demands of tribute (didn’t send it, either). His vault is SearchWard, in the west of Sil Kodor.

The Ivory Monster seems the easiest to obliterate; they have 3 active holdings but the mouse demon that founded them isn’t in any of them; it still lives in FountainTorment where its spire is. Its slab is in HardyGate, the northern vault.

Third and hardest are the Disgusting Dungeons. This is Sil Kodor’s undisputed superpower; at nearly 6,000 goblins, they now have three quarters of living beings in the world, and enough holdings to show it. Further complicating matters, their demon has his slab in ShellsGrave, that vault that can’t be revealed on the map for some reason.

And looking through legends, he also has a necromantic slab named PlagueCurse in his possession. It was created in year 9 in OpenBook, and stolen in 33 after the Disgusting Dungeons attacked the fortress and razed the... tavern? Sure, why not.

It would be child’s play to go around razing fortresses; but that’s what I’ve done with the tossers’ holdings, and The Disgusting Dungeons have immediately moved to reclaim them. So I’m presuming any razed location is basically handed to my ultimate enemy; this is part of why HopeWork has 13 squads total. Most of the dark pits in Sil Kodor will be conquered, not razed; and while recalling army personnel is entirely possible, somebody still has to hold them. Unless it’s a cave, I won’t bother with those. In fact, JoyousGloomy get attacked first, at the start of winter:

149-10-07:




One immediate side-effect of this operation: there is visible XP gain for the involved troops, including the notorious coaster who’s finally, finally, gone up a level:




StartDawns, by the way, is also known as Kotkodor -- the slab that my adventurer took from JoyousGloomy and eventually left in SwallowedShoot. News definitely fails to travel in Sil Kodor; doubly so since Lokum has actually used the damn thing, and she’s been living in Hopework for years now. But this doesn’t explain why dwarves sent to SwallowedShoot fail to notice it…


The tossers still have the other cave, but it’s not accessible in adventure mode, so it’s not visible in fort mode, so I can’t attack it. They’ll have to keep the damn buggy thing.

Next on my list, the Ivory Monsters. Their two smallest holdings can be taken and held even by our worst troops; only StealBand may pose some issue, with its 750 inhabitants. Plus, it’s sitting right next to the citadel of the Disgusting Dungeons, PresentDoomed. If I simply raze it, it will be reclaimed within the week.




So a different approach is taken: the two holdings are conquered by the two least-skilled troops, and a tribute request is sent to StealBand.






Despite launching the mission in mid-winter, its launch was delayed for two months by a single mace-dwarf; he is moving some 5 times slower than a normal dwarf despite having no injuries whatsoever, and may well be the worst dwarf ever drafted: garbage strength, agility, endurance, and recuperation, and terrible armor and shield use, despite wearing them for four and a half years by now.


In StealBand, the dwarves engaged in a bit of unopposed slaughter, then left. We’re all waiting for results, be they a tribute or an invasion; either would be fine, if I’m honest.

Summer and autumn both begin without any official reaction from StealBands, so I decide to deal with them. I still intend to conquer the place, so I send my three least skilled squads to soften them up:



But as bad as the dwarves are, the goblins are even worse, because the 750 defenders of StealBand folded like paper before its thirty attackers:


Damn. Well. I guess the Disgusting Dungeons are next?

Speaking of the Disgusting Dungeons, as expected they did claim StealBand within the next two weeks:


Including this latest ‘acquisition’ they have ten sites total: four in the north-west, three to the east, and three in the south-west. Populations tend to be very small too, except of course the massively over-populated PresentDoomed with its 6,000 goblins:


There’s also an oddity in this list: the hamlet of WalkBud. In the game it’s listed as having less than 10 inhabitants, in Legends Viewer it has no active population. It’s a tiny hamlet, founded at the beginning of the world then destroyed 11 years later by that one bronze colossus. Then it sat unoccupied until 73, when the Disgusting Dungeons reclaimed and populated it.

ScorpionMetals and KindlingHells are the first on the list; they get the hammerers and the mace dwarves; as always, the mace dwarves are going the slowest -- the hammerers have finished conquering KindlingHells, and even killed a night creature en-route:




Meanwhile, three mace-dwarves are still within the fort; the same Ser SlowPoke who delayed the StealBand mission is supposedly leaving for ScorpionMetals, another one is gathering provisions and the third is sleeping.

No, wait, Ser SlowPoke has returned from the edge of the map; he’s now getting provisions too. At least the third one woke up, and is now filling his waterskin. The other two finally leave, but Ser SlowPoke returns multiple times for various provisions, and doing so manages to delay the invasion by three weeks and change. It is now winter, the 4th of moonstone to be exact, and he’s just exited the fort. For reference, the hammerers have conquered KindlingHells on the 9th of the previous month.

I can at least take comfort in the knowledge that this is the last time I have to deal with this idiot. He gets his own super-special name and title, and never in the history of Sil Kodor will he ever be called to any form of work in any fort owned by me.


In the same day, ScorpionMetals is ours:



The newly-named FuckThisGuy even scored a kill, somehow!

Last in the south-western triad is SinBlock; formerly of the tossers, it was ruined by me and claimed by the Disgusting Dungeons. Now it’s time for a new claim to be laid on it… except at less than 10 inhabitants any trained squad is a waste. So it’s time for something else that I have never done before: requesting workers.


Three of our four holdings get a polite request for three mace-dwarves or hammerers each; once they reach HopeWork, they will be formed into a squad, armed, and sent to take SinBlock. Presuming, of course, that the situation doesn’t completely upend itself in the meantime.


Some of the new arrivals are dwarves of the fort, some are completely new citizens. Either way, they get their own squad, and are allowed until mid-winter to pick up equipment. Then they conquer SinBlock without any incident. This makes the north-west cluster fully ours.

Um, excuse me, what?


An unhappy Axe Lord threw a tantrum, and this was the result; two dead dwarves. His lordship was complaining about a whole bunch of things, most of which I can’t do anything about (Missing family? I have no idea where they are. Bad food? We’re swimming in masterwork lavish meals, maybe ditch your cat meat jerky and go pick one of those. You want to craft? You and two other whiny idiots have been on bone carving duty for three years; you’re a level 17 bonecarver by now, don’t tell me you haven’t crafted).

Well, time to take drastic measures. HopeWork has three axe-dwarf squads, and some reshuffling is in order. Namely, the angry, angry axelord gets booted all the way to the least skilled squad, and the most skilled dwarves in squads 2 and 3 get promoted in turn. Then squad 3 is sent to occupy one of the eastern pits, alongside the second crossbow squad, after an unhappy legendary crossbow-dwarf underwent a similar repositioning; he’s been compliant so far, but I’m not taking any chances.



With LimpFiends and MenaceMold also conquered, the Disgusting Dungeons now have only five locations, and our own internal forces have been ‘reduced’ to seven squads. I think I’ll wait a bit for the world to react to me.

Oh, and FPS also increases, from the 30s to 40-50. Needless to say, I approve.

If you’re wondering what else has been happening in HopeWork for the past… nearly six years now, the answer is not much; 130 dwarves were training, and some 40 other dwarves were taking care of the fort -- including making food and drink for all the dwarves who are training. And armor, and clothes, and so on; after fort reclaim, a whole bunch of items made from cloth and leather turned out to be a bit worn-out, and so were replaced -- bags, rope, quivers, and waterskins, mostly.

The old northern-facing depot entry was torn down and floored over, and a new entry was made towards the east. No caravan has ever used the old northern entry to arrive in HopeWork, though some were fine with leaving through it. Speaking of caravans, the dwarven one has confirmed we are no longer the mountainhome; our ‘gift this much crap to caravan’ quota has been reset to zero.

There’s another anomaly I noticed: none of the caverns are spawning anything. Not only forgotten beasts, but just normal cave fauna. There’s not even a single crundle in any of the two discovered caves. And I’m genuinely curious if the same will happen in the middle cave, too? It was never revealed before, since I had no interest. But now I start from the bottom of Cave 1, and drive a 2-wide shaft straight down through the middle of an embark square.


Cave #2 is found, right above Cave #3; really, the floor of its lowest point is right above the highest roof of Cave3. It’s a fairly normal place, densely wooded, and free of either forgotten beasts or loose demons that I feared I’d run into. It’s also free of any other creatures, so this may have been for nothing.

At least there are webs; operations are suspended until they’re all collected. Woodcutters would also have their hands full here, but we’re already neck-deep in logs from regularly clear-cutting the surface. Odds are I’m just going to wall it back up.

After a quick trip to “What’s going on in your fort”, I find my cavern fauna to be spectacularly dead:

Spoiler: that's a lot of nothing (click to show/hide)

BAT_GIANT   0
BIRD_SWALLOW_CAVE_GIANT   0
BLIND_CAVE_OGRE   0
BLOOD_MAN   0
BUGBAT   0
CAVE_BLOB   0
CAVE_DRAGON   0
CREEPING_EYE   0
CREEPY_CRAWLER   0
CROCODILE_CAVE   0
CRUNDLE   0
DRALTHA   0
ELEMENTMAN_MUD   0
ELK_BIRD   0
FLESH_BALL   0
FLOATING_GUTS   0
GIANT_EARTHWORM   0
GORLAK   0
GREMLIN   0
HELMET_SNAKE   0
HUNGRY_HEAD   0
IMP_FIRE   0
JABBERER   0
MAGGOT_PURRING   0
MANERA   0
MOLEMARIAN   0
MOLE_DOG_NAKED   0
MOLE_GIANT   0
OLM_GIANT   0
PLUMP_HELMET_MAN   0
POND_GRABBER   0
RAT_GIANT   0
RAT_LARGE   0
REACHER   0
RUTHERER   0
SPIDER_CAVE_GIANT   0
TOAD_GIANT_CAVE   0
TROGLODYTE   0
TROLL   0
VORACIOUS_CAVE_CRAWLER   0

I could crank these numbers up, but it feels too much like cheating; no, the caverns will be left as they are.

And so, we wait again. I am giving at most two years to the Disgusting Dungeons to decide upon a retaliation for their drastic drop in assets.

[StrikaAmaru]

“I am giving at most two years to the Disgusting Dungeons to decide upon a retaliation for their drastic drop in assets”

Oh, two years? Try fucking 20! And I’m not done yet! You don’t just magically diminish a population of 6,000 goblins, plus assorted trolls and beak dogs, especially when said population is busy warring with another goblin civ and won’t even start sieging you for the first 5 years.

Years 6-25 (151-170)

Previously on Sil Kodor: in what can only be described as a fit of madness, the ~400 dwarves of The Fountain of Quickness have picked a fight with the ~7,000 goblins of the Disgusting Dungeons, Sil Kodor’s undisputed hyperpower. The resulting war will see either the extinction of the dwarven species, or the death of some 90% of the world’s population, or possibly both. Either way, the world will be forever changed.

The dwarves initiated hostilities in the winter of 150; taking advantage of the peace treaty they had with the Disgusting Dungeons, they attacked and conquered 5 of the 10 holdings the Dungeons had. In terms of population, these losses barely scratch the Disgusting Dungeons -- less than 250 goblins combined. Perhaps for that reason, the Dark Fortress of PresentDoomed has chosen to ignore said dwarven aggression for the next two years. What cares the immortal anteater-demon for the annihilation of a few goblin peasants, all of them casually replaceable, and thoroughly worthless?

This only emboldened the dwarven aggressors, and at the end of the aforementioned second year (152), they also conquered three more -- SpeckHate, StealBand, and GhoulSpiraled. So now, at the start of 153, PresentDoomed officially dominates a single holding -- the hamlet of WalkBud, inhabited by less than 10 individuals. Unofficially, they also have a presence in a permanent camp named DungeonPointy (and, unknown to the dwarves, a cave ensconced in the northern mountains ^*1).

^*1. That cave was discovered in adventurer mode, but couldn’t be explored -- whenever I approached it, the game crashed.

But the dwarves haven’t limited themselves to ‘only’ charging against goblins; they have run successful campaigns against HardyGate and SearchWard, two vaults that still hold the divine slabs that were laid within them at the beginning of the world. And while they haven’t reached the slabs, they did kill some of the defenders -- less in SearchWard, and far more in HardyGate:

Spoiler: Combat (click to show/hide)

Post-attack population:
- HardyGate: 37/50 Beings of Treachery,  4/25 Tricky Champions, 0/1 Ruination of Ngopex. All this damage was done by a single squad of spear lords.
- SearchWard: 46/50 Protected Puppets, 21/25 Spirits of Kogsak, 0/1 Harbinger of Fortresses. According to the legends, this attack has consisted only of a single legendary axe dwarf, PlanGears the Legendary Spells of Draining. I’m not discounting it, I may have screwed up a squad.

Yet, the anteater-demon still doesn’t concern himself with dwarves. Those two vaults shield the slabs of Necate PerplexedDusks (HardyGate) and Thocit HaleReigned (SearchWard). Slushu JackalHate may measure himself against the other two demons walking Sil Kodor, but he does not truly care about them:


His own vault is ShellsGrave, and sits safely ensconced in the middle of the mountains. No living being has ever set foot in it and lived; and only one living being has set foot in it, only to swiftly die: Tekud RiderFainted, an unfortunate human male who found ShellsGrave in the spring of 145 ^*2.

^*2. ShellsGrave was also discovered by our resident goblin axe-woman, Lokum WheeledPartner. However, the game refuses to acknowledge the vault as discovered, so I have to patch that bug in roleplay: either she never reached it, or she did, and never told anybody about it (and that last interpretation is wildly out of character)…

In the summer of 153, the dwarves made a gamble: banking on the assumption that the goblins would not mobilise any time soon, they recalled almost all dwarves that had any measure of military skill. These dwarves numbered almost 40, and trickled into HopeWork until the start of winter. Here, they were formed into 4 new squads. Combined with the existing 4 squads of legendary warriors stationed in HopeWork, this once again turned HopeWork into the offensive capital of the world. But this was not achieved without complications.

Among the returning soldiers, there were two unhappy dwarves. They had been initially sent away due to this, but their records did not reflect this; so when the recall was issued, they were included. And one of them has done a very foolish thing: he desecrated the temple of Ber, god of metals, by toppling a pedestal within it.

Enraged, Ber has cursed the offending axelord with vampirism. The axelord did not care, and went on to tantrum further through the fort.


The fort was faced with a decision: what to do with the newly-cursed axelord? Should they quietly kill him? Should they hide him away as a nasty surprise for whoever may cause the fort to fail?

The dwarves have eventually decided to send him off to battle, where the enemies will kill him instead.

So Axe Lord Zimiteb was sent alone against PresentDoomed. He killed a single goblin, and returned to HopeWork. That was profoundly disappointing, in more than one way; how about we send him to BadDabbled?

… and he has not returned; perhaps he was killed, perhaps he simply ran away? Either way, there are no vampires in HopeWork.

(We later find that he fought three trolls, killed two, and vanished).

Soon after, the fort is preoccupied with far more interesting news than the fate of one cursed axe-lord: news has finally reached us that one of the three demons has been slain!

Thocit HaleReigned, the master of the tossers, met his end two years prior, due to the machinations of Slushu JackalHate himself.

Between 149 and 152, after a decade of peace, BadDabbled had been harried by both its kin in the Disgusting Dungeons, and the humans of The Empire of Notches. And perhaps it was dumb luck, perhaps BadDabbled has slacked off after ten years without military engagements, but in the winter of 151 Thocit Halereigned the Free Storm of Ferocity has been struck down by a random goblin (so random, in fact, that we don’t know his or her name).


This means that BadDabbled has now become a much softer target, and can be conquered; provided we can even spare the dwarves, because the home front is not exactly peaceful, we have other irons in the fire, and say what you will about BadDabbled, at least it will keep.

First on the list are the two vaults, HardyGate and SearchWard. Already softened up, they receive the attention of two squads each; Searchward (the western one) gets legendary axe-dwarves and crossbow-dwarves, while HardyGate gets Spear Lords and a fairly well trained squad of axe-dwarves. Both were conquered in 154 without dwarven casualties.



HardyGate is the most important, being the vault of Necate PerplexedDusks, master of the Ivory Monsters. SearchWard has lost most of its value with the death of Thocit, though wiping out the angels of murder is a worthwhile task in itself.

We are also conquering the little hamlet of Walkbud, but by this point the poor thing is an afterthought.


With this out of the way, HopeWork’s attention is split three ways: defending the home fort from the constant attacks of the Disgusting Dungeons, whittling away at BadDabbled, and watching over our many holdings just in case the goblins want them back.

Defending the home fort keeps us reasonably busy. Between 153 and 165, the Disgusting Dungeons have attacked us 12 times; 18 dwarves have died defending HopeWork.


None of these were small sieges either, despite the numbers Legends lists as attackers; they were massive affairs, each employing almost 500 attackers -- goblins, trolls and beak dogs. Numbers like these have been common:

Spoiler: Typical Siege (click to show/hide)

All attackers have been killed, except those few who fled during combat; so it is doubly frustrating that Legends doesn’t acknowledge any of this, and that PresentDoomed doesn’t empty in numbers to match. Only around 165, did the place finally deign to dip in the 4000s; by all rights, the dark fortress should have been made empty already.

(And after the combat is done, the cleanup employs dwarves for the next two entire seasons at the least; never an idle moment in HopeWork).

Which is not to say dwarves have been sitting ensconced in their walls, waiting for their enemies to come to them.

BadDabbled has been sieged eight times, resulting in two dwarven deaths, and the extermination of all goblins within it. Then, slowly but surely, grinding away at its numerous population of trolls. The last goblin in BadDabbled has died in 152, at the hands of its kin; after that each dwarven siege has killed off 100 trolls exactly, with only two dwarven losses in 158 and 159. BadDabbled was finally conquered in the winter of 167.

(ignore the ‘attack’ in 153; that was our poor vampire).

In 168, I have done something that might have ended poorly for me: I went through each of our holdings, and recalled every dwarf that had even a smidgen of skills with the spear, axe, or sword. This ballooned HopeWork’s population from 180 to 250; worry not, they will not last. The most skilled dwarves (and one former adventurer goblinette) have been arranged in 10 squads of 10 dwarves.

Then they were sent against PresentDoomed, in the spring of 169.

Of the 100 dwarves, 19 have died. But they killed 265 enemies, including the demon Thocit himself (also 96 trolls, and the remainder were goblins, humans, dwarves and even a few necromantic remnants of the tower; but the demon is the main attraction).

Our only dwarven demon slayer is Sodel RoomCarnal the Beard of Discovering, a legendary +5 dwarfette. She has lost her entire right leg during the adventure. When she returned to HopeWork, she was given the title “The Demon Slayer”, removed from her squad, and made Champion; she was also made exempt from any and all hauling jobs. Long may she party in the engraved halls of the Laborious Belly!

Thocit was succeeded by a ranger dwarfette, Ngokang Menacegrand. She in turn was killed in the autumn campaign, by a random speardwarf named Releasemined. The third master of the Disgusting Dungeons is Damsto Yellcruel the Ripe, goblin recruit, widower, and eight-time murderer (these last facts are not related). He can now preside over the gradual dwindling of goblin-kind, because you know we’ll carry on sieging PresentDoomed.

And this is where 170 finds us. Goblin numbers have dropped from 6970 to 5060, humans increased from 498 to 713, and dwarves from 397 to 663 (at least 30 of which were born in HopeWork). The conflict with the goblins will continue, and once they’ve lost their last citadel, an adventurer will travel to HardyGate to retrieve a certain slab, and then to FountainTorment to banish a certain demon.
------------------

Some random tid-bits.

By 170, HopeWork’s dead units list was nearing 5,000, which prompted me to look around and find a command I never had to use before: fix/dead-units. This trimmed the list back to around 180. I hope this gets across just how consistently fuckhuge goblin sieges have been.

Damsto YellCruel started life as a member of the tossers; he switched over to the Disgusting Dungeons in 125, when he remarried and settled in PresentDoomed. He did all of his murdering in BadDabbled, between 107 and 123. He was married twice, and both of his wives got murdered; the first by a human, the second by a dwarf in the same siege which killed the demon (The Singed Siege).

Some delicious gossip: a marksdwarfette is cheating on her mace-dwarf husband with a civilian book binder. The entire affair was burst wide open when she produced her first child, and his paternity was put into question; personally, I’m just glad dwarven numbers are on the mend.


The Ivory Monsters, the goblin civilization that has no more holdings around, just refuses to die. It is listed in the civilizations screen, with its mouse demon master. It’s actually listed as a dead civilization in Legends, ever since we conquered its 3 holdings.


The third and smallest dwarven civ, The Inks of Morality, is also extinct. Its numbers briefly bubbled from 2 to 5 dwarves (and some 20 goblins) but now it only contains 3 beak dogs and 1 troll. There is only one named dwarf in Legends, Smunstu Poisonitch. She seems to have simply ditched her own civilization, and joined the Disgusting Dungeons. Then she tried to siege HopeWork in 161, and was killed by my defending forces alongside her goblin allies. She was 98 years old when she died. In her life, she had 8 children; 5 were killed in world history, one I killed in JoyousGloomy as a goblin adventurer, another was struck down by one of my hammer dwarves in 150 while defending KindlingHells on behalf of the goblins, and the last one lives as a metalsmith in ScorpionMetals but is still listed as a member of The Disgusting Dungeons. So, um, don’t join goblins, kids?

[StrikaAmaru]

Years 26-35 (171-180)
Wherein the goblins are being ground down to almost nothing, mostly due to their own actions.

When 170 began, the total population of Sil Kodor was 5060 goblins, 713 humans, and 663 dwarves. Our own civilization, The Fountain of Quickness, had 491 dwarves, 530 goblins, and 201 humans, living in 15 sites.

Now, at the end of 180, Sil Kodor has 1441 goblins, 791 dwarves, and 635 humans. The Fountain of Quickness has 513 dwarves, 581 goblins, and 25 humans, living in 16 sites.


Let’s now see how we got there.

When we begin in 170, The Disgusting Dungeons were still in possession of two holdings: the Dark Fortress of PresentDoomed, and their little war camp hidden away just north of ScorpionMasters.


That war camp has turned out to be way more trouble than it’s worth. But more on that later.

PresentDoomed was the only target available to me; and, for some reason, it and HopeWork seem to be the only targets available to goblins; the other 14 holdings have all lived in tranquility. Plus, our home fort was only attacked when PresentDoomed was held by goblins.

The first conquest of PresentDoomed took place in the mid-winter of 172, with 70 dwarves.



It was preceded by 7 separate raids, which resulted in 6 dwarven deaths on our side and 679 losses on the goblins' side. Knowing the large number of enemies living in the Dark Fortress, I didn’t even bother ordering troops to seize it, I just ran raids to whittle them down. Also, knowing just how lackluster the defenses are, dwarves have been sent in small groups of 20-30, each of which still achieved the expected 100 troll kills. This is how we managed 3-4 raids in a single season. I probably could have sent single squads, too…

Not to say goblins have just sat around, waiting for us to slaughter them; HopeWork was attacked in the winter of 170, and 4 dwarves died defending it. Or rather, three dwarves died defending it; the fourth was an idiot crossbow-dwarf who went for a walk though the battle grounds, instead of staying safe on the crenelations where he was stationed (and no, he was not collecting ammo).

Anyway, in mid-winter 172, PresentDoomed was ours. Goblins would not put up with this, of course. This is where that war camp is becoming trouble, because The Disgusting Dungeons have launched 7 attacks from it until they managed the second conquest of PresentDoomed, in late summer 173.

Going by Legends, 885 goblin attackers have died to annihilate the 164 dwarven and human defenders. The true death blow was dealt in the early spring of 173, when 301 goblins managed to kill 140 of the 141 defenders, obliterating all but one of my highly-trained dwarves. The rest of the attacks were more or less picking at freshly-arrived human settlers. Axe Lord LaboredVine, it must be said, was the last to die.

By the way: after losing PresentDoomed, goblins no longer have trolls and beak dogs. All attacks have been formed from goblins only, regardless if they were in HopeWork or in PresentDoomed. This didn’t change after they got their fortress back.

The third conquest of PresentDoomed took place in mid-spring 177, with 39 dwarves.


It was preceded by a single raid, in which a single dwarf killed a single goblin.


The goblin Amsan LivingSlid was the leader responsible for annihilating the previous regime, so it’s a bit surprising his army has vanished off into the haze; he was the sole inhabitant of the fortress which he had conquered. There had been a three-year delay between the second conquest and our retaliation (we needed that time to train some more troops) so maybe this too contributed?

Dwarves then proceed to pick themselves a very goblin name:


Meanwhile in HopeWork, there have been another two attacks, in the spring of 175 and summer of 176. Two dwarves died, all goblins died, and they were otherwise uneventful.

In PresentDoomed, however, things are the opposite of uneventful.

Even in fortress mode, the population had dropped gradually from ~3000 to ~1000. Exploring Legends, we find out that a mind-boggling 17 attacks were launched by the ever-dwindling forces of The Disgusting Dungeons on the dwarven and human defenders.


This is, without a doubt, the cause of the spectacular drop in goblin population numbers across the world, because 1854 of them died to kill a mere 42 of us. If I'd have waited one more year, it’s entirely possible the goblins would have just annihilated themselves.

A few more interesting tid-bits:

Goblins are using an abandoned hamlet as a staging point, or maybe pitstop.


The awesomely-named BearYells was established at the beginning of history, by The Mortal Nation (a small human civilization in the south-west of the world; we have no business with them). It was conquered by their neighbors, The Disgusting Dungeons, in 130. BearYells nominally has a single inhabitant, the goblin Iki ScarletPeak; he’s an utterly unremarkable individual, without any recorded family or skills.

Between 130 and 137, some 15+ groups were formed in it; then nothing happened for the next 40 years. There’s certainly no trace of a marching goblin army puttering about before attacking PresentDoomed…

Also, in the three exports I’ve made for this period, BearYells is consistently listed as ‘abandoned’ in the year prior to the export.

-------------------

The goblin camp, DungeonPointy, is dubiously unchanged across the decades. It sits at 62 goblins, 8 goblin outcasts, and a handful of varying outcasts of other races. Even as far back as 125, it held 65 goblins, and not much else.

Now in 180, these guys are the official population of The Disgusting Dungeons, all the other poor schlubs who died were ‘outcasts’, apparently. I’ll have to swing by that place with an adventurer; and our Legendary +5 Axe-goblin ex-adventurer is still alive and well, from what I know. Maybe she can have a ‘chat’ with the current master of The Disgusting Dungens, Damsto YellCruel the Ripe…

-------------------

Yeeeeaaah… There is this human civ that has been our main ally so far, The Confederations of Swimming; little place by the coast, frankly it’s lovely. And their law-giver since 121 is a dwarfette named Xetan, she was the girlfriend of Anthil Grandlock, fourth king of dwarves, for a month or so?

Well turns out we killed her. She was living in the hamlet of LightCrazes since 125; that hamlet has dubious ownership, it started out as a human settlement, then it was conquered by the Tower in 77, and then we conquered it in 149. At some point in this entire history, it must have been claimed by goblins too, because I only ever attacked goblin holdings. Trouble is, there’s no word of it in legends.

-------------------

In HopeWork, there wasn’t much to do; train more troops ‘just in case’, deal with all the mandates for mail shirts, figurines, and earrings issued by our king and our mayor, take care of dwarven children, and generally just pass the time.

Between 171 and 173, I built a tower of garnierite, green glass, and clear glass, largely for the hell of it.

Spoiler: I think it looks nice. (click to show/hide)

In the summer of 180, I’ve done something I’ve been planning to do for in-game decades: knowing that the fort will be retired and dwarven law won’t be enforced, I broke the ever-loving hell of the trade restrictions, and gifted the human caravan with some 50 years’ worth of figurines and earrings. The full trade reached 7 digits, relieved the fort of ~10,000 items going by the output from cleanowned x, and took the humans 5 months to pack. And I retired the fort right after they left, thus dodging all consequences.

Next up; adventurers a-travelling.

[King Zultan]

That's a fancy tower you've made, what kind of adventurer gonna make?

[StrikaAmaru]

One who can become a necromancer; so either a dorf or a human. Of course, I'd prefer a dwarf.

It did occur to me Sil Kodor has become a fairly uninteresting world -- the tower was annihilated, forgotten beasts and mega-beasts have been exterminated, and now even goblins are about to bite it. There is still the reclaim of ClanWorks, and all its demons, and once that's done there's really nothing to do.

I made a peaceful mode world in the hard way. Victory has never been so boring.

[King Zultan]

It could still be an interesting adventure to see it through to the end.

[StrikaAmaru]

Adventure in the Year 180: part 1

Reddit has informed me of a wondrous fact: now that I have conquered those two vaults, I can go adventuring as an angel! This is what finally prompted me to pick up Sil Kodor, after putting it aside for half a year.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Vault angels aren't available in the main menu, or in the list of ‘other’ intelligent creatures; has the internet lied to me?


Meh, problems for later. At this moment, I decide to embark as a necromantic experiment, namely a Soldier of Eman. One of the first enemies HopeWork has ever faced, and suspected necromancers in their own right.

It’s a bit ironic that now the only civilization they can start from is The Fountain of Quickness, the same dwarven civ that annihilated their home tower.


Thob RazorMurders, the man with the coolest name, starts in the south of the world, close to the goblin pathways. The hamlet of WalkBud shall be this Soldier’s starting point.


One of the first things I check is if Soldiers of Eman have any powers; they don’t Their x-p menu is completely empty.

WalkBud itself seems deserted; rows upon rows of houses, with no-one in them. I like how houses are set up, though:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also like this little bridge design.


Moving north, there’s a few ‘incidents’ in a highly-regular pattern. I’ll go out on a limb and say these are the goblin army, poised to retake BadDabbled.


Let’s go talk to them, what’s the worst that could happen?

… Not much, actually. The first goblin I run into politely responds to greetings, and we engage in all kinds of small-talk and gossip.


I’m surprised to not be at war; The Fountains of Quickness was at war with all three goblin civilizations, so finding obviously-military gobbos who don’t consider themselves my enemy is unexpected. Asking why he’s traveling makes these goblins look more like refugees than attackers. All of them give the same answer:


There’s no menu option to question them about their faction or their leader; are these guys independent of any group? Some of their answers certainly make them seem apolitical, but that might be just the game’s canned response. Nonetheless, I inquire about political matters.






Asking for directions to said king causes the goblin to point me towards HopeWork. I’m assuming His Kingship stayed put this time.

(At this point DF crashes, and of course I hadn’t saved yet; this finally pushes me to go back to my old hand-made DF+DfHack install, and leave LNP behind. Normal service is resumed, this time with a metalsmith named Sazkul).

Sazkul heads around the same path, but stops on the north-eastern blob, instead of the south-western one. He (it?) receives an entirely different reception:


The tents are different too, they’re made of leather not cloth:


They're not attacking Sazkul, by the way; those goblins are engaged in fierce battle with a few buzzards and gray langur monkeys. Without productive discussions to be had, Sazkul heads back south to the nice goblins. And it turns out they’re still nice; if also still ignorant and fatalistic:






No further information is apparent, so I make my way west towards legendary BearYells. From there, I’ll look in the two human castles, and head to PresentDoomed.


On the way, I stop by WalkBud’s tavern, The Crown of Roses. I find it stuffed with dwarves from my civilization, most of them hammerers. Presumably, this was the squad which took over the place. Between many shouted lines, I find that HopeWork has a new mayor, and little else. Onward.


BearYells has its own tavern, occupied by a single goblin: the fabled Iki ScarletPeaks. He settled the hamlet in 130, and as the only living creature in the entirety of BearYells, he was appointed overlord of it. He chose to start working in the tavern, and has probably been doing so for the past 50 years. I’ve spoken with him, he knows nothing about anything; or at least, he says nothing.


There’s something weird with that place: taken over in 130 and abandoned in 123, but also after conquest? What?


From BearYells, I’m heading north towards the human castle of StasisKeg. With a name like that, maybe it’s got something to drink!

A corpse meets me at the entrance to the tavern; I loot its coin purse, you never know:


Um, hi?




Oh… Uh…


We’re all undead here, let’s be easy, ok?

The law-giver doesn’t answer, and the baron is nowhere to be seen; plague ghouls are the ones who can go invisible, so I’m not entirely surprised. They seem to stop fighting, with my arrival. The law-giver is still alive, but he’s not talking to me; he’s just sitting there, in the middle of a tavern devoid of food and drink but decorated with books and pedestals.

At least I can pass by him without being attacked:


The slab there holds the secrets of life and death:


I do read it, but being undead nothing is learned.


Looking through Legends, the picture clears somewhat.

The root of the problem was Chancellor Ero RhymeEmbrace the Meandering Staff (not even joking). He was a human born in 104, and turned into a plague ghoul at some unspecified point before 125; in 125, he was in OpenBook and killed one dwarf of my initial reclaim party. It keeps coming back to that place, huh? Anyway, nine years later he joined The Empire of Notches, the human civ that holds StasisKeg, and slowly progressed through the ranks until he was given a barony and was appointed chancellor.

Then in 180, when my adventurer walked on the same embark tile as him, he just… went postal. He murdered the Master of Beasts and Chief Executioner, Uquur Blindzeals the Grand Fair Drip of Bitterness -- nearly 60 years of military might ended by treason, with a copper carving knife in the back. Chamberlain Ulux, chamberlain Lasod, and baroness Lani, far less martially skilled, soon followed. But Law-giver Ina DancedExit was turned, not killed; she became a plague ghoul like Ero. She then kills Justiciar Zilta.

And that’s the leadership of The Empire of Notches turned undead, or plain old dead.

(Later Edit: In Legends, the fighting encountered by Sazkul is listed as an insurrection; it started on the 7th of Moonstone, and ended on the 9th with the death of all rebels. However, this does not absolve chancellor Ero RhymeEmbrace of guilt; two of his murders (Uquul and Ulux) occurred before the insurrection was declared.)

Back to adventure mode. Right outside StasisKeg, I meet a random peasant who claims to just be out on a stroll (you can just say you ran from the murder-fest, I won't blame you). He’s friendly, chatty, and hilariously uninformed. He keeps gossiping about events that happened decades ago.



Yes, Nosing did march on SpeckHate... in 128; and was killed defending BearYells in 130. Were you even born then, man?



Vesifa died like a bitch in HopeWork, stuck in a pond and pelted from above by goblin arrows. I floored over all ponds after that event.


Hmm. WaterPaints is a hamlet to the south-west of StasisKeg. This guy isn't even from here.




There’s nothing else I can do here in StasisKeg. I’m heading off to the next human castle, EqualProblems (I swear, these humans). Their tavern is a bit more normal:


I talk with a diagnoser and get nothing of importance. But I overhear a greasy-haired human talking trash about dwarves:


Greaseball is a bit more helpful: he’s aligned with the local government and has some knowledge of the outside world:


Extremely outdated knowledge, much like that one farmer. Why is everyone so obsessed with Nosing?

So, after much faffing about, I finally reach PresentDoomed; it appears to be surrounded. Screw it, I’ll start from the left and head to the right. Later I can follow the river into the fortress proper.


First, a few axe-lords. I guess I just found where the dwarven occupation forces are living:



I tried to trade for a waterskin of booze, but all my money and two books I filched from that human tavern are still not enough for this top-tier negotiator. So I just left.

Wow, that’s a lot of goblins.


The goblins all have jobs, and they did not die of an axe to the nervous system, so I’m assuming they’re part of our civ. The Fountain of Quickness is listed as having 583 goblin members, and that tent likely holds some 10-15% of them. Seriously, they're piled 5-10 deep like firewood.

Moving on to the inside of PresentDoomed; the river I mentioned cuts through the trenches (making them utterly useless in the process) and takes me to the infamous spire. Also, I’m amused to see PresentDoomed's northern bits were built on top of Sil Kodor’s tiny good biome; not very goblin of them.


The spire has a nifty interior design:


I wander around until I get bored out of my skull; the Spire has almost nothing in it besides armor too small to wear, and its basement might in fact go to the bottom of the world. Descending on the twisted ramps is sufficiently annoying that I simply jump off a ledge; this was an amazingly bad idea, because getting hit by the slade floor has immediately killed me.

Thus ends Sazkul TradedBlood, soldier of Eman metalcrafter from WalkBuds.

Next guy is a Heateddikes’ Fist, generated straight in the vault of HardyGate:


… this may be the shortest adventure ever.


I figure my best bet is a nearby tree to the north. Maybe it even was, but after around 8 levels of trying and failing to catch onto branches, this adventurer too ends up splatting on the ground.


Later, I find out it’s my fault for being a n00b: before grasping onto something, I was supposed to clear at least one hand ([p] to put items in a container, or [q] to strap to the body). So yeah, yet another supid death.

In the next chapter, we get to the real meat of this adventuring session: claiming the demon’s slab from HardyGate and going to the deserted Dark Fortress of FountainTorment to banish the last demon master of goblins.

[King Zultan]

Glad to see this back.

[StrikaAmaru]

I've been pushing this back for WAY too long. Adventure mode isn't something I'm really familiar with, so it's always a mix of playing and stopping to google random stuff, which doesn't make for the most fun experience. At least now I have a long list of how-to keys, so the next time is going to be much better.

[StrikaAmaru]

Adventure in the Year 180: part 2
In which Erush fails at his one job.

This time, I’m starting as a dwarf; since I want to also go down the necromancer road, getting a mortal is required. The only start option is ye olde AdmireFortresses, so once again I find myself jumping off a wall. But this time, I have the guarantee of landing without issues.


I make a bee-line towards HardyGate, a trip which takes me two days.

Only in the slade halls of the cursed vault, does it belatedly occur to me that I bypassed two separate slabs with necromantic secrets. Reading one of those would have gone a long way towards ridding me of the thirst, hunger, and drowsiness that I suffered during the labyrinthine pathways of the Vault. Really, no-one should be genuinely happy to see two levers of normal quality:


After WAY too many twists and turns, I finally find the plinth containing the Slab.



So Necate is actually named Weri. Ok then. I also look for Ngopex in Legends mode; she’s the human goddess of rumors, fame, trickery, lies and treachery.


If I have to do this again, I’m not crawling through several miles of winding little tunnels. I’m bringing Combicor to the surface. However hard this may be:


Yep, the thing is made of native silver, and it’s heavy. After walking around for a day, a night, plus a bit more of the next day (and getting turned around a coupla times), I finally leave the fucking Vault. The Slab stays at the entry:


Now it’s straight to FountainTorments; I have a meeting with a demon.




To the talk menu we go! For the sake of politeness, plus a bit of curiosity.


That… was significantly less murder-y than I expected. How am I supposed to kill the last demon master of goblins if he’s just so polite?

The god he worships isn’t clearing things either; if Urdim would be some god of murder, or treason, or death, or other unpleasant Spheres, I’d have no hesitation. But the only god that Necate/Weri worships is a dwarven god of fortresses.


Am I looking at a Paarthurnax situation here? Maybe I’ll learn more if I go through more menu options:

Spoiler: Apropos of nothing the rumor menu has lengthened significantly: (click to show/hide)

That doesn’t exactly narrow it down; everything is to the west of this place.





MatchCluck is a silver short sword, created in 81 by a dwarf citizen of FountainTorment, and willingly offered to Necate. It was lost when The Amazing Pages conquered the Dark fortress in 99. And by ‘lost’ I mean stolen by a human plague ghoul named Apup; he’s settled in OpenBook since 143.

Well. Dang. I had come here to banish Thocit, and instead I find myself with a fat friendly fortress fan. Who also happens to be a mouse demon. Ok. Fine. I give in. The mouse demon can come with me. There’s nobody else in FountainTorments, and the Ivory Monsters have not had an active site since the year 98. Necate himself may or may not suffer effects from this state of affairs:




Next, we’re heading towards SwallowedShoots where I’m going to read KotKodor/StartDawns.


I’m dropping KotKodor in the same place where I found it, and I’m also dispensing with food and water. The thirst and hunger that have plagued me for my entire trip have vanished, so I no longer need supplies. Perhaps my next adventurer can make use of them.

One of the nearby skeletons is raised as a death slayer; unfortunately, it can’t be spoken with or otherwise recruited, so I’m going to leave it here. The next aspiring necromancer may regret this decision.


Then we run into wolves. It’s not really a fight:

Spoiler: It's really, really, not a fight (click to show/hide)

I chop into one of the stragglers, might as well refresh the combat commands.

In the human castle, I am welcomed to the tavern; Necate, however, isn’t. As demonic as he is, het’s also technically still alive, and the two undead rulers of The Empire of Notches attack him on sight. To their misfortune, because they don’t last very long.

Spoiler: combat log (click to show/hide)

On the plus side, the undead plague infesting the top level of this human civilization has been extirpated. On the minus side, after the killing was done, The Empire of Notches has a single citizen.



The nearest fresh human corpse is raised as a putrid butcher; much like the plague ghouls and the goblin skeleton death slayer, it can’t speak back. I also raise the mutilated corpse of chamberlain Ulux as a normal zombie; it’s swiftly killed by my companion.

I think we’ve done all we could do here; we move towards our next destination, once again leaving an undead loose behind us.

Next, I head to HopeWork, where I get armor, and a good axe. I’m unable to find a right gauntlet, so that’s the only piece of armor I still lack. Then, I make the mistake of leaving through the eastern side, which drops me in a mountain range. No fast travel for me.

I had several other options available, but the one I chose is traveling through ClanWork. Not an easy thing to do, as FPS is even worse than in HopeWork, for some yet unknown reason.

Well, I’m definitely in ClanWork; I ran into the corpse of Melbil, one of the ill-fated seven, who was struck down by a white brute named Servantweevil.


Moved by morbid curiosity, I leave my relatively safe path between Hope and ClanWork, and descend southward, towards ClanWork proper.

And the source of FPS drop is immediately located. For some reason, the people (and cats) of HopeWork keep coming and going between the two forts. The lag is from all the damn pathing calculations. Maybe I should have raised the bridges before retiring HopeWork; should have kept the beards and fuzzballs in.


Now that I see scores of other people walking inside ClanWork and not dying horribly, I’m motivated to go explore the place.


I’ve been through most of the housing and smithing complex, and have not found any demons. I did find a handful of dwarves, the corpses of four of the seven dwarves that broke into Hell, and, seriously, a whole lot of cats. FPS occasionally drops to single digits, but mostly it’s fine.

Looking at Legends, ClanWork now has a single dwarf inhabitant, and its resident 5 demons are no longer listed. This has been the case since my last adventuring experience, in 144/5; so glad I kept all the past Legend exports. However, there’s no record of the demons leaving, either.

It’s now pretty certain that I’m going to reclaim ClanWork, to see what’s happening there. I still don’t think the demons are really gone, though.

With nothing to be found, I decide to head for the third and last easily available necromantic slab found in the world: NecroBone, or Nirsut, stored in the castle of KnightThorns. I’ve also started a project of mapping out Sil Kodor in more detail, by using the map shown during fast travel.

The tavern is packed. With great difficulty (aka, having to dismiss 2-3 pages of random dialogue for every step) I reach NecroBone, and read it. I’ve learned nothing new; it has the same secret as StartDawns/KotKodor.


There is one last slab that can be accessed -- PlagueCurse, the first necromantic slab crafted in Sil Kodor; but this time, I learned to plan my travels more carefully. After looking at the necromancer it was crafted for, it’s obvious PlagueCurse has the same secret as StartDawns and NecroBone. Death Slayers are pretty popular with godly faces, apparently.


The Slabs

The Fountain of Quickness, our civilization, worships Vesh as a goddess of death, of course. She created AshenBury in 23 for the benefit of Morul HeatedDikes, who used it to great and terrible effect. AshenBury was taken by conquering forces from the Tower of SoothedPaints and delivered to HopeWork, where it was installed in Vesh’s temple. Then it vanished into the haze, as HopeWork was retired and I went adventuring. So I mark it as lost, for all that Legends insists it’s still in HopeWork. It has SECRET_11, which I assume is the plague ghoul business.

The Strapping Hame has Lenod the Early, who made StartDawns, aka KotKodor, in the year 30 for some gal named Erith Visionstandard. She proved to be a poor choice, as she died a year later to a goblin.

KotKodor then traveled through all the south of the world, being stored, moved and stolen from our old fort of SwallowedShoots, the Dark Fortress of BadDabbled, the cave of JoyousGloomy, and ultimately taken by a certain goblin adventurer back to SwallowedShoots, where it still lies. It holds SECRET_2, the ability to make death slayers.

The Inks of Morality, the last dwarven civ, worships Rakust as goddess of death and murder. She created PlagueCurse in year 9, for Zon FierceCrafts, back when they still had OpenBook. Zon then did very little necromancing, busy as he was with his six children. Then The Disgusting Dungeons pillaged OpenBook in 33, killed Zon, his wife, and two of his children. The goblins’ demon Master, Slushu JackalHate, personally claimed PlagueCurse and stored it in  PresentDoomed, where it still is to this day. As stated above, it has SECRET_2 as well.

Of the humans, one civ, the Mortal Nations, never created a slab at all; the other two did.

The Empire of Notches worships Gamu as god of death. He created The Dead Burial, aka Muthrodonu, in 75, for one Obol MindfulWeaver; he stored it in StasisKeg where it still is, and then died 5 years later to a giant cougar. The slab has SECRET_13, the ability to make putrid butchers.

Our good allies in The Confederations of Swimming worship Sath; she only found a worthy minion in 119, and created NecroBone / Nirsut for Testri SnarlBarked; we've seen it in the castle of KnightThorns. Testri has enjoyed a good military and political career, and was eventually chosen as Law-Giver in 149, despite being a necro for 60 years. He now lives in LightCrazes, a hamlet next to KnightThorns.

And that’s all the slabs. Five total, only three unique secrets, and one is lost.

[King Zultan]

Demon companion is best companion.

[StrikaAmaru]

Adventuring in 180, part 3:
It's Nice to Have a Competent Companion

The first half of Opal is spent just moving around in order to craft my detailed map. I engaged with some of the incidents, now that I have someone practically guaranteed to murder anything. Most were just animals, but some were a bit more notable:

A squad of goblins, broken by Necate before I could even take a proper screenshot. Demon boi can dash at really high speed, and by the time I caught up with him the surviving goblins had fled.


Two empty butchers that were in the process of killing a different squad of goblins (they foolishly attacked Necate and got killed).



Emboldened, I risk my entire project and go towards OpenBook, whose north is guarded by two other empty butchers and where two other adventurers met their ends.



Well. Fuck. The two ‘dwarves’ closest to me are both empty butchers; of the goblins, the most southern one is listed as ‘a skinny master’; there is only one goblin master of goblins, and I’ve been looking to kill him for some time. The weirdo caught between the two goblin squads is a ‘sacred safety’, priest of that cult dedicated to fortresses which has never left OpenBook despite the fort being legally fallen and abandoned.

Now let’s just hope I survive this mess. Everybody here is listed as hostile to me.

What follows is a four-way slugfest between us, two groups of goblins from the tossers and the Disgusting Dungeons, and the zombies raised by the terrified Sacred Safety (I think). Everybody fights everybody else. Luckily for me, Necate first engages the two empty butchers; meanwhile, the goblins attack both each other and the two poor priests, who retaliate with zombies. And I do nothing of note because I’m running away from the plague ghouls moving noticeably slower than everybody here.

Necate does have a good showing, as expected, but the empty butchers aren’t exactly pushovers either. The combat log is ungodly long.

Spoiler: An ungodly long combat log (click to show/hide)

Necate then runs off to kill the troll and beak dog (and a good dozen goblins, and the priest, and six other empty butchers; vanishing out of my sight didn’t save them). Me, I’m going to play with corpses:


I try to raise them as normal zombies, but none of them are valid targets. My only options are to raise them as intelligent undead, and I won’t do that. They already caused too much trouble. It’s good that I at least can read their names now:



Zuglar is the son of a queen; that’s about the only interesting thing about him. He killed two random humans in OpenBook, none of them my adventurer.

Ngom is a bit more interesting; related to three royals, two from the Inks of Morality and one from The Strapping Hame, she was kidnapped by goblins in 61 when she was merely 1 year old, and taken to BadDabbled. There, she grew up to be a huntress, then a bard. She moved to ClanWork with her teacher, and authored three books -- two songs, and an essay named “Against the Dwarf” concerning her own abduction. She would likely have been perfectly happy to live her life as an entertainer, except she was killed in 91 and raised in 99 by our old boy Morul HeatedDikes. She settled in OpenBook in 125 (undead really like doing that). There, she killed seven humans and goblins, including my two poor adventurers, Bomrek GalleyBridges and Monal, uh, MoistOpen.


Udda DearBent, human plague ghoul; she was a High Chef, a position I didn’t know existed, and was the mother of a LawGiver for our allies, the Confederations of Swimming; she was turned in 79 by Morul himself, and fought on his behalf for many sieges. Then she retired to OpenBook in 125, and lived peacefully until we arrived.

The Sacred Safety made me feel a bit sorry for him: Atu FieldDawns, an otherwise unskilled human born in 117 and kidnapped in 119 by the tossers. He managed to escape in 124, and settled in PresentDoomed where his biological father already lived (I guess the Disgusting Dungeons are an improvement over the Taut Omen-Seductions). He married and lived a peaceful life, becoming a Sacred Safety in 150. He never killed or mistreated anyone; he just had the misfortune of visiting OpenBook at the same time we did, and got caught in our Melee a Quatre.

All of the above was pulled from Legends, of course. Another bunch of corpses is found a bit to the east:


I run though their names, so I’d have some Legends fodder:












And Legends fodder I find indeed: on the 24th of Obsidian 144, right before my adventurer Bomrek was killed, there's been a sort of loyalty cascade among empty butchers here. That entire pile of corpses is because of it: empty butcher killing empty butcher. Notably, Lorbam Dorenam over there is Lorbam DiamondOpen, first queen of the Fountain of Quickness, Morul HeatedDikes' first lover, and mother to four of his five children.

Bomrek's killer, Ngom, was involved, which is how I have a timeline putting adventurer deaths at the very end. There's one participant in that murder-fest who's not an empty butcher: the very awesomely-named gloom hag Zitha NecroCaverns the Gloom of Abysses. She may have initiated the whole mess by killing Mirding TreatSearches the Earthen Gear, human empty butcher. Mirding didn't kill anyone (on the 24th, I mean) while all the other corpses created in this mess either killed another empty butcher, or the night hag. You can sort of build a hierarchy of who killed who, starting with the night hag killing Mirding and ending with Ngom coming to lay down the law.

I didn't find Bomrek, but I found the second adventurer; that one started from KnightThorns and went directly to OpenBook. He did confirm empty butchers can turn invisible, and are hostile to all living creatures, then immediately died. His was the only corpse I found with a bag of coins on him, so I knew right away he’s an adventurer.


Thus ends 16th of Opal 180; a good day for the living, a bad day for undead. I temporarily leave the location so I can sleep the night.

In the morning, Necate and I entered OpenBook proper. I’m curious if any goblins have fled into the fort, and if Necate will start attacking the priests.

The first thing we see is, of course, another corpse.


There’s a pretty sharp delineation between the fort and its surroundings; fort territory is obviously deforested.


Cataloging corpses gets very tedious very fast, though, so off to the entrance it is. The ill-fated wagon of the first expedition is still parked in a corner of the central keep, and still loaded with slowly-rotting goods. This does mean I finally do something all my undead adventurers have been dreaming about in this entire session:


Booze! At last! (Too bad there’s no physical benefit to it; being undead does have some drawbacks).

Moving on. Walking through the fort answers both my questions: there are no hostile goblins, and the sacred safeties are fine with Necate (and vice-versa). So I’m leaving, because I’ve explored OpenBook before.

The mapping project is resumed, with the occasional incident engaging in the way. The very first one I run into turns out to be a goblin camp, with a familiar individual:


The master is dead; who knows who will replace him.

Another incident is a fierce battle between a bunch of empty butchers; at least two of them had started as soldiers of Eman, three were humans, and there are likely many more that I missed in the plentiful combat log that followed:



Necate gets himself involved as usual. Soon everyone is dead, and Necate has been injured. Nothing fast travel won't fix.


One of these corpses belongs to Apup, that human empty butcher who stole Necate’s artifact silver sword. Apup still had said sword, so now MatchClutch the Random Princess is lost somewhere in that corpse pile.

One tile further, two more empty butchers attack us. They die very quickly.



Buqui TaughtGrips is the human necromancer responsible for (trying to) steal a certain artifact cat bone pickaxe from HopeWork. She was the one who sent that human empty butcher to corrupt a spear-dwarf and steal the artifact. She was also present during the reclaim attempt in 125, and turned a dwarf into an empty butcher (it didn't last, the newly-turned dwarf was killed by a zombie corpse of one of his fellows).

Moving towards the old tower, the route meanders near the labyrinth to engage an incident. A night hag meets her end:


A goblin squad was loitering within sight of her, for some reason. One of them was killed and the rest scattered.

Dwarf Fortress started crashing a lot at this point. I must have gone through Momuz’s death six or seven times, without any hints in the logs either. Eventually, I decided to disable DFHack completely, by restoring the old SDL.dll that it replaces. The crashes seem to have stopped, but the look of the map has changed notably:


And for the better, I dare say. Now I’m starting to regret that I made 2/3rds of the world map with the TWBT look; but I don’t quite regret it enough to start all over again.

Back to the game; that squad of goblins is stupid enough to follow me. I call their bluff:


Two very stable incidents are sitting in the south-west of the tower. They’ve been in the same spot all the way back in 144, when a human hero has started exploring the north-east of the world:



… for crying out loud.




The first incident is a deserted tent, but the second is a camp with 11 goblin children, all of whom were turned into plague ghouls who-knows-when. What the hell.

Now, children they may be, but when they see living flesh they still charge right ahead. This is giving me Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead flashbacks. This batch of undead has been exterminated as well; as expected, without any complication on our end.


I’m going to blame Morul HeatedDikes, on account of him knowing the eleventh secret. And I turn out to be right -- all of these children were turned by Morul personally. This dude had issues. The children have been gathered from all over the place, and at various times, across about 20 years. Mind you, it didn’t necessarily have to be Morul, he’s taught his secret to his students, and all empty butchers seem to inherently know this secret. There were many others who could have turned a bunch of children; but it was Morul who did so.

During this mess, I find out I’ve lost my ax somewhere in the past few days; luckily, I can still hit zombie necromancer children with the shield’s edge, and inflict notable damage. There were two fights where I was attacked and might have lost my ax; the nearest was the mess with the night hag, so I returned to the site. I find a crappy copper knife, but no trace of a masterwork steel ax.

So I make my way back to the riverside where I remember engaging all those plague ghouls. Except I misremembered, and I dropped in the middle of the goblin camp where Necate killed master Damsto instead. I found an iron ax on one of the corpses, which will have to do for now.

Then I go engage this gaggle of idiots, whom I presume to be goblins because they keep following me. I am right.


The funny part is that I can talk to at least one of them, even while Necate is killing him. He has no leadership dialog option either; I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a goblin thing.



Now that I switched from DfHack to pure DF, there’s something else I want to try: visiting LoveCracks the Deep of Stumps, the cave which used to crash the game if I got too close to it. Visiting the vault may be worthwhile too, even if I don’t think it’s going to change (also, I don’t need that slab anymore because Thocit got killed by a badass ax-dwarf).

The cave should be directly west of my current location. Fingers crossed.


No problemo! I’m not playing adventure mode with DfHack anymore.



Definitely still held by goblins; the question is, where are said goblins? I can hear them, but I can’t see them.


After walking around and finding nothing, I just get fed up and leave. My next target is the vault. Technically speaking, I know exactly where it is; it’s just not marked properly as revealed.


Well, at least it’s consistent. I can walk right up to the vault, and still not get a message.


I kinda guessed I was going to die if I went inside, which is why the entire doomed expedition described below was intended to be reverted from the start.

===== Apocrypha: Briefly walking inside the Vault. =====

The first thing I do is raise the corpse of my old human adventurer as a death slayer. He’s immediately killed by a Murderous Pawn. The Murderous Pawn in turn is killed by Necate; it leaves behind a pile of ashes, so no new undead doing my bidding. At this point, I was still doing pretty well, actually. But then I go inside the room nearest to me, and I get some serious wounds; I drop my ax and shield from pain, and the menu to get them back is involuntarily hilarious:


(At this point, I still had no idea what Lagongobte is; I just knew I picked it up from a corpse in OpenBook. It didn’t quite occur to me yet that I could go to inventory, select its letter, and hit Enter and v for a full description. From Legends, I learn it’s an artifact copper breastplate crafted in FountainTorment by the aptly-named Atu HellFuture).

While trying to pick my stuff back up, another Murderous Pawn sneaks up on me; good ole Necate does kill it, but I’m already too injured; I suffocate soon after.

Spoiler: All the combat logs for the above spoiler (click to show/hide)