Lately, I've been
invading immigrating to pre-built human settlements, because they're always full of stuff I can
steal barter for, and their wood houses are
easily demolished deconstructible without an axe.
In this particular story, I chose to approach a human military outpost. It was a smallish village of several residences, a couple shops, and an inn, all surrounded by three gigantic (but not very tall) obsidian towers. If you just read that and translated it as "free obsidian at ground level", then know that so did I. Furthermore, the obsidian, unlike the wood houses, was not "constructed". It was natural, diggable, and fully smoothed. Even the squares
behind the exposed walls were smoothed, somehow.
I chose to re-christen this settlement: Uristnazush. Daggerbloods, in the low tongue.
I embarked in the center of town, and promptly... shall we say "re-appropriated" the nearest tower for my purposes, followed ultimately by the other two. Before digging down into the sweet Dwarven Earth, I decided to try something new, and make the entrance to my fortress be on the
top floors of the three towers, snaking through the walls down each level until I reached the basement. Designating a pattern that could get from top to bottom without needing to build new walls was something of a logic problem, but eventually I planned out routes through all three towers, an example of which can be seen here:
Which brings me to Spugac.What is Spugac? Well, apparently Spugac is the law-giver. And Spugac is friendly.
Oh, and it goes without saying that Spugac is, physiologically, an eldritch abomination the likes of which mortal eyes were not meant to see without going mad. It has no gender. Even its blood is deadly. Spugac apparently means "gland" in the human language, and I suppose that's a reference to some sort of
serious glandular problem that this thing has.
Did I mention that Spugac is friendly? Well, I thought it was, anyway...
For most of the first year, Spugac didn't move. Not once. It just stood there, by the northwestern cottage, minding its own business. I pretty much forgot it was there at all.
Of course, had I remembered my lessons from Nethack, I would have known that a giant ampersand is never friendly, unless it grants wishes. Spugac doesn't grant wishes, as far as I can tell. But Spugac isn't purple, so no alarm bells immediately went off. I left Spugac alone, and Spugac left me alone. All was right with the world.
Then, suddenly, come mid-winter, as if it had been switched on by something, Spugac began a rampage. First it destroyed the door to the cottage. Then it destroyed everything inside. It occurred to me while Spugac was smashing the bed that I should try to wall it in there. Unfortunately, Spugac was too fast for me, and I had to abandon that attempt.
Then, charmingly, Spugac started running towards my population centers.
Spugac apparently doesn't like furniture, and it commenced destroying the contents of the next building it came across, just inside the gate I was planning to build. The gate wasn't meant to protect me from Spugac, but in retrospect I should have hurried the work on that.
Again I tried to wall the abomination in.
Again Spugac was too fast for me.
Then Spugac started to actually cause trouble. First it destroyed my carpenter's workshop, presumably because it thought that was the source of the hated furniture. All that stuff it had already smashed was built by the humans before I arrived, and Spugac was also here before I arrived, but it didn't seem to appreciate such a technicality as that.
Then Spugac destroyed my outdoor still, interrupting the flow of the sweet sweet nectar which races lesser than Dwarves can only drink
sometimes. I realized at this point that I might have a serious problem on my hands. While I had stockpiles overflowing with
stolen conveniently found weapons of human manufacture, I hadn't yet had a moment to spare to
train any of my Dwarves in their use.
Spugac's next stop was destroying my farms. Since I hadn't actually broken earth yet, these above-ground farms represented my entire agricultural sector. I was beginning to suspect that Spugac hated not only furniture, but also the brewing process.
It was at this point that I noticed where Spugac was headed. It did not bode well.
In a matter of seconds, my trade depot
ceased to be.
Then, apparently just to get its point across, Spugac also destroyed my wagon before changing direction and heading back towards the tower I had
hijacked rented out from the humans for my own use, within which was
everything I hold dear.
Just as fast as that, Spugac was inside my tower, heading towards all my precious squishies, and whatever it was intent on doing to them, I knew it wouldn't be good. One only needed to peruse the thing's track record so far to guess that:
Spugac stopped here for a good while, and I thought perhaps it was done with its tantrum, and would go back to its previous state of torpor.
But no, it turns out Spugac was simply pausing to contemplate how much it hates doors, and then it smashed the door to my main food stockpile. At least Spugac can't destroy the stockpile
itself.
Then, suddenly, I saw my opportunity.
Spugac was surely going to keep destroying the doors in the southern quarter of my... commandeered tower. After it broke through this door, I guessed it'd head south. If I acted fast, I could wall it in down there while it was busy breaking those other 3 doors.
If it went north instead, I was quite screwed.
Then Spugac went north. I was quite screwed.
Spugac managed to topple my indoor still, one floor above, without ever going up there in the process.
It continued rampaging through
the human my tower, destroying doors left and right. I continued my attempts to wall it in. I knew that if it got to my meeting hall (just there to the right), all hell would break loose.
I made preparations to wall off the meeting hall, at least from the rest of the ground floor. It still had its own stairwell, and exit was still possible.
Just then, spring arrived, which I took to be a good omen. Perhaps it meant I would be able to seal Spugac away for a future generation to deal with. I wouldn't feel the least bit bad about it: what did those deadbeats in the future ever do for me? Nothing!
I should point out that, throughout all of this, Spugac has always remained "friendly". If this is friendly-Spugac, then I would hate to see angry-Spugac.
Then, quick as a whip, Spugac went back down to where I tried to spring my trap, and I saw my
second opportunity. I swore an oath to Armok that I would contain this abomination once and for all, or die trying. I immediately ordered every single one of my Dwarves to masonry detail, and nothing else, to be absolutely sure that the walls would be built as fast as Dwarvenly possible. I would never allow it to be said that a Dwarven colony failed for want of a good stone wall. I canceled the other 167 build orders (I was building a wall around the entire village) so there could be no screw-ups.
The trap was set. All that remained was for Spugac to walk down the corridor, waste time smashing the three doors down there, and the wall would be built behind him. And I swear to Armok, if the Dwarf who builds that wall seals himself in along with Spugac, I am not even going to attempt a rescue.
And in double-quick fashion, my Dwarves proved they were the equals of any Urist who ever lived. I now have a "friendly" rampaging behemoth in my tower, but hopefully it is sealed away forever. Or until I can think of a use for it...