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« on: November 16, 2008, 12:15:14 am »
This thread would be the catch-all for those fun little things that happen in your fort, but don't quite fit into the various other 'post your most X Ys' threads around here...
To start things off, in my current fort I had some need for assigned door guards. Given that I'd recently gone on a kick making the various temples for each fortress deity, I decided to make a declared Guardian for each deity, and have them stand post in turns.
First up came the Guardian of Lal, Lord of Fortresses. He did his duty, taking care of a few kobolds and even helping dispatch an ambush. His day came in a rather sad twist of fate. I'd decided that the new ambush was a bit much for him to handle, and ordered his retreat and the priming of the fortress defense mechanisim, consisting of a dump into the plumbing intake, a fairly far drop, and a landing on a grate strainer with no access which would later be turned into an item retreival system. Lal's Guardian happened to be particularly agile, so he ran out of the ambush's range without much trouble... However, his luck ran out, as I realized, a few seconds before it was very graphically demonstrated, I had hit the 'emergency fire' lever instead (how I'm not entirely sure). Lal's Guardian was promptly shot off the bridge by a jet of high pressure water, hitting the wall and plunging halfway down the regular plumbing line before being caught between a mechanisim and a screw pump, and drowning.
There were special burial chambers for those dying in the Guardianal Service, but due to the ironic nature of his demise, I reasoned that Lal had been displeased with his Guardian, and decided his body could rot in the ducts.
In his stead, I promoted the Guardian of Kun, deity of nature and the rain. Kun had a much bloodier history, as I'd decided to try and avoid any more mechanical errors by having the Guardian's duty extend to holding the gate. This went quite well for some time. One fateful month, I had ordered the line of windmills along the road to the gates removed, as part of a massive overhaul of the waterworks below. Predictably, there was combat, and the Guardian of Kun joined the on-call marksdwarves in defending the workers. The battle itself was not particularly notable, and I spent some time afterward directing the placement of the second waterworks before receiving the message that Kun's Guardian had died of dehydration. Zooming to the corpse, I saw that she had dodged into a pit... Coincidentally, the rain collection pit. Seeing another omen of displeasure, it was only by virtue of her outstanding military performance that she was given the honor of a standard coffin in the catacombs.
Now, the Guardian of Vanel, Lord of Law and Balance, holds the post of watchdwarf, mostly by virtue of being likely to last at least until the Hammerer shows up... And in the future, I'll remember to check if the applicant is properly feverent, as opposed to the dubious and casual worshippers chosen for their combat ability... Somehow, combat never claims a Guardian.
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