So a while ago I started a story fort in Dwarf Fortress but due to moving and other things I never finished it.  I liked the premise but I don’t really want to return to the old version of the game I had started it in.  So I’ve decided to restart it in the current version.  Seven Dwarves, ten axes, and a forbidding landscape.  Lets see if they live.

Diary of “Mandy” the Chief of Lebesbomrek (Apexwhips)

—- First Entry —-

I found a mostly blank recordbook in with the axes on the wagon so I have decided to use it to record a … well a record I suppose. After all keeping track of a fort’s history is traditionally the job of it’s leader.  Though to call this place a fort seems a poor joke at best.  God forsaken hellhole is more of an apt description but let me start at the begining, or at least as close to it as I dare write down. 

First off, let me just mention that the names within this journal are not our real names.  Not that it would matter much if they were as I fear we may just all die out here.  Those who come across our rotted bones will probably have little care that we are all escaped convicts.  That’s right, we are a pack of criminals.  What we were in for little matters now and I’m not about to write it down in any case, lets just say we were all incarcerated for our crimes at the prison fort of Axegrind.  Being part of the general hauler crew, we were not watched quite as closely as the more skilled laborers so we were able to escape our dismal fate using a plan I devised.  It wasn’t a terribly complex plan, we simply deconstructed some key support beams on the guard house and then stole a supply cart in the resulting chaos. 

We hitched up the first two animals we could find, a horse and water buffalo, to the cart and drove it out away from the fort as fast as we could.  Would that we had paid more attention to the contents of the cart and would that we had been caught.  A hammering would have been preferable to this fate.  After the initial rush of escape had died down we took a look at what the cart we stole contained.  Curse our luck it was a cart meant for the guards and contained nothing but a crated full of copper axes.  No food, no drink and worst of all, no picks.  We did have the foresight to each take some small amount of food with us in our escape and we prayed that would hold us till we got somewhere we could trade the axes for better provisions.

On the second day of our journy we entered a dead forest.  It was the start of spring so the lack of leaves on the trees wasn’t unusual, but something just felt wrong about the place.  We kept on though afraid that the guards from Axegrind would be after us.  Now though I am sure they stopped chasing as soon as they realized where we were headed.  No sane dwarf would want to be in this place.  On the morning of our third day of freedom the wheel came off the cart.  That in of itself wouldn’t have been so bad except that the cart promptly dropped to the ground with the distinct sound of splintering wood.  When we lifted it up to inspect the damage, it was clear the axle of the cart had snapped through when it fell.  

That was when the undead Buzzards attacked.