It was the time of 40d DF, and my first turn (ever) on a succession fortress, was in control for year three on a nearly waterless very hot map. There was an underground river somewhere on the 5x5, and a few empty pools. There was a little rain in the spring, but efforts to channel the little water that formed underground so it would stop evaporating failed. The character I took as my narration's perspective took a lover early that year, the fort's expedition leader. An ambush around late summer/early fall caused several wounds and a couple of deaths which dropped morale. I'd never had this problem in my own forts, I'm a trap-heavy very defensive player who avoided "Where's the water" maps in all my earlier games. As the wounded started to dehydrate to death, tantrums started (another problem I'd never dealt with, as when things went bad in my maps I usually abandoned them instead of trying to play them out) and I really didn't know how to help the dwarves quickly calm down.
I'd accepted that I'd killed the fort, and was playing out (and writing out) the miserable rest of the year, with ever so many dwarves (including my narration-perspective) throwing tantrums and wounding more and more dwarves, when my "giving up" and cancelling most of the labors on the dwarves, as well as setting them to a tiny meeting place in the nicest area of the fort started to calm things down. And then I noticed that "my" dwarf's lover was mildly wounded, in bed, and thirsty. He'd been constantly busy for some time holding meetings with disconsolate dwarves, perhaps one finally punched him.
I never saw how he got hurt, or when. But I knew he was dead if he didnt leave that bed soon, because of the waterless map problem. The season was now mid fall. My narration-perspective had -just- stopped tantruming, so she and I threw ourselves into high gear, focused on finding the water (that hidden river somewhere-somewhere! on the map). Ever dwarf calm enough got drafted to dig a search pattern for the water, and in between bursts of dowsing, minor unhappiness control, writing updates, and searching the forum and wiki for possible answers, well, no successful answers were found.
The bed he lay on was finally deconstructed, in the hopes that he might rise and walk to quench his thirst. He -did- rise and stay on his feet, after -all- beds were deconstructed. But he failed to go drink. He was still the leader, still the one that the many upset dwarves wanted to meet with, and somehow the game trapped him in an endless loop of meeting. Even when the last dwarf trying to meet with him had ended the meeting and was doing another labor, the leader was still "conducting meeting", all by himself and still not drinking (perhaps he was meeting with himself? He was very unhappy still). Nor would he return to a bed, once beds were finally redesignated. A good chunk of the map had been strip-mined, cut through with a swath of meaningless searching passages, my year was nearing its end, and he died about halfway through the last winter month, still on his feet to his last gasp, still meeting with no one, at least no one I could see.
My narration perspective returned to tantruming with his death, and my last writings were disjointed and rambled, as befit her horror and despair. I failed to save that dwarf, very true. But my, did I fumblingly try!
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Topic: The Dwarven Caring Thread (Read 4715 times)