A Tale of Two Dwarves
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(80 votes)Now, here’s the thing about dwarves: they’re not like you and me. We wake up, we shower, we get dressed, we go to work, and while we’re doing all this, sometimes we get an idea. “I should write a cookbook that focuses on pomegranates,” we think, and then we get out of the shower and towel off and we don’t write the book. “I should create a mosaic depicting Washington’s terrible defeat at Fort Necessity,” we think, and then, almost always, we reach our bus stop, we step off the bus, and we go on with our lives.
Dwarves aren’t like that. They have lives, and jobs, just like us, and they have normal ideas that don’t come to pass, just like you and me, but sometimes – often enough that the Dwarves have five different words for it, all of which translate, roughly, to “touched” – a dwarf gets a particularly strong idea, an idea that he can’t shake. “I should write a cookbook that focuses on pomegranates,” the dwarf will think, “and I will make the cover from pomegranate peel. And the ink will be made from pomegranate juice, and the pages shall be made of the finest papyrus, and the pages will be bound with a single thread of gold. And the book shall be called ‘Berrydowned’.”
The dwarf’s co-workers might say to him “Hey, Arast, why did you stop hammering?” and Arast will say “Fuck you,” walk in to a grocery store, kick everyone out, and spend the next nine hours obsessively examining each pomegranate to find the perfect materials for his cookbook. That’s what dwarves are like.
This is a story about two dwarves in the fortress of Bekemlogem, “Springpainted.” One of these dwarves became a legend. The other died miserably, starving in the dark. The first dwarf’s name was Nish Oddomshetbøth. The second’s was Urist Köbukrinal.
Bekemlogem was an unusual fortress, built as it was in the middle of a swamp. Dwarves, by their nature, are not fond of swamps. There’s too much mud, for one thing, and too much water. There are many adjectives one can apply to a dwarf, but “moist” is not the first that comes to mind. This was not just any swamp, but a swamp that, as near as anyone could tell, was over an aquifer. An aquifer can make it hard to mine safely, and no mining means no profit. The leader of the expedition to found the fortress, a merchant by the name of Stukos Oddomsanreb, had to do an awful lot of fast-talking to persuade people that he wasn’t crazy. “There’s a caldera there,” he insisted, “which has to be solid rock. We can tunnel down near the caldera, and mine under the aquifer. If we’re careful, there’s nothing to worry about.”
Stukos was a good dwarf, but not a persuasive one. Only 6 other dwarves left the safety of the mountainhomes to try to find their fortune in Stukos’s swampy paradise.
The funny thing about this is that Stukos turned out to be mostly right. There was solid rock near the caldera, and although the miners had to be careful to not accidentally take a bath in hot magma, they were able to dig down below the aquifer and establish workshops, where they began growing mushrooms and carving crafts to trade with anyone crazy or stupid enough to visit them out in the middle of the marshlands. Soon enough, they started attracting immigrants.
The swamp was peaceful and quiet. There weren’t even any goblin attacks, and when was the last time you heard of a fortress that wasn’t attacked by goblins? Even the goblins, it seems, were smart enough to avoid the swamp.
Nish, a glass-blower by trade, had arrived at Bekemlogem on a spring morning and was promptly informed that out here in the country they didn’t have much call for fancy things like glass, that stone was good enough for plain-spoken honest dwarves, and that we don’t have any sand around here anyway, so here’s a crossbow and you’re in the army now, son.
As I said, there were no goblins in the swamp, which was good, because there weren’t any bolts for Nish’s crossbow either, and even if there had been bolts, there was nothing to shoot at. Military service at Bekemlogem mostly involved standing around outside, swearing, and sweating, not necessarily in that order. Occasionally one of his squad-mates would offer to wrestle, to relieve the boredom, but this just made Nish feel even more uncomfortable, especially since this particular squad-mate always wanted to wrestle naked, “to keep our uniforms from getting wrinkled,” he said.
So mostly Nish just stood outside in the swamp, sweating, and thought about beer.
Nish thought about dark beer, light beer, frothy beer, flat beer, ale, lager, porter, and stout. He thought about beer mugs, beer steins, beer taps, kegs of beer, a beer mug, tall glasses filled with beer, coasters that you could fling at people after you’d drunk enough beer from that stone beer mug, and a table for putting the beer mug on, except there needs to be a little bit of something on the bottom of the mug to make sure it doesn’t scratch the table. A bit of turtle shell would be perfect. He thought about drinking beer on cold days, nice days, rainy days, hot and sticky days, when your hand slips on the beer mug and you drop it, spilling your beer, which is bad, so you’d want to have a good grip. Maybe you could nurl the handle? No, no, too boring. You want something textured. Something you can really feel. Bones. You could wrap the handle in small bones. But you’d have to position the handle so as not to obscure the carving on the mug, the carving depicting the founding of the first Fortress.
It was around this time that Nish dropped his crossbow and began slowly walking towards the nearby outdoor workshop, like he was in a trance. “Hey, get back to your post!” said his captain, Momuz. “Fuck you,” said Nish. He walked inside to the workshop, elbowed the master stonecrafter in the face, picked him up by his breeches, and threw him out of the building. Momuz put his head in his hands, and moaned, as the realization hit him. “He’s touched. This is going to end in blood.”
In fact, it didn’t end in blood. It ended in a lovely beer mug, engraved with an image of a dwarf raising a scepter, that Nish called “The Undignified Worries,” which when you think about it is a truly appropriate name for a beer mug. Nish never drank from anything else for as long as he lived. On unveiling the masterful mug — and its artistry and craftsmanship were undeniable — Nish was honorably discharged from the army, was given his own workshop and a generous stipend, and basically allowed to do whatever the hell he wanted for the rest of his life. When not in his workshop, “whatever the hell he wanted” turned out to be drinking beer, from his mug, inside.
No, it didn’t end in blood, but Momuz can be forgiven for thinking that it probably would. The funny thing about ideas — dwarven or human — is that there’s no strict requirement that they be practical. We can all imagine building a hot-air balloon to fly to Jupiter, or making a bicycle entirely of bacon, or, to take an example from Minnie the Moocher, a diamond car with platinum wheels. But when a dwarf is touched by the idea of a car like that, he doesn’t stop to think “this isn’t practical.” Instead, he starts looking around for diamonds and platinum.
What happens when a dwarf can’t find enough diamonds and platinum to build his car? Someone dies. Every time.
Sometimes, the dwarf will go mad, grab the nearest weapon, and start cutting down anyone he comes across. This is what Momuz expected when he bemoaned Nish being touched, because that’s what usually happens. Momuz, being captain of the guard, was likely to be the first person killed. An insane dwarf can usually take down four or five of his comrades before being killed himself. It’s a lot easier to kill when you aren’t afraid of dying.
Strangely, this outcome is viewed by most dwarves as the lesser of two evils.
Sometimes, instead of going on a rampage, the thwarted dwarf will kill himself. Suicide is not a part of dwarvish culture, and they would be bitterly offended to hear me describe it this way. Their word for this sort of death translates roughly to “melancholy.” The melancholic dwarf stops eating, stops drinking, and simply wanders aimlessly around the halls, sometimes for months, until she or he eventually dies from starvation and malnutrition. This is infinitely worse for the dwarves than the violent outcome, which at least is over quickly.
The key thing to realize here is that to the dwarves, the failure of a touched dwarf to create his artifact is a failure of the community, not a failure of the dreamer. “If we had only dug deeper, and worked harder,” they think, “we would have had enough diamonds and platinum for her to build that car. The vision of that car was a gift from the gods, and we were too shiftless and lazy to be able to claim it.” The melancholic dwarf, dying slowly in public, is a constant reminder of the community’s inadequacy.
Which brings us to Urist Köbukrinal, a name that to this day will make the dwarves of Bekemlogem weep in shame and shake in self-loathing. Urist was an engineer, a shy boy who one day was touched.
True to his nature, Urist snuck downstairs to the lowest levels of the fortress and, in the deep, quietly and shyly claimed a mechanic’s workshop that no one was using. No one noticed he was missing at first, but when they finally found him in the deeps, he was surrounded by sketches of something, and refused to say a word. His sketches had rock, and bone, and cloth, and he was surrounded by pieces of rock of varying sizes. The town elders brought him all the cloth and bones they had, but none of it was right. They didn’t know how it wasn’t right; Urist wouldn’t say.
It would be four months until the next caravan arrived. There was no way that Urist would be able to make whatever it was he was trying to make. And so the dwarven elders of Bekemlogem, perhaps thinking of their children, whom dwarves love as much as we love our own, did the unthinkable.
They walled Urist in his workshop.
Urist made no attempt to escape. He just stood behind the workbench, calmly watching each stone as it slid into place. The masons, their cheeks red with humiliation, would not meet his eyes.
When the last stone slid into place, he sat down and, quietly, waited to die. It took fifty-two days. He never made a sound.
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(80 votes)The Hidden Tower
(43 votes)There was once a small but thriving fortress dug out under a mountain at the edge of a vast mountain range. There was a forest to the north, a brook on the west, a volcano on the southwest, a chasm on the southeast, and mountains on all other sides.
The land was so full of riches that the miners struck gold as soon as they started digging. The fortress grew slowly in size, but very quickly in wealth, as they were surrounded by precious metals and gems. When dwarven caravans returned to the Mountainhomes bearing golden crafts and platinum statues, they brought news of an outpost with immense wealth. The news spread like wildfire, and soon almost the whole world knew about the fortress.
However, as always, the news reached the wrong ears. Goblin and kobold thieves and ambushers came soon, eager to steal the riches. The fortress was still small in terms of population, but their military was made up of grim, determined dwarves who fought bravely. The outpost managed to repel all attacks with minimal loss. The population began to grow quickly as migrants arrived in huge numbers.
Soon thereafter, the mayor decided that he wanted a supply of magma for the smelters, and sent a group of miners to channel magma to the fortress from the volcano. But along with the magma came fire imps, fire men, and magma men, rapidly killing dwarves.
The mayor had also sent miners on an expedition to the far ends of the land to find more gems and ore. The miners dug faithfully, but forgot to block the tunnels they dug, and soon chasm creatures flooded into the fortress.
To cap it all off, the goblins chose that moment to send a huge siege party.
As the three separate armies advanced upon the fortress, the mayor consulted the captain of the guard, who told him that even if they managed to drive away both the chasm creatures and the magma creatures, the goblins would still finish them off. But the mayor had an idea. Miners were sent for an extremely important, secret mission. They dug out a large, temporary room for the dwarves, deep inside another mountain. The nobles were quickly rushed in, followed by civilians with food, drink, equipment, and treasures.
The chasm creatures were first to arrive at the fortress, and the military fought them bravely, killing some and driving away the rest. The captain of the guard then rushed his army into the secret room. Miners, meanwhile, dug a tunnel from the brook to the room, providing it with a water supply. Finally, the best mason built a thick wall to block the pathway, just as the magma creatures arrived.
The goblins arrived last, and were surprised to find the fortress completely devoid of dwarves. As they explored the fortress, it seemed as if it was devoid of treasure, too. Then the lava creatures burst in. There was a fast and furious battle between the goblins and the fire imps. The goblins managed to drive them back to the magma forge – a heroic feat – but magma men and fire men emerged from the magma. The goblins sent a few messengers to nearby goblin towers, just before they were all burnt to crisps. Soon, more chasm creatures spouted out of the tunnels, and joined forces with the magma creatures to battle more goblins who arrived. In short, there began an endless battle between the goblins and the creatures of the deep.
Time passed, and while the two armies fought off-and-on endlessly, the dwarves excavated their new mountain refuge from the inside. They dug until the mountain was almost entirely hollowed out. In the center was a vast tower, made of gold, silver and platinum. On it, there were hundreds of masterwork statues and engravings. Without the caravans to bring them food, (since most dwarven civilizations had erased them from their maps) they relied on subterranean farming and herding for their food, cloth and drink. They also mined deep into the earth, with tunnels reaching to various corners of the land. Their tower was completely self-sustaining, and like a wonderland for dwarves, with ponds, statue gardens, zoos and artificial waterfalls. The dwarves thrived.
The dwarves of the Hidden Tower, as they called themselves, survived for decades in this way. However, they did not realize that the fighting outside had ended, and did not know that dwarven adventurers had begun to repopulate the fortress again.
These new dwarves had managed to drive out the remaining goblins and tame the wild creatures of the land. However, they were surprised to find strange criss-crossing tunnels deep in the earth, and more surprised to find that much of the ore and gems had been excavated. They were also blocked out from a certain mountain by what were certainly dwarven-made walls. Alas, if the hidden dwarves had chosen to reveal themselves, they would have survived what was coming for them…
More than a century later, a terrible famine struck the Hidden Tower. A dwarf went fey and started screaming for glass. Since there was no means of making it, (the only thing the Tower lacked was a supply of sand) the dwarf went berserk. The mayor had not planned any assault on its citizens, so there was no military at all. The miners were the only dwarves who carried any weapons – their mining picks. Most unfortunately, the berserk dwarf was a legendary miner.
The hidden Tower was mainly focused on food production, so that its population of almost 500 would be sustained. The majority of the working class worked on farms, and in farmer’s workshops, kitchens, stills, butcheries and fisheries. Fisherdwarves also fished in channeled streams from the brook and underground river. The berserk dwarf rampaged through the workshops, and slaughtered most of the workers.
The mayor immediately called for the other miners to subdue the berserk dwarf. Meanwhile, the dwarf in question worked his way through the workshops and onto the farms. There was a renovation project going on in the farms, and there were many farmers there. The miner killed most of the farmers, until one of them tried to wrestle the pick away from him. The farmer was killed almost instantly, but he enticed a few more farmers to try to grab the berserk dwarf. After a few minutes of struggling, the pick was pulled out of his hand.
The crazed dwarf was soon killed by the miners, but the damage was done. Almost all the farmers and food workshop workers were dead, with the rest injured. Altogether, 79 dwarves were killed. The smell of dwarf blood hung in the air for weeks. All the remaining ~400 dwarves attended a mass funeral, but many dwarves were unable to handle the loss of so many friends and soon went mad. These dwarves rioted throughout the tower, killing many other dwarves in their madness before they too were struck down by the miners.
At this point, about 300 sane (but still unhappy) dwarves remained. All the dwarves were put into the food industry, but it was still not enough, since the great majority of the workers were unskilled and unable to work fast enough.
With no excess plants available for brewing, the Tower ran out of alcohol. Without alcohol to sedate them, and with very little food, the dwarves became very unhappy. Some of them succumbed to melancholy. Some just starved to death. Others went berserk, killing even more dwarves, and causing even more unhappiness. The beautiful tower did not look so beautiful anymore, with bloodstains, corpses, and mad dwarves at every corner.
When the population of sane dwarves reached just 100, it was obvious that the Hidden Tower was going to fail.
There was only one dwarf alive who had lived before the construction of the tower. His name was Kogan, and he was not happy about the most recent turn of events, as he had seen the Tower grow all the way. He and his apprentice Mafol secretly went out to mine in the tunnels one evening, but instead of going to the usual digging site, they began to dig their way out. They dug all the way up to the surface, and, braving daylight after centuries, threw up promptly.
Both dwarves had a severe case of cave adaptation. Because of this, they were temporarily stunned, and did not notice the approach of a ferocious dragon above them. By luck, the dragon did not notice them either, and flew straight overhead to devour the new dwarves at the main fortress.
At night, when the sky was dark, the two dwarves went out exploring. They marvelled at the beautiful trees, the grass, and the fresh air. They soon reached the new settlement in the area. The dragon was, at that point, frying some dwarves inside the fortress. After killing all the new dwarves, the dragon was peacefully resting on its hoard, when the two miners stumbled in.
The dragon was quite intelligent, and knew immediately that these two dwarves were not from the fortress he had just depopulated. They were richly garbed with silk clothes, and their picks were set with diamonds. With a burst of flame the two miners were transformed into a pile of ash on the ground. However, the sighting of the two dwarves caused the dragon to ponder…
The dragon immediately set off to find where the mysterious miners had come from. He found the staircase and went on to find the Hidden Tower, full of more dwarves to eat.
All the dwarves were killed that night, and so ends the legend of the Hidden Tower.
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Edited and illustrated by Taran
Author unknown. Source
(43 votes)A Metal Dwarf Fortress
(12 votes)The idea was to create a fortress inspired by Metalocalypse. To start, I chose a site situated on a frigid, barren mountainside. There was no water, and no trees, only constant snowstorms. My plan was to dig down, to find a cavern with water for farming, and a cavern with magma for forging tools, weapons and armor. I stocked up on supplies, knowing my dwarves would be living off what they brought with them for many months while the miners searched. I named my expedition “Deathclock” and the site “Murderhowls” (which was the closest I could get to Dethklok and Mordhaus in the limited vocabulary of Dwarf Fortress).
I named the starting seven dwarves after the band, their manager, and their producer: Skwizgar, Toki, Nathan, Murderface, Pickles, Ofdenson, and Knibbler. All arriving migrants would be numbered Klockateers. (later I also named the chef Jean Pierre and the doctor Dr Roxxo).
The first order of business was to get underground. My miners (Skwizgar and Toki) were tasked with digging out a temporary shelter in the side of the mountain. As soon as it was dug out, all provisions were moved inside, and the entrance to the shelter was walled up, to prevent wild animals and goblin ambushes from attacking the defenseless dwarves.. Ordinarily, embarking dwarves bring a wooden wagon which can be deconstructed and made into beds. However, a wagon could not be brought up the mountainside, so they had not a single plank of wood. There would be no beds (or anything wooden) until an underground forest could be located and secured.
The miners at once began exploratory shafts, looking for caverns. While they were digging, the other dwarves busied themselves with smoothing and engraving the temporary shelter. Also, a masonry workshop was set up so that stone tables and chairs could be constructed. Then, they waited.
The first cavern that was found contained no water, only wild animals, so it was quickly sealed up again. After about six months, just as the supplies were running out, the second cavern was located, and it had plenty of water. The task was now to create a farm, so food could be grown and booze could be brewed. To create an underground farm, dwarves must first flood a plot of land with water, muddying it. Then, after the water evaporates, they are able to plant mushrooms in the mud. A system of canals and floodgates was constructed to accomplish this, and planting began in earnest. That was when dwarves started dying of thirst.
I had forgotten to keep tabs on the booze supplies, and many of the dwarves hadn’t had anything to drink in weeks. As soon as the first dwarf died of thirst (Murderface), I ordered the construction of a well they could drink from. Unfortunately, three others died while the well was under construction (Pickles, Nathan, and Knibbler). The temporary shelter was converted into a catacombs to house the dead, and the beginnings of a proper fortress were set up around the farm and well. A large dining hall was set up, along with kitchens and stills. Also, various workshops were set up, and an office for Ofdenson. No bedrooms were made since there was still no wood for beds.
A few migrants arrived, and the wall sealing off the shelter was temporarily deconstructed to allow them entry. One of the new arrivals was a miner, so he was set to exploratory digging as well. There were new migrants every few months, each group arriving from a different direction. Tunnels were dug to each arriving group to allow them to enter the mountain without having to navigate the dangerous mountainside. Over the years, dozens of Klockateers arrived this way. One of them, Klockateer 48, in a fit of dwarven inspiration, created Sanctumrusts, a perfectly cut red spinel gemstone. Engraved on it was an image of cave spider. It was a very metal artifact, and it became one of the legendary treasures of Murderhowls.
The third cavern, containing magma, was eventually located. Again, channels and floodgates were set up, but this time, to feed magma to forges and smelters instead of water to farms. Work began on sets of steel armor and steel axes. The cavern that had the water also had an underground forest (full of giant, tree-like mushrooms), but it was full of troglodytes, so I needed some armed dwarves to deal with them before they could start logging.
By this time, about five game years had passed, and my dwarves were happy, even though there was not a single bed. I decided that I needn’t bother ever setting up bedrooms. When 30 steel plated axedwarves were ready, they cleared out the troglodytes, and my woodcutter dwarves went to work. I ordered the construction of some beds, and placed them in the barracks, dormitories, and hospital. Dwarves didn’t get individual bedrooms, but at least they didn’t have to sleep on the ground anymore.
After 30 more steel-plated axedwarves were ready, I set my three squads of axedwarves on a rotating schedule (with three more squads as reserves), guarding the fortress entrance that was being constructed on the surface. The guarded entrance would allow merchants and migrants to enter the fort safely and immediately, instead of having to sneak into a hastily opened (and quickly resealed) tunnel. Right after the permanent entrance was set up, an Ocean Titan made of lace agate (a type of stone) arrived. My military was ready for him, but since he was made of stone, their axes had little effect on him. My own steel-plated dwarves were quite resilient also, but no matter how many times they chopped at him, they could not kill him. It was basically a stalemate, and since dwarves don’t know the meaning of the word ‘retreat’, I had to load a previous save game (from right before I opened the entrance).
As I wonded how I would deal with the indestructible stone titan, a forgotten beast made of rock crystal showed up in my water cavern. Now I had two indestructible beasts to deal with! I soon came up with a plan to trap them. I ordered the construction of a long hallway next to the (not quite completed) surface entrance with a few wardogs chained at the end. Then, I ordered a retractable bridge and a stairway to the surface installed at the other end. Then, I waited for the Ocean Titan to attack the wardogs. When he did so, the dwarves retracted the bridge, and he was trapped. Finally, the fortress could be opened to the surface world. When it was, the Klockateers spent many weeks gathering the bodies and possessions of merchants and migrants that had not been able to enter the mountain, and had been killed by wild animals or the Ocean Titan. The catacombs filled with the bodies of the fallen, so I ordered construction of a larger one immediately below it. Also, the stockpiles filled with many valuable items.
I ordered construction of a similar trap to deal with the Forgotten Beast in my water cavern. Again, the dwarves constructed a long hallway, with wardogs, and a retractable bridge. This time however, the retractable bridge run the whole length of the hallway, and a deep pit was dug below it. The idea was to retract the bridge while the beast was on it, and it would fall to its death before reaching the dogs, so the dogs would not have to be sacrificed as the were for the Ocean Titan. Unfortunately, That’s not quite how it worked out. The dwarves attempted to retract the bridge as the Forgotten Beast was halfway across the bridge, but nothing happened! Apparently, he was too heavy, and the bridge could not be moved while he was on it! Only when he reached the dogs and began fighting them were the dwarves able to retract the bridge and trap him. Alas, the dogs could not be saved. There were now two great monsters trapped at Murderhowls, Bostu the lace agate Ocean Titan and Nguslu the rock crystal Forgotten Beast. Both unable to leave, both unable to die.
It was not long after that that the fortress began to come unravelled. The dwarves were all nominally happy, but sanity is really only a temporary condition for any dwarf. If a dwarf becomes too unhappy, he will throw a tantrum or go berserk. The dwarf usually has to be violently subdued by the guards when this happens. If the subdued (read: killed) dwarf had close friends, they too may become unhappy and and violent.
I’ll never know exactly what started it, but soon the tantrums were spiralling out of control. It seems that all of the dwarves were good friends with each other, since they slept communally instead of in individual bedrooms. As soon as the first tantruming dwarf was put down, a dozen more began to rampage.
I don’t know why the first dwarf began to tantrum. Perhaps one of the bait wardogs was a pet? Perhaps he got into an argument with another dwarf? Perhaps one of the engravings in the dining rooms offended him? In the end it doesn’t matter. The fort was a powder keg ready to go off at the slightest provocation, so the tantrum spiral was inevitable. It was quite a spectacular event when it happened. Sixty armored axedwarves and sixty unarmed civilians, all throwing tantrums and brawling. Killing each other, breaking furniture, and defacing engravings – each action upsetting even more dwarves. It was one giant dwarven riot.
The life and the death of the fortress were both quite metal, so I consider the whole thing a complete success.
edit: you can explore the fort at the DF Map Archive: http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-9026-murderhowls
be sure to check out the Points of Interest on the left sidebar!
(12 votes)