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[King Zultan]

Using your undying hatred to survive being submerged in lava is a pretty metal way to end a turn.

[nogoodnames]

Glad you guys liked it! I knew this would be the end of Nogood's story since pretty much the start of the turn, but I was struggling to find a satisfying ending. It took a lot of experimentation with Nogood until I landed on the magma bath.

I'm excited to share the results of my experiments, but first here's some notes on the Fortress' state for Recon:

• I accidentally left everyone in the "emergency" burrow (individually, not through alerts). The biggest issue with that is it allows the ghouls to access the social areas (overriding their no-fun burrow) and get stuck again. They're all in the military so a quick station command after removing them from the burrow should shake them out of it.
• I setup some manager orders to automate steel production. I didn't get time to test them so there might be a few bugs.
• The Tall Bar got a couple more floors added, but it's down to you to finish it.
• I couldn't seal the map edge around the swamp because of the geography, so migrants could still come through there. Apparently, you can't build a bridge with its pivot on a ramp. We probably need obsidian casting to properly seal it.

Now then, on with the !!science!!


The !!SCIENCE!! of Nogood: What is even going on anymore?

As I have said before, Nogood's current state is definitely a result of his glitchy resurrection when he turned into a ghost and then a living dwarf. Somehow, he is in a state of half-alive, half-ghost. He is truly immortal now. Even dropping the roof on him won't really kill him.

I had originally tried to kill him by framing him for KingZultan's crimes and executing him with upright spikes. You might have noticed the sacrifice room added to the Temple of Puppets. But whenever a guard would try to beat him, he'd take a couple punches and disappear. It wouldn't even need to hurt him, most of the time they just glanced off his armor. Something about being hit made the game realize "Holy shit! This guy should be dead a hundred times over!" and then try to finish him off. Except it couldn't kill him because of his half-ghost state, so it just removed him from the map. Deconstructing his slab gave me a better idea of what was happening. Without it, when he "died" he would instantly come back as an invisible ghost just outside of the upper-left corner of the map.

At that point, I gave up on bringing him back as a ghoul. So my options then were to keep him around in a paralyzed, mostly-dead state, or kill him and let him remain as some kind of omnipresent spirit entity. I chose the former since I didn't want to just kill off such a unique dwarf. That posed some problems though. Anyone with DFHack would get spammy warnings about him from the warn-starving script. Also, after he went insane, it seemed a bit depressing to just leave him as a melancholic wreck forever entombed under the temple. I wanted some finality for him. Fortunately, further testing provided an answer.

I discovered that if I "killed" him in the terrarium, his body would remain there, but he would disappear from the unit list. That solved the DFHack issues. I also noticed that if you then deconstructed his slab, his ghost would be caged, although zooming to it would still bring you to the corner of the map. Finally, I made a very important discovery about his immortality: he could come back!

I was experimenting with the 166 save when I found this. I made Nogood disappear, deconstructed his slab and then reconstructed it. Then I let the fort play out for a little while to test some other things. I got a notification about a migrant wave, but ignored it. Imagine my surprise when I noticed a dwarf on the surface and, on a hunch, decided to check his name. It was Nogood, returned again as a migrant! His body was healed, but he still acted as if paralyzed. Initially attacks could hit him normally, but after a few weeks of suffocation he went back to disappearing after being hit.

I'm not entirely sure of the mechanics of this. It seems like he could come back infinitely as long as his slab is built. I've managed to do it twice consecutively. He might need some time as a ghost if he ever appears on the dead/missing list. That can happen if there's no path inside when he migrates, and he just walks back off the map. Unfortunately, he'll still be useless due to the paralysis and melancholy. It might be possible to use that grace period when he can still be damaged after coming back to actually kill him in a way that leaves a body. If it is, he could potentially be brought back as a ghoul again.

Anyway, this is the end of his story for me. I'm happy to let him rest (as much as he can have rest) but if others want to experiment on him, they're free to do so.

[auzewasright]

So, in two turns I somehow managed to create an eternal and immortal being completely by accident. Huh.

[delphonso]

So, in two turns I somehow managed to create an eternal and immortal being completely by accident. Huh.

You managed to do something no one else has done.

[King Zultan]

So, in two turns I somehow managed to create an eternal and immortal being completely by accident. Huh.

You managed to do something no one else has done.

Important work was done in this fort, future dwarven scientists will look back on this fort and be amazed at the things that were done and learned here!

[recon1o6]

It was a very somber new year party of 168. The sacrifice of Nogood and the loss of so many brave men and women in the siege had taken its toll. Even the Tavern Keeper had been slain, she who had taken upon herself the mantle of running the overseer elections year on year.

Tholtig was a bored, lonely dwarf. She had no friends beyond the giant blackbird she tamed. A single measly kill to her name- a giant fly. Barely worth the ink on the parchment. Perhaps she could gain some recognition if she ran the election. It worked for the Tavern Keeper after all.
The isolation from her family and lack of friends was getting to her. The ghouls in her squad didn't know nor care how to interact. All she could really claim was to be a fit healthy dwarf.



Tholtid then had an idea- if she was to run the election and get some people to talk to then it would do her good to investigate how the Tavern Keeper did it. Lets see...she always had a list, a specific scroll tube and careful notes about each candidate. They were brought out at election time and put away again after the day. Tholtig's absolute insistence on maintaining decorum and not wasting time "relaxing" drove many away and she sometimes wondered if she was too hard, but here they would be an asset!
Tholtig headed to the old Tavern Keepers office to find out the materials. Certainly the rules and regulations Recon struck certain candidates off for was in there! Alas to her dismay all that was in the office was writing supplies and designs for the Tall Bar. A cruel reminder that the dwarf whose quarters she was plundering was the same one whose ego in having statues of themselves in every bedroom was only eclisped by the waste of time that was the giant tankard.

Still these were some very nice quarters. Perhaps they were in the bedroom in her strongbox.



Tholtig didn't have to look far to find the key to the strongbox, and a rather large one at that. The key was merely underneath the weapon rack in a hidden slot. Quite a clever design but Tholtig was better than that. She opened the chest and peered inside finding several files and curiously two bottles of alcohol labelled 1 and 2. Tholtig shrugged and got everything out than sat on the bed and pulled the stopper in the bottle labelled 1. She could do with a drink, and what better than the Tavern Keepers secret stash? Every dwarf knows that the properietors of an establishment keep the best drinks to themselves.

The booze smelled of strawberries but it certainly didn't seem like wine. Thats it Tholtig realised- Recon must have made Strawberry beer! She recalls overhearing her grumblings about it one training session!
Tholtig upended the bottle and chugged it as any dwarf would. It was strong, incredibly strong, but so sweet! and...Tholtig was getting dizzy...and everything was getting louder. Time was slowing to a crawl and her vision swam. Her body felt like it was slipping away from her. Everything felt heavier and it felt like she had her armour on all of a sudden.
She opened her eyes when she heard the sounds of battle and what sounded like Vutok laughing. Wait that can't be right Vutok was crushed after he fell in battle?
She looked around, her left hand holding Recon's old military flask, empty, in her right a hammer. Goblins were pouring round the corner of the Tall Bar in front of her.

No this can't be happening, she was in Recon's room but then...was she seeing Recon's final moments?
Wait... was that herself in the tower window just then? But that was where she was stationed during the siege...

Tholtig looked to her left and saw Vutok there, surrounded by goblins and trolls. She then jolted feeling a sharp pain in her shoulder as a goblin scourge sheared through her armour. Tholtig screamed as two trolls came and started beating down on her. Blood everywhere, her blood.

that was real, the pain is real, the wounds were real. Was that...Recon laughing?

oh no, did Recon...?

NO

NOOOOO she shrieked as the Lasher plunge her blade into Tholtigs chest and she felt everything go dark.

[delphonso]

You body snatching bastard.

[Murr2]

Following what Recon did with... well...
Recon.
I'm going to try my hand at something.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

     Murr's last wish, hastily scrawled on booze stained paper:
"If you are reading this, that likley means I've been made a zombie. I have only one request
the next time the goblins come to siege
    Lemme at 'em."

Anything else on the paper is likely covered in booze.

[Darkening Kaos]

Spoiler: State of the Embark as of end 167 (click to show/hide)

[delphonso]

Trails of vomit, surface covered in magma, and buzzards circling overhead. Ah... feels like home.

[StrikaAmaru]

 > "I couldn't seal the map edge around the swamp because of the geography, so migrants could still come through there. Apparently, you can't build a bridge with its pivot on a ramp. We probably need obsidian casting to properly seal it."

There's also the option of building statues all across the map edge. It's an old trick, but I presume it still works.

Man, a lot has happened in a short while; I'll have to re-read in the evening, because I only skimmed.

[King Zultan]

That's a lot of vomit on the surface.

[recon1o6]

actually here's a question, where does the goo start and finish each time it passes? I'm trying to work out but I'm not willing to risk one of the few healty dwarves we have

[delphonso]

actually here's a question, where does the goo start and finish each time it passes? I'm trying to work out but I'm not willing to risk one of the few healty dwarves we have

The rain? It's exactly at the grass edge - anywhere on the sand is safe.

[recon1o6]

Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 28th of Obsidian 167

Haha I can't believe it! My hypothesis is right! Souls do persist outside of time! Tholtig truly has my utmost respect for sacrificing herself for me and I'm sure she was grateful for getting to journey to Armok's realm without the possibility of being dragged back by necromancy.

I shall take her surname out of respect. Its better than Claspfought at any rate. That just earned me snide remarks about how I couldn't build furniture or what have you. Even so, she was the best dwarf out of all of them that I could have replaced. Nobody would object to having me around instead of her in any event.

My observations of the undead showed that the ghouls have their own souls trapped within, whereas the zombies do not have anything and are mere puppets driven on bodily instinct. The necromancy slabs said that when there is an abundance of life or death, time starts slowing. This led me to wonder why everybody felt the passage of time slowing down yet still thought at the same pace. The answer to me was that our souls must not be affected by time.

In order to test such a theory I brewed two special bottles of alcohol, designed to trick the body into shutting down momentarily while the dwarven liver kicks in. Alas the goblins invaded and I received the call to arms. So I drank the first while waiting for the green skins to arrive and felt myself fall into darkness with only the feeling of my body standing there. After what felt like forever I felt a second bodily presence similar to my own, I reached out to it so to speak causing its owner to end up slipping into my old one. The liver kicked in and here I am! Alive and well albeit in Tholtig's body.


Now for the second bottle to fix that

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A wine stain covers some of the parchment

Bleh, that was horrible. My face is back to normal, I'm physically in better shape than I was but on the downside I'm a bit more wiry. Thank goodness Tholtig was similar enough to me as it was because I ain't brewing another one. I've had my share of terrible alcohols but very few have made me gag and spill some. It must have started to turn.


Right, time to stop writing and go say hello.


Journal of the Tavern Keeper Overseer 1st of Granite 168

Everyone was miserable when I arrived at the feasting hall, those that were there anyway. I overheard that Nogood had finally gotten sick of his necromancy and cut his strings. With magma. Damn, I would like to have spoke with him concerning what I had learned. Still the man deserves his rest more than anybody here after what he's endured, and what a way to go as well. I'm gonna name my next brew after him in honour.

I turned to the nearest dwarf, Logem our legendary silversmith and asked him what was with the decorations if we are mourning Nogood.
"Its suppo' t' beh ahr new ye'rs party... 'lection o' new' ov'rser an' all tha' Rec'n"

He then dropped his glass and stared at me, doing a double take.

"Wai' REC'N? YE LIVE? -hic-"

I've never seen the man sober up so fast. Not seen a crowd do a double take like that either. Was it really 2 months since I died? Death means little and less in smallhands, but I got bombarded with questions about my survival which was horrible. I then announced that I was going to prepare the election.

Of course, by prepare I mean strike everyone else from the candidate list. I have a mission to do, and that is to return Smallhands to glory!

Starting with my tankard!


-------------------------------

OOC
For my reign I am going to do the following

1. Finish the Tankard and attempt a method of pumping magma up it
2. Attempt to rescue and if possible destroy the tower holding our soldiers
3. Fix the military armour and weapons
4. Plug skill gaps in the fortress
5. Dispose of some of the clutter in the trade storage area