The Rise and Fall of Wildnesspaged

The fall of a fortress is inevitable. The rise is what makes it interesting.

Most of the time, when I create a fortress, I decide to make it challenging. Maybe I'll settle near a volcano, or maybe in the most hostile, haunted, terrifying marsh I can find. Or maybe I'll just piss off the elves from the get-go. With Wildnesspaged, however, I thought I would take a different approach. I would build a fortress that deserved to fall.

And, by Armok, did this fortress deserve to fall.

The first thing to do was find a location, so what better place than the happiest, most joyous and magical woods I could find? We struck the earth in an area that had clouds of giggling pixies, stumble-bumbling fluffy wamblers, and even mysterious, fabled unicorns. It was a beautiful enchanted land when we found it, but this was not to last.

The Elven Caravan:

About a year into settling the fort, we got our first elvish caravan. Now, normally, these guys are douchebags about our cutting down trees. This time, however, I can only imagine that they were so traumatized by what they saw when they arrived that they felt it was already too late. The best thing to do now was do their trading and get out.

So here's what happened:

They arrived on the frozen riverbanks of the southeastern river, only to find that it was lined with the rotting corpses of unicorns. The unicorns had crossbow bolts in them. The bolts were made of unicorn bones. That right there should have been enough to get them to turn back, but they pressed on.

As they emerged from the riverbank, they saw that the land had been clear-cut: trees had been replaced with endless fields of stone stockpiles. Chimneys emerged from the soil and spewed forth clouds of nauseating miasma. A single tower stood surrounded by a deep moat, its only access point a retracting drawbridge.

Horrified, the elves warily crossed the bridge under the watchful eyes of the several crossbow-wielding guards on the parapets. They had only just gotten across and into the trade depot when goblins suddenly attacked! The bridge was retracted and a fierce battle broke out.

Unfortunately for the elves, the retracting drawbridge offered no protection and the trade depot was in plain sight of the goblins. A fierce battle broke out, with arrows flying from all sides, and the goblins were eventually defeated.

One elf survived. The animals were dead, and so was the trader. We got to keep all the stuff and the one elf was left to return home, presumably to warn the others never to come here and avoid Wildnesspaged like the plague. Obviously, his word carried little weight as the elvish caravans came right back the next year.

I never heard them complain about the trees, though.

Forgotten Beasts, And How To Piss Them Off:

The design of the fortress called for the construction of a reservoir since the rivers froze every late autumn until about mid-spring. We started digging one in the lowest portion of the fortress, beneath the dining hall, with a floodgate that would allow it to be refilled whenever the rivers thawed.

About three levels down, two levels short of the intended depth, we broke through the ceiling of a giant underground cavern. It was a massive cavern, with lakes and forests of fungiwood. As incredible as it was, however, it posed a structural problem: the reservoir would be too shallow, and with summer coming to an end, we wouldn't have time to dig another one.

The solution came about accidentally. As we peered down into the abyss, a low growl echoing off the walls revealed the presence of an Unnamed Horror, a Thing-That-Should-Not-Be, a mythical and terrible Forgotten Beast. To keep the snake-like, scaled monstrosity from flying up through the reservoir, I ordered that the hole at the bottom of the reservoir be walled up and then covered.

By about mid-autumn, we had most of it walled, but there was no longer any time for a cover.

To hell with it: open the floodgates before the rivers freeze!

One of the most common fates my fortresses have suffered is death by flooding, and the construction of a reservoir made this a very real possibility. However, because of the walls at the bottom of the reservoir and the missing cover, I had created a drain. The water would rise up as high as the walls, then the overflow would drain into the caverns below.

Onto the heads of the Forgotten Beasts that took up residence there.

There were about five before they started becoming a problem.

Of Mice And Dwarves:

To me, the most amazing aspect of this game remains the dwarves and the tragic little lives they lead. What amazes me is how starkly different they are, reacting in very different ways to the same situation and having their personalities change over time.

Avuz was my most prevalent dwarf. She was a machinator, a pure politician, and by the time she passed she had probably occupied every noble position there was. As Chief Medical Dwarf, she slowly got used to the repeated tragedies and disasters, hardening her for the position of mayor. It was there that her misanthropy really shone through.

She would constantly request items to be constructed out of extremely rare materials that she knew we didn't have. When the items weren't produced, she would have the Captain of the Guard jailed for incompetence.

She was even part of the military for a while, emerging victorious from every battle.

Sibrek was a much quieter dwarf, but I had my eye on her. She was a marksdwarf, proficient with a crossbow to the point where her skill was ledengary. She never complained about anything, never made a fuss, and her only friend was a small dwarven child. Other than that friendship, however, she didn't really care about anything else anymore.

She was always in the thick of battle and somehow managed to avoid all injuries. She could headshot a goblin before it even saw her and reload before the others reached her. She eventually earned the nickname: "The Silken Sloth", which is a terrible nickname.

Her military career continued successfully until the fall of the fortress, and then she was among the last to fall.

One of the most memorable dwarves, however, is one whose name I ironically can't recall. It was more than one dwarf, however, it was a whole family of dwarves.

It started when I was checking out the various family trees around the fortress. There were two siblings whose father I was familiar with, him having the then-Captain of the Guard, but the mother I was less sure about. Her name was Datan, a weaponsmith I believe, but for some reason I couldn't find her anywhere.

After a while, I discovered why. While designing the masoleum, I came across one of the names on the coffins: Datan.

Meanwhile, the Captain of the Guard was having a training session in the arena against captured goblin invaders. A whole squad of dwarves were pitting themselves against a single goblin who managed to outmaneuver them all. It stabbed the Captain through both hands and then broke out of the arena... into the training area for the rest of the military. It was quickly cut down.

The Captain then went up to the hospital where Avuz, of all dwarves, patched him up and sent him on his way. He went back down to the training area and continued the training session until another goblin ambush forced them all to rush to their posts.

The Captain led the charge and, though the goblin assault was repelled, he fell in combat and was placed in a coffin next to his wife's. His two children were orphaned, but in his sacrifice he managed to keep the other families safe for a little while longer.

Blood, Stone and Ash:

The Forgotten Beasts were something I was going to have to deal with sooner or later.

A plan was hatched: we would create a killing floor that was two storeys tall, with the upper level offering sniper positions for my archers. We would lure the Forgotten Beasts into this area and then turn them into pincushions.

Shockingly, the plan worked. For about a minute.

What I underestimated was their speed. The key component in this plan was that I would have to chain up some animals or goblins to lure out the Beasts, in which time I would be vulnerable to attack. I figured I would have enough time to see them coming and shut the gates before they made it through, but it turns out I was wrong. All the Beasts rushed through the killing floor, getting hit by numerous arrows on their way, but inexorably making it through and reaching the surface.

Forgotten Beasts are peculiar in that each one is unique and occasionally defy common sense. For example, there was one of these monsters that was a blob of fire. Not a blob of magma or coal. Fire. When it emerged, it set the remaining lush greenery of the land on fire, and it left a blazing trail as it beelined for my fortress.

The entire land went up in flames. The fire spread outwards, sweeping the massive shelves that made up the surrounding wilderness. Unicorns were roasted. Pixies incinerated. It snowed ash.

We retracted the bridge as the Beasts hunted down and killed those who were unfortunately too slow to make it in time, and from a "safe" vantage point we fired down at them.

One of the recruits was a brave dwarf by the name of Olom. When the alarm was called, she didn't bother to run back into the fortress. Instead, she ran up a nearby hill that gave her line-of-sight to the front of the fortress and sniped at the Beasts from a safe distance. She somehow managed to mortally wound the fire-blob and it exploded, searing most of the flesh and all of the fat from another of the Beasts. Enraged, it disengaged and went after her.

The two of them fought as the fire around them continued to burn and surrounded them utterly. It was, unfortunately, much too strong for her, despite its weakened state, and it was only once the flames had died down did the rest of my military hunt down the Beast and finally slay it. The other Beasts were taken down through sheer force of numbers.

The Forgotten Beasts had emerged from the fathomless depths of the world and were struck down by the hardened dwarves of Wildnesspaged. The land, once a joyous, magical place, was now a wasteland of blood, ash and stone.

The Silent Scar:

The battlements of Wildnesspaged are silent, now. Tattered remains of once-proud flags now flap listlessly in the breeze as trees find it difficult to grow anew. Stones still lay scattered among rusting armor and weapons, some still with lifeless, skeletal hands attached to them. No eyes watch from the walls any longer.

What happened to Wildnesspaged? There are only rumours.

The latest elven caravans believe that the land itself, so angry with the pain they had inflicted on it, gave birth to a creature so vast and mighty that not even those that had slew the Forgotten Beasts could stand up to it. The goblin nations boast that they were finally able to breach the ostensibly unassailable walls of the fortress and managed to slit the throat of every dwarf there, but who can really believe the boastings of a goblin? The humans only believe that the dwarves left, having nothing else to gain from the wasted land, having mined every last gem from the underground. Whatever the truth, each civilization agrees at least on one thing: they had it coming.

In the mountainhomes, however, a different story is told. That the dwarves, having slain all of the Forgotten Beasts, knew the undergound to be safe, and that if any others showed up again, that they would be able to destroy them. With this confidence, they dug deeper and deeper until they no longer had any use for contact with the surface world. They went on to build a magnificent underground city, mining gems undreamt of by those of lesser courage.

Regardless, the remains of the fortress still stand, host to wandering wildlife, territorial monsters, and the occasional adventuring party of foolhardy warriors.

A warning to some, perhaps.

Or maybe a testament.