While all the
dwarves vs humans vs zombies vs forgotten beasts vs necromancers action was happening on the surface, there was immense flooding in the lower caverns. The trouble happened to be that a floodgate had been smashed apart and now there was another
eldritch horror stuck in the plumbing.
This capacity for floodgate destruction should have set off
alarm bells, and failure to act when we still had the chance cost many lives. Unfortunately, at the time we we were distracted by a giant forgotten spider beast webbing everything from here until next week.
While dwarves were sent to
their pointless deaths eventually beat the spider menace through attrition, Urist the Grey finally
succumbed to the healthcare in the fortress, despite it having improved somewhat since Cutey's demise (he was, after all, taken to his bed rather than left to die on the battlements, which was more than Adil got).
The fort had, by this stage, moved into full beast-killing mode, and an
attempt was made to defeat them, though there were still many left, and more arriving all the time, each more absurd that the last.
Some beasts spit poison, others shroud themselves in smoke and flames, and yet more
lurk beneath the water and wait and wait and wait.
The fight within the fort nearly put out the more famous of the dwarves still living. But it was always essentially under control, bar a dozen or so expected fatalities. Mad Meng himself had a
second brush with death, but his sharp-shooting won out.
So confident were we that most of the winter was taken up by an
elaborate scheme to pick off three beasts by luring them close by dropping peahen chick over the wall and then shooting them from above.
In the end it was deemed more effective to just send in a dozen dwarves to finish the job with
proper weaponry. While all this was happening, the humans had gotten fed up with the undead, the eternal siege breakers, and had gone home. As soon as they left another threat appeared on the horizon.
Werepanthers really were the
least of our worries. No, and here I say this with a heavy heart: our problem was Aste. His corpse, raised a second time by agents unknown, trampled down into the tunnel carved out by the behest of Cutey almost a decade ago. It had been kept tight shut this turn with an artefact floodgate but such beautiful furniture was no match for the might of the twice-raised crab. Before the fort knew what hit it, it emerged inside and there was nowhere left to run.
The remaining might of the fort was sent to destroy him and stem the undead tide long enough for a mason to plug up the hole and save the fort. This might have been
possible, for Aste fell once again and though many more dwarves were lost, the undead were momentarily pushed back from the tunnel. And that's when the goblins arrived.
Their ambush was swift and
brutal, and many that might have been saved the carnage threw their lives in the name of 'picking up equipment', the deadliest phrase in all dwarfdom. Children ran senselessly into a barrage of bolts as the foul goblins wreaked their revenge for Ngom and Amxu and all their kinsmen slain or still rotting in cages. Nobody was left alive on the surface of the fort, even inside the high walls. The doors inside were locked shut and the remaining 31 dwarves greeted the new year in pain and despondency.
Though over the year they had bested a full
eighteen forgotten beasts, it had come at a terrible price. The upper fort was now awash with goblins and over 90 dwarves had died. Udib Wastedlabor had survived, along with Lucky II, Sebastian2203, and Urist McKiwi V. They were still protected by a Royal Mace Lord, but the rest of the survivors were decidedly less useful. There were 13 children, three peasants, three other nobles and three other farmers, at best a leatherworker, furnace operator and a gem cutter. Finally, miserable and in chains and walled in for eternity, the vampire Ustuth still paced. While the others discussed leaving this forsaken place, Ustuth, like the hundreds of dead before him, would never leave.
The save game is here.
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Topic: Moltenchannels - The magma flows - FINAL TURN (Ardentdikes II) (Read 401591 times)