A leading swordsdwarf got himself elected mayor by getting practically everyone in the dwarven army to vote for him. As mayor he immediately enacted some nonsensical edicts against the export of earrings and anything made of nickel. The dwarven constabulary applied this retroactively to a large group of dwarves who had carried barrels of finished goods to a trade meet with some elves (elves, in my experience of Dwarf Fortress, are dippy for earrings). The sheriff chained these dwarves in a prison, where most of them starved to death because the dwarves tasked with feeding them were attending a party. The mayor then experienced a mania for doing crafts. He seized a workshop and demanded, predictably, tons of nickel and raw silk. The fortress lacked silk and eventually the mayor’s stymied creative impulses drove him mad and he flew into a berserk rage, smashing furniture and terrorizing his neighbors.

The sheriff confronted him, and because the jails were full, was unable to put him in restraints. Instead, he cut the mayor’s leg off with an axe and the mayor promptly bled to death. Stonemasons throughout the fortress filled wall after wall with engravings commemorating this bloody end.

Written by Ari Samsky

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