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[Uzu Bash]

Crutching would be more akin to crawling. It takes a lot of patience, but it develops Endurance, Willpower, Spatial and Kinesthetic, which are all critical enough to spend points into. After about 3 game weeks of crutching, you're a natural talent at dodging, blocking and armor use, and a marvelous dancer. Keep it in your quiver and losing use of a leg doesn't leave you at such a disadvantage.

At that vault I got so fed up with going back to heal every time I got hobbled, and coming back to fight the same angels over and over again, that I decided to finish it on crutch. And I got all the way down to one detectable enemy remaining and the final switch when -- power outage. Not even ten mins of outage, so I could reload the game while the taste of salt was still strong.

Try sneaking and crutching, you get to hear everyone say, "Is that a weapon?" Well, it might be; you want to try me? Feel like fucking with a cripple, hm? Come get some crutch!

[peasant cretin]

Having slight wifi connectivity issues, so can't upload to imgur, but in starting a dwarf peasant with an "observer/dodger/endurance build", I gave Feb above average kinesthetic/intuition/willpower/STR/AGI/TOU/END, but left spatial and focus at average since those are a dwarf's best stats.

But yeah, might just carve a crutch and do the ambusher/crutch-walk slow travel from this hillock to the next. Thinking on it though since I'm trying to "craft" a specific order on his express emotions menu. Kind of want to group tracker/climber/swimmer together. It's silly stuff to be sure. No real impact other than an aesthetic one.

Those angels are made of salt?

[TheFlame52]

So as it turns out, even if you can kill well over a hundred trolls with just one hand and a busted-up bronze sword, you can't do shit to a lizard demon made of rock crystal sitting at the top of it all. Literally landed one hit, which glanced away, then it punched my eyelid and the force exploded my head.

You would not believe the number of times a demon has punched/kicked me in the fingers and ripped my whole hand off. 10,000,000 cm^3 and legendary combat skills are not to be trifled with.

[Uzu Bash]

I've chatted so much on discord but never introduced my character here. In keeping with my tradition of starting with a one-syllable name and acquiring the rest, my name is simply 'Bal', later 'Bal Chipnurtured', then 'Bal Chipnutered the Shady Skulls'. I come from a low-browed, recessed chin people,

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but I was blessed with the adventurer's chin and therefore destined to Rule the World! (As you can see, I've had my throat slit, gouged, smashed and mangled so many times the scar tissue is calloused hard as a leather posture collar.)

I set off with a bronze pick and a silver bortu

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My first conquest was easy; I just walked into a deserted city with nothing but a warehouse full of food and boozables, and a temple full of vampire (singular), and staked my claim

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then took out the vampire to have something else to brag about, thus beginning and ending my first insurrection. I celebrated with a proud recital of my first poem!

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After a painful trek to a corner of the map I shall never revisit, I'm back in my city, plotting my next course. I've just thrown a retirement party for my speargirl and dubbed her hearthfolk. Companions remaining are my axegirl who joined me before the northern expedition, an elvish trader/dancer who has a history of devouring political enemies, and a nude herbalist/dancer who I should probably get boots for so she'll stop tracking substances all over my floors.

My next expedition will be through a thriving dwarven empire to visit their library, then on to another vault deep in savage marshlands. En route should be the goblin civ whose master I haven't assassinated lately, our first dragon, and our first titans.

Those angels are made of salt?

Not this time; these were actually made of meat, and my roasts for the rest of the season were made of them.

[Rethi-Eli]

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This gave me a good laugh.

[Uzu Bash]

I'm sticking around for some fiefdom maintenance; I don't know how successful this will be in attracting migrants, but it certainly can't hurt. A world tile in one direction is a ruined village with some raiders still lingering around, so I need to install some government to keep it secured, and perhaps provide trade. A world tile in the other direction is a cavern entrance with layers of hematite studded with gems exposed, so I would like to turn that into a mining town.

While I'm mopping up, I can practice playing my bortu as a percussive instrument, but first I must compose lyrics to sing to the music of cracking skulls and splattering brains. My best choices are "The Skull of Bone, a light poetic form intended to amuse the audience concerning death" and "The Grizzly Hawk is a poetic form intended to express pleasure with the hunt". The Skull is less popular with my companions -- they don't like their poetry 'light'.

[peasant cretin]

Dorfin(?) outsider Feb Forestpebble follows up wrestling by tossing 17 rocks bringing up throwing/archery to novice (lvl1), and then logs the 3 basic movement skills: tracking to novice, swimming to adequate (lvl2), & climbing to novice. The catalog of an adventurer's express emotions menu is like a compression of time in which you'd see the salad days of any Greek hero or when we see Goku himself for the first time. That's only if you believe grandstanding adventurers are of any relevance. RNG nicely bookends this first phase with a snow storm. I forget whether it was before the storm or after that Feb swam from adequate to talented (lvl6), so as to level toughness to high and endurance to superior and render himself immune to all swimming penalties save for the combined dizziness + nausea of cave adaptation, which not even legendary swimmer could protect against.

After the storm, without the cuing of a Shamhat and less for modesty and the ways of civilized dwarves, a cold day passes where there's rummaging for rope reed/pig tail clothing in various hillocks before Feb makes a journey into the mountains. Clearly the gods are kind since Feb interrupts a herd of yak and singles out one for meat and leather. The combined above average strength/agility grants him a starting sprint of 2.824 as Feb repeatedly hurls a copper javelin before grounding it. He switches to punching and levels striker to novice before finally knocking the yak bull out just to enable the throttling of the larger critter.

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The yak bull's skin yields 2 leather, one for a backpack and the other for a shield. Feb crafts most of his sewing and leatherworking items here before gathering rocks for a firepit and branches for firewood and meat skewers. During dinner, Feb has a conversation with the stray cat who was witness to all of his industriousness.

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[charcharmunro]

Setting up my own little home-base. Got ambushed by Bogeymen just before arriving at the site. Manage to come out only missing teeth, and the culmination of the encounter was pretty great. 3 of the four were disabled and bleeding to death, the fourth was flying around and being a dick. It charged at me from the sky, I get a lovely ! on a punch to its head, which hits it with such force the neck rips off. My headcanon is that my adventurer just did the "WHAT" sort of pose for a while, just... Saying "FUCK YOU, NIGHT".

[Droggarth]

Ran into an ambush of imps who tossed fire magic at me, usually it would've been something more common and a lot less interesting. A pack of about 10 of them upon getting closer to them they all used their pyro-witchcraft on my character all at once as the battle log was long enough to make the MORE tag appear along with the rest of the text in red. Nothing to worry about for an ischrotaur as the attacks all failed or glanced off.

Unfortunately for them they decided to ambush a wrong gal who showed them what it means to be brutally killed and dismembered. Some got their guts spilled and hacked off before either bleeding to death from too much blood loss from missing limbs or got their heads chopped off before bleeding to death. Limbs and whatnot flew all over the place and into a few nearby trees and the whole ambush turned around and backfired at the imps as for them the mahogany skin-colored azure eyed beastess started moving faster around them into a haze of attacking movements, some which they managed to avoid but not for long as the brutal and broad two-handed drolth-sword of her's moved like the wind and as if it were an extension of her own body. Last thing they probably saw was the horrific sight of bloodied ground on the grass with hoof marks.

After that nasty business I decided to control my character around the aftermath to butcher their bodies and collect skulls, brains and hearts. Haven't had this kind of a fun and surprising ambush happen for a long time now, kinda glad too that my recent adventurer is my own modding success, created to withstand these types of attacks and then some because if it was my draenei character she'd be burning to death and I'd have a miserable time trying avoid the fire magic.

Felt interesting enough to put it into a small mini-story.

..and a nude herbalist/dancer who I should probably get boots for so she'll stop tracking substances all over my floors.

Uh, I'm not sure boots will help to avoid rest of the bodily substances.


EDIT: That imp ambush moment in the game I had are what makes me slowly like and get into DF again despite being an overpowered character. I find it more calming to just be able to wreck a foe with various methods of being a jack-of-all-trades who is master of all.

EDIT2: Not sure how my writing skills really are, I just think back and write from memory and I have no idea what it may seem like to someone else, too many variables of personalities, mindsets and thoughts to a point where I just do what I do, I'm no multi-tasker and trying to be one is just an exercise in frustration for me. Big reason why I don't want to try the fort mode again and why I need to play as a jack-of-all-trades characters in adventure mode.

[Uzu Bash]

While I was still partying in my court, preparing to sweep the surrounding areas, this was what I composed:

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After turning a few residences into abattoirs and hauling many body parts into a fire, I created something a little more like this:

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Seems an afternoon of slaughter exchanged my levity for inspiration.

After clearing and claiming that village, I went to visit other villages around to recruit hearthfolk and pass on my lordship of The Circumstantial Circle of Sides. But one of them had been routed before a keep was ever constructed, so no seat of power, and no inhabitants appeared even though history shows many settling there. Another village had as large a gang as the earlier. Because it was late, I impatiently claimed their seat of power, headstabbed them all in their sleep, and moved on to the last village. My territory expands! Territory I didn't want!

The final village did have a lady in residence with one hearthman to recruit and cede a lordship to. I feel I can trust this complete stranger enough that it's no longer my problem. I brewed up some refreshments from the last gang's food supply, and commemorated the occasion with more verse:

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Yes, I've hit my stride again!

I keep coming back to the cavern and developing more and more, but unfortunately still can't claim it or zone it.

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[peasant cretin]

Feb treks everything yak back to hillock Figuremint where he recalls seeing rock salt pebbles. It's here that he does his salt mining and converts 20 meat into a pile of salted meat. This is a glob item with a product dimension of 20 (20 uses). He also makes enough bacon for the entire run as each glob of fat becomes a side of cured bacon with similar usage rate to that of a pile of salted meat. The encumbrance factor drops as glob items are very light <1r which makes salting/curing useful, but without a metal pick to carve rock pebbles into true blocks, Feb has no cooking containers with which to process these victuals into cooked edibles.

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So he heads north east to human held lands.

In the town of Minedegg Feb trades off his large copper dagger for a large silver knife. One wonders if having novice persuader/intimidator will be of use? The answer is no. It costs an additional 25 salt coins, each a material value of 3, along with a salt block of similar 75 value. Do the civilized discriminate against outsiders who have never known shorn locks or styled beards? ZM5 once said that you could presume the extremely long hair in an outsider's description meant unkempt and overgrown in all ways. Naturally, the transaction at a metalcrafter's shop involving 29 copper arrows has similar result:

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After finding a copper pick in one of the nearby hamlets, Feb travels westward to dwarven lands. He's become unfocused due to lack of reading materials:

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All the fortresses in the area are ruined, but as luck would have it, one has an intact library. Insanity is thankfully averted. At first, this fortress appears uninhabited, but soon enough the scholars begin streaming out from below. During dinner and drinks, there's the obligatory scholar on scholar murderousness.

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As you can tell from the above image, Feb's been living quite well for an itinerant. This express emotions menu's good foundation, part planned, part improvised, tells an accurate story of the first days of Feb Forestpebble just before being cluttered with book reading spam. It is as it should be.

[Uzu Bash]

I tore myself away from obsessively meticulous but ultimately futile cavern remodeling, bid farewell to my city, and set foot again. I passed through the city my name and fame first took root, found it laggier than I remembered, whacked a few weres, then revisted my home village to tell them all the tales I had accumulated and share my compositions.

Then I revisited the first bandit camp I had ventured to. First time I was here, I had to stealthily lure goblins away in order to dispatch them one by one, trying not to get attention from any of the archers, of which there was many. I unintentionally attracted a fully armored pikemaster, and after a long and grueling battle during which I acquired most of my early wounds, I decided to cut my losses and vamoose. Couldn't even wear the little bastard's armor. This time I finished the job and awarded the armor to my dancer.

This is my projected itinerary:

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First, the dwarven library! Except that line is much straighter than the path I'll probably take. The other lines are much more accurate. Anyway, I will reach the vault to the far east, then circle back around to my Longhouse and pay my respects to the lady of the Rancorous Forks of Horror, and probably assassinate the goblin master again. I think I'll just keep assassinating them until I like the art on their coins. Maybe I'll get one depicting me assassinating their master.

[TheVulture]

It's so easy to kill a cyclops if you sneak from behind and cut it's eye, it's fun to see the guy stay in place as i cut it down to pieces
Also i took his eye as a trophy

[peasant cretin]

Due to the varying ethics issues at fortress Frostgolds, Feb kept his stay brief. DF currently lacks gradations toward or away from resilience. It allows for two positions: monstrous apathy or nervous wreck. Feb's killed the one yak, and has seen one scholar's mangled corpse. Numerically, this is well away from the unfeeling yet desired state of "doesn't really care about anything anymore." While he'd like to avoid becoming horrified due to trauma from having witnessed sentient death, Feb dutifully combs through each pile of books looking for topics on wind, rainfall, and the stars—topics of interest to all rangers and itinerants.

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Before any further murder can erupt, Feb collects his belongings and leaves.

After salt farming once again in hillock Figuremint, Feb decides to build a kiln. Besides salt, hillock Figuremint also has clay. Feb does some cooking for the journey ahead and uses the ash that's leftover to help with glazing the various earthenware items he's crafted. There's a Sumerian world of difference between using a jug made from rock blocks and one from glazed earthenware. Shamhat would be proud.

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Feb might be wildling like Enkidu, but he's still a dwarf who appreciates craftdwarfship.

Southward, in the town of Vigorraptors, there's an almost conflict with a bowgoblin.

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Feb had just jumped into fast travel and the game threw him back into local slow travel mode. I had neglected to resurface periodically onto the fast travel map to check for incoming asterisks. That's really SOP if you're managing an NPC unit count and their relative positions when raiding a camp, or in this case, to avoid a conflict that might require taking sentient life. But it is what it is.

First Feb has a look at the bowgoblin's profile. There's no size descriptor. The lack of size descriptor will mean there won't be a strength modifier in the description either. It's safe to presume the gobbo is of average size and likely average strength, which = average mass. So, grab + dodge or jump will result in possession of the weapon. Feb initially approaches from as much stealth as the terrain affords to make the grab dodge from behind to buff the grab roll (image below shows Feb's position is outside the gobbo's vision arc). One tick before the moment of truth, Feb finds this bowgoblin talking with a stray cat as if they were two peas in a pod.

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While it's true this bowgoblin would have never given it a second thought, Feb sidesteps. Time to pass. Everyone drinks from mugs today.

[charcharmunro]

So, not the current adventure, but the one that abruptly ended thanks to a rock crystal lizard monster, but you recall how I said the guy had one hand? The other was lost after a roc pecked at his finger. The peck did nothing to the finger through the armor, but the force of it sent his hand flying off. I imagine he just kind of... Did that thing where you block an attack with one finger, only to get horribly maimed in the process. I believe it was actually the middle finger too, which makes it even more hilarious.