"And so Ura is banished from the Windy World."
"For the time. Thoth did exactly what he was supposed to."
"A rather cold outlook for you."
"It's not yet time for joy, nor sorrow. Yet we will see him again. I do not intend to abandon him to oblivion. If the Seal is saved, things will eventually return as they were."
"And when the Seal is destroyed?"
"Then we will go to war if we must to save him."
"The Conflict of Atrocities."
"I'm afraid it is inevitable."
"We shall all lose something. No one can win such a war, Kigok."
"I know you are not that naive, Otik. Someone
would win that war, and it has to be us."
* * *
Deprived of the fell powers holding it aloft, the demonic symbol cracked and crumbled to the ground.
At the goblin bone trading bridge overlooking the eastern walls, Tupu had gathered twenty dwarves to make a stand against the invasion force. "Lads," he said. "I have no idea what just happened, but there's bones to collect. Now get out there and make these goblins never live to regret this day!"
The bridge fully extended, and the dwarves and goblins charged forward to match blades.
When the goblins were soundly defeated, Failcannon still stood, a proud and defiant speck against the long, lonely coastline of the Bluenuess of Malodors.
That evening, then the weary and wounded dwarves settled to their ale and roasts, the in-fighting finally calming, Andreus and Glacial walked cautiously across the damp sand in search of the former Overseer's body. Failcannon hardly needed any more ghosts at the moment. In the southwest where the fortress met the shoreline, the great spider loomed, a shadowy sentinel against the sea's horizon.
"What happened today, Andreus?"
"To speculate, I'd say the Universe became a bit more fair than it once was."
"Look," Glacial said in awe as they walked with the body back toward the gate.
"I have eyes," Andreus said.
"There's so many of them! I never noticed how many until they were gone."
"A great many things are like that."
"Does this mean it's over?"
"As far as I know the Seal is still damaged. Queen Led may still be out there. The Shadow is yet to be dealt with. I expect Death has only been waylaid. But this is a good sign, I think."
* * *
As the once prosperous city of Graspedseduce sat in smoking ruin, the guards were providing what little food and water could be managed from within the shattered temple. By the door, the old man huddled over anxiously, wondering when the demons would come for them. He could stall perhaps one demon, but any more would overwhelm him. None of this had been in the visions. This was all very disheartening.
The temple doors burst suddenly open and the old man sprang to his feet like a youth but a quarter his age. But instead of a demon stood a hunched, impossibly thin figure wrapped in a robe of darkest midnight. The old man drew back in horror.
"You're alive!"
"Alive? Not quite, you insolent frog. Far more than that."
"But I saw you die!"
"Silence! Do you not know who I am?
And I will never die."
* * *
A Letter to the Next Overseer:
If you're reading this, then I've probably been killed by the rioters since, were I alive, we could have this discussion in person.
The place is more organized than two years ago, there are more goods are in bins, but the place is still a mess. The dwarves are drafted with assigned clothing and weaponry, and most of the dwarves still alive are happy enough. There are about seven dwarves in the hospital but Seraphin has no tasks assigned but healthcare and I expect everyone should recover. I don't think there's any poison left on the floor, either, there was a staircase covered in poison blood from a beast killed years ago but that should be gone now.
Oh, almost forgot, the primary metal and armor stockpiles are completely flooded by the Ocean of Slime.
I added some notes explaining stuff I added or learned about. If there's an unlabelled lever I have no idea what it does.
Have fun, you brave soul.
* * *
Regarding Graspedseduce: Those engravings were put there by
world gen. That was an actual embark to the actual Graspedseduce. The process was basically this:
1. Downloaded Battlefailed save from the end of turn 2, loaded in DF 31.06 and abandoned
2. Located Graspedseduce and embarked there, saved and reloaded in 31.25
3. Took screenshots and dug down until HFS
I uploaded
a save of Graspedseduce here if you'd like to take a look. By using dfreveal you can check out the underground engravings or just dig to them the old-fashioned way. The one thing I couldn't get around was Queen Led dying of old age as soon as embarking there. It happens every time, even with immortal humans.
Anyway, the game itself came up with that stuff, I just tried to present it in the narrative. The Spider/Ampersand monument took two years to build, made mostly of bone blocks. I knocked down the big demonic symbol since it felt like the right thing to do, but the spider's still there.
Did you perhaps use rumrusher/that other guy that makes more sense's method for fortress retirement to retire failcannon while you did the whole demons in the city/rebellion thing? So that those changes are real and observable within the save? And was Thoth's fight all done in the arena? If this is merely some form of save/artistic sorcery then I hope I come back as an angry ghost and possess Queen Led whenever she arrives.
Nah, hacks like that probably shouldn't be used in a succession game without group approval first. It was all on a separate save file, and Thoth/Ura fighting was all Arena mode, so yup, sorcery. Led would be dead in Legends even if resurrected. If she came to Failcannon, we might keep her from being D.O.A. by raising the max age for humans, but I've never tried that and my last untested suggestion ended up with dwarves refusing to eat, so that's a maybe. Oh, your ghosts haven't come back yet, just one of the forgotten masons I forgot to make a slab for.
seems you need a god among dwrafs to save you. a hero like those in time before time. like those of syrupleaf in the first baptism of the world -if your using the boatmurderd timeline etc-
whos the best warrior and does he seem fit to take on the god of death?
just idle speculation. This has been a great read. wait the ending with anticipation. if it is indeed the end.
Good questions. It's all one big multiverse to me. If there's a warrior here to fight Death it would probably be Tupu, since he's already cheated it a few times and uses skeletal horse collar bones as toothpicks. As for it ending, I'd like the fortress to go on as long as it naturally can without getting boring or cheap. We'll have to figure something out if there is to be a Battlefailed 3 though, because it seems embarking anywhere in Aluonra besides the two forts causes a game crash now.
The tantrum spiral is over, we have enough food to not have to worry about producing any for a long time, and we still have adamantine to spare. If you have Urist make even one masterwork weapon a season we should get a steady trickle of migrants. I completely failed to raise FPS and actually lowered it a few points, it's about 15 for me now, and for that I apologize, hopefully someone more efficient than I can fix it up. Getting rid of the ghostly mason might help.
Here's the Failcannon save. My thanks to everybody who enjoyed the turn! It's been fun. There's no World like the Windy.
If you pull the the Hematite Lever of Remorse, there may be a couple minutes of lag as the game processes what is happening. Don't fret if the game looks like it stopped responding, just give it some time.
Edit: Nearly forgot to mention. The save is at Granite 6, all that's been done in that time was the recovering of two wounded and the deactivation of the pump for FPS. I'll upload the autosave at Granite 1 if this is objectionable.