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

[mostly_harmless]

Cool. A human this time, so armour will actually fit?

Btw. Shorelocked was your nickname.
You can check the name of the local area/hamlet/town by looking at the "q" quest screen. The fast travel screen should work as well.

mh

[uberfish]

Uberfish Circlecut was a human hero from the Ponderous Union, a nation on the other side of the Harmless Strait. Inspired by the accomplishments of the dwarves and elves, he decided to take up arms against the bandits pillaging the countryside.

However, first he would borrow some basic armour from a local fort and train his Defensive skills with the noble sport of crab wrestling in order to actually have a good chance of surviving those damn crossbows:



After a couple of days of intensive training he headed to the capital of the Ponderous Union, Blockfaint, which had problems with outlaws hiding in the dungeon... wait... that didn't make much sense but never mind.





Despite his Novice swordsman skills, having good stats from the crab training let him do good damage when he hit, and tactically striking at exposed limbs enabled the party to dispose of the weak outlaw band there without any serious injuries.



There was a ton of loot in the dungeon, enough to make up a full set of iron armour with plenty left over - he left it there as a repository for any future adventurers bold enough to claim it



Amusing stuff happens on autoattack sometimes (I have learned by now not to auto-attack by moving into things unless they're harmless or have had their weapon disabled)



Such as biting people in the head and shaking them around

Anyway, now fully equipped he decided to go see the dwarven bridge for himself, but on the way got ambushed by more bandits:



Their bowman got only one shot off before allowing Circlecut a clean headshot:



However two out of his three travelling companions were killed in the melee, leaving just a skilled Lasher.

Here is blockfaint, the line showing its position in relation to the bridge



There was a silly goblin encounter on the way to the bridge where goblins ambushed and were in turn attacked by a couple of rhinos. This did not go well for the goblins.



The rest of the trip across the bridge and to Empirestring was successful. Predictably, upon arrival at the official Empirestring Adventurers' HQ he received a quest to kill the goblin overlord in the catacombs, and I knew exactly where to go by now




Now this group of goblins included some highly skilled ones - a Spearmaster, an Elite Crossbowman, Hammer Lord and others. Our allied lasher unwisely rushed in and got outflanked with this result:



He was promptly killed. Uberfish had to back down to the corridor as goblins poured out in order to manage the crowd.



For some reason he felt the urge to bite a goblin in the eye.



The scene was one of total carnage.



The enemy spearmaster duelled with Circlecut for a bit then ran away as the boss showed. He was an elite bowman too, which was a bit scary, but eventually after blocking a few arrows he was caught by a chokehold:



and for some reason it takes FOREVER to strangle anything to death in this game



After all this fighting the Sword skill had levelled up considerably, and Armour User had become Master considerably decreasing the encumbrance of Circlecut's iron plate.



He reported the overlord's death and retrieved an Uberfish corpse.



The citizens of Empirestring were happy! Fairly predictably, the next quest was to avenge Shorelocked the elf who had fallen trying to clear out the nearby bandit camp.



This camp no longer had any archers, and Circlecut had great defence and armour, so clearing it out solo wasn't a problem.



Dead bodies of both good and bad guys were scattered around the camp.



Stats at this point since people wanted to see growth:



The townspeople of the Slippery Confederation were impressed and started directing him to the lords who had important quests.



so I decided to take this one on solo too. I guess as a lord quest the bandit group was tougher. Their armour was still weak/nonexistent but there were more of them including about 5 crossbows/archers. Circlecut was glad of his extensive shield training. Even so he pragmatically used a tree to block the line of sight to the enemy archers while taking on the first wave of their melee troops



Oh hey a clean shot to the head!



He then had to advance to take on more, and used a tactic of disabling the legs of melee troops to be able to run past them to the archers before they could get any lucky shots off




and trying to "disarm" the archers




he also had a bit of fun with throwing corpses and body parts at the enemy, although with his low skill they usually missed and didn't do any damage even if they connected



Then he got hit by a crossbow bolt and mortally wounded



Ok the mortal wound term was... misleading; it was only a bruised lung, the bolt not having penetrated his iron breastplate.

He rushed down the offending shooter and quickly cut her down



Then threw her corpse at someone



I couldn't find the previous Uberfish corpse but at least he was avenged! There was some small sized armour here and I took it back to the Empirestring Adventurer HQ stash.

Impressed by the heroic deeds of Circlecuts the lord offered him a scary quest.

[uberfish]

The titan's lair was a shrine situated far to the west in the great swamp.



Crossing a river on the long trek there Circlecuts was accosted by some aggressive fish:



Carp can't bite through armour though so they ended up as sushi.

Circling arond the mountain range he found the shrine deep in the Mire of Dawns.



And carefully sneaked in



Ominously, lots of corpses and skeletons were scattered here, and eventually he caught sight of the great beast




Ok... er... webs are scary. He didn't want to get stuck in a web and killed. I decided to try a new tactic which involved a day's trek in either direction to the nearest village, Oliveshoveled:



Civilian zerg! On the way back to the shrine we had a run in with a jaguar which was promptly dog piled and killed.



Back at the shrine Circlecuts went into sneak mode to let the civilians be webbed first. Under the leadership of a legendary hero they were fearless and a Farmer actually dared to BITE the titan.



having avoided being webbed, Circlecuts flanked the titan and delivered a mighty blow!



The civilians that weren't immobilized followed up! To my surprise their carving knives and other implements were actually doing significant damage to the thing now that it had been knocked over by Uberfish's attack.



With a few more well placed strikes to the legs, the Titan was pretty much disabled apart from its web shooter. Eventually it decided to start chain firing webs at Circlecuts, but because it was surrounded there was no way it could entangle everyone and with its limbs broken was unable to kill the entangled people.



The civilian knives continued their gruesome work



Until eventually the titan bled to death from a thousand cuts.



I took its skull and eyes as trophies... 256 swamp titan meat and other questionable delicacies remain at the shrine as an offering to whatever gods may inhabit it



Amazingly, none of the civilian zerg were actually injured in the titan fight. On the road back to civilization, though, an alligator attacked them crossing the river killing one and causing another two to drown.

Brought the trophies back to the Empirestring Adventurer HQ for display!



The side room is an armoury at the moment and I'm close to finishing up a Small sized set of armour for elves/dwarves by saving the stuff I found. Not the best gear but better than nothing.

Uberfish Circlecuts, having defeated an ancient beast from the dawn of time and lived to tell the tale, decided to hang up his -iron long sword- for a while. The villagers went back to their normal lives, but would never forget the day they took on a titan and won.

[uberfish]

I went to the Legends mode to look up the titan we'd killed. Of the nine titans created at the beginning of the world this was the fifth to die.



Other legendary creatures are listed here... including a "mouse monster" which is sadly dead. There's also one living dragon in the realms somewhere.

We can see the titan's bloody history in the legend list, it has roamed from its lair to kill other creatures



Plenty of which were goblins, it had a total of 70 kills to its name.



The civilian who got credited with the kill shot for dealing the last blow before the titan bled out



And the adventurer, Uberfish Circlecut the Combined Cloister of Passions (got to love random titles)




Yeah... I have no clue who most of these groups are but I guess my enemies must have made a lot of enemies.

[uberfish]

Current save.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/19168036/d/region3.zip

[Brackard]

Wow. Not much more to say here, but dang. Wow.

[NobleHelium]

According to the wiki there is a stat cap that is like double the stats that you start with, so a hero will always be inferior to a demigod character in the long term.

[NobleHelium]

Also, why did you recruit a bunch of civilians instead of soldiers?

[uberfish]

Also, why did you recruit a bunch of civilians instead of soldiers?

Because a bunch of angry villagers with makeshift weapons mobbing a titan is inherently cool. I wasn't actually expecting them to do any damage.

[mostly_harmless]

Those are some excellent stats, uberfish!
Congratulations on killing the titan. From your screenshots I have found the spot of the shrine and marked in on the map of the kingdom. You certainly are one for long distance travels!

So, the keep in Empiresstring is the adventurer base?
And your Uberfish Circlecut has retired there, correct?

Edit: Sheesh! 66 notable kills?!

mh