The construction took place over the course of the first decade or so, with slow progress due to various incidents after that. The layout consisted of an outdoor courtyard open to the overbright and lined with coffins of the dead (seriously, something like 500 dwarves died here, the coffin maker's couldn't keep pace when tantrum spirals hit); the courtyard itself was the site of the fort's first massacre. The courtyard was carved into a natural stone bowl at the entrance of the fort. The main gate was exiting to the left, while the gate into the city itself was to to south. Inside the gate was a massive tiered construction spanning 4 or 5 z levels. Just to the right of the entrance was the trade depot and The Weary Traveler Inn. The wood stockpile to the left, and various office buildings to the south. Below that was 1 z level which made up the farms, with housing below that. The housing area was another large cavern mined out of solid rock by the dwarves, with housing consisting of a large, multistory dumbell tenement design (which looks awesome by the way) to the left of the main ramp down from the upper layers. To the right was a bridge taking you over a several z level drop to the Grand Hall. The Grand Hall being a 3 story fully engraved structure with seating for over a hundred dwarves and plenty of room to spare. It was quite the sight to behold. Below all this was the industrial layer. It was about 4 stories tall, with a large magma holding tank and just about any sort of industrial workshop. The magma holding tank was supplied by the massive 50+ level pump stack powered by windmills on the surface with about 1500 power. The tank could then be released via the magma cannon onto enemies on the surface, and was used against goblin sieges several times to great effect. Although the pump stack was constantly being invaded by forgotten beasts. Deep below that was the tree farm created in a partially natural cave.
The first big event was the slaughter by goblin crossbowmen in the Courtyard. I had 1 military dwarf at the time. Goblin crossbowmen parked up top of the courtyard, firing dozens of bolts down on the pets and civilians down below. I sent out the military dwarf, and being sensible for once, sent him after some goblin melee units. They fled, with much of their squad wiped out, and the goblin bowmen left. As he returned inside, the military dwarf encountered a goblin thief. This thief became violent, murdering a dwarf, and severely injuring the military dwarf. He healed over the course of the next year, save for a gimpy yellow status leg. It was, apparently, enough for him to not survive the next year. At that point, I had built a wall around the courtyard to prevent a repeat of the last year's events. I sent out my military dwarf, now more well trained than ever, to confront the newly arrived goblin attack. The results were less than good for his health. A group of goblin macemen ambushed him, beating him repeatedly. Every bone, sinew, and tissue in his body was red, with blood covering a large radius around him, and the macemen continued beating him for months before he finally died. It was probably the most horrible death I have yet seen in dwarf fortress. Surrounded by mace wielding goblins repeatedly beating him over and over for months. IIRC, the tantrum spiral era started soon afterwards.
It went through several goblin-induced tantrum spirals, reducing the population from 100+ to only about a dozen on at least 2 occasions, a dozen or so forgotten beasts over the course of its history, one of which climbed up the 70 z level garbage chute, only to be pushed off the edge by a dwarf and falling all the way to the bottom (this fort had some pretty epic forgotten beast battles on stairs next to said garbage chute). Also, we had decent captive bear and wolf populations.
A good deal later, I decided to mine adamantine, and after only a little of it, I ended up with a demoic horde of about 75 demons invading my fort of about an equal number of dwarves. The ensuing battle was really extremely epic, with corpses of demons, dwarves, bears, and wolves scattered all over. The demons managed to take the fort, slaughtering nearly all dwarves. Two survived, a peasant names Nil, whose name shall always now be remembered, and some other drunkard who was supposed to be my fort's lone bow-dwarf who was sleeping and I would like to imagine passed out in a pile of wine bottles (incompetent moron couldn't be bothered to wake up while even the untrained, unarmed children did battle with the demonic horde), through the entire horrifying slaughter. The bowdwarf I had wall herself into the basement food pantry of The Weary Traveler Inn (so named due to its position next to the trade depot) and so she had plenty of food and booze, the lazy git. Nil, on the other hand, had work to do. She managed to skirt around the demons and make it to the outer barracks, whereupon she acquired a pickaxe. The skill with which this pickaxe was wielded would soon become the stuff of legends. But before then, she made it to an old mining shaft once used as an emergency airlock for dwarves surviving goblin attacks and walled herself in. She then dug a shaft to the Lazy One's chamber, thus ensuring she had booze and food aplenty. Migrants were first priority, and so a system to retrieve them was quickly set up. Luckily, the demons stayed for the most part inside the fort, all oddly gathering to the graveyard. (At this point, something odd did happen; some sort of bug with pathfinding or something meant all the demons congregated on a single tile in the graveyard, with about 50 of them on the same tile at its peak.) While waiting for the immigrants necessary to rebuild their shattered fort, Nil began to dig up into a chamber several layers and half a dozen locked doors from the demons. After securing the room by walling off any possible entrances, Nil began the final operation. A platform over a support was constructed, with a lever attached to it. Nil's lever was pulled, sending the floors crashing down half a dozen layers, killing nearly 50 demons in a single moment. Nil had managed to destroy more of their foes with the work of half a dozen pieces of stone than all the warriors with their adamantine platemail combined. Hell, more than all other dwarves in the entire fort combined even. Meanwhile, Urist McUselessBowDwarf was sitting in the food stockpiles and, I would imagine, getting sh*tfaced drunk in a pile of her own useless vomit. I think I later fed her to the demons.
The 'shadow fort' as I referred to it, grew in size as more migrants came, eventually becoming an actual working fort of some description, built in the crawlspaces between the walls of the old fort, now infested by the 15 or so remaining demons. It became a safe haven in the otherwise utterly destroyed and deteriorated ruins of the old fort.
Low FPS and a demonic repo of the fort mostly made me lose interest and I deleted several of the save files, although there may be some of various description floating around my hard drives and flash drives. I was getting something like 15 FPS on RIT's I-7 processor game development lab computers at that point*, and god forbid you try to play it on even a mid-range system.
Edit: found the save file, if anyone wants to take a peek
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=3682*Not actually measured; I turned off FPS long ago since it became depressing to watch it.
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Topic: Crowning moments of awesome while playing a game. (Read 7767 times)