Entry-05 Differing levels of madness
Death be damned, life be double damned.
To anyone who finds this and even goes as far to read this. You are the unluckiest bastard to come to this plane of existence.
With that said I'm Highmax, current mayor of this Hall. Not sure what it means to you, or even me, but it damn as well means something because I'm not dead yet!
The fact that I've even found the time to write this is a God send. My mind has been so numbed at this point all I can do is just put it down into words, so expect nothing less but words; as if I were to even try to explain to you the emotion's I've gone through in depth there would be nothing left but a husk.
I do have a few things to be thankful for however my wife and four children are alive for now. In fact every bone in my body tells me to escape this place, however aside from the fact a zombie horde now roams beyond the defensive ramparts; there is something else there keeping me from truly going overboard.
Enough is enough, onto to giving you a semi-coherent report atleast.
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Well things started to look up initially, Roshev had survived, the farms were starting to produce even! But sadly it just wasn't enough. Shortly after the goblin encounter, death wove its way into our halls. Truth be told after looking back at it now I cannot find what caused it.
Perhaps a goblin had slipped through our defenses as we recovered Roshev, or perhaps something had of a dark and evil nature had perpetrated into our deep tunnels. It could've been both, as people had randomly died in the memorial hall, and some even in the construction of the catacombs. I had even heard quiet and panicked utters of the return of ghosts, lusting for the blood of the living yet again.
Whatever truly caused doesn't matter now, what happened after those first few deaths did however. You see the Fortress was already uneasy, death after death, we still held strong. Exceptionally so, any other sane being would look at us with admiration. But it wasn't enough in the end as insanity started to infect our ranks. The death, despair, and most importantly the lack of booze had caused quite a significant amount of our population to go insane. They ran naked in the halls without whim or purpose, the world just a futile playground in their eyes, as they ravaged their bodies through disquieting carelessness. Roshev was first among the wave of madness, in fact, most to all of the founders went stark raving mad and found unfortunate ends; excluding the exceptionally hardy miner Balien who is missing his arm from a ghost attack, and Bealor a cook whose background is rather foggy.
But as time moved on, people now died from a mix of starvation and dehydration(mostly dehydration). If the food shortage wasn't bad enough, now people weren't attending to their needs at the well for reasons I'm not even sure of, and the plans for the new well had been shafted by the recent report from scouts that a Necro-lord has arrived.
Thus I have hastened the moving of bodies to the catacombs and the construction of the draw bridge, however the work is slow going, due to the food shortages, general insanity and miasma that attacks the workers on a daily basis. I'm not sure why the fortress hasn't died from a horrifying attack by our fallen companions, but it only causes me to worry more as to what may happen later down the road.
But I cannot stand this any longer, just writing this down as if it were a game of chess.
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A funny thing had happened earlier, I had issued the construction of statues for decorative use. Well they were finished, most of them to my satisfactory were of great quality and diversity. But I noticed that each statue had been marked by Roshev, even his handwriting familiar to me.
I searched the halls, where the Dwarves went through their daily business if you could call it that. Miasma in the air, coughing moaning from starvation and a plethora of other reasons. Most however stay up in entrance hall, drawing grafitii over the memorials, and expecting a expedition from the Mountainhomes to save them. If anything will come through those doors to the surface now, it will only be death.
However I hadn't found him, so I queried my fellow Dwarves whom had but a ounce of sanity remaining. However to my disdain, they only cursed me away in hushed voices. While at the well a boy came behind me"I know where Roshev is, the others are scared to tell you, because they are scared of Roshev himself". I said"Would you care to show me?". A poor thing that child was, the vestige of innocence had long ago been stolen from those rare turquoise eyes, and now a meer cat's frown laid place where a smile of ignorant bliss should have been.
He scampered quickly through the halls, were these children to one day rule this place? Their minds but chalices that now held the stark and grotesque memories of Necrochambers? I quickly pushed away such thoughts as I followed the boy down the hall.
It was quite a short distance, surprisingly so, the boy turned back to me, and lifted his arm with emotion of a robot pointing towards the right. A stupid grin grew upon his face, and now the beggings of a foul fear started to grow from my bowels upwards. He disappeared admidst a crowd of passerby's, and I walked slowly to the Orthoclase door.
I opened it swiftly, miasma invaded my senses causing me to gag, but as I looked up something far more horrible awaited me. Dwarves played in the room of corpses sifting through it as if it were some sick perversion of an statue garden. Both adult and child alike scurried through the endless wade of corpses, laughs of indwarven joy bouncing off the necrotic chamber walls.
It was as if at that moment that Necrochambers had been compounded into this room, the entirety of its being, malice, and grotesque nature brought here to twist my soul into non-existence.
I stared for what seemed an eternity, then in my stupor of disbelief, I entered the room pushing and wading through the insane children and adults. There was no measure of time in that room, it now is ingrained into my memory playing over and over again. I found him, Roshev his corpses almost bones now in a berserk rage I clutched his remains shaking them in the air. I screamed"Lionvessel's! WHY! WHY DO YOU TAUNT ME!".
This place is truly death immemorial, it will consume the world...
(The Statues, I seriously ordered them after Roshevs death, I'm dead sure.)
(Heres his corpse in the momentary morgue, also all the people in there I searching for food, but hey this is Necrochambers, everything is f***ed up)
OCC:Wow this session has gotten interesting... Miasma is a constant people die trying to walk to the well, and constant messages of melancholy, beserking, and varying forms of insanity keep popping up. Well atleast the children are starting to die off, the bastards were half my population at one point!
Well I'm back, sorry for my unannounced absence, NanoWrimo got me by the arse so I didn't find the time to get back to this for awhile(Was lazy).
(for dworfing)
I have decided to go with a you get one life policy, makes thing more interesting for me.
Highmax, your guy is a beast. He is the first of his kind, with bucket loads of skills, including real good warrior stats, he could probably fight off 3 zambies at once and not get a scratch. However he has low morale right now(miserable 0) and probably won't make it as it is.
Also funny thing I discovered! I have crap tons of raw mussel in storage! Time to get a fishery up and cook the bastards!
I'll probably die due to tantrums at some point, but I'm alive so far and its fall now. But I might make it, if I have one dwarf left I'll keep dredging on. I have a plan to solve the siege but in order for it to work, I'll need atleast ten dwarves to survive the initial gauntlet of of beserking Dwarves.
So there it is, the usual madness in dwarf fortress, and bad assery. Will be more active, and will also have another post tomorrow. So Whats your thoughts on the Roshev thing? Have you guys ever encountered something like this in your games?
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Topic: Necrochambers - a Long Term Succession Game (Read 27360 times)