Rayguard is a city in decline. Many homes and shops are abandoned. The lairs of outcasts line its east side. Rayguard is also the home to innumerable cats, which are the most overpowered non-dangerous critters in game. No other creature can simply shift you one tile. In RL of course, they possess a similar skill, but it works quite differently.
If pathing issues (during slow travel) from any NPC in city/town threaten crashes, periodic offloads—when you make that jump into fast travel before returning to slow travel—are most welcome as they clear out the *meandering* non-historicals. Without resorting to DFhackery, the OP cats and directionally challenged merchants are gone. They've been teleported away. Their numbers haven't gone down, they're just somewhere. Elsewhere.
After an uneventful inactive temple crawl…
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...Bim heads toward Rayguard's keep. Perhaps vampire law-givers, while being naturally self-serving, might be better than their mortal counterparts? On the way, found in a lot populated with various domestic critter life, is the flying shadow freak mate wrestler, Struslot Catchaxes. The animals provide cover for arrows sent in greeting (poor sow); Struslot becomes strangely motionless, yet grounded in the sky.
She becomes active once again and Bim fires point blank adjacent tile shots.
Talented Dodger (+ Superdwarven Spatial/Kinesthetic) are what cause Struslot's failed attack rolls. Her roll-to-hit seldom succeeds (over 10% but less than 20% of the time—sample size is small, but you get the idea), triggering Bim's actual dodge (jump) away.
Bim watches with horror as she bleeds out.
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So the progression from two stages of resilience "getting used to tragedy" and "is a hardened individual" is punctuated by the experience of horror, prior to eventually becoming dead inside "doesn't care about anything anymore". Narratively this works well—while I wasn't quite sure where Bim was headspace-wise (figured he was at the very least hardened as he's over 20 in wolf/moose/bear kills), I abided by Charles Bukowski's line that goes a bit like this: "it's better to choose your own time than to have it chosen for you." Due to fort mode's unfortunate pacing, "doesn't care about anything anymore" comes on a bit too fast and should arguably be triggered via *sentient only* death, and after say the deaths of 10+ sentients.
At Rayguard's keep, vampire law-giver Ado Grottohugs is nowhere to be found. Perhaps Ado's in a meadhall? Bim's beginning to not care about finding Ado Grottohugs anymore. But I guess the hidden history demands it.
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Topic: What's going on in your adventure? (Read 2124798 times)