Dear Urist McCaravanTrader,
Thank you for killing my fortress. My broker was indisposed, and you just couldn't accept a ridiculously fair offer from anyone else, so you accused me of playing childish games and I decided it was a good time to drown you in the depot. But you just couldn't accept that, could you? You couldn't just drown like good merchants, no, you had to find a way out and spend the next 4 years hanging out in my moat because apparently the very obvious door to the outside wasn't a clear indication that you were not wanted. Even when I managed to fill the moat up to level 7, you still found a way to not drown. I don't know what black magic you have worked that allows you to survive in deep water without drowning, but I can assure you the queen of this land will hear of it, or at least she would've heard of it if I had not had her killed.
Anyway, because you could not take a hint and just leave, and because I did not feel like starting a civil war in my fortress by sending my militia in there to kill you, no other caravans came from our home civilization. Apparently the total lack of news from any of your caravan combined with the fact that a few of you just could not take the hint and walk out convinced those from the outer lands that you must still be here, trading with us, and so they had no need to send anyone else. And because no further caravans came to our once great mountainhome, no word of our great deeds or ridiculously massive wealth was passed on to the dwarves of our outermost reaches, and so immigration slowed to a trickle before stopping altogether.
Word of our wealth did however reach the goblins and the kobolds though, who launched numerous raids against us. We dealt with these handily, but because my most experienced soldiers were more concerned with picking up equipment than fighting off the enemies, and because my reserve marksdwarves mainly joined for the money for college and didn't understand that you needed bolts in order to be able to use a crossbow, and were also unable to grasp the concept that sometimes bins can contain ammunition, we lost a few men in the defense. Then 2 or 3 forgotten beasts emerged in the middle of a kobold ambush and my more experienced fighters were stretched a little thin. We managed to defeat them, well, all except for the big spider who coated most of my fortress in webs and killed off almost all of my militia including virtually every one of my legendary fighters, but we were eventually able to lure him into the crypts and seal him off behind a wall, so that'll be a nice surprise for whoever comes to reclaim our fortress.
We were bruised but not beaten. We had repelled the invaders, but had lost about half our population, including many of our legendary, skilled crafters, but we could recover from this, assuming we could get some migrants in to replace them, but oh wait, that's right, there weren't any. That's okay, I'm sure we could still find a solution, but it was around this point I noticed that the population of our fortress seemed a little smaller every time I looked. Besides the many dwarves who had been wounded and were now succombing to infection because the hospital was filled with miasma from all the rotting corpses and the few surviving doctors seemed more concerned with moving animals back to their pastures than actually treating anyone, it seemed a few of my more disgruntled deceased were unhappy about the manner of their deaths and the fact that we didn't have enough coffins to bury them all, and decided to rise up and start murdering the remaining populace, leaving many contorted in fear, oddly inside the hospital.
Well, after the last of my patients had died, I saw no problem sealing off the hospital and hoping the ghosts remained there. I tried to engrave memorial slabs for these poor, murderous souls, but it seems that one of their victims had been my legendary engraver. That was okay though, as I could hire a few newb engravers to make a quick memorial slab, but they were rather occupied with the whole corpse hauling and trying to stay alive thing and it took a little while. My population had dwindled to around 20 when we were attacked by troglodytes and voracious cave crawlers from below. My attention had momentarily wavered and was brought back to it by the arrival of a firespitting forgotten beast monitor, who dispatched the wild animals who were overrunning my lower levels and then went to engage the monitor in single combat, as the remainder of the militia, all recruits, were too busy trying to find where they had left their bootlaces to be of any assistance.
The match between the legendary Axe Lord who commanded my militia and the forgotten beast was a draw. The commander attacked the beast with many fierce swings of his axe, and the beast responded by spitting fire at the commander, encasing both in a thick cloud of smoke. An intense battle developed, and when the dust cleared, both were dead. The commander was my last dwarf with any military experience and I was now left with a bunch of recruits to deal with the growing army of troglodytes that were gathering at the base of my fortress. There are some very thick doors leading to the entrance of my fortress proper, but because dwarves can never be bothered to clean up after themselves, and one had left a cage containing a troglodyte caught by one of our traps inside the doorway, the troglodytes had little trouble getting into my fortress, killing most of my ducks and chickens, and generally annoying the population that remained, and my recruits are still trying to track down their boot bands.
So now, my population is down to 6, I have a fortress rapidly filling with wild animals, and to top it all off, now I have an elven caravan to deal with, and I have decided with great reluctance that it is time to abandon the once mighty mountainhome of Pricedwheels. Hopefully the few remaining dwarves can find their way out and still go on to other things. All of this because you guys could not figure out where the exit was despite the many engraved invitations that I had sent you and my multiple attempts to drown you. Please in the future try to be polite and die when I ask nicely. And let this be a lesson to all other upstart overseers of fortresses in realms all over the world, when designing a trap to drown ornery merchants, always be sure you put a grate, and not a fortification, on the lower level so that they cannot swim out through the water inlet. If they survive, they will linger like a piece of meat that gets stuck between your teeth and eventually grows rotten and infected before finally coming loose only to get into your blood and infect your heart, resulting, in a slow painful death from sepsis.
Best Regards to All,
Your former overseer
Author
Topic: Note to Urist--In which you express your frustration to your dwarves (Read 1501258 times)