#werecavy

[izzydeadjet]

The Fall of Oilgleam

Hoo boy do I have a story to tell y'all about my latest fort (Yes, the same one Drilus used to visit)

So I had this for up and running for a good 5 years at least. Not too long but enough to be well established. A year before we had a goblin mercenary roll up to visit, turn into a werecavy and start toward the tavern. My military immediately dispatched it before it could get to any major population and resulted in three casualties (Not including a few animals and the werebeast itself).

I immediately located the dwarves that had been bitten, got them healed and then put them in a squad so I could barricade them in a room. This worked beautifully and I now had three almost invincible soldiers I could train separate from the rest of the fort.

Two of the dwarves really wanted to pray to Nadak Cradlebastions the Barricaded (Lol) so I made a chute to throw some picks and booze down to them and had them carve out a nice little temple to keep them happy. The last dwarf, Ducim Domasasiz, had an unmet need to "cause trouble". I had a good laugh at this and moved on.

At some point I wondered if weredwarves could get sun-sickness and decided to build a sort of air-lock system outside so they could have a yard to walk in if they needed. I made the walls two z-levels high with a floor lip on top to stop them jumping out and a 3-tile-long bridge to make sure they wouldn't be able to jump over that either (THIS IS IMPORTANT).

I was having a merry old time with my two fortresses on the same map. I was making plans to integrate more dwarves into the werecavy side to make a kickass military and was also working on breaking into the caverns properly in my main fort. A caravan came and we traded lots of goods, then I got distracted by a dwarf in a Fey Mood not having the correct materials.

While I was trying to figure out whether it was leather or metal bars we were lacking, I got an alert that one of my werecavies was fighting someone... No, a LOT of someones...

Turns out Ducim the Menace had hopped over the gate, (possibly agitated by the leaving dwarven caravan) and immediately burst into the tavern to cause the most bloody brawl Oilgleam had ever seen up until that point. (PSA: No matter how long a drawbridge is, it will always retract to 1 z-level high. I essentially made a cute lil' fence for her to use as a hurdle.)

Thankfully she was dispatched very swiftly, but because she had gotten into the tavern I had no clue who she had attacked and the combat logs sometimes do not give you specific names for some reason. I combed through the nearby dwarves and lists, checked the blood on the floor and the hospitals and quickly found an Inod Oddomniles in there. "Phew", I thought, "Just Inod injured. I'll pop him in the Werecavy pit and once he's in I'll block off the yard so they can't get out."

The rest of the month goes by with no dwarves visiting the hospital. I figure I've contained the afflicted and get back to figuring out what on earth Sarvesh is missing for her Fey mood.

On the full moon I get another message that Werecavy Inod has now started attacking people in the tavern. I rush over to the Werecavy pit and...Inod is still there? He's just chilling with the boys...

And then I find out there were two Inods.

Immediately the game grinds to a halt, the window keeps fading in and out like my PC is about to pass out from the amount of carnage it is processing. I'm panicking trying to block up the tavern and fruitlessly squad afflicted dwarves. As I watch another werecavy appears, and another.

"How are more werecavies spawning?! And why are there so many blue and purple people in my tavern???" I cry! And then I realise...

Fuckin' Arat Agopi the necromancer poet is currently having the time of his life. He's reanimating corpses left and right as fast as the bodies are falling. Here's the thing though; Necromancers that reanimate victims of werebeasts cause their transformation to immediately trigger. He was just spawning more and more werebeasts in the tavern.

At this point my game is progressing at minutes per frame. I can navigate the game fine while paused. I can advance the game three or four frames just fine with ".", but if I unpause or advance any more than four frames my game chokes and threatens to crash at any moment.

I tried my best to let it ride out. I tried leaving the game unpaused while watching youtube vids on my phone. I tried advancing the frames slowly to make sure my PC had completed the math on the last tick. I spent HOURS trying to soldier through.

I had to abandon the fortress not because keeping it going was cruel to my dwarves, but because it was cruel to my PC.

I guess Ducim finally met her need to "Cause trouble"...

[izzydeadjet]

I didn't want to make that post any longer but here are a few things that I'm gonna miss about the fort or that were kinda "Fun" at the end.

Zikath "The Mangy" Imust. One of my first non-human/Dwarf visitors who ended up becoming a citizen just a few months before the end. He was a delight to see milling around my tavern and temples and I was really looking forward to seeing what he'd achieve next. I couldn't get over having a chill demon in my fort.

The fact that you could see the guts spilling out of some of the werecavies in the tavern. They didn't have to create this sprite but I'm so happy they added that.

Poor, poor Tulon. I was advancing one frame at a time while watching him and saw an alert that he was interrupted while trying to drink wine. Turns out his hand was dangling by a thread and in the process of drinking it must have fallen off. I feel so bad for laughing when I saw that.

Anyways I'm thinking about starting a new fort in the same world, possibly close to Oilgleam to see if Drilus still visits or if I can retrieve any visitors or other goods from the old fort. A lot of people seem to hate werebeasts but they have a special place in my heart. My first fort in 2017 fell to a legendary werepanda miner. I'll have to dig out the old screenshots I took of her.

The Fall of Oilgleam

Hoo boy do I have a story to tell y'all about my latest fort (Yes, the same one Drilus used to visit)

So I had this for up and running for a good 5 years at least. Not too long but enough to be well established. A year before we had a goblin mercenary roll up to visit, turn into a werecavy and start toward the tavern. My military immediately dispatched it before it could get to any major population and resulted in three casualties (Not including a few animals and the werebeast itself).

I immediately located the dwarves that had been bitten, got them healed and then put them in a squad so I could barricade them in a room. This worked beautifully and I now had three almost invincible soldiers I could train separate from the rest of the fort.

Two of the dwarves really wanted to pray to Nadak Cradlebastions the Barricaded (Lol) so I made a chute to throw some picks and booze down to them and had them carve out a nice little temple to keep them happy. The last dwarf, Ducim Domasasiz, had an unmet need to "cause trouble". I had a good laugh at this and moved on.

At some point I wondered if weredwarves could get sun-sickness and decided to build a sort of air-lock system outside so they could have a yard to walk in if they needed. I made the walls two z-levels high with a floor lip on top to stop them jumping out and a 3-tile-long bridge to make sure they wouldn't be able to jump over that either (THIS IS IMPORTANT).

I was having a merry old time with my two fortresses on the same map. I was making plans to integrate more dwarves into the werecavy side to make a kickass military and was also working on breaking into the caverns properly in my main fort. A human came and we traded lots of goods, then I got distracted by a dwarf in a Fey Mood not having the correct materials.

While I was trying to figure out whether it was leather or metal bars we were lacking, I got an alert that one of my werecavies was fighting someone...No, a LOT of someones...

Turns out Ducim the Menace had hopped over the gate, (possibly agitated by the leaving dwarven caravan) and immediately burst into the tavern to cause the most bloody brawl Oilgleam had ever seen up until that point.

Thankfully she was dispatched very swiftly, but because she had gotten into the tavern I had no clue who she had attacked and the combat logs sometimes do not give you specific names for some reason. I combed through the nearby dwarves and lists, checked the blood on the floor and the hospitals and quickly found an Inod Oddomniles in there. "Phew", I thought, "Just Inod injured. I'll pop him in the Werecavy area and once he's in I'll block off the yard so they can't get out."

The rest of the month goes by with no dwarves visiting the hospital so I figure I've contained the afflicted and get back to figuring out what on earth Sarvesh is missing for her Fey mood.

On the full moon I get another message that Werecavy Inod has now started attacking people in the tavern. I rush over to the Werecavy pit and...Inod is still there? He's just chilling with the boys...

And then I find out there were two Inods.

Immediately the game grinds to a halt, the window keeps fading in and out like my PC is about to pass out from the amount of carnage it is processing. I'm panicking trying to block up the tavern and fruitlessly squad afflicted dwarves. As I watch another werecavy appears, and another.

"How are more werecavies spawning?! And why are there so many blue and purple people in my tavern???" I cry! And then I realise...

Fuckin' Arat Agopi the necromancer poet is currently having the time of his life. He's reanimating corpses left and right as fast as the bodies are falling. Here's the thing though, Necromancers that reanimate victims of werebeasts cause their transformation to immediately trigger. He was spawning more and more werebeasts in the tavern.

At this point my game is progressing at minutes per frame. I can navigate the game fine while paused. I can advance the game three or four frames just fine with ".", but if I unpause or advance any more than four frames my game chokes and threatens to crash at any moment.

I tried my best to let it ride out. I tried leaving the game unpaused while watching youtube vids on my phone. I tried advancing the frames slowly to make sure my PC had completed the math on the last tick. I spent HOURS trying to soldier through.

I had to abandon the fortress not because keeping it going was cruel to my dwarves, but because it was cruel to my PC.

Long Live Oilgleam.