Defini Etha: The Dimensions of Prophecy
In a small world I've, so far, made a series of five dwarf fortresses that I ran for about 10 years each. I'm doing different things with each to see how the world responds and how they change after I retire them.
Looking through Legends Mode, the goblins were situated between the humans and elves who stomped the goblins into the ground early on and then proceeded to fight each other ever since then. There are still goblins in the world, but they're all living in other civilizations or as bandits. I decided to revive the goblin civilization and made them 'site controllable.' There was a huge forested swamp biome in the east where no one had settled, so my head canon was that secret villages of goblins survived deep in the swamps.
I had my starting seven goblins, plus two migrant waves for a total of 17. After that there were no more. The leader of the civ is still living with one other goblin in a camp (the civ's sole remaining site before I started building a new one). I ran the fort for 58 years before deciding to move on. In that time there were 65 births for a total of 82 goblins by the end. There were only four goblin females having children, and one of them had thirty-eight of them. What's more impressive is she was stricken with melancholy in year ten of the fort after not being able to sleep for too long. She just sort of wandered around for forty-eight years, having kids every so often.
The place was
really built like a human settlement on the shore of a bay where three rivers emptied into the ocean. It rained all the friggin' time and we had to do a mass tree clearing every season, otherwise the place became completely overgrown. I played with invasions turned off, because without a mayor, militia captain, etc I can't form military squads. I don't know if positions like manager or bookkeeper can be added to the goblin civ post-worldgen?
On retiring I checked in with my older forts. In those 58 years a lot of my dwarves died of old age. When you unretire a fort, everyone who died of old age is just laying dead on the ground. All of the livestock died of old age and wasn't replenished in one fort. In another fort it looks like visitors and migrants brought new animals with them. It would be nice if herds didn't just die out over time. I was alarmed when Legends showed that 159 entities had died at the site, only to discover it was referring to all the sheep, dogs, and turkeys.
A mercenary who was in the tavern at another previous fort went on a killing spree a year after I retired it and killed 27 before being taken out.
Various people in other nations "claimed (artifact) from afar." I assume that means they sent people to claim or steal them.
I've been trying to figure out why some of my forts dwindle in population after retirement while others gain population. I think it mostly correlates to how many Hillocks are associated with your fort.
One fort was retired after a titan arrived. Another was retired while demons were rampaging through it. Post-retirement the simulation doesn't seem to care and just lists them as "outcasts" in the site populations. I was hoping to see them cause some havoc, but the simulation seems to just ignore them. I want to see if
abandoning the fort with demons does anything different from
retiring it.
The world only has one vampire who is a dwarf that profaned a temple by knocking over a statue in my fort. The fort was retired with the vampire locked in a chapel worshiping the god of death. Post retirement she's still in the same fort and... she got married recently. Curious if that leads to anything in the future. There are no werebeasts in the world. I'll see if one appears on its own, or maybe get a dwarf cursed, or maybe play an adventurer and get them cursed. Then see how far it spreads.
There are three necromancers. One necromancer, she had a son who became leader of a human civ. The son later died of old age. After several other leaders took the position and died of old age, the necromancer became the new leader. Seems like a rare case where the parent becomes leader of the civ
after their child does. And this happened post-worldgen while I was running my forts.
There aren't any expertly written books in the world yet. Everything is still amateurish. I'm thinking of making a fort of scholars and trying to crank out some substantial writing.
At the moment I'm making a second goblin fort to try and grow the population. The goblins in the previous fort are continuing to have kids and they're up to 94 population now. I was worried they might get wiped out in an invasion after I'd spent so many hours growing the fort. Luckily the humans and elves are still busy fighting each other and the dwarves are just chilling out in their mountain halls.
I know there are certain things that only happen during worldgen. My goal is to poke and prod and see what I can make happen post-worldgen. If you think of something I should try out let me know.
