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No. 123065
> I went ahead and made the reclaims more interesting by allowing forgotten beasts to be active in world generation and I also let the other large beasts sometimes have very successful attacks ending in a lasting change of residency. A 100 year medium world I tried out had 32 healthy forts occupied by dwarves that were not reclaimable, and 7 troubled forts that could be reclaimed on start.
> The first reclaimable fortress in this world is Amostiklist, and it is the home of a dragon, Ibmat Gemglowing the Bejeweled Furnaces. In just the second year, he killed the king and various other notable dwarves, and this wasn't even their first trouble. Before the first winter had passed, a demon named Mete Deepterror and a couple dozen goblins and trolls killed almost everybody, but the king managed to hold out with the help of the baron he placed over the fortress, who single-handledly killed more than half of the attackers. The demon killed the mayor but fled in the end. Then everybody met the dragon not many months after. Over the last 100 years, the dragon has defeated seven heroes and is looking forward to seven dwarves or another naive adventurer.
>The second fort to fall into ruin was Oshuratis of the Reputed Crypt. That dwarven civilization was also involved in squabbles with a demon, but those wouldn't come to a terrible end for 30 years. In the year 14, death came from below in the form of a squirming eight-legged sauropod Ukoz Reignhobbles the Flag of Soils (a name which doesn't bode well for kingdoms), and nobody escaped. The queen, Tekkud, the local nobility and their families, and the general all fell. Queen Tekkud was followed by King Cog, who will come up in the final fort.
>Ten years passed, and we come to Sherikrakust and the great scaly leech Dosheb Slunkmined. The local baron and mayor were slain, and the beast moved in. Fortunately, many of the family members were absent with responsiblities in other forts and hill sites. The mayor's father was a tragic character, obsessed with his own mortality, but unable to secure the secrets of life and death before becoming a skink monster, attacking communities until he died of old age in 93. The secrets became widely available just a few years after he contracted the curse, and they play a large role on the periphery in some of the other stories. In any case, Dosheb fought off an elf hero and is waiting for further challenges.
>Just a year later, in the summer of 25, another dragon arrived, this time in Azuzthob. As usual, the mayor was killed. Her husband, also a mayor but later a necromancer, wrote a book about his marriage 45 years later while playing with dead bodies in his tower. He revisited the topic in an essay the next decade called My Thoughts On The Book.
>25 was a bad year. In the winter, Toseddom was destroyed by an enormous shelled gecko from the depths, Jozi Oozeghost the Fated Boil. The king of the Urns of Wire was slain, but the queen consort was also a mayor and not living at the fortress. She later learned necromancy from a human possessed of that knowledge. Her teacher was an apprentice of the very first necromancer, Tura. Using her knowledge and an army of corpses, the dwarf went on to raise one of the seven towers of necromancy in the west, the only ones in the world, abandoning all mundane responsibilities.
>Torasstinthad is the sixth ruin, and Dungsfur the Tufted Certainty was a hydra. Maybe it was routine by now, but many dwarves died and the hydra came to stay in 38. The baroness's father was not present, as he was a mayor elsewhere, but he met his own beast in 41 when a dragon destroyed Pickconfines. Unlike other fortresses and their beasts, that dragon wasn't the kind to stick around. Pickconfines was reclaimed in 45 and still stands.
>The last fortress was different, since nobody lives there now, friend or foe. In the year 43, the demon war of the Reputed Crypts was raging, and many sites were emptied to contest the evil army that was attacking Doorriddles. King Cog and almost everybody else died in the battle there, and the demon force destroyed dwarven settlements in the coming months from the hills to the mountains. The last fortress to fall was the last fortress of the Reputed Crypts, Machinenations. That dwarven civilization was left with one distant hill settlement, far to the east of all the action, called Minelocks. The new queen was unrelated to King Cog, as the line was broken in the war. Queen Olin survived with a few dozen dwarves in the hillocks, appointing a baron and general (her husband) among them, but living in the civic mound like hill nobility. They were far away from the old goblins, but they were surrounded by the new goblins, and over the next few years, the queen's growing family was devastated by abductions in 48, 55, again in 55, 56 and 61, and by a child killed in 49 by a cyclops, which also maimed her husband. By 56, in the middle of it all, she became obssessed with her own mortality, like so many dwarves before her. The difference was that the necromantic explosion was less than a decade away.
>Tura was the ruler of the human hamlet Growthbrain. As she became older, something changed, and she sought to extend her life by any means. Every other civilization in the world was without a death deity, but Tura's people could pray to the rotten goddess. She did, and in the year 65 she received a slab engraved with the secrets of life and death. Before she even managed to raise her first corpse, seekers of knowledge flocked to Growthbrain and settled there, taking up odd jobs and receiving training. By the winter, Tura was able to get away to look for bodies of her own, but some of her apprentices stayed behind long enough to greet more seekers as they arrived. The process lasted for six years, all the way until the winter of 71. At least 30 necromancers learned the dark arts, and no fewer than seven towers sprang up in the wilderness surrounding Growthbrain. Tura herself only managed to find enough good bodies to raise a score of zombies, not enough to construct a tower, and to this day she has a camp out on the plains, clutching the death slab by the fire. Queen Olin arrived with the second wave of seekers and also has a camp and ten zombies out in the wilds near the hamlet. All of her abducted children were murdered in their adult years while working for their demon master, leaving no heirs.
>In the year 100, the fortress ruins lie waiting and the necromancers of the seven towers should be a menace to any dwarven expedition that tries to settle nearby. Minelocks is home to the two surviving dwarves of the Reputed Crypt, the self-styled baron Sigun, and the former Queen Olin's husband Medtob, the general. Neither of them wanted to be the ruler -- the Reputed Crypts hasn't had a king or queen for 30 years after Olin left. I'm not really sure why, which is one of many reasons why there's still work to be done, but the new reclaims should be more entertaining now, anyway!
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