Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[farecoal]

You know, I was thinking. Dwarf Fortress has a lot of funny, epic, awesome moments, but I never hear about sad stories. I don't if it's because most people can't find sad moments in the game, but I wanted to see if people do have these kinds of stories. I recently visited my succumbed to invasion fort in adventure mods, and it was awful to see all the dwarf corpses lying around. Especially when I found the fort's hero and militia commander on the ground, instead of in his tomb. I actually took his corpse to his tomb and placed it in his coffin, then flooded the fort so it would remain untouched by visitors.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Read Internet Kraken's recent posts in the "What's going on in your fort" thread.

[Julius Clonkus]

In a fortress which ran out of drinks, I had hoped for the river to thaw. A mason got a strange mood and made a wonderful rock coffin.

...

Yeah, since there was no booze or water he died of dehydration and got buried in his own coffin. "Digging your own grave" indeed.

[Jayce]

Had a dwarf trapped underground while the icy river froze him off,he survived ages somehow deep in the new pond chamber,when the river thawed and the water started flooding in he made a dash for freedom along the channel,but every time he was but a step away from the stair to freedom the water washed him back into the chamber dropping him down two levels,he made 3 attempts and came so close i could see him frantically fighting the current,but he eventually drowned.

[Ieb]

This one made me sort of sad.

I found a kidnapped dwarf in Legends mode called Ingish Pillarspeak, who ended up being the sole defender of his adopted goblin civ, killing over two hundred dwarves, including his own mother, father, father in law (he married another kidnapped dwarf, she was killed by dwarves early in the war), brother in law (duelled him five times), several brothers, and a sister. He was at war with his original dwarven civ from the year 30 to 70, armed with a crossbow and presumably a knife. He liked to rip off the third toe of his opponents. Oh, and he ate the dwarves he killed (never his own family, at least).

He was the victor of his final battle against his original dwarven civ, but still (somehow) lost the war. He joined the new civ and died of old age, wandering the wild.

When I visited the now-dwarven dark fortress he'd defended for so long in Adventure mode, there was a goblin priest in the temple. Every dwarf I talked to had a relative who'd been killed by Ingish Pillarspeak.

I imagine the war was ended when Ingish was shown his own kill list, and it was explained how many of his own family he'd slain in battle. I imagine Ingish negotiated amnesty for the goblin priest, who may have been the only other surviving member of his adopted society by then.

Late in his life Ingish began worshipping a rampaging giant he'd seen battle his goblin kidnapper while still a prisoner. The giant passed through his life kind of like Halley's comet, right at the begining and just before the end. The list of gods and demons he'd worshipped and the various entities he'd claimed membership in made me sad: he fought so hard for so long, and for what? His dwarveness, his goblinness, his marriage, his nation, his sense of who his family was and who he had to protect, as it all kept shifting and changing around him. He was a dwarf constantly in search of something to believe in, and his capacity for belief gave him a terrible power. If that didn't alienate him from his fellow dwarves, I'm sure the fact he'd personally killed (and occasionally eaten) everyone's grandparents did.

I deleted his whole world after I realized I'd spent 40 hours researching his history in a week that I worked 50 hours, and was still accruing more detail. When I found out he'd shot and killed his youngest sister I cried.

[Jake]

I get this feeling after every battle or tantrum spiral, to be honest. I've spent years of these people's lives watching over them, guiding them from above as they build their homes and lives, and I'm not ashamed to admit I get attached to the ornery little buggers quite quickly.

[Indricotherium]

I had a situation in an early version of .31.x where an unkillable steam beast attacked my fort. I managed to pin it down outside the gate by judiciously feeding war animals into the fray to replace the ones that died from thirst or starvation while the dwarfs desperately built a space elevator to the sky and then a boom out over the battle area so that I could collapse a chunk of flooring on top of the thing to kill it. I gave the dwarf mason who finished the last floor areas the custom title of 'Astro-Dwarf' and ordered him to deconstruct the crucial floor section. I discovered, of course, that he did so from the wrong side when he rode it down like what's-his-name in Dr. Strangelove to slay the beast and save the fortress!

That wasn't the sad part. I thought that part was awesome and made sure his coffin was ringed in gold statues to commemerate him. No, later on during the cleanup I noticed a pile of clothes directly next to the spot where the intrepid hero landed after his 25z level plunge. Curious, I looked up their owner. They belonged to his wife. I didn't know he was married. Instantly in my mind I could see her tearing her clothes in agony and despair next to the bloody depression in the earth where her husband sacrificed himself to save her and the fort.

A few months later she bore a daughter. He was listed as the baby's father. So she was pregnant during the monster's attack.

That made me sit back and sigh...

[Tcei]

In an older 40d fort I had grown bored with; I decided to open the hfs. For a long while nothing happened so I decided to station my military in the tunnel leading to the hfs.

Spoiler: hfs related tragedy (click to show/hide)

At first it was only frog demons, which my multi-legendary military dispatched with ease, then came the first wave of spirits of fire and a demon! Needless to say the demons wiped out my military, save for one unfortunate dwarf. For whatever reason this unlucky dwarf was singled out to be tortured but not killed; each demon took it's time, gouging an eye out or breaking a bone, before growing bored and seeking out the fortress proper.At last the final Spirit of Fire moved on, leaving the unfotunate soldier broken and blinded on the tunnel floor.

Terrified and knowing only that he wanted to get as far from the demons as possible he began to crawl his way down the tunnel, not realizing that he was crawling deeper in rather than out. As he crawled inch by agonizing inch,he stumbled upon more and more frog demons, who like their more powerful brethren, took joy in torturing him rather than killing him. At long last, with nearly every bone broke or missing he made his way to the edge of the pit - just as another Spirit of Fire emerged.  Determined that he would not go out without taking at least one more demon with him, he tackled the spirit of fire, sending the flaming abomination shrieking into the bottomless depths of hell with him. Out of respect for his noble - if pointless- sacrifice, I chose then to abandon.

To this day I wish I'd taken the time to write down this brave soldier's name.

[farecoal]

I get this feeling after every battle or tantrum spiral, to be honest. I've spent years of these people's lives watching over them, guiding them from above as they build their homes and lives, and I'm not ashamed to admit I get attached to the ornery little buggers quite quickly.

Same here, getting attached. That's why it was so sad to see all my dwarves dead.

[Jake]

Well thank heavens for that! I thought I was the only one.

[Kobold Troubadour]

Reading some stuff in Legends...I came across an interesting tale (Unfortunately, I didn't bother to write down names & most relationships):

It started as usual, with a disagreement between a Goblin nation and Dwarven one. The Goblin civ was led by a Demon, and it wanted every dwarf dead.

The brave dwarves fought with such bravery but the Goblin army was indeed formidable as it consisted of goblin warriors as well as kidnapped & brainwashed humans & elves, beating them at every encounter & slowly pushing them back until they were cornered in their own fortress. The dwarves offered peace...the Demon and goblins only wanted more bloodshed.

But surprisingly, the Goblins was unable to to break through their defences even when the dwarves kept on losing more warriors every battle. In time, there was only one left to defend them. This Dwarf defended his home alone for several years, even meeting them head on in the battlefield several times, but was unable to stop the kidnappings of several children, one of them his own. He eventually got a new recruit to join him in but alas, the rookie died in his 1st battle.

This continued for several more years...until that faithful day that the lone defender was finally bested in a duel against a fellow dwarf. The knife twist in the wound was...it was his own son that killed him (and I don't exactly remember if His son ate him or not...I'd rather not remember).

[Medicine Man]

Dwarf fortress is awesome with some of the stories that come out of it.


We need a single dwarf to fight the gobbo's off who have killed everyone around him and then fight his brainwashed brother as the last opponant in the gobbo army.

[Herbiie]

In the 40d Fort I have atm almost every goblin siege is quite sad, the last one had over 40 goblins attacking, during the attack 8 of my dwarfs died. I have two monuments to the dead at the Third Battle of Cloisterwood and the Fourth Battle of Cloisteredwood (both sieges, the first one 5 of my soldiers were slain as the gobbos stormed the northern gate, second 6 soldiers and 2 civilians died at the southern gate)

During the third battle of cloistered wood I had 3 dwarfs with swords in a squad guarding the northern gate. They were all good friends. When the Goblins attacked, they came straight into the gate that the dwarfs were defending, The first one to die (Rovod Thobstigaz) was killed almost immediately, sending the other two (Ingish Itebenas and Dumed Dakostatir) into martital trances where they fought they're way too Rovod's corpse and lay about them, both were eventually killed but they slew no less than 7 Goblins. During this fight, they were not only defending one another - but the whole fortress, their sacrifice to their friends and their fortress held the northern gate long enough for reinforcements to flood into the gateway in the form of two champion, 3 spear dwarfs, and a crowd of marksdwarfs on the walls. In the end two of my marksdwarfs were shot in the bitter firefight between my dwarfs and the Goblin archers. At least 19 goblins were killed, and several escaped (one crawling with a bolt in his leg).

*sniff* so sad.

[darkflagrance]

The Legend of Tholtig in my sig ultimately ends in tragedy...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

She dies alone of old age, her children and husband long since dead, and the mountainhome she fought for her entire life to defend is abandoned to her enemies.

Along with that, I once modded in giant spiders to lay siege to my fort. They were a bit too efficient, and annihilated my entire army, including my militia commander, in a single siege, trapping them in silk before dismembering them slowly.

To deal with them, I set up a cunning trap. My fort had two entrances, one right above the other. The lower one was reach by means of a ramp, and a retracting bridge covered that ramp so that when the lower entrance was sealed off by it, the upper entrance would be opened. More bridges in front and behind them allowed me to further control the position of enemies within my defenses.

I chained a pair of war bulls near the underground entrance, next to my trade depot. A drawbridge behind them would prevent anything from passing them into my fort. I planned to trap a squad of spiders between that bridge and the one that covered the entrance ramp, after which my marksdwarves would fire from fortifications in the walls.

That part of my plan worked. However, I had forgotten that I positioned a marksdwarf right on top of the retracted drawbridge to the trade depot - and she was carrying a baby, because I made sure all my female dwarves with children wielded crossbows to prevent them from getting in harm's way. When I reopened the trap, she fell into the trade depot, and the next wave of spiders swarmed her. She fought valiantly, but she and her child were torn apart before my military could shoot the rest of the spiders to death and retrieve her.

Her husband had been one of those who died in the original battle with the spiders.

[Interus]

I remember reading one really sad story somewhere on these forums.  I don't even remember which subforum it was in exactly.  Probably adventure mode, because it's the story of a miner that somebody named his adventurer after.  The miner had been the only survivor of a terrible tragedy that had struck the player's last fortress.  A weaponsmith was suddenly struck with a mood, and ended up killing a child in order to make what he needed.  After striking down the child, he took his bones and formed a wondrous dwarf-bone axe.  Unfortunately, the first person to see the weapon was the child's grieving mother.  She took up the axe and killed the weaponsmith in her anger.  Then she killed everybody else she could find in the fortress and eventually died from the wounds she received in the battle.  As a said before, the only survivor was the miner who was deep in the mines, expanding the tunnels.  He eventually comes up, sees that everybody he ever knew was dead, and decided that he really needed to sleep, because he'd been working hard, and honestly, that's too much to stay awake through anyway.

I embellished a little.