First of all, let me get this right. Community fortresses are the ones that a player makes and shows to the community, allowing others to be dorfed and behold the HFS madness that ensues, am I correct? If so, let's continue.
And, so that you can all understand what the heck I am talking about, a small summary of the events so far:
Long long ago, when I had just discovered DF, I decided to name all of my seven starting dwarves after videogame characters before embark, just for the sake of it. Then I hit the "e" key. Just as the "Strike the earth!" message vanished, everyone was eaten alive by skeletal carp. Except one. My trader/bookkeeper was, single-handlely, holding off the swarm of undead that emerged from the river. His name was Big Cheese. (Y'know, the village chief from RE4.)
He survived, with over thirty kills under his name. But few migrants came, and all of them were slain by the evil fish before reaching safety. And so he lived alone on the wilderness for over eight years, building a huge fortress on his own, complete with a self-powered pump stack to breach the three-level aquifer. Then he found adamantine, and the king came. To a fortress populated by a single dwarf. (And his pet mule, who he'd found on the wilds several years before.)
From that day on, I vowed that every time I made a fortress, the most awesome dwarf would be named Big Cheese.
Time passed on, and I took a break from DF. A lot later, me and a few other guys from the Data Realms forums (more specifically Duh102 and Geti) decided to do a succession game. It was a total disaster, to say the least, with fort after fort being destroyed by tantrum spirals or random crashes, but boy was it fun. The last fort had a pretty unusual characteristic: our civ's king was an elf. My dwarf, as you may have imagined, was named Big Cheese. In the end, we gave up on the whole thing, but not before writing some pretty little stories about how our dwarves were actually exiles, sent away as slaves for discovering the true identity of the king, but who had escaped and built themseves a whole fortress. It was kinda cool, really, and the end of that story... is the begginning of this one. Prepare to be amazed, bedazzled and otherwise estupefied as we strike the earth! (Ok, maybe not bedazzled.)
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PROLOGUE: The Edge
A small boat rocked in the stormy sea. On the deck, three dirty and soaked dwarves fought not to be thrown overboard.
"Mr. Geti! " Yelled one of them, "How long 'til we get there?"
"I'd like to tell ye, Cap'n, but I cannae make heads or tails of this bloody map!"
"Curses! Miss Duh, how much supplies have we got left?"
"A cheese Cap'n!
"Aye, but how much of it? A barrel, a stack?"
"The records just say Cheese[1], Cap'n!"
"Cow cheese?"
"Dwarven cheese, Cap'n!"
"Great Scott! Then be sure to make a roast out of it when we find some dry land! And stop a-callin' me Cap'n, will ye?"
"Aye aye, Cap'n!"
Big Cheese cursed under his breath. It had already been three weeks since they left the port of Machineshimmers, and still no sign of land. He cursed the name of Fíma Lamaamala, elven king of dwarves, and cursed the day he had been sent to exile. If only that pesky liaison had not told everyone in the mountainhomes that he was building an undercover fortress in the southern dunes, he'd probably be in his grand office, and not sailing this pathetic excuse for a ship. Of course, when he'd seen the king's army standing at the gates, he knew that he could either surrender and be imprisoned for life, or run away to the distant edges of the land. But maybe he'd gone a bit too far this time. His destination's name was the Edge Of The Map.
No one had ever gone there and returned. No one had ever gone there, period. But he knew that, once there, he'd be finally free from the evil king's plan. And so he kept going forward. "Well." He thought, "At least I've got the two most trustworthy dwarves I've ever known to help me! This can't be that bad, can it?"
Then he saw Geti pass out once again from seasickness, while Duh just stared at him, with a definitely murderous look in her eyes.
"Right, maybe it can be that bad. Miss Duh, don't you dare try to drown 'im again! That's the third time in two days!"
"Aww, Cap'n! Ye know how I feel when there's this much water around! At any rate, are we still far from the Edge?"
"Eh, I en't got the faintest idea! For all I know, it could be right under our feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet..."
He kept yelling that as they fell from the edge of the world.
CHAPTER ONE - Brave new world
Taken from the logs of Edem Kalanvabok, expedition leader:
For five thousand years, we, the Dwarves, have walked upon the Obeisant Continent, and for those five thousand years, we have been getting closer and closer to our end. Since we first set foot in here, we have been attacked by evil beasts and fell monsters, and many times we've barely escaped from total destruction. Many others have tried to survive here as well, and all of them, man, elf and goblin, have failed. We have only lasted this long by hiding under the earth, but now we are not safe even there, as demons and other monstrosities continuosly break through our mining shafts. Our kings have been killed, our fortresses laid waste to. No one alive remembers having a place they could call home. Over the course of the last two years, I've seen my band of warriors have its numbers reduced from thirty to fifteen, and then to ten, and then to four. We roam this ravaged wasteland, trying desperately to keep what little dignity we have left, perpetually running away from the ravenous titans. We might as well be the last ones of our race, as we haven't seen anyone else alive in months. However, we may have received a sign. A sign from the great Armok, telling us to keep on and try to survive. While searching the southern coasts for food, we came across three castaway dwarves, who claim to have come from a land far beyond the Edge of the World (whatever that means). Now we are seven, just like the seven who, legend has it, first claimed this land. Armok has spoken. We shall not give up! We shall rise once again, under the great basalt peaks of the Sizzling Point, and show to the demons outside that the Dwarven race is not dead yet!
We are the Lone Wanderers, and this... This is our Last Stand.
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So yeah, this is it. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it interesting and not let it crumble to dust too soon. Because, due to some worldgen fiddling, this world has a thousand titans, and no wealth/population requirements for attacks. It also lacks a dwarven civ, so I'm not even quite sure how it let me embark. Maybe it's because the civ is there, even though everyone in it is dead. Oh well.
As usual, dorfing is on a first come first served basis, so be prepared.
(And, since this is my first comm fortress, don't be too hard on me, OK?
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Topic: [Community] The Last Stand. (Read 3592 times)