"You have been struck down." - Dwarf Fortress Adventure stories

[mostly_harmless]

Ok, that worked. I lost my pursuer.

Now what. It's hot, its nearing midday, I have alienated a whole hamlet, if not the whole civilisation by committing several crimes, starting with attacking a goblin (for Ulet's sake!!!) and lastly killing a civilian (kind of in self defense, I was not initiating the attack, counterstriking is handled automatically).

I have a messed up body. Still my weapons on me. Some food supply and some water.

I decided to not crawl into the next hamlet (yet), but rather make my way to the next river to my north, to at least make sure I have a source of water. And maybe wash away some of that blood, that is all over me.
I have the blood of 6 different people on me!

[INDENT]{OOC: Blood spatters on your equipment are a source of drink in the current state of the game. So I could probably go by several days by drinking the blood off my equipment.}[/INDENT]

btw. I levelled my shield and dodge skills quite a lot by blocking those civilians! Yay.

I decided to rest for the remaining day to let some of my wounds heal.
It actually works quite nice. Most of my wounds seem to have healed (a bit off, that mechanic, it seems) leaving me with a broken nose a bruised lower spine and lots of scars. The bruised spine still prevents me from standing up, I think.

I wake up when the sun sets and eat some of my meat and drink some.
Now here is the catch with the night.
Being outside at nights alone is VERY DANGEROUS!

But since I am apparently a guy with some survival instinct in me, I will create a kind of safe place by using the river on one side and a half circle of campfires on the other side to survive the night.

I continue to crawl along the river until I find a waterfall of some sort. Not sure I want a gorge on one side of my safe place and with darkness closing in, reducing my field of vision, I prepare for the night.




here you can see my safe place. with the campfires surrounding me (most of them are hidden underneath the smoke. And the river to my west.
Note how the field of vision got reduced as I crawled along the river.
The waterfall is the grey area to the north.

I will sleep until dawn breaks and continue down the river. Maybe I can even swim it?

mh

[mostly_harmless]

I fall asleep ....

... and are woken up very soon after by sounds:



Can you see those ns with the tilda?
Bogeymen! They come in various shapes:



I count four of them, one being in the river?! Oh-Oh!

[INDENT]{OOC: The yellow rectangle is part of your UI (upper right corner) and shows you your vision up and down the z-levels (if you have vision). So that river bogeyman is some 5 meters away from my position, down a z-level}
[/INDENT]

This guy can swim?

I wait a moment and surely enough three bogeyman are now in the water. So much for my survival instinct!!!

I cannot cross the campfires nor put them out. (alpha software, remember?)

So, uhm, jump into the river hope to swim past the bogeyman and drop down the waterfall???
Or stay in my little place and fight for it?

...

[Bigger]

fighting for it hasn't worked well for you so far, perhaps you should run.

[mostly_harmless]

Well, I take my chances with the bogeyman, rating my chances to outswim them with a bruised spine even lower.

I post the combat log here as it holds some new ways of how FUN is brought to the player in DF:



So, yes, DF, Ladies and Gentleman! Fear the night! The villagers will tell you so!
Damn that idea with the river, should have encased myself completely with campfires.


So after all this getting your head gored, I am off to lunch.

mh

[mostly_harmless]

Next attempt. lets try a maceman this time.




Bronze mace and shield. And starting off in an area we have not seen before. Hamlet of Knifesilver!

The people of Knifesilver are certainly troubled:



Lets find some clothing, companions and go for the leopard!

mh

[mostly_harmless]

Only one soldier is willing to join me, Gagu Showeredlull, an impressive crossbowman.

Got some leather clothes, but not as much as I would've liked.

Ok, lets set out then.

I am practising my sneaking while travelling, greatly reducing my speed.
However, not travelling on the fasttravel map allows us to meet wildlife, which we do.
A group of rhinoceroses!!!
Now those are quite fearsome beasts, I's rather avoid them.
But, no, Gagu immediately fires a bolt and hits one rhino in the leg, making it fall over.
I slowly approach, while Gagu fires some more bolts into the threshing animal.
In a moment where the grounded rhino is unconscious I bash it in the head twice to finish it off.

Animals can be butchered with a knife or sword (or sharp stone, I think) for food.
I do that and get a ton of food from it. (Check the DF wiki for Rhino to see what it yields)
Now I am not going to drag around a ton of rhino meat with me, since I just set out and still have my starting food.
But as a good hunter I will eat the heart right here and leave the rest to rot.

I also retrieve the two bronze bolts from the cadaver, as Gagu is not picking them up again, and might be able to use them for throwing later on.

What we do next depends largely on whether Gagu feels like shooting another Rhino, I's rather have him not do that (to save bolts for one thing!).
So I switch to the fast travel screen.

Late afternoon, Gagu and me arrive at the hamlet of Duneyelled .
I intend to spend the night here, before attempting the leopard tomorrow after a fresh start. My sneaking training have rather slowed us down and I don't want to look for the leopards den at night.

I find another companion in the spearman Bale Kneadedplanter.
With that accomplished I ask for permission to stay the night and call it a day.

mh

[mostly_harmless]

A nice morning!
I nick a couple of strawberries, find a better suited leather helm and move south. Turns out Duneyelled is rather bigger than I though yesterday! Lots of people around here. I guess well over 100.

We reach a river. Since I am not sure my companions can swim, I rather look for a bridge to cross.

There is a fortress here, "Stoodlyric", which I circle around for now. We are on leopard business for now. Not certain what a fortress might hold.

Here the fast travel map:


You can see the river and the bridge we just crossed. That grey structure to my west is the fortress.
The leopard den is the dark grey point just at the lower border of the map (above the "i" in Genius)
The river empties into the sea to our east. The brownish line is the road.

The right third of the map is the larger scale world map, btw.

I had to stop my sneaking training as my two companions would run after birds all the time!

So once you arrive at a location/site in fats travel you jump back to the proper screen and have to look for the actual site.

Now a fortress is easy to spot. A hole in the ground less so.
Found it though.


Note the single downward pointing triangle at that hill flank to my north? That means it goes down not up as all the ramps around it!

mh

[Kylearan]

Hi,

damn you m_h, first I wasted(?) time reading your stories, then I got hooked and wasted even more time reading about Dwarven Fortress adventure mode. Ah, I so would have played this ten years ago when I had more time...

One of the things I found is this: An adventure mode Succesion Game where people take turns and each player tries to collect something interesting for a museum (which of course is in-game), revealing the history of the world while doing so. It looks like the museum's staff got killed on turn 2. What a great concept! The list of items in the museum after 21 turns makes me want to play the game even more...

-Kylearan

[mostly_harmless]

Here I carefully sneak into the den:



I am pondering whether it makes sense to drop some of my equipment to become more agile.
But not now, I will have to test that later.

Rounding a couple of corners, I spot the leopard!

Bale, the spearman rushes past me, viciously attacking the leopard.
I have to struggle to keep up and killsteal! :D
While Gagu, further back, goes "Uh! What?"



That was easy!
Lets butcher the infamous leopard and eat its heart and drink its blood!

I also take the skull as a trophy and pack the brain and the two kidneys for food for later.

Fast-travelling back to Duneyelled and breaking the good news:
"May Moma Saffronmatches rot forever in the underworld!"

Quest fulfilled! Yay!

mh

[mostly_harmless]

...
One of the things I found is this: An adventure mode Succesion Game where people take turns and each player tries to collect something interesting for a museum (which of course is in-game), revealing the history of the world while doing so. It looks like the museum's staff got killed on turn 2. What a great concept! The list of items in the museum after 21 turns makes me want to play the game even more...

:D, yes I read that as well just last week. This is actually what brought me to write down my adventurers here. From those mortality rates you can see that it is very easy to die horribly in DF.

I agree, it is a time sink.

mh