I’ll start by sharing an incident from one of my first fortresses. Having situated myself in a river delta with drawbridges going over the rivers as the only way into the fortress, a fell creature of the night laid an assault on my dwarves. A werechameleon had already ripped a few of my dwarves apart before someone had the sense to raise the drawbridges. Unfortunately, there was insufficient time for two dwarves to get inside before the bridges were raised, one of them being the mayor of the little hold.

With the way to the fortress cut off, the werebeast began targeting those that were still left outside. Not long after, only the mayor remained alive outside. In what proved to be a surprisingly fierce battle, the mayor and the werebeast tumbled into the river while trading blows in unarmed combat. Seeing this happen, the onlookers from the fortress started making a slab in memorial of the bravery displayed by the mayor, whose death was surely imminent. However, to everyone’s surprise, the mayor climbed out of the water after being wounded and underwater an incredibly long while.

Although the hero was celebrated and reveled in their glory as the savior of the fortress, they also had to be initially quarantined due to fear of being infected by the wereplague. Although bitten multiple times, the hero seemed fine and was eventually free to roam the great halls again. That was, until new signs of darkness revealed themselves throughout the fortress. It started with dwarves laying about unconscious in their beds, refusing to work. Then some even seemed to fall asleep while working.

Not long after, there were found dead dwarves, whose bodies had been completely drained of blood. Something had to be done and a curfew was mandated with the population split into smaller groups in an attempt to find out what was going on and limit the spread of death. In one of the groups the dwarves kept dying and rumours started to spread about who had killed them. The populace began demanding justice be delivered. In a fury of rage, the dwarves of the smaller group were either killed by an unknown assailant or drowned in a chamber of execution.

At last there was only one dwarf left in the group of dwarves where the killer seemed to be: the mayor. Being the hero of the people, they had been spared the demands for retribution, and had been confined to their personal chambers for safety. Seeing they were the only one left, they could not be protected anymore and were sent to the execution chambers as well. However, just like the time with the werechameleon, the mayor seemed able to hold their breath quite well. In fact, they seemed not to breathe at all.

And that is the story of how I met my first vampire.

From my other life:

This was one of the most forlorn pocket worlds I’d ever played through.

The fortress of dwarves I had previously made, succumbed to a necromancer and I had to kill each and every one of them with my adventurer.

He was but a lowly human peasant (with legendary skills), accompanied by a human goddess who rode on the back of a giant hunting cave swallow. She was struck down early on in the game by one of my very own zombified dwarves.

I tried to resurrect her using every cheat I knew, but nothing worked. Angry at the world, I set off alone into the savagery and killed each zombified creature I saw, ignoring the irony of having to frequently resurrect myself in order to do so.

In one skirmish I was completely overwhelmed by goblins, and to my surprise the long forgotten cave swallow belonging to my beloved goddess swooped out of nowhere and tried to help me, but ultimately succumbed to their savagery, though buying me enough time to flee. Even in death, she continued to watch over me.

I craved social interaction, and roamed the world looking for any site that had friendly inhabitants, but discovering only ruin after ruin, leaving me to wander solo through forest retreats, lairs, and fortresses, in a very melancholy fashion.

After a while, I had finally explored the entire map and decided to head back to where I started. I went back to the bloodied battlefield where my companion goddess was overwhelmed all those moons ago, and gathered her remains into my backpack. Together we headed upstream into the mountains, following the river all the way up.

There I buried her atop a mountain meadow, where keas bounded freely. I placed a little wooden statue as a burial marker next to her site, and then built a little house next to it. I furnished it with a bed, a table, a few cabinets and an armor rack. I hung up my weapons and stored away all my other worldly possessions, and finally - feeling at peace with the world - laid in my bed and willingly gave into starvation.

I embarked on a volcano and dug out a 3-wide tunnel around the magma chamber so traders would have to spiral down into my fort. I had an issue where wagons kept on coming in hot - really hot - as in on fire. If I recall the front of the wagons turned 90 degrees their back end would clip through the 1 square wall to the lava and catch fire. Or they caught fire when they had to ride over a set of bridges just above the lava.

Also, dwarfs would dodge the incoming wagons while on the bridge… into the lava. RIP my bisexual king who had an Adamantine bedroom.

I am playing the Steam version right now and I noticed that I have just 1 perpetually pissed off dwarf. Upon closer inspection, it’s a child. Who is a sadist, always pissed off and stays away from the other children to get drunk all the time all because when he was, like, 3 years old he was almost mauled to death by a giant squirrel.

This happened almost a decade ago and I don’t have the storytelling skills to embellish it, but long story short: Zombie invasion. Corpses chasing citizens everywhere. The last one to die was a little girl who got cornered at the edge of the map.

If I remember correctly, I tried reclaiming the fortress, but all the bodies and ghosts everywhere kinda bummed everyone out.

I promoted a dwarf to militia commander - never been in combat, as I was working on creating a militia once I had weapon and armour production underway.

Then a forgotten beast Cyclops decides to visit my fortress, he makes quick work of my dwarven hunters and in an attempt to get my dwarves inside the fortress I send out the newly promoted militia captain out to delay it while I get ready to seal the fortress up

I wasn’t expecting much from the essentially green dwarf, but somehow he invoked the spirit of Amorak and proceeded to engage it in a one-on-one duel.

It was only after I was ready to seal the fortress did I look around to see if he had died, instead I was greeted by a sight that took me by surprise, this lone militia captain was holding their own against the cyclops with his iron short sword. I look at the logs and see this monster of a dwarf is not only fighting without injury but is tearing away at the cyclops, getting his sword lodged multiple times into the beast while deftly avoiding any counter blows.

It was a one sided slaughter reading two pages of combat logs, one of which was the dwarf wailing away at the cyclops who had collapse from pain shock.

Made me think I was reading some dwarf Kratos fan-fiction, needless to say the fortress was in good fortunes once the butchers got around to carving up the remains of the cyclops.

*edit seems it was the Captain of the Guard who was the hero not the militia captain

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