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Written by Illisid

After 2 caravans and no raids, my second fortress finally gets some migrants – 17 of them – more than tripling my population. In this group was a blacksmith who liked cats.

None of my cats had yet been adopted, so as soon as this blacksmith became situated and comfortable, he adopted all of them but one, which a migrant child adopted. Under my blacksmith’s relations menu, it said he had 7 pet cats, and that his only friend was the child.

That alone was a funny image – the “cat lady” of my game being a burly, muscular blacksmith. But it got better. It turned out I had more use for him, smoothing out walls, so he ended up becoming a skilled engraver. And when I told him to engrave my dining room… well, now my dining room is filled with pictures of cats.

This is majorly entertaining.

Picture by Illisid’s brother.

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Written and drawn by Atomicthumbs

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Chaos, absolute chaos.

Despite the destruction, the entire main staircase survived. I was expecting it to be completely destroyed, top to bottom. But most of it is magma-free, and dwarves can still travel up and down on it.

I’ve dug out a few walls here and there to free dwarves from their rooms, and added some walls to stop the entire magma pipe from leaking into the fortress and killing what little framerate I had left.

A dwarf named Ducium Datanfash went mad and picked a fight with a nearby donkey. Everyone else just ignored him.

A few dwarves, mad with grief, throw themselves down the newly-made pits, dying at the bottom. As other dwarves start tantruming, going berserk with rage, and succumbing to melancholy, I check on the baroness. She’s still “ecstatic” and pretends like nothing is out of the ordinary. I’d think an enormous hole in the fort spilling magma everywhere would dampen her spirits at least a bit. I guess not.

One of the champions has taken it upon himself to chain up tantruming dwarves in the makeshift jail. But that’s the dungeon master’s job, and he’s still alive! I think it’s hilarious.

I order all the chains to be removed – I want these dwarves to run rampant around the fortress, causing mischief!

Upon being released from jail, Sarvesh the jem cutter goes around killing things, until he too is struck down.

With things still burning and dwarves still killing each other, the population is down to about 30 now. That’s still too many…

I try killing the remaining dwarves with ballista arrows. It works pretty well, but the arrows don’t fly very straight, and keep hitting walls instead of dwarves.

13 dwarves remain. Most of them are either nobles, royal guards, or fortress guards… and you can’t order those guys around at all, they do as they please. It would be very difficult for me to kill them all.

So, I decide that now is a good time to abandon the fort.

Goodbye, Scouredbridged. It’s been fun.

THE END.

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21st of Felsite. Today is the day that my laggy fortress shall die.
I open the init.txt file and toggle “temperature” to [YES].

When I load the game, I take one last look at the fort.
Some dwarves are sleeping in their miserable, cramped rooms. Others scurry about doing menial tasks. A marksdwarf practices on the archery range.
Most of the dwarves are hanging out in the dining room, the statue rooms, and the zoo.

Someone pulls the doomsday lever.
The tiny support snaps like a twig.
My computer struggles to load a single frame as the enormous bowl of death begins its descent.

Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting this… when the next frame finally loads, an enormous dust cloud envelops the fort from top to bottom. I suppose cave-ins are instantaneous, because the bowl has already fallen the entire distance, smashing apart along the way as expected. The fortress now looks like swiss cheese… or at least it would, if I could see through all this dust.

The lava, however, falls much more slowly. In contrast with the bowl’s instantaneous fall, it seems to float down from the sky.
The ensuing magma rain kills several dozen dwarves.

The molten rock covers everything as it rains down from the sky. Dwarves and furniture burn. Barrels of alcohol boil and explode. Smoke, dust, and magma mist fill the rooms.

The population of my fortress, 91, has been cut in half.

A 2-minute ascii video of the entire event is available here.

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