(https://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/8/8f/Tholtig.jpg)
-courtesy of burningpet-
(https://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/2/2f/231.jpg)
-contributed by igorgitirana-
(http://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/a/ac/Ahumbleoffering.png)
may you continue with your elf murdering ways for all eternity
and stand as an example for all those child bearing elite soldiers
-contributed by PlutoniumApe-
I decided to post this here after others asked me to, and because it chronicles truly rare greatness within Legends Mode. Stories like this are the chief reason why Legends Mode should be improved to allow easier browsing - they epitomize the awesome possibilities hidden under the overload of names and dates.
There is now a wiki page devoted to Tholtig (https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tholtig).
At the very minimum, at least check out her kill count.
Some of what others have written:
HOLY CARP! Tholtig truly is an inspiring dwarf! She must've had been blessed by Armok himself!
Tholtig's story is truly an epic one, on par with any of the heroes from the Chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
when i was reading about tholtig, i was getting flashbacks to reading the Silmarillion
I am going to be sorely (read genocidally) disappointed if Tholtig ends up being forgotten, merely another footnote in the heaps of forum history to be glanced at and then never thought of again. This is epic... the sort of thing that should inspire novels.
Captain Ironblood apparently has a wife waiting for him in Dwarven Valhalla.
(Although Tholtig already has a husband and ten kids...)
That's an amazing tale. This kind of thing makes me excited for the release where we get to fight wars outside of our own fortress in dwarf mode.
I hope Toady sees this:
Personally, I think that's Toady's biggest accomplishment with DF. Most of the legendary dwarves are not his or Threetoe's, they're the stories and worlds made by the community. Most game developers can only dream of such a thing.
*Haspen cancels: forum lurking. Went to build a catherdral for Tholtig*
I barely get 600-800 kills with my overpowered adventurer.
She's more than EPIC.
Wow... and if Tholtig's history was not impressive enough as is, your writeup of said history was a true pleasure to read...
Nothing could top this ever. Tholtig is the Planepacked of historical figures.
You really should get her her own thread already.
Seconded.
What do you think?
***
This is the tragic but inspiring legend of Tholtig Momuzidek Lelumdoren, "Tholtig Cryptbrain the Waning Diamonds," and the bloody century and a half-long war with the elves that she was born into and died within. It is long, for it chronicles the epic of an entire dwarf civilization, but there is a screenshot at the end that summarizes her greatness.
I discovered her story while I was browsing legends mode tracing the many wars of the era (I was looking for a world with a long history and interesting events to engrave, and had therefore increased the size of megabeasts from 20 to 70, except for hydras, which I increased to 140) and happened to notice her name appear over and over, throughout the decades.
She was the fifth and last ruler of the dwarven cilization known as the Bronze Orbs, and ruled the mountainhome of Circletower.
Her grandfather Meng Emetmistem Tirdugzodost Urrith, "Meng Freshportal the Brutal Rot of Scarring," had been the first of their line to rule Circletower, after the previous queen, only daughter of the first ruler since time immemorial, had died childless, slain by a titan after ruling for only less than a year. Meng had earned the throne after he himself stepped up to duel with the titan, driving it off but receiving a heavy wound to his lower body in the process.
It was Meng who had started the war with the elves, incensed over their devouring of sentient beings. In the year 81 he led ten of his best dwarves against fifteen of the elves of the Steamy Winds, slaying five of them in exchange for two of his comrades. Several dwarves who would go on to earn fame and honor earned their first kills in that first conflict, among them Goden Leafybridges the Talon of Shooting (294 kills, the elder, dispossessed son of the first ruler of Circletower), his wife Tosid Stockadefortunes the Lined Friend (146 kills), and Goden Routedgates the Jade Planes of Braving (23 kills).
However, Meng had picked as his foe a powerful elf civ on the rise. During the same years as they fought with the dwarves, the Steamy Winds declared war on the humans and a goblin tyranny ruled by a demon - it was a world war of unimaginable scale. Cities and forest retreats were stained with the blood of literally tens of thousands of the dead, settlements were razed repeatedly by both sides as they fought over them, and the fortunes of empires often turned on a single battle. By the end of it all, over 250 years later, the great elven forest that once stretched across the map was reduced to scattered outposts, but this was long after the passing of Meng and his daughters.
Meng died forty years after claiming the throne in 113, and the skulls of 91 elves decorate the mausoleum where he was laid to rest. He had outlived all but one of his children, the rest having been slain (but thankfully not devoured) by elves.
The only survivor, Metthos Rodercatten Notlith Am, "Metthos Baldedchanneled the Ruin of Speaking," (101 kills) ruled for only seven years before her death leading the Bronze Orbs to victory against a force of elves that outnumbered the dwarves more than 6 to 1, leaving the throne to her only daughter, the aforementioned Tholtig, who had just turned 30. There had been no other children because Metthos's husband had been slain by elves two years after Tholtig's birth.
The odds would only get worse after her death.
As soon as she could raise a hammer at the age of twelve, Tholtig had joined her parents and grandparents on the battlefield. The dwarves had no choice, for their losses were so great that they needed every pair of hammer-wielding arms they could find. By the time she ascended the throne in 121, she had slain 48 elves and a cyclops, but the amount of dwarves left capable of wielding a weapon numbered less than ten. Nonetheless, she led them to victory in her first assault against the elves, but it was a Pyrrhic victory that saw the deaths of two of her children, including her eldest son.
The war saw the rise of numerous heroes and their offspring: among them Alath Pageplaited the Circular Tongs (60 kills, slain by a hydra in 103), Olon Orblabors the Fenced Sandal of Shadow (Alath's brother, 118 kills, became a diplomat halfway through the war and stopped going to battle), Unib Lancemet the Way of Boiling (the sister of Alath and Olon, 8 kills, slain by an elven arrow), and Mafol Drilledhammer the Violence of Forests (Son of Tholtig, with a mere 5 kills before death by an arrow) Many elf heroes of the wars with the humans and goblins, flouting long titles earned by the lives they had ended, themselves met their end at the hands of Tholtig or her brothers and sisters in arms. A typical battle might see 281 elves arrayed against a mere 4 dwarves, only for 96 elves to perish with all 4 dwarves surviving, yet this continued year after year. There was an elf leader who met each of the dwarf heroes in battle multiple times for eight years and escaped, before Tholtig finally killed him in their third duel. However, as time passed, the elves only grew more numerous, while the dwarves, their numbers decimated by constant warfare and their children dying without offspring, only grew closer to ultimate defeat.
Tholtig married Logem Uthmikmelbil Gosterudosiddor, "Logem Shaketomes the Hoary Men-larks," son of the heroes Leafybridges and Stockadefortunes from the first battle between the dwarves and elves and brother of Alath, Olon, and Unib. Unlike previous rulers of the Bronze Orbs, Tholtig and her husband had many children, numbering ten in all. However, fate was against the Bronze Orbs: eight of her children died at tender ages shortly after taking up arms against the elves, and even the two who survived the wars met misfortune elsewhere. Her youngest daughter, Urist Joinedrings the Permanent Scars, who had slain 176 elves and survived countless battles, was slain by a hydra, but most tragically of all, Tholtig's eldest daughter and heir, Erush Racktoned the Rough Miseries of Quiescence, was slain at the age of 90, having slain 1007 elves, by the same titan that her great-grandfather King Meng had driven off to claim his throne, which had suddenly returned 100 years later to plague the Bronze Orbs.
However, time was a foe that even legendary force of arms could not overcome. In 200, five years after Tholtig mourned the passing of her heir, an adventurer slew that same hydra that took the life of Tholtig's youngest daughter and brought an end to the Age of Legends. By then, only three dwarves remained to defend Circletower: Tholtig, her husband Logem, and Obok Willbolt the Drinks of Ruining (a venerable dwarf, great-grandson of the heroes Goden and Tosid, who had witnessed the rise of Tholtig's grandfather and the beginning of the war a century ago and amassed 1654 trophies), along with of course the diplomat Olon, who by then must have been regretting the pacifism had cost him equal glory.
Lacking children to carry on and therefore hope, the remaining dwarves slowly slipped away, Obok in 227, Logem in 237, and finally Olon the diplomat in 242. For nearly ten years, from 237 onwards, Tholtig defended her ancestral home of Circletower alone. Each of these years year saw one hundred or more elves lay siege to the empty halls where Tholtig's entire clan lay sleeping, only to be driven back in bloody defeat. Alone she stood, hammer in hand, the only force between her home and fiery conquest. Despite the injustice of fate that had taken away her children and the inevitability of defeat, she held her ground until at last in 246 when old age struck her down, something no mortal weapon could have aspired to. And so fell the last dwarf of the Bronze Orbs - and with Tholtig's death ended their entire civilization and history.
Tholtig had lived for one hundred and fifty-six years, all of which had seen no peace for her, and outlived all of her children, her friends, and her husband. Logem, the second-to last of the dwarves to pass on, had died with 1955 kills. To give an idea of how many Tholtig had killed, it took one minute and thirteen seconds to scroll from the top of her entry to the bottom.
The Kills of Tholtig Cryptbrain the Waning Diamonds, Last Queen of the Bronze Orbs and Ruler of Circletower:
(https://i.imgur.com/TgOBjni.png)
***
I imagine that Tholtig considered her final end glorious, for she did not die an ignominious death, or fade away at the end of an age, but passed on at the height of her glory in the midst of war, hammer in hand, bringing down with her a great elven civilization, all the while proving her invincibility. So passed the last dwarf from the world.
Commentary:
To work out her story, and the story of her family, required me to painstakingly search for the entry of each of the dwarves whose names appeared in the conflict - otherwise such connections as the identities of Tholtig's children would have been lost. [Filter on string] is your friend. Also, the fact that the heroes in the war not directly related to Tholtig by blood were actually members of the original royal family, and that therefore that everyone in the war was a member of one last great Dwarven clan, was lost to me until recently due to the obscurity of Legends mode.
The total death toll on the elven civ as a result of the above dwarve alone was 7978. One must bear in mind they suffered these casualties concurrently with the losses from the wars with the goblin tyranny ruled by the demon Zedan Demonburied the Dust of Midnights, who ruled until 157 and acquired 105 kills personally, as well as two human civs.
Also, the image here is a better version of the one I had previously posted that includes the cyclops.
Her eyes grow heavy, heavier then her axe and shield. The ancient metal stainded and scarred from the lifetime of combat that it has seen. Her husbands' axe in her hands, the head notched and cracked, but still razor sharp. A lone elf stares at her, his dead eyes unseeingly witnessing her final momets.
"I, Tholtig Cryptbrain, Daughter of Metthos Rodercatten Notlith Am. Have grown old.
I have seen so much death, and partaken of so much violence. I have outlived my children, my husband and my empire."
She drops the axe to the floor and throws her shield to the side.
"I, Tholtig Cryptbrain, Grandaughter of Meng Emetmistem Tirdugzodost Urrith, Have grown tired.
My arm has ended so many lives, My hands have touched the hands of so many great warriors.
Dwarf, Human and even Elf.
Her eyes, now moistening for the first time in many years, hold the dead stare of the elf nailed to the wall.
"I, Tholtig Cryptbrain, Widow of Logem Uthmikmelbil Gosterudosiddor, Have need of rest.
Body, Mind and soul I am tired. I have stood, like a cliff before the ocean, for so long. My bones ache with sorrow, hate and a fatigue deeper then the very pits of hell."
She reaches up and wipes the tears away, the elf no longer before her.
"I, Tholtig Cryptbrain, Mother of a murdered family, Have need of peace.
I desire the touch of my husband, the sounds of my children, the laughter of my mother and father and the respect of my Grandfather"
Her eyes unfocus as she stares out over a brightly lit hall, precious metals and gems glitter in the light that seems to come from everywhere yet nowhere. In the distance she can hear the sound of laughter and her husband happily calling her name. Tears stream down her face, cleaning away the blood and grime of her life. She stands and reaches towards the sounds.
"Logem... My love, I have come home..."
She falls forward with a clatter of metal on stone, her hand still reaching out towards the silent sounds of happiness. But she stands still, upon smooth obsidian and engraved iron. Her husband wrapping his arms around her, burying her face in his beard. Her children crowd around them, hugging, crying and praising their mother. Their Queen. She whispers to her husband.
"My love... I am at pe..."
Her eyes darken and her breathing stops. She leaves to spend eternity with her family. Her vigil ended.
Epilogue
The elf lord looks down at the fallen dwarf. Her Artifact Armour covered in the blood of his people. By her hand had his father, uncle, mother and brother all fallen. He hated her.
Druid! Bring me the book of records
He stands, still looking at the fallen figure, his eyes smouldering with hate and... something else...
Record this day, Druid. Tholtig Cryptbrain, Enemy of the Elven people, Slayer of Thousands and Defiler of Trees. Has died.
He turns and glares at the rotten elf remains pinned to the wall opposite the fallen legend. The elf's empty sockets staring out at the grand throne room. The elf lord idly taps the pommel of his wooden sword. The Druid looks up at him.
My lord, Shall we prepare a ritual feast in honour of this day?
The lord stands still for a moment. Before he slowly draws his sword and turns on his Druid.
What honour is to be had today? Druid. A great foe has fallen. Dying of old age nonetheless, She did not suffer for her crimes. Nor did she die in glorious battle. She has died a sad death...
He pushes the tip of his sword against the Druid's neck.
Alone... Remembering loved ones, friends and times when life was better...
He looks at the corpse again. then slides his sword away.
Seal the chamber. Pull the lever we found on the way in... If I am not mistaken it will flood the entire place with magma...
He grins over his shoulder at the Druid.
That seems oddly... Appropriate...
His footsteps echo down the empty halls and caverns. the druid breathes a sigh of relief and turns to order a solder to locate the lever. The steps stop for a second before his voice rings out clear and sweet.
Oh, and Druid... I hope the Magma devours you quickly.
The druids' eyes stare at the retreating figure of the Lord as laughter fills the Halls...
Tholtig places her youngest child into his bed, her Husband standing at the doorway. She looks up at him and smiles. Knowing that tomorrow will be the same as today. Just as it was the day before that and the day before that...
Perfect.
(http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n229/benkashmir/tholtig.jpg)
A mother loses her child.
option1:
(http://www.image-share.com/upload/1258/231m.jpg) (http://www.image-share.com/ijpg-1258-231.html)
option2:
(http://i39.tinypic.com/igcgw8.jpg)
Sorry for the errors of perspective