Forward: Phew, this post turned out way longer than I thought it would, so sorry for the wall of text, but I hope you enjoy it.
Now that the new version of DF is out I've been getting back into the game, and I wanted to try out the new stuff I'd heard about in adventure mode. So I read back over the quickstart guide on the wiki to figure out some decent starting stats/skill and remind myself what the key-bindings are. Then I rolled up a demi-god swordsman and started questing. He died on his second mission, in swordsmanly combat. His reincarnation fared better, taking out enough small timers to get a quest to take out a dragon, unfortunately he was melted to death because his companions didn't care for a stealth approach when entering the cramped quarters of a fire-breathing beast's lair. The next few died mostly of impatience, as raiding forts for armor to equip was starting to feel tedious.
I had just created my sixth adventurer in two hours of playtime and was starting to feel a bit frustrated. This latest character (Sai VI Fatebound The Immortal Shadow Of Death) started off like usual, at the edge of some town or hamlet, except I noticed he was standing just a few tiles away from a stray dog. I felt like doing something mean, so I sauntered over and aimed a kick at it's tail. Seeing as it was an impossible shot and I had exactly 0 skill in kicker, it should come as no surprise that I missed. I had assumed that the dog would run away, like most random wildlife does when attacked, but apparently this dog was not willing to let the issue drop. It followed me, attacking several times before my adventurer got fed up and counter-attacked automatically, striking it in the head with the pommel of his bronze longsword and jamming the skull into the brain. Uh, oops. So, just as any good adventurer would, I butchered the corpse and stuffed the dog meat into my pack. Waste not, want not and all that.
That done, I was starting to feel kind of bad. I had attacked, killed, butchered, and pillaged some poor sod's dog, essentially without provocation, and all in the first 30 turns of my new adventuring career. I know it was a 'stray' dog, but it was also (Tame), and it belonged to these townspeople. Well, I had been planning on wandering the wilderness hunting whatever wildlife I could to build up my sword skills, but I sort of wanted to make things right here before I left. I didn't expect that any of the NPCs in town would be sophisticated enough to talk about the fact that I'd just murdered their dog, but I could go to the nearby house and ask about a service, maybe kill some night creature or bandit leader for the townspeople, by way of apology. So I headed on over to the house, stepped into the doorway, and promptly beheaded the tanner standing on the other side. Oh, Shit.
What the hell just happened!? I was holding down the right arrow key to move into the house, and... attempting to move onto a tile occupied by a hostile creature causes your adventurer to execute an unaimed attack... I guess this dwarf tanner was standing here peeking out the door and witnessed my second degree dog-slaughter, and it must have offended him so deeply that he marked himself hostile to me. I would have tried some diplomacy first, but the damn random number generator hates me; I just had to slash the guy's head off in one hit, instead of missing or performing some useless wrestling grab like an unaimed attack usually does. I really doubted anyone would believe me if I claimed to have cut his head off 'by accident'.
Hmm, maybe no one witnessed my little, ah, indiscretion. I took a few steps into the room to see if anyone else was home, and noticed there was a second tanner in the vicinity, and he was heading straight for me. I didn't think he was coming over to shake my hand, but I waited a few turns just to see what he would do. Sure enough, the hairy little fellow stabbed me in the chest with his copper slicing knife, bruising the fat through my llama wool... dress? I tried talking to him with 'k', but that didn't seem to do anything at all. It looked like I had two choices, either defend myself or let this dwarf kill me in recompense for accidentally decapitating his flatmate.
I got into character and thought to myself "Screw this, I spent my last five incarnations fighting bogeymen, bandits, night creatures, and a fire-breathing dragon for the sake of these lazy peasants who never do a thing for themselves, and just stand around in their houses all day. I'm not about to roll over and die for this useless little pushover." So I aimed a few retaliatory attacks of my own, and within a few rounds I had disarmed him (by chopping off his weapon hand really), smashed up one of his legs, and mortally wounded him with a stab to the lung, and all without a scratch on me beyond the initial bruise. It seemed he'd had his fill of fighting as he wisely started to crawl away from me, toward the door on the opposite side of the room. I was content to let him go, figuring that between his horrible maiming and my abrupt murder-entry he had learned not to mess with me.
Not sure what to do next, I decided to loot the first dwarf's body and check the house for other valuables, just as any good adventurer would do. There was nothing but clothes on the body and the plant bag in the corner contained only inedible rope reeds, but as I continued my search the maimed dwarf finally dragged himself to the door. It didn't lead to the outside as I had assumed, instead it opened to another room of the building, this one with another four dwarfs idling in it. I suppose that from their perspective things must've look pretty cut and dried, what with me standing there rifling through their possessions, a bloody longsword in my hand, a headless body laying in a pool of blood by the door, and a gasping, disfigured dwarf leaving a trail of blood behind as he desperately dragged himself away from me.
Naturally, they decided it was time to get dwarfy and rushed in for a fight. They had me outnumbered, but I had certain advantages of my own, such as a weapon, a shield, advanced martial skills, and the ability to target specific body-parts for best combat efficiency. The civilians really were nothing compared to the bandits and creatures I'd fought before and in the end it didn't take long to get them sorted out. Afterward I found the maimed dwarf from earlier had bled out during the fight. Then I took a minute to survey the results of my apology visit: blood on every surface, miscellaneous body parts strewn about, six mutilated dwarf corpses, and an empty quest log.
See for yourself:
(http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/1513/murderhousezoom.png)
Upon further inspection I noticed that the dwarf I accidentally beheaded was actually standing (maybe sitting?) on a chair by the door, though I'm not sure why you would put a chair directly in front of a door.
Well, I was a serial killer, and a cross-dresser too, apparently. I guess you find out new things about yourself every day. I had never done anything like this in my past adventure-mode games, or my adventurer's past lives, as I tend to think of them. I really had no idea what came next. I assumed that the town guard would show up, armed and armored to deliver justice, but as I stepped outside I saw no one in the immediate area. Which made sense, I thought, after all the guards wouldn't 'just know' that I'd killed a bunch of people, someone would need to find the bodies and report the crime. Hell, maybe I could just walk away and no one would ever know I did it. I could find another house, get some quests and try to apologize again. I'm not sure exactly how many good deeds you have to do to make up for a minor murder-spree, but slaying a few dragons and deposing some vampires couldn't go amiss.
With renewed hope I set off for another house that I had seen earlier. Halfway there something unusual happened. Animals burst from the hills by the dozen, a veritable horde of Dogs, Ducks, and Drakes. Like something out of a dream, they converged from every direction and as the first of them reached me I realized they were attacking. I fought, and they died easily without even coming close to hurting me. They were numerous, but individually they were laughably weak. After the first dozen or so fell, many of them began to retreat, only to rally and charge again. Eventually their numbers dwindled to nothing, and I was left to wonder what had just happened. Were these animals seeking revenge for their fallen comrade, or perhaps even more bizarrely they were the police force in this town.
Results of the mass animal attack:
(http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/1363/deadanimalfield.png)
Also pictured: the leftover intestines and whatnot of the butchered dog, I only ever bother to grab the meat stack.
I thought about butchering the corpses, but a field full of neatly butchered animals might be even more conspicuous than a house full of dead dwarfs, and the weight of the meat would've slowed me to snails pace anyway. Instead I continued on, towards the other house, to see what the inhabitants would make of me. At least covered with so much animal blood from head to toe, no one could make out the dwarf-blood stains from earlier. Though I'm not sure if there's a readily discernible difference between the two.
As I made my approach to the house I took each step leading up to the door with great care. I managed to make it into the doorway without killing anyone, and found the room ahead to be empty. There was a door in the back wall, presumably to another room in the elongated building. I crossed the room, again carefully, and stepped into the next doorway. There was a human bone carver in the next room. As I stepped forward and waited, he approached me. I tried diplomacy again, but he refused to answer. I let him close the distance, maybe he just thought I needed help, because of all the blood I was covered in. Come to think of it, walking into a person's house covered in blood might not be the best way to make a good first impression. He seemed to agree, as he began attacking as soon as he was close enough. Damn, maybe I could calm him down? I tried slapping him in the lower body with the flat of my blade until he began vomiting. Well, this stopped him from attacking, but I didn't think it would lead to peace the long term. Eventually he recovered enough to resume his attack, I wasn't sure what else to do, so I tried gently breaking his bones until he became unconscious, but even this didn't get him talking. In the end I put him down, as it seemed more humane than leaving his crippled body to starve.
I had tried all three things I could think of to make peace with the hostile towns-person, and it seemed as though I just couldn't make amends. Moreover, the man had known what I had done somehow, despite being in the windowless back room of his house, maybe he 'just knew', or maybe those strange animals had seen me leaving the murder-house and warned everyone in town. Either way it hardly mattered. Unless I wanted to fight more innocents, I would have to skip town and make my way out of this territory post-haste. I searched the second house and took stock of my supplies before leaving. There was nothing of use here either, but I had enough food for a week and enough drink for several months in the form of blood splatter coatings.
Out of curiosity, I checked to see how far my skills had progressed from all the combat. Rather amazingly my dodger was nearly up to talented from proficient, and my swordsmanship had gone from skilled to nearly talented. In fact, the villagers and their animals were quite easy to kill, and almost completely risk free. I started to think about it, and really, that first 'murder' was really more of an 'honest mistake', and all the other murders were more like 'self-defense'. Besides, I hadn't really tried all that hard to make good with these people, and if they all turned out to be irrevocably hostile that wouldn't really be my fault now would it? I decided to search the town for some people who might be willing to listen to me and offer me some task for atonement, and if some unreasonable townspeople attacked me along the way, well they would just have to be 'self-defensed'. And if I happened to gain a great deal of sword skill from all the 'self-defense' that I couldn't avoid, then at least I could put that skill to use later ridding the world of monsters.
...
Several hours have passed since this incident began, and I have explored a great deal of the town and discovered that it has had a huge multiracial population of Humans, Dwarfs, and, most curiously, Goblins. Unfortunately I have not found anyone that would listen to reason and was forced to 'self-defense' a combined total of six-hundred and four townspeople and tame animals, with around one-hundred and fifty of those being the animal portion. My inventory has also accrued over sixty pages of blood spatter coatings, though they don't seem to encumber me, for some strange reason. On the bright side, my sword and fighter skills have grown to legendary with dodger at master level. I will continue my search here for a while longer, but if I find no one to accept my help, I may have to leave for another town at which to offer my legendary services.
P.S. In the course of my search I thought it prudent to visit the fortress in town and ask the Lady there for a pardon directly, since my skills had grown enough to survive even if the guards there turned out to be 'unreasonable'. Unfortunately the Lady attacked me on sight and had to be 'self-defensed' along with the entire garrison.
I guess the moral of the story is, don't kick a dog unless you're willing to become a mass-murderer mass-'self-defenser'.
The story continues here. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=105470.msg3126537#msg3126537)
Edit: Went back and added some pictures of the origin of this slaughter. Edit2: Fixed grammar, phrasing, and structure errors.
You kick a dog, all 500,000 peasants in that civ enable the hive mind and begin hunting you down.
I sort of feared that might be the case from the moment I killed that first guy. Really the most shocking thing about all this is that I managed to decapitate that tanner in just one hit. At 'skilled' level I had very little success in further severing of heads, as most of the strikes were difficult at least, and even when I managed a square hit it usually just resulted in a torn brain. Even at legendary skill I have some difficulty decapitating on command.
Have fun depopulating the kingdom.
Hey! It's not like I wanted to kill everyone... Then again I could have gone about it a bit more tactfully, cause after a while I got bored and tried to fill the entire square with corpses by carefully positioning each victim 'unreasonable person' prior to murdering 'self-defensing' them:
(http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/3686/corpsecarpet.png)
As a side note, the fortress guards in this new version seem like complete pushovers compared to what I remember, you can take like a dozen with you to raid a bandit camp and they'll get completely destroyed in no time flat. It was kind of weird how easy it was to kill all of them. I don't think they even wear armor anymore...
(http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/7226/awthedog.png)
Apparently, highly applicable to DF
Update:
So I've been at it for quite a while now and I still have not found anyone willing to forgive me for kicking that dog. I guess it's just as well, because I've killed quite a few people in their sleep and I don't think anyone would buy an excuse like 'preemptive self defense' any more than they would believe I could accidentally decapitate someone.
My original goal as an adventurer was to achieve over a thousand notable kills and be seen as a hero in the eyes of every civilization in the world. Well, I certainly had over a thousand kills:
(http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/8840/killscreen.png)
My skills and attributes have progressed quite a bit since the fighting began:
(http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/3892/skillsju.png)
(http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/3609/attributes.png)
In other news, I've noticed that the area surrounding this town I've been fighting in has an oddly appropriate name:
(http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/2586/thefieldofexecuting.png)
Maybe this means they're used to countless murders occurring? My rampage certainly hasn't seemed to bother the townspeople much, I just passed back through the square by the markets, where I had created a veritable carpet of corpses, and found that the markets had been re-inhabited while I was away. In fact many of the houses around town where I brutally murdered all of the tenants seem to now be occupied by both the corpses I left to rot and a number of new residents. It's somewhat puzzling that they don't mind the mutilated corpses and blood stains covering all the floors, walls, and furniture.
All in all I've been killing for the better part of two day straight now, and there are still more townspeople showing up all over the place. I'm not sure if I can kill everyone here, as it seems they pop up again as fast as I can slaughter them. It's actually kind of a shame, this is the most populous and interesting town I've seen up 'till now, what with the humans, dwarfs, and goblins all living together in some kind of bizarre harmony. There are also loads of shops including several weapon-smithies and armorers, although they only have copper and silver items available, so they're not really of any use. I've searched several bowyer's shops for anything impressive, but have yet to see a single masterwork item.
Eh, guess they're not so interesting after all. Back to work then; I think I see another couple of markets ahead, this time I'll try to lure them all onto the same tile and create a pile of corpses fifty feet high.