Bay 12 Games Forum

The Spawn of Holistic: Big mutant undead(?) dwarves with suspiciously-shaped maws on their chests, first seen in the Something Awful fort Syrupleaf as a powerful "late-game" enemy which accidentally turned up way earlier than intended. Brought back in Spearbreakers, in which they served a similar role and their bite would mutate dwarves into one of them. They are more-or-less how they appeared in Spearbreakers, albeit with some bugfixes -- in particular, they no longer burn forever when immersed in magma. They lack blood, do not breathe, and are impervious to decapitation, magma, nausea, and stunning (unlike in Syrupleaf; DF2010's armor rewrite was not kind to creatures that rely on biting, so I had to buff them somehow). They can only be killed by bisection or damaging their obsidian hearts. In addition, their bite now carries a "special surprise"!

Seething Mist: Similar to the thralling clouds found in vanilla DF, except that it turns affected creatures into "mutants", hulking monstrosities which are similar to thralls except a touch faster and -- most importantly -- vulnerable to bleeding, brain damage, and suffocation. Additionally, mutants will die of catastrophic organ failure after one year, so there is no need to worry about a zombie apocalypse permanently overtaking the surface.

Banshees: A hostile race that operates in much the same manner as goblins, although they steal shit instead of snatching babies. Though much weaker than dwarves and easily-dispatched in direct combat, they have a secret weapon -- their scream, which can target dwarves through walls and, if successful, cripple them with agonising spasms which will put the victim out of commission for a full month. A banshee will start screaming if left on the map for longer than a week, making getting rid of them promptly a must if the fortress is to run smoothly.

Please accept your turn (or not) promptly. I will PM you when your turn comes up. If you don't get back to me within 48 hours I will skip your turn. Even then, if you don't feel like taking your turn, please tell me promptly so that we can keep things moving!

Please stay in touch. If I don't hear from you for more than 48 hours at a stretch I will send you a PM seeing what's up; if you don't respond within a day you will be skipped without further inquiry, UNLESS you give us fair warning beforehand that you won't have Internet access or such.

Please keep playing consistently and keep us updated on your progress. We don't need a full in-character writeup until you're ready to give one, but please try to keep playing and keep us updated on how you're doing. It's okay to have lulls if you're busy or need a (short!) break, but if it's obvious that you aren't making an honest effort to progress the fortress or work on your updates then you will forfeit your turn.

Please refrain from using massive weapon-trap hallways or dwarven atom smashers. Any other contrivances ranging from stonefalls to cave-ins to elaborate minecart skullduggery to magma-powered world-fucking devices are acceptable, however!

Please refrain from using danger rooms or similar training exploits. They make it too easy to replace fallen soldiers. If we are staring death in the face and desperately need more soldiers quickly I may temporarily waive this if I feel that the fort doesn't quite deserve to die yet.

Please don't use DFHack unless there's literally no other option. Unless it's a choice between hacking the game or swiftly losing the entire fortress prematurely, do not use DFHack to tamper with the game. Cheating your way through every single challenge and inconvenience the game throws at you cheapens the game to me. The only exception to this is cleaning up garbage for the sake of FPS in later turns. Further, once the fort has had a good run, don't bother using DFHack if there's a crisis -- just let what happens happen. All forts need to die at some point.

• Additionally, Overseers are authourised to freely use the "tweak patrol-duty" command to stop training soldiers from getting unhappy thoughts.

Please, if you can swing it at all, stick with basic ASCII. Graphics packs can be a pain in the ass to uninstall if you don't know what you're doing and can be difficult to read for people who aren't familiar with the specific pack you're using (e.g. myself). I won't throw too big a fit if you do use them, but I swear to Lucifer if you don't cleanly uninstall the entire thing from the raws before uploading your save and we experience even the slightest graphical fuckery afterwards I will blacklist you from ever having a turn again. It's still acceptable to set custom ASCII tilesets in your init so long as you don't tamper with the actual fortress data.

Please give in-character writeups at some point. Part of the fun of succession games, to me at least, are the roleplay elements, and the overseer is probably the most important piece in this regard, so it'd be great if you'd do your best to give us your very best material -- whatever that may be; I don't care how amazing (or not) a writer you are as long as you're giving us your best. (SIDENOTE: If you just post two sentences bluntly summarising what you did I will assume you are not giving us your best.)

Please post screenshots. You don't need to screencap every little silly thing (you can if you want to, of course), but I'd appreciate it if you posted screenshots of major changes to the fortress layout so that we can see how the fort is growing and evolving.

If at all possible, if you must cancel your turn midway through, please upload your current save file. It really helps keep the fortress moving and keep morale up if we can just keep going from where you left off rather than having to redo anywhere from 1-11 months of play (and having all the progress you made go to waste).