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[hillburra]

Hi everyone, This is my first post and I've decided it should be a story fortress.

Any feedback including ideas and suggestions will be welcomed and I will try to keep my story as interesting as possible

I'm just playing a normal DF game with a tileset, I haven't modded any of the raws except for the mouths of cats and the only third party app I'm using is Vista's snipping tool to make screenshots.

Anyways, time to write the epic opening backstory post - Strike the earth!

[hillburra]

Life in the Mountainhomes is dull.
Getting assigned jobs to perpetually haul horse chunks from stockpile to stockpile very rapidly wares thin.

One day I was in polite discussion with my co-workers when the butchery foreman overheard me and the topic of our conversation.
This was not the best of things to happen as the topic of conversation amongst my co-workers was invariably the shortcomings of our foreman whether they be mental, physical or sexual.

I think what really pushed him over the edge was the fact that at the time I had quite plainly stated that it appeared he had beard extensions. And that those beard extensions looked like they originally were growing on a dog's nutsack.

This comment freed up my schedule quite quickly and rather than haul horse chunks to and fro I went to the pub to lament my newly found unemployment.

After 6 or 7 pints of a rather tasty ale some annoying loudmouth waltzed on in to the pub and started making grandiose proclamations about how his "grand expedition" was going to mine an untouched, virgin mountain range he had delightfully dubbed "The Scalding Fingers" and how whoever joined him would be granted vast material wealth.

Vast material wealth had always appealed to me so I quickly strolled over to have a chat with him. It didn't take long for me to realise what had happened, a moron had hatched a gem of an idea. There's only one thing to do when a moron has a good idea, join in and steal all the credit.

To my surprise the fool had actually put together a quite competent team and assembled most of the right provisions to start a new mining outpost in the far wilds. I greatly oversold my cooking skills to him and we departed the very next day. I asked him what he had called the expedition knowing he would be happy to regale me with a long winded spiel about bugger all, letting me get on his good side and find a way to remove him from being top of the food chain.
"I've called us all Fath Sod! Isn't it profound? It means The Sacks of Mist, so mysterious, so elegant, so haunting. Don't you agree?"
I just smiled and nodded, I actually thought it quite fitting that even he would call himself a big bag full of nothing but gas.


Our Equipment

It didn't take very long for our "glorious leader" to get on everyone's nerves and I will admit I had helped him to annoy every single member of the expedition, the time was right. I got him outrageously drunk on the last of our dwarven beer and through a bit of shameless flattery I got the daft bastard to draw me quite a detailed map. Soon as he'd finished that my cooking skills came to the fore as I lopped off his head with my meat cleaver. I then proceeded to drag his body to a nearby river and feed it to some ravenous carp. I think they had developed quite a taste for dwarf by the time I'd thrown all of him into the river. Good thing we were still a long way from our destination, those carp were more than a little off-putting.


The map

When dawn came it was a very simple matter to assume leadership of the expedition, I just had to flash the map at them followed by my rather large and menacing meat cleaver - which had more than a little dried blood still on it.

So far a definite upgrade from horse chunk hauler.

It took quite a bit of time but we eventually arrived at the Scalded Fingers, I stopped the wagon in a appropriate looking place and yell that phrase all dwarves love. "Strike the earth!"

Unib Thobag (lead miner) had barely picked up his pick when Dumat the jeweller came racing up to me screaming "STOP!" at the top of his lungs.
"What the hell is it?" I demanded.
"We haven't named the place yet,"
"You actually stopped the digging just for the lack of a name?"
"It needs a name before anything gets dug up, it's dwarven tradition."
"Fine, whatever, just name it so we can get this thing started."
"OK, can I call the place Athelod?"
"Eh, fine by me. It's nice and short so it'll save me time on the paperwork. Unib, start digging"
Unib just grunted and got back to work, my kind of dwarf.

The hours passed and the entrance began to take shape and at that moment curiousity got the better of me.
"Dumat, what does Athelod actually mean in the Old Tounge?" I asked
He looked me straight in the eyes, grinning from ear to ear and said
"Ringlimbs!"

At that moment I let out a sigh that felt like it had a bit of my soul attached to it and I wished a giant eagle would swoop down and eat me on the spot. None obliged. I'm stuck here with these people and I have a sinking feeling that the next few years are not going to pass quickly...

[hillburra]

I did not enjoy Spring.

I now understand why that jerk called it the Scalding Fingers. As soon as we arrived all the grass turned to a dry, crunchy brown and all the lakes and ponds dried up right before our eyes. The miners worked hard to get us all inside and protected by lovely, lovely caverns in record time. They were also helped by the fact that there was a lot of soft soil so we could move all the food inside and deconstruct the wagon before it all spoiled in the heat.


Hot enough for ya?

After the we got the food inside the diggers spent all their time making room for stockpiles and workshops, I thought they were a little keen. We had massive halls for the producing of goods and magnificent workshops in a multilevel production complex which was all well and good but we were still sleeping on rough hewn floor in the middle of a hallway. Add to that there were almost more workshops than residents, damn those gung-ho miners.

They finally informed me that in concert with the carpenter they had fashioned space for us all to sleep on proper beds and I was ecstatic, after the quality and effort they put into the workshops surely the bedrooms would be magnificent!

How wrong I was. It was a medium sized room with beds lined up against the walls, so close together they were almost touching. What the hell were they thinking? I'm the Overseer of this roasted little hole in the ground and they dare to make me sleep in with all my underlings? I hope I can make my snoring louder just to spite the bastards.

It was about the time that the sleeping arrangements were revealed to me that I also discovered that we had completely run out of food. The farmer was frantically growing mushrooms but I wasn't in the mood to hear his excuses, I get a horrible feeling that over the next year I'm going to get thoroughly sick of him and his mushrooms.

I will concede that there were some good bits to the season as well, most notable of these being the excavation and furnishing of my own private office. I may have to sleep in the barracks with the plebs but at least I can eat in privacy. To contain my disappointment at my latest set of circumstances I threw out some ridiculous work orders so that the others would be busy and not bothering me, we now have more bins than finished goods and a room full of mechanisms - made me feel quite pleasant.


Progress on the main floor (stockpiles, entrance, farm, barracks)

As a sidenote the miners also uncovered about 30 sunstones which is marvellous news, they're worth bugger all but they keep that stupid jeweller busy and out of my hair.

I still haven't forgiven him for giving this place such a ridiculous name.

[hillburra]

Summer has been an important if not incredibly frustrating season for Athelod.

It began as expected with half of the workforce being bone idle layabouts even when they have survival critical tasks to complete. Main offenders this season were the our resident greenthumb who I have my doubts towards and the lump of useless sod we call the mason. Maybe the farmer is growing a lot and just keeping it all to himself, leaving him strong while the rest of us starve, I can't tell but I know how short on food we are and it has me worried.

The mason deserves to be put in jail for his laziness but our settlement isn't big enough for me to be handing out vengeful beatings in the name of justice yet.

In order to bolster our defensive capabilities I ordered a retractable bridge built to let us close the entrance when in trouble, the miners in their far to eager fashion dug out the entrance to our fortress which cut us off from the outside. I then sent for the mason to build a bridge so life could return to normal. That leech proceeded to eat, drink, sleep, take breaks and claim to have "no job" for over a month, it wasn't until there were 6 other dwarves locked inside with him ready to make a sacrifice to Armok when he realized it might be in his best interest to actually do his job. In sheer frustration the carpenter had even done all the architecture for him.

Construction of the bridge was proceeding nicely until something happened, I still don't know what, but the mason got distracted and wandered off. I think the old coot might be a little senile - or he just hates me. The bridge was eventually completed but not before we had been cut off from the outside world for an entire 2 MONTHS!

I sent people out to see what had happened in the furnace that was the outside, turns out just as the miners had cut off the settlement 7 migrants had arrived. They saw the bridge get finished and instantly ran over to us demanding food and drink. Greedy scum, we don't even have enough to feed ourselves. That said I am impressed that none of them melted or spontaneously combusted during their long wait.

I took a quick census of the new arrivals:
1 Metalsmith
1 Weaver
1 Dyer
1 Gemcutter (because one uppity jeweller wasn't enough)
1 Furnace Operator
1 Woodworker
1 Peasant

I instantly reassigned the jeweller to the thankless task of beginning work on the Great Smoothing, lazy prick.

The migrants claim that a trader is coming in autumn sometime, I hope for their sake he has an awful lot of food and booze on him.

The season of summer is also a sad one as we have had our first loss. Whilst left to roam outside one of the dogs got caught in the midst of a war between naked mole dogs and troglodytes, I liked the dogs far more than any of the dwarves here so this loss has hit me rather hard. I'm also very glad the bridge is actually functioning as there is an ominously close pack of 8 Ratmen loitering near the fort. Something will need to be done about them in autumn.


The troglodytes to the south.

[hillburra]

Hmm....
No one has commented so far

I was hoping people would provide me with ideas to help further the plot. I'll throw up my autumn update and probably stop playing this fort to go off and do something a little crazy like a swamp castle unless someone would like me to keep going.

[Creamcorn]

We're reading but so far you're not doing anything cool.

[hillburra]

Hmm, maybe I should just do yearly updates to cut down on detail. Anyway, apart from the caravan stopping everyone from starving the only cool thing to happen in autumn was the caravan guards mowing down the ratmen and Unib taking out 5 troglodytes who kept interrupting his efforts in exploratory mining


Aftermath of getting annoyed by trogs.

[Creamcorn]

Still not incredible interesting. Troglodytes aren't incredibly dangerous to begin with, any miner or Wood cutter can easily take them down.

[Paulus Fahlstrom]

Keep in mind that story forts generate much fewer comments than Community forts, and those even fewer than succession forts. It's not that people aren't interested or reading, there just seems to be less motivation to post. Also keep in mind that for story forts, it's not so much what you do, it's how you say what you've done.

People are reading, so keep it up if you are interested in creating a story for the sake of the story. If you don't have a story to tell already, well, look into the details that the game generates and figure out how to tell one if that's what you want to do with this thread.

Keep in mind that everyone that reads this has likely started multiple forts of their own, so general 'I dug out stockpiles and got my depot up' don't make for very thrilling things.

Describing the slaughter of five troglodytes from a first person pissed off perspective of a miner with a grudge against interfering varmints is something that can be done in detail to draw people in more.

[Lemnx]

Lobbed off the dorf's head to take all the glory and wealth? Is this story teller, perhaps, an ELF?

Make the story teller much more plotting, insidious.... EVIL! That'll be interesting - If all his actions were for the sake of wealth - leading to nobles being drowned, migrants drafted and put to be crushed under bridges...

[hillburra]

Thanks for the feedback, I get the feeling I should take a more Nist Akath style of narrative and only put up updates when events happen rather than when a set amount of time has elapsed. That and some actual insanity.

I think I'll just play this fort for a few more years to get ideas for myself then come back with a new fort in some inhospitable location, maybe an elegant glass city aboveground in the desert.