Great writing...but shouldn't this be in the community/stories section?
I don't know! Maybe it should. How do I move it?
I actually wanted to ask for suggestions as to how I might save (or further doom) my fortress, but somehow it came out as a poetic story. It's my first fortress that's lasted past a couple of seasons, in previous attempts I ended up getting intimidated by the complexity of it all. But aside from Chairman Mao levels of mismanagement I think I'm finally getting the hang of this game!
Tholtig is the expedition leader and ex-mayor of this whole fustercluck, I figured she should be the one to give the introduction. I'm fairly certain the current mayor is a vampire, more on that later. Here's the rundown:
Catastrophic incompetence in the agricultural department led to a severe shortage of booze (and food, but that we managed by hunting) in the 3rd year. We had assumed the barrels we bought from the traders would last us at least through the winter, but our estimates were based on a population in the twenties, and the actual beardcount had recently ballooned to more than 70. This would not have been such a disaster in itself, had it not been for the fact that...
...our engineers are a dim-witted rabble of nincompoops that don't know their arses from a hole in the ground. The trench they had dug from the surface brook to our underground water cistern would hardly fill a bath tub in a season's time, much less deliver enough water to supply the fortress well in any foreseeable timespan. Even so, the work did not start until late Autumn, whereupon the brook soon froze solid. Had they at least started by leading the water underground, we might have averted the worst ... But no, the last part of our great installation was the brook channel itself, which of course remained dry and frozen hard as bone until the first of Slate. In addition...
...our Chief Medical Dwarf, curse his beard, was a murderous, lying bastard. He assured us that a few months of drink shortage would be of little concern to overall dwarven health as long as we had food. No need to go outside gathering snow-covered apples for brewing, he said. Then one morning we found the Administrator as a shriveled corpse in the lower halls. Next was the Chief Medical Dwarf himself, and while none of us shed a tear for him, the panic was now beginning to spread among the populace.
And then the children... Oh Armok, the children. And the parents. Even the Baroness succumbed to thirst eventually. Soon it was all we could do to keep the corpse gas from spreading. Those of us with the strongest stomachs took it upon us to deliver their bodies to the surface, as a temporary resting place until proper graves could be constructed. Most of them are still stinking out there.
I tell you, I could feel the relief through the computer screen when the brook melted and the remaining dwarves shambled down to the cistern to drink the filthy muck. I have since expanded farming considerably and am now reserving all plants for brewing. The victims of this tragedy will rest in fine caskets of purest lead near the (now filled) cistern, about 1/4 of them have been interred there already. May they never be forgotten.
Still, there's a lot to be done. Most of us have thoughts that are several screens of "horrified by death", and I suspect the only reason why there have been so (relatively) few tantrums is that the military keeps everyone too afraid to step out of line. Even the ghosts that roam our hallways seem reluctant to float in their way. They are equipped with fine silver warhammers hewn from our very own galena veins, and iron plate armor that we forged from bars provided by traders, with bone greaves and gauntlets, and wooden shields. All of them are supremely well trained. At least one thing seems to be working right in this miserable hole in the ground.
Which is good, because we are now under siege! Our finest dwarves ran out to greet the invaders, with ranged support from our four hunters, all professional marksdwarves.
With no ammunition. Remind me to establish a justice system and set the Hammerer upon whomever it was that sent them out so poorly equipped! The drawbridge is raised behind them, so they're stuck plucking their crossbowstrings while the melee squad does its duty.
Yet somehow, through great skill, or perhaps a tremendous amount of luck, it seems we are winning this battle! Yes, a fisherdwarf and an apple gatherer have fallen, and the cruel goblins have taken their wrath out on several animals in our livestock pasture (remind me to wall that off!), but not one of our soldiers has fallen! I see them blocking crossbow bolts and dodging whip lashes, and two of them managed to bring down the goblin master in combined effort, their hammers crunching skulls and shattering femur bones. Glorious.
Which brings us to a rather sinister problem that I've been unwilling to discuss with any of my advisors. We have a vampire in our halls. Two children have been found dead in their beds, drained of all blood (why is it always the children!). The first one occurred some time after our last immigrant wave... in which we received our current Mayor. Strange, that, being elected Mayor after just a few weeks in the fortress. Tholtig was practically furious. Our new Mayor is a swordsdwarf by trade, although I haven't examined his skills too closely. I will do so when he returns from the siege, as well as dig into his past.
I say when he returns, because I have never seen a dwarf fight like this. Here is a rough summary of his most recent combat log:
The speargoblin misses the Mayor.
The Mayor bites the speargoblin in the left hand and latches on firmly!
The Mayor crushes the speargoblin's right leg
with his shield. No ordinary dwarf, this.
The Mayor tosses the goblin around like a toy by its left hand,
using his teeth. What a magnificent set of teeth he must have...
The Mayor crunches the goblin's skull like a ripe melon, swinging his heavy hammer with ease.
These impressive feats are even more startling considering that his fellow hammerdwarves mostly just stand around muttering about dead dwarves in their combat logs, whilst getting in a lucky hit now and then. It's almost as if our Mayor
has no fear of death... I'll keep a close eye on him. And I'll be sure to keep him
far away from the hospital I've begun constructing. We have survived our own thirst. We shall not fall to the thirst of another!
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Topic: I am Tholtig (Read 13857 times)