Bay 12 Games Forum

9th of Granite, 209

Solon Wardbridges, sweat dripping from her face, slotted the last pin in place, and let the sheet of flat iron drop. It swung down on its rough hinge, and with a rather disappointing thud, struck the earth. Feeling utterly exhausted (the greatest challenge in the last few days had simply been hauling the iron over the immense length of the bridge), she walked carefully down the makeshift ramp. She stopped at the bottom. This was it.


Solon looked back.

She took one step forward.


She had walked over the ocean on a bridge made of iron.

Oh, it wasn't a full bridge. Not even close, really.  And looking back, the narrow causeway of iron didn't even seem that impressive. No great mechanisms here, no tremendous feats of engineering, not even simple pump stack. But there it lay: the result of seven years of back-breaking labor. Seven years of disaster, idiotic mistakes, murders, sacrifices, starvation, sobriety and death. Seven years of being alternately bored and terrified. Seven years hovering on the brink of catastrophe, never knowing whether the next day would bring a siege, or an ambush, or, y'know, an axedwarf shouting bad puns. Seven years.

And why? Because of the whims of a “Mad” king? Because they were dwarfs, and there was nothing dwarfier than hammering away at an impossible project without any thought to where it might lead? (Probably that one, she thought). In order to hand the orcs a path leading straight in to the mountainhomes, so they could frolic and caper and slaughter in a new continent? Yeah, probably that too.

The trees were thick and the canopy heavy here, and Solon realized that none of the others knew where she was. She'd been doing most of the final work herself, and maybe she hadn't been... completely honest about how close to the shore they actually were. No one knew she was here.

She could just leave. Walk in to the jungle and disappear. They likely wouldn't notice for a day or so, everyone knew how long it took to traverse the bridge. By then, the jungle would have swallowed her up. She could go home. It sounded like madness, and maybe it was, but hey, madness was what brought her here in the first place.

Solon took one step forward.


(and that's that! If you read this, thank you for reading, and if you didn't, that's ok too. I know that most won't care about this, but I'm glad that I finished it.)

This is the internet. No joke, no matter how lame and endlessly repeated, will ever be let go. Personally, I've never liked Chuck Norris.

My first thought was of one Bertram Wooster.

Now, I can't imagine that young gentleman being one for this sort of fighting, even if he has just come off a rather satisfactory binge. Just in case, then, I would bring along a bit of Jeeves' marvelous little restorative. Having administered said drink, we would sit down and await rescue from our predicament.

Soon we shall be like the lark on his wing, or the snail on his thorn, as Jeeves might say. All is right with the world, and so on.

My longest living fort is 25 years and counting. As for towers, well, I generally don't build them on account of the fact that they confuse me. I am bad at translating a bunch of 2d screens into a 3d object in my head. It is baffling.

So, I was digging around in an old zip drive (or whatever you kids these days call
them), when I found my copy of this here fort. Now, honestly, this fort was the most
fun I ever had playing dwarf fortress. It was an endless chain of disasters, helped
along by my own incompetence, sure, but I loved it. I came thiiiis close to actually
getting one arm of the bridge to the opposite shore. Knowing what I know now, I
think that I could do even more.

So, basically, what I'm asking is this. Is there anyone here interested in seeing the
revival of an ordinary, not particularly legendary 40d fort? I'd like to make a go at
finishing this thing, but a community fort isn't much without a, well, community to
support it. So, thoughts, anyone?

A small sample of an aboveground (mostly) fort. Note its complete lack of planning.

Found a collection of fairly intact Little Blue Books at a local antiques shop. Most of them are from 1927-1929. Right now I'm going through "Life Among the Ants" and "Evolution vs Dogma". After that, who knows? I got about twenty of these things in a small box bound up with twine. Cheap old books are the best books.