I was visiting a friend of mine earlier today.

So it happens neckbeards flock ar ound neckbeards, and he was currently deep into a game of Dwarf Fortress. As I s tepped into his room he motions me to quickly check out his monitor. On it was the largest demon invasion I ve ever seen. But I m getting ahead of myself . Before you hear the end of the story, you will have to hear the beginning as r elayed to me by my friend. Having started as your standard DF, the Hamlet of Tyranny was uneventful by /tg/ standards. Sure there would be caravans and immigrants and occasional (though u nusually rare) seiges, but there was a dark and DEADLY secret buried beneath the hills. And his name was Ashmalice. Ashmalice was a fire demon of legendary status. Not only had he existed in the p rehistory of the fort, but he had over 550 kills which included 2 entire tribes of goblins, a handful of elves, and a terrifying amount of dwarves one of whom wa s the king of the mountain-homes. Fast forwarding to the present time, major construction was . Many many immigrants had arrived over the years and times arves. Having many legendary carvers and warriors my friend nses. And his dwarves paid the price when a miner unearthed elow the dungeons carved into the mountain. underway of the fort were good for the dw grew lax in his defe a glowing pit deep b

Within an hour my friend s fortress was besieged by a nearly unending horde of dem onic horrors. Ill equipped to deal with the threat immediately, the population o f the Hamlet began dropping exponentially. Not even a panicked redirection of th e river into the lower levels was enough to staunch the influx of demons, only e nough to slow them long enough for the major walkways to be collapsed to buy som e precious time. Luckilly (and cleverly) my friend had built his fortress in such a way that if a ny large section had collapsed, then all escape routes would lead out into the w ilderness and on a path far from the fortress and defendable by collapsing the c eiling via lever to flood seawater into the tunnel. Though no dwarf was alive on that side of the map, or able to reach it to pull the lever, my friend had boug ht the dwarves much needed time, though when Ashmalice made himself known all se emed futile. Even moreso when Stuvok lost his mind with rage. Stuvok was one of the founding 7. He was an ex-miner turned blacksmith of legend ary status. He was a monster of a dwarf that all dwarves aspired to be. And he h ad just lost his wife Doken (another of the starting 7) to the demon Ashmalice. His sorrow was felt by the surviving clan as he tore through them one by one uno pposed. Only when he ran into his workshop and was locked in did his rage abate. Morale was rock bottom. Several dwarves commit suicide in this dark hour. And of the handfull who remained of this once great fortress, few were willing to do a nything at all, except the only other remaining dwarf of the founders: the engra ver Sil. In the months that followed, the floors were carved with graven images of his follow brethren. All hope seemed lost. But this was not the end for the H amlet. Not just yet In his grief and mourning, Stuvok opened his heart to the spirits of the dead. A nd one day they came to him in spirit. In his posessed mood he plotted and plann ed and (ironically) with the materials available to him, crafted an artifact cle arly in homage to his wife: Endless Death of Tears a sword with an image of a dw arf holding a piece of glass glass that his wife used daily in her trade. My friend had been content to just flood the map with lava and end the game afte r such losses. But upon seeing this artifact his neckbeard overtook him and he k

new that Doken, the dwarves, the king, must all be avenged! And thankfully for m e, he decided to continue. Fast forwarding again to the present (the time at whi ch I had come in to see him play) my friend had safely excavated what he could o f the fortress and moved all activity to a small corner of the interior. When al l levers were erected, dwarves armed, and preparations complete, he unpaused the game for me. A few dwarves made suicide runs to the bottom of the dungeons and collapsed them which in turn lowered the debris above into a sinkhole that breached a large ho le for the demons to pour from back into the fort. A few more dwarves valiantly fired into the oncomming tide of hate, but they were nothing but fodder that bou ght precious moments for the true plan to kick in. A masterfully placed lever th at had yet been unpulled brought down the entire mountain through the legendary dining hall ceiling; crushing almost half of the intruding horde. As planned, the demons made a bee-line through the side hallways through rows of blade traps. Demons were chewed up by the blades, but still they came. And so d id He. Ashmalice not only avoided the fatal cave-in, passed the slicing blades, an d bypassed the numerous flooding-trap chambers, but he and a squad of equally lu cky frog demons carved and scorched their way into the final defensive line. Amo ng their victims was Stuvok; unable to avenge his beloved. And the last handfull of dwarves were quickly reduced to 2 Sil the engraver and the legendary captain of the guard, Daneken. As respected and powerful as Stuvok had been, Daneken was that and more. He was a god among his clan, and had once in his long career single-handedly repelled a goblin siege led by a cyclops, and had helped wrestle a dragon to death. And no w armed with his dead friend s artifact sword, he was seeing red. Daneken had been stationed at the edge of a chasm (my friend s map had a pit AND chasm that had be en unearthed, but it was amazingly only filled with tiny spiders that were easil ly dispatched in the early years of the fort). A single bridge had been built to span the chasm, and would have been later expanded as housing. But that plan wa s no longer. And this was it. This was the end of the dwarves of the Hamlet of T yranny. But they would not go quietly. As the demons approached Daneken threw himself at them in a rage. Ashmalice blas ted him with demonic flames, but Daneken was imbued with the collective rage of his people and carved through the frog retainers with little signs of stopping. Ashmalice, however, had seen the death of a king and was not impressed with the antics of a lowly dwarf and sent him hurtling back onto the bridge coincidentall y knocking Sil over the edge. With his flesh scorching and his blood boiling, De nekan crawled to his feet just in time to see Ashmalice hover over him. With but a single push the fortress would be claimed by demons. But to my friend s and my own utter jaw-dropping amazement, it was the dwarves who claimed him. Daneken, in a testament to his dwarfdom, slashed off one of Ashmalice s arm/wings and plunged Endless Death of Tears into his evil heart. Such was the force of th e blow that the demon was hurled backwards off of the bridge and sent spiraling down into the unending darkness; spouting curses the entire way. With his clan and his king avenged, Daneken himself tumbled from the bridge. But one dwarf remained? Awestruck by what had just happend, I urged my friend to quickly find the surviv or! The menus opened, the tabs clicked, and we see that name. Sil. Sil? But he f ell into the chasm! What was going on? With the battle essentially over and the remaining demons blocked from furthur intrusion by an unchecked flood of river w ater, we peer into the chasm. Several Z-levels down, on a tiny 2-square ledge, l ay Sil broken and bleeding, but alive.

With no way to save him, and with his entire clan residing in the afterlife, we debated how this should end. Should we just abandon the fort outright? Should we try and kill him somehow? What? In the end, however, we decided to let him crea te one more carving one last testament to dwarfkind. This decision did not come lightly, as after such an epic climax, anything less would seem an insult. After all, maybe he would draw a picture of a plump helmet or something equally rando m. But still we left him to his work. What did he draw? Moments before he bled to death? Alone on a cliff? The last ge sture of the dwarves of The Hamlet of Tyranny? A picture of a demon and some dwarves. The demon was in a fetal position. The dw arves were laughing.