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From Jadetongs comes a tale of human error and dwarven idiocy. The magma workshop area was all but complete. All that remained was to release the magma. The miners apparently channeled the wrong spot, because the magma began to spill into the upper floor, the planned workshop floor, as well as down into the magma channels. Two wall sections and a floodgate were quickly installed, though naturally the dwarves who did the installing trapped themselves on the wrong side of the barrier. The floodgate was built solely to get them out of harm’s way.

One of the trapped idiots dwarves was Jadetongs’ mayor, who’d come down to install a wall section, then found himself unable to leave again due to the imposition of the floodgate. The floodgate installer, too, was stuck, and was reduced to standing about helplessly as the magma inched closer.

When the mayor had come down to the future workshop, the dwarven liaison had followed him, hoping to grab a few minutes of his time to have a meeting about trade and the like. Unfortunately, he was trapped along with the other idiots dwarves. An emergency draining channel was hurriedly cut into one wall to lessen the pressure on the oncoming magma. It did its job perfectly, and the magma poured back down into the level below while a fledgling mechanic attached the lever to the floodgate.

A dwarf on break came by to observe the idiocy at work. “What’re you doing on that side of the floodgate? Can’t you see the magma?”

“It is a bit warm in here,” the mayor was heard to comment. “Do you think it’s warm in here?” he asked the liaison.

The mayor stood by as the magma crept around him, burning his feet and inexplicably causing him to spontaneously bleed to death. The liaison, stymied in his attempt to meet with the mayor, announced his intention to leave Jadetongs, but was still stuck behind the floodgate.

Shortly the floodgate became operational and the trapped idiots dwarves fled the approaching magma.

Once the crisis was averted, the magma smelters and forges were installed and productivity increased. Though one metalworker complains of hearing trade mandates in his dreams…

Just another day at Jadetongs.

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The fortress of Towerhill grew very quickly to a population of around 50. This was by design, as all other migrants were turned away for the sake of sanity to the manager. There were no further beds, and keeping fifty dwarves busy was becoming a larger hassle every day.

After a few winters of low food and alcohol resources, the manager of Towerhill designed a great project, designed to give water to every room of Towerhill. No less than four legendary miners carved out a large plumbing system, leaving only a few mechanisms to be made before completion.

Then, in the late winter of the year 1065, catastrophe struck. A band of goblin raiders ambushed a squad of sparring dwarves. “No worries” they thought, for no less than two full squads have been training for this exact moment. The alarm sounded and the squads rushed to the main gate. They swung their well-practiced weapons at the goblins… only too late to realize that they were swinging wooden axes which could not even pierce cloth. A few of them had silver war hammers, but these were not their favored weapons, and so they thrashed a sliced to very little effect.

The manager of Towerhill panicked, immediately replenishing the fallen recruits with young, untrained dwarves. They fell just as quickly. Soon the manager recalled hearing about miners, and their sharp picks perhaps being ideal for slaying goblins. With such skilled miners, surely they would provide a worthy resistance of the dwarves? He sounded the alarm and sent a runner, gathering his miners and drafting them into them military. They also provided no resistance. The manager, no unnamed, dies before any more can be arranged.

Two dwarves remain behind as the goblins slaughter animals in the main hallway.

Olin Atheltumam, a wounded recruit, and Sarves a trapped miner. Trapped? oh yes, during her ventures carving out tunnels, she trapped herself next to a wall and two holes. She shortly realized she should carve herself through the wall, at which point she sprinted to the food stocks. Her baby, always on her back, also ate.

It didn’t take long for Sarvesh to become aware of the goblins, and visa versa. She ran at them, screaming and waving her iron pick. The goblins struck first, but their effort was easily parried. The pick swung fast, furiously, quickly severing several chunks of goblin across the floor.

In her furiosity, she nearly forgot about her baby. The baby nearly slipped from her arm several times, With one hand holding a baby and the other furiously swinging an iron pick, she fended off the whole of the goblins. They fled, realizing their attack was at an end.

Sarvesh looked at the carnage around her, realizing for the first time the devastation that was wrought. The entire hallway was littered with bodies, even more outside. Dwarves, donkey’s, dogs, cats, the goblins spared none.

She started working, stockpiling the dead bodies in a pile outside. It wasn’t long before she just snapped though. The bodies… the death… being trapped, starving and thirsty…

The first victim was the baby, who in her berserker rage was strangled. Then a horse (who provided too much resistance), and then a cat. The animals, in defense, killed her.

And thus nearly ended Towerhill, save one wounded dwarf left to tell the story.

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Okay then, young’en, sit down and hear the story about how your old grandad became the most legendary fisherman ever to walk the Realm of Legends. It all started in the winter of fifty one. You may not believe it, but we had no idea what “winter” even meant back then. Our people come from the south, where it never gets cold. I’d never seen snow in my life, and I had no idea a whole river could freeze over. So back then, we didn’t have no rules against walking on the ice. In fact, we all thought it was a blast! When that river first froze, we had a party on the ice. Kids and dogs and donkeys and even oldsters slippin’ and slidin’ all over the place. Bein’ a fisherdwarf, I was a bit concerned that I was out of a job, but I spied some steam rising from the river a ways off one morning, and I decided to go check it out.

Well, you know how the waterfall freezes up into a big ice damn, and the big pool above it doesn’t freeze? I was the first Dwarf to find that out that winter, and I was in fisherman’s heaven. All the fish had schooled up there, and they were biting like there’s no tomorrow, practically throwing themselves on the shore to get at my bait. I was just casting and realin’ ‘em in as fast as I could.

That’s about when I heard *CRACK* from the ice damn. Ol’ Bossy, the expedition leader back then, yelled at me to run for it, but it was too late. He got real scared the water would swamp the fort through our summer fishing port, so he started building a drawbridge to seal it up if the water got too high. He yelled over that they’d build me a bridge to get back as soon as they were done.

But right about then, a big bunch of shiftless layabouts showed up looking for beds and hot meals. And one of ‘em gets that crazy look in her eye, you know the one, and starts yellin’ about how she needs a clothing shop, she’s got this great idea for a thing called a “coat,” says it will keep us all real warm. We figure it must be some kind of portable wood furnace, turns out it’s just a thick shirt, but of course YOU know what a coat is, we all do, now.

Well, we all know you can’t keep a crazydwarf waiting for her workshop or she might get a little stab-happy. Nobody wants to get poked with knitting needles, so that was the top priority. Meanwhile, I was going a little crazy myself, stuck out in the cold and the rain with no booze. I had plenty of food though! When them huge stacks of fish started rotting, I got an idea. Booze is just rotted plants, right? Well let me tell you, I ate a LOT of rotten fish that spring, trying to get drunk. Turns out, no matter how rotten a fish gets, it won’t turn into booze. It WILL turn into something that makes your head go funny, but not in a good way. The fish started talking to me, tellin’ me all their secrets, tellin’ me the other dwarfs didn’t like me, that’s why they left me over here, they were all laughin’ at me and drinkin’ MY booze! I’d show THEM! I’d build my OWN fortress! Out of fish!

It took five strong dwarves to pull me out of my fish palace once they got the bridge built. I was King of All Fish, what did I need them for? It didn’t help matters that they was all holding their noses and throwin’ up left and right. I’d long since stopped noticing the smell. Luckily, one of them shiftless layabouts knew how to make this stuff called “soap.” It confused everyone at first, we all thought we should eat it, but that didn’t work. He said you put it where it smells, and eating something is the only comfortable way to get it to where it smells, you don’t want stuff goin’ in the other way, so, yeah, laugh all you want youngster, you’ve got it easy nowadays with your soap and your coats and your rules about not walkin’ on the ice and no fishin’ in the winter and your enormous jungle-gym made out of fish bones. All thanks to yer elders, and don’t you forget it!

Everyone thought I was crazy, sure, but those fish really did tell me their secrets. I can catch enough fish in a day to feed the fort for a year. They won’t even let me catch fish most of the time, say I use up all the barrels in an hour, nobody can cook that many fish, give it a rest old man, we get it, you are the King of the Fish.

Just a note, the climate indicator on Embark said “warm.” Don’t believe the climate indicator, if you are working down below and you get a big long lag in the winter for no apparent reason, pause the game and go look at the surface, see if stuff froze up, and if it has, mark the ice as restricted and turn off fishing! Old Urist McFishystink was a merely competent fisherdwarf when he got stuck across the river, by the time I got a bridge built, he was legendary. He had nothing to do all spring but eat, sleep, drink river water, and fish. There was a literal wall of fish running the whole length of the river, starting with piles of two and three fish, ending with stacks of thirty or so! I wasn’t quick enough forbidding them, either. The whole fortress emptied out for a Grand Fish Parade, and most of it was THIS close to rotting before they grabbed it, so the whole kitchen complex turned purple for months before I got all the rotting fish cleared out. I’m just thankful they weren’t jumped by Goblins during the Fish Parade, it was right about the time in spring when the Elven caravan shows up, but I’m guessing not even Goblins could stand the smell. God only knows what the Elves thought of the whole thing. “You SICK little monkeys! What ARE you doing to those poor fish?!? You are never going to eat them all. Is this some kind of Dwarven religious ritual? I will never understand you people. No, just bring out the gold, I don’t even want to know. Wait, are you EATING soap?!?!”

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Written by melkorp

I found a kidnapped dwarf in Legends mode called Ingish Pillarspeak, who ended up being the sole defender of his adopted goblin civilization, killing over two hundred dwarves, including his own mother, father, father in law (he married another kidnapped dwarf, she was killed by dwarves early in the war), brother in law (dueled him five times), several brothers, and a sister.  He was at war with his original dwarven civilization from the year 30 to 70, armed with a crossbow and presumably a knife.  He liked to rip off the third toe of his opponents.  Oh, and he ate the dwarves he killed (never his own family, at least).

He was the victor of his final battle against his original dwarven civilization, but still (somehow) lost the war.  He joined the new civilization and later died of old age, wandering the wild.

When I visited the now-dwarven dark fortress he’d defended for so long in Adventure mode, there was a goblin priest in the temple.  Every dwarf I talked to had a relative who’d been killed by Ingish Pillarspeak.

I imagine the war was ended when Ingish was shown his own kill list, and it was explained how many of his own family he’d slain in battle.  I imagine Ingish negotiated amnesty for the goblin priest, who may have been the only other surviving member of his adopted society by then.

Late in his life Ingish began worshiping a rampaging giant he’d seen battle his goblin kidnapper while still a prisoner.  The giant passed through his life kind of like Halley’s comet, right at the beginning and just before the end.  The list of gods and demons he’d worshiped and the various entities he’d claimed membership in made me sad: he fought so hard for so long, and for what?  His dwarveness, his goblinness, his marriage, his nation, his sense of who his family was and who he had to protect, as it all kept shifting and changing around him.  He was a dwarf constantly in search of something to believe in, and his capacity for belief gave him a terrible power.  If that didn’t alienate him from his fellow dwarves, I’m sure the fact he’d personally killed (and occasionally eaten) everyone’s grandparents did.

I deleted his whole world after I realized I’d spent 40 hours researching his history in a week that I worked 50 hours, and was still accruing more detail.  When I found out he’d shot and killed his youngest sister I cried.  DF creates epic stories.

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