Bay 12 Games Forum

From my fortress diary:

25th Moonstone, 182, Early Winter - Water flooding of the top of guildhalls began this month, but with the sealed passages between the buildings accidentally closed off, the dwarves (restricted to the interior of the halls, via burrows) pathed along the exterior avenues. Four dwarves perished when water flow pushed them off of the streets to fall many z-levels to their deaths. Additionally, one dwarf died on the surface, slain by a goblin ambush before the military could rush to protect him. The total fortress population has been reduced to 96, with no new dwarves having been born since 157.

Welcome to Nugrethshorast.

DFFD: Weatherwires (year 185)
DFMA: Weatherwires (upper fortress), Weatherwires (lower fortress). Also, the full and final map, dated 226, one full century after embark.
TOUR: Starts on page 35. It's extremely image-heavy, so beware.
ADVENTURE MODE SAVES: Explore the fort as an adventurer!
    Solon Townclenched, the last dwarf.
    Vucar Tombdeath, plump helmet woman.
    Osman the Puzzle of Poisons, forgotten beast.
    Èzum Openeddoors the Robust Stoker of Lances.
STORY: The Saga of Weatherwires, extracted and presented in a single downloadable document.


The fortress is a collection of free-standing structures, carved from natural rock, and housed inside a hollowed-out hemisphere. The bottom of the grotto is the bottom of the upper cavern layer, and most of the structures have been carved to match the arrangement of pillars and cavern walls of the caverns. The entire project took the majority of the summer, with the outline of each layer having to be carefully calculated (there was a lot of math involved), and carved out before the next could be worked on.


As it turns out, the Merchant of Echoing (the fort's parent civ) was destroyed by goblins during the first few decades of world gen, so when Weatherwires was declared the Mountainhome (shortly after excavation began), no queen arrived - she had been dead for more than a century. With the duke (Kogsak Murdershot) dead in a recent tantrum spiral, the only 'royalty' left in the fortress, and thus in the entire civilization, was the duke's wife and four surviving children. At this time (around the year 135), I resolved to make the dome the last impregnable bastion of dwarfdom in the world.


Of course, once the dome was excavated, the massive amount of stone piled at its bottom was debilitating to my framerate, a problem which I resolved by flooding the entire affair with magma, pumped in from the adjacent magma tube. Many dwarves gave their lives in the excavation and flooding of the dome - I thought that my supply of dwarves would be neverending, between immigrant waves and new births. I could not have been more wrong.


In the hopes that the dwarves, sealed underground, might procreate and develop into an essentially limitless civilization, I organized them into clans. Each dwarf that was born in the fortress was given a nickname that was the same as their father's surname. The late duke's children were named princes and princesses, and given the nickname "Murdershot," in honor of their dead father, the last royalty of the Merchant of Echoing. A tantrum spiral or two later, the fortress population had dipped down to about 150, but no immigrant waves had arrived to replace the dead. I assumed then that the civilization's dwarven population had been exhausted, and all dwarves living in the fortress were, indeed, the last of their kind.


In 157, Kol "Languagemetal" Claspedrelief was born. His birth went unheeded for several years, until the following journal entry:

16th Obsidian, 164, Late Winter - All remaining stone dumped, and the bottom of the dome channeled out. The dome is finally contiguous with the upper cavern layer, and thus the excavation portion of the project (not counting housing within buildings) is complete. Also, the fortress, despite containing married couples who have produced children before, has stopped producing new infants. The only child left is Kol Claspedrelief, of clan Languagemetal, and at 7 years old, is the youngest dwarf in the fortress.


Since that journal entry, nearly two decades have passed. The fortress population has dwindled to 96, a combination of engineering accidents, pond grabber ambushes, and the occasional lucky goblin. Kol "Languagemetal" has been designated "The Youngest Dwarf." The surfaces of the four separate guildhalls have been flooded with water, to allow the growth of wild fungi. Eight guildhalls have been carved out of four free-standing structures, connected by a series of causeways. The royal family (of which a mere 3 remain) are housed in their own suites in the citadel located in the north part of the dome.

With no immigrants, no merchants, and no children, these dwarves are the last of their kind. Theirs is the saga of Weatherwires.

Tantruming dwarves sometimes throw anything throwable near them. (verified behavior I have seen many times)
Your tantruming dwarf likely started chucking vermin (bees) at random - every bee he could get his hands on.
Throwing in this version levels up the generic ranged combat skill - archery
There was a lot of bees, and he was very pissed.
Level 6 archery.

This makes the most sense, and assumes the least, being based off already observed DF phenomena. It would be completely confirmed, if only the dwarf in question had also gained skill advances in Throwing.

This is a personal favorite I screencapped. A total "shit just got real" moment.


Also, this happens fairly regularly in my current fortres...

That looks great!

I'm curious, how did you manage to get the concentric circles looking so clean? Were they built freehand, or did you somehow calculate the outlines?

This embark site is literally beautiful. I don't even care that there's no exposed metals.

But what if one person were to pause? fortress mode would not work in realtime, maybe turnbased with action and pauses.

Actually, this could be solved by removing pausing altogether (thus making all menus real-time, like the (S)quad menu is now). Additionally, if playing a game on a private server, you could have some arrangement for pausing or saving a game when both players agree to it.

The names in this story have been altered to protect the innocent.

My last (also first) fortress was totally isolated from anything but a Dwarven civilization, so I'd never experienced a true goblin siege. I had no idea.

First of all, one of my peasants was taken by a fey mood. Almost simultaneously, a force of evil appears on the map. 40-50 goblins, many of which wield crossbows, led by a fearsome axelord. The peasant is forgotten.

I mobilize my frugal military (10 wrestlers, 4 hammerdwarvers, and my axewielding Captain of the Guard) to the entrance, behind the traps and the great hall. The first wave of goblins is caught in the first row of cage traps - but about 10 break through. One squad of wrestlers rushes out to the entry hall - a grand room, about 10 by 40, with engraved olivine floors, flanked by golden statues - to meet the enemy. They are mowed down by goblin marksmen, who then proceed to shoot through the doorways at my Captain's squad, who moves forth to engage.

At this time I get the announcement that the Captain's infant daughter has been shot out of her arms by a marksman. She flies into a berserk rage, slaying many goblins, but soon suffers fatal wounds. I decide the time has passed for direct engagement, and pull a lever, opening up the whole floor of the hall, and everyone tumbles down three z-levels and is crippled.

At this time, the peasant goes berserk. Apparently he didn't get some raw gems or something and decided it would be a wise idea to throw a child against a wall. This just happened to be another child of the Captain.

Turns out I survived the seige - my squad of hammerdwarves, aided by the human liaison who happened to be in town, beat back the rest of the army. But now I've got a depressed child who's lost a mother and two siblings to goblins. What should I do with it?