Bay 12 Games Forum

Dear wandering possessing spirit,

Did you have to choose one of my titled warriors to posses? Tut has been here since Wave 2, he's the High Gore and he's earned himself a name now - 'The Feral Direction of Devils'. I was quite fond of him. He looked set to go on and defend the Fortress very well, but no. You just roll right in and demand 'rocks, metal bars, and cloth.
Take a look around, moron, we have those! We've got like 60 reams of cloth, dozens of different metal bars and more rocks and stone tan you can shake a sodding stick at, what's your issue!?

Damn it. Can we get an exorcist in here? Seriously - the rest of my military aren't even half as good as Tut. Vaohmin's getting there, but she's got a long way to go.

Personally I like traps, but cage traps are particularly op. A restriction on what a wooden cage should be able to hold would be nice, and I don't think cage traps, of any kind, should be able to catch mega and forgotten beasts either. To give a challenge, I don't go after Adamantine and I don't use danger rooms; all my veterans are real veterans, so I think it's fair. I prefer weapon and stone traps anyway - the hilarity of besiegers running through all kinds of hell, beleaguered and bloodied, to get at a fresh squad of warriors is hilarious.

I also like to have bridges with large pits underneath. Kind of epic when there's a mass battle on a bridge with people being thrown off the edge to go plummeting to either their deaths or some very nasty wounds.

First artefact of Stolengrowls, crafted by a child: Mengrooves, the Insensitive Good, a Badger bone Longbow.
Sweet. The siege went away, I'm down to 25 Borioth, most of them are thirsty, I'm waiting the river thaw, but there's mass Hauling from the two caravans worth of dead merchants. Lots of drink for thirsty beasts. The Liaison went insane, I think. We have Nords now and a lot to trade. Got lots of weapons and armour scavenged, which is good. My military isn't so poorly equipped now.

Still need to build the outer walls and the tower, but nobody seems interested, which is a shame.
And my burgeoning 'pit-o-merchant-doom' goes straight through a stockpile and a work-room...

Had the most awesome badger just die. He'd been lurking around my front gate for about year now, attacking everything and everyone in sight. He got shot and cut up, he never actually killed anyone, but his resilience was incredible. In the end he was covered, literally covered, in scars, and blood. He had bolts and arrows sticking out of him. Man, I wish that air mephit hadn't strangled him.

And my Borioth are starting to really irritate me. "We can't complete the wall!" Yes you can, you just don't want to. Now go build the sodding wall!

A friend's Facebook status update is "You're the last Salmon man..."
And you think of Dwarf Fortress, wondering whether such a thing exists and if you'll ever kill one...

Very happy: hit the caverns and finally found a flux deposit, after fruitlessly searching for several years.
Oh, and Ill Tefeqenebu is out of Hospital! He actually survived. He's been in that hospital for literally about a year or more, after being thrown off the entrance walkway and plummeting several Z levels to a a grisly halt. I didn't expect him to survive, but apparently he's tougher than he looks. Good to have him up and about, but he's lost his Noble position, as he wasn't doing anything.

More indoor farms built.
A corpse stockpile until the miners clear more graveyard space.

Then two sieges at once:
 
Demons:
An Elite Bowman leading swords unit
A hammer lord leading halberds.

Serpent Folk:
I think just one group of hammer wielders. Still, they will breathe fire on everything, and kill my FPS by igniting the entire map. Kinda hate them.

The swords group reach the gates just before the bridge can be raised, but are held at bay by three warriors. One goes down quickly, one newbie axebeast makes a good show of herself, and one somehow ends up at the back of their ranks, gets hurt and leads them off while the lever is pulled. Let our enemies weaken themselves killing caravans and each other. We will slaughter the remnants.

The sword-demon squad camps outside the gates, they also stand along a line of weapon traps which they continually trigger and it thins them out nicely . The Orc merchants are butchered by the Naga.

My enemies do not attack each other. The troops are sufficiently massed. The lever is ordered pulled.
One Demon swordsman just abandons his troop at random and wanders off the map.
The bridge goes down, the swordsdemons come in, the bridge goes back up. They are outnumbered.

Ill Tefeqenebu, first battle back, is the first to die - stabbed in the face with a copper scimitar.
The demon squad is swamped.
Bridge goes back down. Winter arrives. Squads form up on the walkway and in the fortifications. Demons charge. They meet a wall off Borioth, and then run.

The naga are just sitting next to the river in a ditch.

Oh Christ, those Centaur REALLY want my fort dead.
Roughly seventy or so showed up headed by a General. Dayum, shit just got real.
Down to sixty or so after the cage traps took a few.

Nobody was quick enough to pull the lever, so a small batch of at most ten, got into the inner courtyard before someone was clever enough to seal the fort itself off from them, so they are now camped in the inner courtyard, while my dumb arse milatry either gets it's shit together, or wakes up. Seriously: kinda unamused.

Would you know it: nobles are good for something. Pulling levers in the nick of time.

Fun fact: Some of my military are wearing Centaur bone helmets.

Right: so we got the ten in the inner courtyard down with a few massed Borioth. Military seems to be completely all over the place...  My Low Gore, despite being told to wield a close combat weapon, is wielding a steel crossbow. YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.
The leader of the Fortress is wearing a centaur bone helm and stabbing things with an Iron Kryss (basically a knife...)

The plan now, is to pull the main gate open at intervals and see if we can control the centaur flow, because damn, there are a lot of them, and the amount of warriors that have massed, is pathetic.

So, few more go down without a fuss. Drawbridge down, drawbridge up. One is catapulted god-knows-where.

Here comes Mrs. General with her big scary band of centaur. It's gonna get nasty. Luckily we have fresh fighters coming in all the time and we're reclaiming ground now.

But the bridge comes down, in come the centaur. A couple are it with arrows.
Einaka Lleadyleni, the insensible Band of Shades, one of the surviving heroes of the fort, is set upon by three centaur and is struck down. But, in the ensuing mellee, new titles are born as the centaur are cut to ribbons, the General herself killed:

Her Psesazspolf The Mortal of Coils
Aemont Luthulfpons The Fence Skulls of Tin

But even as they finish those off the third wave come charging down the hillside from the north, at the gates of Dirgebend. There is nobody to pull the lever.

The outnumbered Borioth charge into the fray. The walkway will run with the blood of the fallen.
A vicious battle ensues with a hunter shooting into the fighting from a distance.
Eventually the casualties are too high, the centaur flee leaving their wounded behind and two centaur who charge after anyone remaining.

The old Butcher woman, Bern Ebuungmar, the Defensive Scenarios, drags herself and her greatsword from the field. A centaur pursues. She fends off all attacks and manages to cross over to the inner courtyard, before bleeding to death from multiple wounds sustained in battle.

The other two titled warriors died in the fighting. Her and Aemont. There are not enough tombs, and not even enough common graves dug out to lay them to rest in proper fashion. It is  sad day for Dirgebend.

After this it is simply a case of hunting down the stragglers. A centaur Spearmaster limps off the map the hammerman gives up the chase. The remainder bleed out or are butchered where they lie.

The military is awful shape. What is left are raw recruits, lead by a single, able bodied, Champion in bad shape from a previous battle with Werewolves. The High Gore lies in the half-dug hospital suffering from battle wounds. Ctharl Gebtitpfas, The Nettle of Carnage, is left to whip the remaining new blood into shape before the next attack.  He can only hope that this attack, led by the Centaur General, has broken their spirit and their military might. For now there are traps to reset, prisoners to cage, fur to clean and bodies to bury.

Dirgebend remains.

Pretty scrappy Mod sketch scene: