Dwarf Fortress > DF Community Games & Stories

Waterhatchet: Draining the Ocean into the Underworld (Steam) (mild spoilers)

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smithy:
"General, I want you to flood the underworld.”
“I am sorry, my queen. You want me to do what?”

Dumed Dodokasiz sighed. She was being serious, no doubt about it. He knew the queen very well, he became general of the Theater of Sounding after marrying her after all. Things did not work out between them however. Dumed always wanted the best for dwarfenkind. Peace and prosperity, backed by a strong military force to defend against and maybe one day even quell the goblin threat. Queen Sakzul however, had other goals in mind. Under her rule, the Theater of Sounding declared war on almost all its neighbors; The various Humans, Elves and even the other dwarven Civilization to the East all became enemies. Where resources could have been used to aid the populace, she wasted it on stupid and ridiculous projects. Her most valued artifact is hatch made from dwarfen bones that some madman gave her for her second wedding. She carries it with her wherever she goes, probably to scare the nobles (which dumed could actuelly kind of get behind). Sometimes Dumed wonders if the queens only dreams consist of spreading chaos and strife all around the world. Her destructive nature is why the dutiful Dumed eventually divorced her. Despite his protest, he still remained General however. And he hates every moment of it. Every bad idea the queen has, he has to carry out. Its like she wants to taunt him as revenge for divorcing her, opposing her.

“You heard me, General. We must deal with the underworld before it deals with us.”
“You want to deal with the Underworld using water? What is water supposed to do against hordes of demons? Some of which, may I remind you, have been reported to be beings made of pure fire.”
“Even better! The water will surely put them out.”
“Demonic Fire! My queen! Not some campfire or burning elven…”
“Enough, Dumed. You will do as your queen says!”

Dumed sighed. He knew there was no talking her out of it. Once she has an idea, she will make sure it gets done. Consequences be damned.
Recently, a group of prisoners of war from the dwarfes to the east told them the story of Taughtrims. It used to be their capital, until the local miners guild dug too deep, too greedily. Their smiths were happily weaving the adamantine they had dug up, probably hoping to get an edge in the war, when a horde of demons came rushing out of the mines. The horde destroyed everything in its path, wiping out the entire city. It is now owned by the Horror of Earth, the local goblin group. A Skunk demon now serves as the new ruler of the once prosperous fort. When the report eventually reached the queens ears, she started smiling with glee. Dumed knew that another crazy scheme started taking shape in her head as soon as the dungeon master had finished his report.

“No discussion, General. I want you to send out a team of our best miners and engineers out to the coast. They shall dig a mighty pit to the bottom of the world and connect it to the ocean. Then, they will dig a channel down to the underworld and flood it. Through this hole we will drain the ocean itself into the underworld and give these demons the what for!”
"Wouldn't a well equipped army be the better option? Perhaps we can ask the eastern dwarfs how best to avoid the demons and get some adamantine for our self?"
"Good idea, General, question the prisoners again."
"Of course, I will..."
"And once you are done, you will send the settlers to the coast."
“Very well. It shall be done, my queen.” Dumed answered, with dread in his voice. The queen smiled.

The Tale of Waterhatchet

With a bit of backstory out of the way, I present to you the story of Waterhatchet, a “challenge” fort I recently finished playing. Its my sixth fort so far. The goal: Dig a massive pit, fill it with water then try to flood the underworld. And yes, I know that demons can not drown or be “put out”, this is just a dumb idea for a fortress that I wanted to try for giggles. I love the idea of dwarfen engineers trying to drain the ocean into hell and getting murdered by demons who are probably just as angry as they are confused about all the water.
Things did not go 100% as planned and after about 26 ingame years I did not mange to “dig a pit to the center of the earth”. Mainly because I stopped getting migrants pretty early on so instead of the 150 or so Miners I planned on having, I only had 25. Maybe its because I settled in a savage wild biome, maybe my civilization did not have enough people for migration, or the game bugged out (did not get any traders after the first two as well). No idea. I was hoping to have a population of 200, instead I only had 50 dwarfs at most to work with, half of which were children for most of the fortress lifespan. I imagine after the queen sakzul died and was succeeded by her daughter Avuz, she either stopped sending support to hide her mothers foolish endeavors or she simply forgot about them. A massive army of olm people in the blocked off caverns also created a lot of lag. I eventually cleared them out by flooding the caverns with lava (The former queen only sent the best fluid engineers for the job after all), but the game still ran pretty slow even after the lava was drained. Probably because of the massive amount of rock-items generated by digging the pit. I ended up with a 101x 128 wide pit that went from the sealevel at -1 all the way down to level -33 (thats 413.696 tiles of water, if I am not mistaken).

Here is the final, empty pit with a nice bridge spanning its entirety:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I could have dug three times that before the first cavern layer begins, but I was getting bored and wanted to continue playing another fort in this world. So dug a 3x3 channel all the way down to a blue candy pillar, blocked it off with a drawbridge and started filing the pit with seawater (note: I cheated and used DFhacks liquid command to speed things up):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Using fortifications to safely dig around trapped demons and a small pumpstack to drain out any water- or lava-pockets, I managed to create a pretty sizeable channel down the pillar with only two miners lost in the process. I also set up a long tunnel between where the water would come from and the pillar. A bunch of fortifications would let the water through and sets of chert doors would hopefully hold back the demons for a bit. I also set up all the caged agitated giant animals, ettins, etc. that I had been collecting over the years along the hallway. Hopefully, they would keep the demons busy for a bit and draw all of them out into the tunnel. I also trapped a couple of forgotten beasts into rooms along the tunnel, which the dwarfs could release to fight the demons as well. The dwarfs would hide in a special bunker, protected by a set of adamantine doors while the demons would (according to the queen) all drown once the water is released.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Though savescumming I had found the last tiles to dig into hell. I also let the dwarfs engrave around the soon to be entrance to hell, one of them adding an image of the queen striking a menacing pose. If only she were still alive to see her grand plan come to fruition.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I sent the dwarfs into the bunker, all but one. The Miner Fikodmishos had murdered the fortresses first legendary miner edil with an axe and turned him…into a dwarf-bone axe while in a fell mood about ten years ago. After a light sentence of only 1 year in prison, she was chosen as the one to open up the gates of the underworld. Funnily enough, she refused to do it at first because she urgently wanted to “get to a meeting” with the mayor. The mayor, of course, was locked away far from her office in the bunker, ready to pull the lever to drown the foul demons. I had to set up a temporary office in the bunker and let her through, one last time. I imagine she had a lot to say to the mayor.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)Anyway, The miner dug into the underworld, sadly she only managed to dig a one tile wide hole before running away and getting roasted alive by a firedemon.

Now, the end result was kinda disappointing. I was expecting a horde of demons rampaging through the tunnel, breaking down all the doors while slaughtering the trapped beasts, limbs and blood everywhere. Then, the water would hit, flooding the demons, corpses and debree back into the underworld. Unimpressed, the demons would swim back through and murder the foolish dwarfen engineers hiding behind their adamantine doors (or maybe even stay down this time).
Instead, the firedemons burned most of the beasts before they were even released from their cages. Most of the FBs died after only a brief fight.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
And then the demons just… stood there. They did not break down the doors and fortifications, even after they saw an ettin on the other side of the fortification and even spit fire at it.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I unlocked the doors and the demons walked through, but they would not even go near the final set of (still locked) doors leading to my dwarfs and waterhatchet proper. So I released the water.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
There was a short lagspike as the water was released. The tunnel and adamantine pillar was filled with water instantly and a prism-shaped pillar made of full water tiles spread all the way down to the ground of the underworld. Its amazing that the game accounts for the water pressure of millions of litres of water.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)


The demons where not affected by the flow of water though. They were fully submerged instantly, but were not flooded away or drowned. The firedemons also evaporated all of the water hitting them into steam. Other than that, they continued standing around doing nothing just like before.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I decided to unlock the main doors. Again, the demons did not react, even after the water was mostly drained. Most of it had simply vanished into the eery glowing pits. After a couple of days, the water was almost gone, leaving only a thin layer of mud, trash and some puddles on the slate cavern floors of hell.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)



So, I decided to send in a squad to open the doors, which prompted the demons to finally attack. I expelled all of the dwarfs to see which would manage to flee. Only three managed to get out, sadly leaving the adamantine weapons assigned to them behind.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)


I could have probably continued the fort and killed the demons, but the low FPS and underwhelming demon attack made me want to play a new fort. So instead of simply retiring the fort, I engineered its end. May its ruins forever be a reminder of what dwarfen folly truly means (I also want to explore the demon-infested ruins once adventurmode comes to steam).

If I where to try this "challenge" again (which is not anytime soon), here are some thoughts:
1. make sure the fort is eligible to get enough migrants to reach the pop cap
2. on top of an army of miners, set up a dedicated team of haulers that carry all the rocks to an atom smasher to hopefully regain some frames
3. turn off cavern invaders. Honestly, with how broken they are right now, that should be done on any fort.
4. we want as few enemies as possible, so no savage wilds and if possible far away from necromancers and hostile civs
5. The embark location should have no aquifers, but it should have have Deep soil. With deep soil you can avoid having to dig into the caverns, saving you headaches when planning and reducing mining accidents.
6. By blocking the dwarfs into a self-sufficient fort and keeping the pit sealed from above, one may give the digging order and let the game run AFK. I am also pretty sure the steam version lets you turn off autopause from events like FB attacks.
7. Instead of slowly filling the pit with water, one may dig the pit beneath the ocean, then retire and reclaim it to instantly fill it with water. I have never experienced it myself, but I remember reading about that being one of the many bugs with reclaiming retired forts. Not as cool as a giant pit to the bottom of the earth though. Maybe there is some way of collapsing the ground under the ocean?


So that’s that. Not as impressive as what others did with (or rather, to) hell, but it was a fun goal for a fort.

Maloy:
Yeah clowns being invulnerable to most forms of dwarven trickery can kind of take the fun out of challenging them!

Once I beat them one time with a huge military and it was so epic, but after that I rarely ever found myself going after them.

I love the idea of flooding the underworld though lol

TheFlame52:
I've actually flooded hell before... but for terraforming, not as an invasion tactic. In Bastiongate, a fort I played for 60 years, I slaughtered the initial demon rush with 2000 repeating menacing steel spikes. I then trapped some of the wandering demons behind a drawbridge so that no more would come. Then I walled up the entire edge of hell. I built boxes around the bottomless pits, setting up one with a floodgate to act as an eventual drain. A duct from the second cavern lake was dug, and hell slowly, slowly began to fill. Eventually it filled to the ceiling. I closed the duct, opened the floodgate, and watched an ocean of water drain into the bottomless pit in mere instants. Eventually, all the water dried up except for a small lake in one corner. All of hell was muddied and cave fungus began to grow. I even started a farming operation down there, by the glowing pits.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
That said, that was all in 0.40. Over 5 years ago. The steam update has reduced me to a novice. I salute your effort and dwarven spirit.

Salmeuk:
nice screens, I love a good demon surge.. I do wish the water would squelch the fire demons at least


--- Quote ---turn off cavern invaders. Honestly, with how broken they are right now, that should be done on any fort.
--- End quote ---

yeah, +1. the constant invader spam turns into lag traps at the moment


--- Quote ---That said, that was all in 0.40. Over 5 years ago. The steam update has reduced me to a novice. I salute your effort and dwarven spirit.
--- End quote ---

I remember this fortress quite well still.. hopefully the new keyboard UI update recently announced will help us return to that former style of gameplay.

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