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[HunterBlackLuna]

This isn't a great and glorious tale. It's not an epic disaster or some amazing feat, it's just, well. A mediocre player's story.

After a quite extended break from all things Dorf, I got the EridexisErrant LNP r64 and fired up my standard calm, abundant, no aquifers, no troubles start.

Or so I thought. The grand outpost of Workedlengths, a randomly generated name so amazing I had to take it immediately, was founded in a bit of a river valley, cut into the side of a lot of sand. The site looked fairly promising, and the dwarves set to starting up a solid community, digging secure lodgings, and even setting up for underground dorms, a great hall, stockpiles, workshops, you know, the works.

Given that the site was calm and I'd pretty much chosen to embark in territory that was surrounded on all sides by my own faction, I put off certain things such as any form of military at all, and only slowly built up walls. Specifically, my favorite basic trick, a drawbridge to seal off the entrance, was left until, oh, just before Winter. What could go wrong? Even kobolds don't start showing up until next year, right?



wrong

[HunterBlackLuna]

“This can’t be happening… this can’t be happening… Please Armok, spare me…”

Various snippets of panic and undwarvenly murmuring floated down the crudely-cut sand tunnels, and reached the group of six, perched near the mouth of the ‘entrance’ to their ‘fort’. Assembled hastily and named a ‘military’ despite none of the dwarves having a day’s experience in such matters, they were chosen mainly because they happened to own weapon-like items.

For instance, miners lived and died by their picks anyhow, and they were good, sturdy picks that had dug a promising new page of dwaren history throughout the year. In a pinch, they figured, they’d serve against rotten flesh and bare bone. Neither looked exactly happy, but they weren’t quaking in their dirty, dusty boots as much as, say, the ‘expedition leader’.

Like everything about Workedlengths except the sand that entombed them all, ‘leader’ had to be put in quotation marks because this particular leader had only gotten the job through minor medical and economic skills. They’d figured he could negotiate with the caravans and whatnot.

Thus, he was also made the ‘leader’ of this ‘military’ ‘squad’ of six. The rest of the fortress, animals and dwarves, had been recalled inside as soon as the enemy had been spotted.
Naturally, none of his ‘squad’ had ever faced the Undead before, but from the legends, they always seemed eager to get at anybody who was alive, and yet…

“Where the Hell are they?”

Half an hour passed and there was no sign, or smell, or even noise from outside. The weather was mild, and birds were even still chirping outside in the chilling near-winter air. The tension mounted as they waited, but there was nothing.

Too afraid to even peek out, for the Undead could still very well be out there and attracted to the scent of fresh dwarf, the expedition leader turned towards their woodcutter, a stout lass. “Get down to the mechanic’s shop and get a few of the chalk mechanisms. If the work order got done they should be ready to hook up to a lever in the ‘great hall’ we were digging out.”

At her confusion, he let out a sigh and pointed towards the finely-crafted and meticulously-designed drawbridge, sized through exacting measure to cover up the only way into Workedlengths should the worst happen. Naturally, it wasn’t hooked up to any machinery to pull it up. “Look. If we’d hooked that damn thing up just a bit faster… but that’s beside the point.”

“Right now, that bloody bridge’s as useful to us as a clump of sand’n fending off the dead,” One of the miners rumbled in his working-caste accent.

“Precisely. If the Undead want to take their time, we’ve still got a chance to make it through this. Get down there, grab the mechanisms, hook up the lever, and run the rest up here and attach them to the bridge.”

If their luck held for five more minutes…

[HunterBlackLuna]

I was so proud of myself for getting a burrow designated to recall the civilians inside that I forgot to include the drawbridge itself in the damn burrow. Hence the job was canceled, and by the time the zombie human and his two skeletal horses were finished chasing random pets… the bridge was almost hooked up.

In fact, the mechanic was laying the final bit of machinery into the bridge when the Undead rounded the corner into the entrance, and he naturally chickened out, abandoned his job, and now we were well and truly defenseless from this menace.

The ‘militia squad’ did kind of alright against the regular human zombie. Took it out in fact, although several dwarves were lost. Although I didn’t notice at the time, one of the miners had been knocked out by having her hand broken or something, and laid sleeping as the two zombie horses came in.

Uh. Given the way Dwarf Fortress handles combat, it’s honestly not surprising that the fast, strong kicks of horses are absurdly deadly. They mowed my ‘squad’ like grass, and, with no options, I drafted every single adult in Workedlengths and gave the order to charge. We could rely on literally nothing but the courage afforded a cornered animal, and sheer numbers.

Didn’t work.



They mowed down every single person effortlessly, and the walls of the fortress ran red with dwarven blood. The only survivors of the rampage, for which the Undead horses were no worse off aside from getting names, was a child cowering in some room somewhere, a bunch of random pets who are as I speak being used to paint the meeting hall area, and that wounded, knocked-out dwarf.
One of the original seven, a miner.

She woke up, stumbled back into the entrance of the fortress, saw everybody, including her lover, dead, and uh.



So I’m pretty sure I know what happens next but we’ll see if a miracle happens. I saw a random peasant punch a Titan’s brains out once, so I’m not ruling anything out.

[HunterBlackLuna]

Yeah. The child didn't deliver us a reversal of fortunes, either. so welp. Let this prove as a cautionary tale; no matter how safe your embark is, and how careful you normally are, don't delay basic safety measures. Or, do, and then watch the results with amusement. At least Toady was nice enough to give an update like yesterday so hey, time to upgrade anyhow.