How complex is it?

[The Former]

This is a repost from a comment I made in another thread. Spent so much time compiling it that I thought it deserved its own post, might be interesting to players wondering how deep the game really is.

If any typos are present (psh, "if", like it's not certain), I apologize in advance.

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<irrelevant text from original discussion has been trimmed>

First, let me start with this post I've repeated a few times already, forgive me if you've read it before.

The Tale of the Lonely Howl

I went into Legends and clicked on a dragon. Rano Parchedpearls the Bejewelled, a female dragon associated with wealth and fire. A brave dwarf struck her down, and I noticed her weapon, an iron spear called The Lonely Howl, earned its name at this moment. I decided to follow this spear to its present state, just out of curiosity.

The spear - a well-designed image of five-pointed stars in lignite - was used by this dwarf, Edzul Girderlances, to strike down two noteworthy beasts: Rano Parchedpearls, and later a dingo named Spabse. Then Edzul was struck down in a war and the spear passed to another dwarf, who held it for not even a season before being struck down by a hydra and passing it to his youngest son.

This third holder, Ducim, kept the spear for 14 years, taking him into a mercenary career. Despite being hired to fight in several wars, Ducim never recorded any further killing blows with the spear, although he did kill seven during his career. This tells me he kept the spear as a memento rather than a weapon of war. Finally, Ducim was struck down during one of his contracted battles by a female human, a necromancer named Anig Bellyinked, who currently holds the spear, and has for 47 years.

Sorry to everyone who's reading that for the 8th time, I found it really interesting.

My First Fortress, Puzzlegirder

Here's where it gets more objectively interesting. The tutorial threw me onto haunted terrain. It was a literal nightmare to deal with as a new player, so before the first winter was done, I abandoned the site and moved on to my current fortress. Theirs was a brief and miserable existence[i.imgur.com] complete with a bit of haunting.[i.imgur.com]

Well, just now I decided to alt-save and retire so I could check Legends, just for this reply, and I found something most interesting.

The Hame of Opening and the Humorous Bells

Immediately after I left them, the whole group created a bandit company, The Hame of Opening. Its leader, one of my sturdiest and most dedicated in the short time I ran Puzzlegirder. This group immediately fled into the Axe of Jaundice, a region in that tainted land I once called home.

In 104 (I've just begun 105), they launched an expedition into a hold called Urgedhell, and have since settled there under the name of The Humorous Bells. Now led by Onol Netswallowed,[i.imgur.com] have just begun to live there as a legitimate group of settlers again. Of interest is that Onol was the wife of Cog, the ghost who haunts Puzzlegirder. I remember their marriage, the joy they felt as a result, and the subsequent grief Onol experienced when she found him dead after he'd been missing for a weeks.

Glad to see she's getting on with her life.

But of even more interest...

Urgedhell

Urgedhell is a cave, but not just any cave. Urgedhell is a cave with a story dating back a century. Imagine my surprise when I clicked in to have a look[i.imgur.com] and...

What's this? This was Rano Parchedpearls' home! That's right, that ancient dragon who started the story of The Lonely Howl... She lived and died in this very cave, a full century ago!

Even more interesting? The ettin who lived there?[i.imgur.com] My current fortress, Homagecaves, struck her down! She came to our door and we had to slay her when she attacked our liaison with the Mountainhomes. I found it quite tragic, as she wasn't your typical monster. She was a hateless, neurotic (she became terrified the moment the liaison's guard flashed his crossbow and stayed that way until she died) lass who loved nature.[i.imgur.com]

Apparently a bit too much. Look at all that mundane stuff she stole from all those people. I suspect most of the fights she got into, she was just trying to grab a pretty fruit or flower and ended up getting attacked. That's how it happened at Homagecaves. She just wandered by minding her own business when the liaison's guards started shooting and charged her.

Poor girl.

I noticed, by the way, that she slew two elves when she'd arrived. Only two elves, in all her years, and no one else. I never would've dreamed one of them died in Rano Parchedpearls' lair when he came to give the ettin a reckoning.

At any rate, this storied cave is now the home of my first ever Dwarf Fortress band. I'll be interested to see how long they stay here when I next come back to read Legends.

A Brief Interlude: Tirist

Tirist Crazydoors.[i.imgur.com] You might've noticed she slew our ettin friend up there. Tirist didn't just "spawn" as someone to populate my fortress. She lived before then. Fought in a few wars. She had parents. Let's follow them! Meander a bit with me, we'll be getting back to Puzzlegirder soon.

Her mother Ingist was a mercenary.[i.imgur.com] She was hired to fight in a battle at The Courageous Hill,[i.imgur.com] an ancient site where a giantess, a cyclops, and three named dingoes all lived at one point. Seems a dragon came across some unfortunately humans here once as well.

The battle Ingist fought in was a skirmish between The Deep Confederacies (humans I currently trade with!) and The Vigorous Gulf (elves). Many battles have been fought here (Tirist would later fight in one of them!), but this one was one of the smaller and least eventful.

A year later she became a baroness in Oiledphrased, a hillock in the Cudgel of Birth (my current lot's civilization), where she still reigns. Ingist is woman with many children by many lovers. I imagine she's a fiery sort who burns hot in both battle and love. Perhaps I'll find out one day, should I meet her for myself.

But of all her lovers, it was the first, Lokum, who fathered our ettin slayer. Lokum's life was decidedly less exciting than Ingist's.[i.imgur.com] Shorter too. A prophet of the Denomination of Defending, later retiring to become a monk. As an itinerant monk, he saw much of the area and even recruited some monks in Frillytomes... A hillocks with a long history of troll attacks that would eventually be the last place Lokum saw. He was attacked by trolls twice in his journeys, and the second one killed and ate him at Frillytomes. What a grisly end.

So we have Tirist, daughter of a monk and a mercenary-turned-baroness, who lost her father at the age of nine. So what sort of woman is Tirist today? Just who slew the ettin that squatted in Rano Parchedpearls' home?

Well first, did you know that she married her childhood friend? This didn't happen in the worldgen, either. Legends dictated that Sigun Swordrein, whom she settled here with, was her childhood friend... and she married him in midspring of 101, a year after I started playing on this save. Of course she didn't actually come to Homagecaves until 104, but when she did, she came with both husband Sigun and her lover, Zuglar. Seems she's just as spicy as her mother was!

Sure enough, Tirist lives fast and hot.[i.imgur.com] She falls in love easily and likes excitement in her life. She still experiences trauma remembering the fear of facing that ettin, though. She's a mother now, and her daughter will continue the tale of this bloodline.

Meander over! Let's now talk about...

The Riddled Gear

You might've noticed that my first lot at Puzzlegirder were from The Riddled Gear. Who are The Riddled Gear? Well, it turns out they're one of the earliest civilizations.[i.imgur.com] Seems they thrived in the forsaken haunted lands in part by embracing it early; their general in the year 1 was very storied[i.imgur.com] dwarf necromancer Iteb Glovedglaciers. First of his kind! Not sure if that means first necromancer or first DWARF necromancer, but there it is. They also embraced The Fatal Ghost[i.imgur.com], a ghastly god indeed.

A lot of interesting things happened to Iteb in his long life, including a bond of friendship cemented in battle. What a warrior, too! Just look at all those contests of arms he's won in his life. Hammer throwing, wrestling, sword throwing... The man was an Adonis.[i.imgur.com]

Iteb wasn't only a warrior-general, either. He became king in the year 46[i.imgur.com], after traveling the world winning all sorts of martial contests, journeying to the depths of the world and taming some cave crocodiles,[i.imgur.com] and... What's this?!

Iteb didn't become king because he won many great victories for the Riddled Gear... He... Oh my, this is a scandal.

In the year 30, Iteb started hatching plots.[i.imgur.com] Recruiting people such as Sazir Jawwound,[i.imgur.com] baroness of Paddleplait, and Tulon Matchcudgel,[i.imgur.com] butcher-baron of Obscureguild, to gain control of Knifeflames, the first city founded by the Riddled Gear.[i.imgur.com] Iteb was no Alexander... He was Julius Caesar! He became king only after overthrowing[i.imgur.com] the queen who'd trusted him for 46 years!

(I love how he's such a badass that he was literally listed as instrumental to his own plan, though.)

And notice that he didn't start big. His plot started with an ex-lover. Someone close to home. Someone easier to manipulate. What spurred this, though? Was he rotten from the start? I don't think so. I think he was a decent man who had good intentions for the realm at first.

And look at that! The lore backs me up. The plotting started very shortly after he recovered Dieghosts the Dead Dust[i.imgur.com], a relic created by The Fatal Ghost himself. Somehow I'm starting to think it wasn't that this civilization embraced the undead... but that it unleashed the undead in this region.

Either way, it seems Iteb has allowed himself to get complacent. He spends all his peacetime pursuing athletics, but he finds a lot of wartime now. Why? He's allowing his barons to be tricked and letting other civilizations slip into their territory.[i.imgur.com]

Even Knifeflames isn't immune from these slip-ups. I noticed when I left Puzzlegirder that in only a year, the map had changed drastically in that area, with several goblin holds rapidly spreading across the continent where the Riddled Gear held absolute power when I started the tutorial. Now that I'm reading this, I realize it's the result of their king and his lords being followed time and again and allowing hostile figures into their midst.

Iteb is having to fight an awful lot of battles these days.[i.imgur.com] Maybe he'll soon learn that his reign isn't assured just because it's ancient.

Conclusion

First, sorry if any of the links are off. I was furiously capping and uploading to Imgur as I typed and it's very possible I double-pasted some links. The full album[imgur.com] should have all the stuff if you dig for it, but hopefully I didn't mess up anywhere and you won't have to.

Second, the actual conclusion: I think this proves without a doubt that while a lot of it is mundane and inconsequential, just as "In 368, Alexander stubbbed his toe" would be if we recorded such things IRL, this is not simply flavor text that's in no way tied together into a coherent whole.

These things tell congruent stories if you take the time to read it and follow the threads, and the stories work together to make one big story of your world. Each of these tales affects the world you're playing in, and they don't magically stop when you get done generating the world.

Iteb Glovedglaciers is still out there, ruling the Riddled Gear. His story is still being written. If I were still playing Puzzlegirder, he would be the king I'd have to sate with my exports.

Puzzlegirder's members still exist, living in the cave of that ancient dragon who was the first legendary beast I clicked on by happenstance on launch day. Their stories will echo, and I may even see some of them again if I decide to try settling in that horrible land again one day.

Ingish Lordsmith still reigns as baroness of Oiledphrased, though she's left the place, implying she doesn't care for the title. Still, Oiledphrased exists. Some of their people have visited my tavern.

Ingish's story won't die with her, either. Her daughter still lives, serving as one of my realm's most stalwart defenders. One of her lovers just died to a goblin raid; I wonder how she'll react when she finds out?

She has siblings. Many of them (two each in two separate attacks in 65 and 94) have died to ogres. Some live. Her older sister Vucar was a ranger in Oiledphrased, and now serves her as its sheriff. Her older brother leads a mundane life in OIledphrased. His former lover was struck down in battle and raised by a necromancer, but he has no knowledge of this; it happened in a different place, long after they split.

[Tonus]

My all time favorite Epeve the Maneater .

The game hides something magical under the hood. There are neural networks dedicated to generate stories like AI Dungeon. But Dwarf Fortress makes it interesting, because it's not about patterns in writing books and stuff, they are real characters with theirs pretty much real lives.

[Alphapalme]

Can you see that? Can you actually see effects like a dwarf hiding because hes frightend? A dwarf who is angry, lock himself in his room?

[Tonus]

Originally posted by Naranja™:

Can you see that? Can you actually see effects like a dwarf hiding because hes frightend? A dwarf who is angry, lock himself in his room?

Once I had a dwarf, who decided to kill herself jumping into a volcano. She was a mother, so she jumped with her baby in hand.

Recently I was attacked by dead zombies, and I sent my squad of fresh recruits against them. They droped their axes and ran in fear when they saw zombies rip apart one of the dogs. They didn't lash a single hit on them. All of them were brutally murdered in their dining hall.

I don't think they can lock themselves in a room. If they lose their minds, they either kill themselves or kill those around them.

[Alphapalme]

Originally posted by Tonus:

Originally posted by Naranja™:

Can you see that? Can you actually see effects like a dwarf hiding because hes frightend? A dwarf who is angry, lock himself in his room?

Once I had a dwarf, who decided to kill herself jumping into a volcano. She was a mother, so she jumped with her baby in hand.

Recently I was attacked by dead zombies, and I sent my squad of fresh recruits against them. They droped their axes and ran in fear when they saw zombies rip apart one of the dogs. They didn't lash a single hit on them. All of them were brutally murdered in their dining hall.

I don't think they can lock themselves in a room. If they lose their minds, they either kill themselves or kill those around them.

Ouh so, so you saw that she get to the volcano and jumps in? After that you reading the thoughts or how do you find that out? And you saw their axes laying on ground then and they running away?

[Tonus]

Originally posted by Naranja™:

Ouh so, so you saw that she get to the volcano and jumps in? After that you reading the thoughts or how do you find that out? And you saw their axes laying on ground then and they running away?

The game has stress system. Some dwarves may become depressed. And if it lasts long they become insane (the game warns you when this happened) and one of the insanities is melancholy, melancholy dwarves drown in water/magma or just stop eating and starve to death.

There is discipline skill in game. My dwarves were fresh recruits. So yeah, dwarves can be terrified and ran away from danger dropping everything.

[|Pipe Dreams]

Cool thread. I'm right now debating buying DF.

[Simonson [29th Ret.]]

There's a reason why many people consider this game to be the greatest game ever made.

[Gabriel_Uppercut]

The game I play is reading all these crazy stories people piece together with things that happen to the dwarves. I know mos of it is filling in the blanks, but its still damn entertaining. That Epeve story, lol. I really want to try it but I'm not the type to keep rebuilding from scratch even if it means more cool stories. I'll most likely enjoy from afar.

[MozarteanChaos]

damn, i should really take a look at legends sometime. i already knew that this game is a shockingly robust simulation, but for some reason it just didn't occur to me that it could make such well-connected histories like this.
i feel bad for lima... if only the other sapient races were more willing to try diplomacy before violence.