Prologue, It is November of 2007, my friend had just introduced me to Dwarf Fortress. Knowing I was in way over my head, I took small steps in the beginning, watching over his shoulder, reading the tale of boatmurdered, and looking over the abundance of information on the Bay12 website. It was not until the following February that I made an attempt at my own real fortress for the first time. Every night for an entire week I would spend a few minutes playing and the next day, while hitting slow periods at work, Inspired by the epic story boatmurdered, I wrote a narrative based on my memory of the events from the night before (taking only a few liberties of course). I would send these snippets of story to my friend at the end of each day and come home ready to see new chapters of the tale unfold.
Today at work, I found the story while going through some of my old files. So for your amusement, here it is.
Disclaimer: Sorry, no pictures, I tried to dig up the old save files to get some now for this post, but no luck. Also, I apologize for the abrupt ending.
The Massacre at Joinedtongs
Upon arriving, we selected a suitable site for groundbreaking near the river. This would provide easy access to water for the thirsty dwarves. Miners began digging out areas for farming in the clay below the surface and stockpiles for food and lumber were setup around the entrance. The woodcutter immediately set to felling trees to provide materials for our ambitious plans. After the farming area was dug out we began planting. The fisher-dwarf helped out wherever he could as the river was frozen solid. A workshop was setup to begin constructing beds; we were determined to sleep comfortably by the first night.
Early reports are spotty at best, but there was some talk of ogre sightings to the west.
“If we leave him alone, he will do the same” explained our expedition leader. Unfortunately, no one told the woods-dwarf, who, at that very moment, was wandering too close the beast’s domain.
It came suddenly for the poor woods-dwarf, as he went to chop a tree, the monster came crashing through the woods, roaring and salivating at the smell of fresh meat. He was immediately struck down, and the ogre dragged is bloody corpse away to do only Armok knows what. This was only the beginning of the misfortune that befell our group. Just as our nerves began to settle after the ogre attack, two harpies swooped in. one attacking the carpenter as he worked on the beds, the other went after a dwarf as he was fetching a meal from the food supplies. Death did not come as quickly for these two. The two dwarves fled, the harpies chasing close behind, clawing and biting at the two dwarves until they bled to death.
After all was clear, we tried to put the tragedies behind us and set back to work. With fewer hands to help we were all very busy. However, the tragic fates were not done with our already thinned group. Our fisher-dwarf must have been trying to drill through the ice, when the cracking beneath provided much too short of an alarm before he suddenly fell through. The strong currents swept him away immediately and no one has seen any trace of him since our last glimpse of his hands desperately clawing from under the frozen sheet.
Now we rarely stray from the humble fortress. We work frantically underground to salvage our own existence. We only hope some immigrants come soon too lend some additional help. The Merchants have just arrived, we can only hope they offer us some charity, but that is unlikely, our trader was one of the lucky ones taken to the great forge beneath the earth, whoever greets them will likely screw us over…
Massacre of Joinedtongs Chapter 2, Revenge and Reunion
The trading was fruitful, but boozeless. We exchanged some trinkets for some food and seeds.
“No Drink! A caravan of dwarves treks all they way here and they come without a single drop to drink?”
“They are probably hoarding it all for themselves.”
“Those bastards.”
Life goes on, at least had some left in the stocks, is anyone keeping track of the stocks?
No.
The Ogres and harpies seem to have wandered off, so we fetched the bodies of our fallen and setup a graveyard on an unused level of the fortress (if you could call it that), we thought it best to engrave the walls of the tomb in memory of our lost friends.
“What is that?”
“It’s a circle.”
“Why would you carve a circle in the tomb?”
“I don’t know”
“How does that commemorate our fallen comrades?”
“I don’t know”
“I carved a harpy, which makes sense because harpies killed our friends.”
“Look, I made a square!”
While carving some lopsided circles and squares, we listened to howling from outside. They must have been wolves and they sounded hungry. Fortunately they wandered off. However, to our dismay, as soon as the howling faded, some harpies slipped into the fortress. But, the mindless beasts decided to attack the only one among us armed with an axe. Sezin was her name, and she was never quite the same since that attack, but when she saw one of the harpies rushing into the workshops she advanced and raised her blade in an upswing with all her might. The blow sliced off the harpies arm, wing and head all at once. Two more harpies slipped in while she watched the pieces of her slain enemy fall to the ground in a bloody mess. The first lunged and slashed her across the neck, fazed, but not finished, she swung her axe around and took its ugly head clean off. In her moment of vulnerability the last remaining harpy attacked with its claws gouging out her left eye. In a blind rage she swung again. After the noise abated, Sezin stood in a pool of blood and gore, surrounded by the three corpses of the wretched beasts.
We avoided the workshops after the incident, and decided to thank Sezin by smoothing the stone in her room. She hasn’t been able to do much of late; she gets up, walks around, and tries to eat, but falls unconscious. We let her rest.
By now it was late spring. It seemed safe outside, so I decided to take a look around. I was overwhelmed to see in the distance some dwarves walking toward the fortress. Immigrants! Finally, we can start turning this place into a real fortress. They came out of the woods one by one, a fisher-dwarf, a miner, a metal smith. Dwarves with skills, how perfect! But they kept coming. The line of immigrants didn’t seem to end, one after another the kept coming.
We better make some more beds.
When they finished filing in, there were 13 all in all, a lucky number. This put our entire group to 16.
End
I guess I stopped playing after the first immigrant wave.
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Topic: The Massacre of Joinedtongs: An Unfinished Tale of Desolation (Read 1013 times)