Dwarf Fortress III: The Ironic Fate Of Stafftufts

So it turns out that when winter comes, rivers freeze, and dwarves can't get any water to drink.

Such was what happened with Stafftufts. The residents there were doing fine, farming and hunting regularly, drinking water and enjoying their lives. Then the river froze. But it froze solid.

With all the nearby ponds equally frozen, no one was able to get at the rich, life-giving water beneath. They started dying of thirst. Worse yet, the fishermen could no longer fish, and our crops weren't enough for everyone to last.

Well, not everyone lasted. Most died of thirst, several more died of hunger near the end, and those that survived were struck with melancholia. Well, not all of them. Enough survived in a hale mental state to embark on a project that would save the fortress (or so I thought): divert the river with an underground passage to a well.

The project started out remarkably well. The tunnel diverting the river was dug and the well built over it. Unfortunately, we'd built the tunnel too shallow; there was barely a sheet of water beneath and the well's bucket just hit the ground and came up with mud.

Fine, I thought. We can fix this.

In theory, certainly, we could have fixed it. But we didn't. We made things much, much worse.

We built a hole that went down several layers into a reservoir and then built a well on top of that. The idea was that the water would flow down, fill the reservoir and be enough for the dwarves to enjoy. It worked for a little bit. What I had underestimated was the water's pressure.

The well sat there, peaceful, as one or two dwarves had a drink. Then water suddenly shot out and began to fill the dining area. The dwarves panicked, running to-and-fro, some trying to erect walls to contain the water but finding the current too strong to work in. The less bright ones ran to their rooms to wait for the disaster to pass, but it didn't. The water didn't leak through the doors, but it filled the corridors, trapping them in there.

In the end, there was just no stopping the flow. And so it was that in trying to save themselves from dying of thirst, the dwarves of Stafftufts drowned.