I play a 43.05 world for more than a real time year now, got quite attached to it. Sixteenish or so adventurers plus four forts make 30 years of ingame history now. It's a large world (masochist me) with MBs set for large quantity and we're already 10 years into brand new Year of Legends. Mostly hanging around till ver 44.xx becomes playable (linux gamer here).
And I've got some means of hanging around. Elderly (60+) titanslaying eagle woman who lives in her own camp on a seashore, surrounded by grandchildren of her companions (as close as I could get her to her hopeless goal of raising a family), who would like to see the fortress of Claspcurled, where she once lived, before she dies. The fortress was conquered by humans, purged and reclaimed and retired by then. They breached the hfs, contained it and sealed it. I've got human vampire necro retired for 10 years now in a camp under the ocean with backpacks full of autobiographies and candy tools of torture borrowed from two of my forts. He'd like to turn them back. The weapon naming feature would be so handy with it, but I gues he'll have to wait. But my current adventurer might be the most interesting yet.
Right now he gathered quite an army with quite badass core members and leads them on a nearby dark tower, where one-eyed yellow-green fiend lurks and cowardly sends army after army to crush his civ, the Confederacy of Fealty, and all her allies.
How did he get here? When spawned in quite ruined, but still operating city of the Confederacy, he was presented with the vault quest. He's a human demigod, large for his species, and now he is known as Captain Bugi the Cursed, the Calm Glacier of (something). The Soon-to-be legendary hero, realising that the vault everybody was so suddenly talking about was about all the world away, decided to focus on local tasks from his liege. Well, ok, while the first task was about minotaur, the second was rather mean: take care of a nearby bronze colossus. Mighty as Bugi was, he was yet still lucky: in the town he began his adventures in he met one of the Founding Dwarves of one of Four Legendary Forts of the World, visiting there as a scholar in the town's library. I really enjoy the game for meetings like this. Bugi enjoyed even more, as the dwarf Bim was all steel-clad. Thanks to Bugi's might and Bim's 'magic metal' armor and axe they not only defeated the colossus, but also subdued all local banditry and made them pay tribute to their lord. The climax of those missions (Bugi by now was a commander of neat 12 soldier squad of resocialized bandits, the Dirty Dozen would they be called elsewhere) was surely when they contained a rebellion against their liege-lord which erupted when the lord told them to subdue the town's criminals. These were the good times.
Finally, the lord, having all his nearby region secured under his command, decided to send Bugi and his Dozen into one of the goblins' dark pits, to send them a message that they won't get us too easy.
Well, Bugi wasn't very good at messages. Maybe when the message was delivered, there was noone left to tell the tale (why yes, the working pit of the gobbo settlement was a steaming heap of gore, bodyparts and blood laced with water, water, water, vomit and water when the Dozen, now sadly reduced to the Ten with Three Lamed for Life, finished what they considered their job), maybe it was one of those 'Bugi' ways the world around Bugi sometimes went, but when all was said and done and there was even a human at the charge of the pit now, the lord still didn't concider the task done.
Bugi decided then and there that it was no time to play games of messages and diplomacy. The strike must be delivered at the heart of the evil war machine. He could called the Cursed right now abd then. The three crutch-walkers were left at the perimeter of the dark tower, where the patrols of brain-washed former prisoner were taken by surprise and eradicated. The Magnificent Seven came into the towering shadow of slate. Only Bugi came back, leaning on a crutch himself, scarred both on body and on mind, when his companions and prisoners he made free and armed died one by one in the shadowy corridors by beak, horn, tusk and their own socks. The companion he was most fond of, woman called Arat the Beloved, only two years younger than him, with whom he had many value-changing (mutually) dialogues by campfire and while waiting with their crossbows in ambush, and in taverns and in the castle halls - died unconcious, bleeding out while he desperately defended her from wave upon wave of trolls and beak dogs. He only told it to Bim later. Bim was one of the crutch-walkers. Bim replied 'Arat the Beloved is finally dead. I guess it might be cinsidered grimly satisfying.' Bugi will never understand dwarves.
Bugi, after few days of aimlessly roaming the jungle, pain buried deep inside him but burning, decided to take a break. He came with Bim to capital hamlet of a neighbouring civ, the Kingdom of Assault. The kingdom lost all of its cities and most of its hamlets to dragons, hydras and elves in the early history of the world, so it was named justly. What's more, their current law-giver appeared to be also a slave of Bugi's civ. Baffled, Bugi agreed to help the poor, old Slave-King. He asked him where he wanted to go. The newly emacipated law-giver said his niece was living in Castle the Horn-Pass.
Bim's grin wided at the name of the fortress he himself was building fundaments of 14 years earlier. There was no second thought to it. Five of them, Bugi, Bim, Dik the law-giver and two of his hearthpeople willing to go with us will visit the fortress of legends!
to be continued, the wall of text is large enough for this time