Nothing to do with anything, I just feel like some levity is needed:
So: I had a little guy in my Dwarf Fortress game who was a master at combat. All his physical stats were extraordinary, and he loved war. He was in the military and excelled at it; my military saw a lot of action and he became legendary in several fighting abilities. Then there was a great disaster which led to the decimation of my military, and a period of several years hiding in the fortress with all the doors locked until the goblin army got bored and went away on its own. He survived the disaster, but he was badly wounded. Like real messed up.
The fortress survived, and gradually things came back to life, but this dude was crippled. He had to walk with a crutch, and had nerve damage. He became a cook, at which he also excelled, and his excellent meals became another key fixture of the fortress. I would sometimes sell barrels and barrels of them to trade caravans when I was short of other stuff, at huge prices. But. He always had unhappiness because of wanting to be able to get back to fighting. It was clearly a non starter of an idea, but it bothered me somewhat that the guy had been through so much and now had any kind of sadness in his daily life.
Finally, during a period of needing some additional troops, I finally said fuck it and put him back in the military. I gave him a battleaxe to go with his crutch, honestly not really sure how it would work out. His physical stats were excellent but the fuckin dude's got a useless leg. I don't think this is going to work. But it's what he wants to do, and who am I to tell him no?
I watched him close during his first encounter in combat. He wasn't good for much, to be honest. It was clear that his physical ability was impaired. He kept falling down. Until, somehow, he lost control of his axe, and then he picked up his wooden crutch and BEAT THE FUCK out of his adversary with the crutch. Like absolutely took him the fuck apart.
I don't understand the combat engine well enough to say exactly how it works, but it seemed clear that the answer was to give the guy a steel crutch and have that be his weapon. He kept breaking wooden crutches across enemies' faces and falling down, which is an issue in combat obviously, so I didn't feel like it was safe to continue to let that happen and have him maybe come to harm. I made a bunch of steel crutches, and tried to manipulate things so he would pick one up and start using it, but I never quite got it to happen. I think I gave up the whole endeavor and put him back in the kitchen. But if someone can tell me how to assign a particular crutch to a particular wounded dwarf, I'd love to give him a brand new indestructible crutch and let him hobble his way into battle and go the fuck to town and finally come into his own.
One of our crafters was stirred by this tale and went into a frenzied state. The mayor has drafted a delegation to deliver this artifact to your noble warrior in the name of Armok!
Legendary War Crutch: "Odrizudil, the Mithril Support"
Crafted from the rarest of ores, this mithril crutch gleams with a lustrous silver sheen, intricately engraved with scenes of dwarven champions bravely defending their mountain halls. Its shaft is adorned with glyphs that shimmer softly, imbued with the essence of resilience and unyielding determination. When grasped, it bestows upon its wielder unparalleled stability and fortitude in battle, enabling them to withstand even the mightiest adversaries without faltering. It bristles with thorns of steel.
Haha glad you enjoyed; I have many more. I thought of Dwarf Fortress games like explaining your dreams or your DND sessions, in that they’re only interesting to the person who went through them, but if it’s not that way I may start making a habit of posting them in a DF sub somewhere.
Much the same here. I recently got back into DF and was checking out the DF subs but got crickets. So I was glad to see a thread about DF and read through your story. If you start posting to one of the subs I’ll be sure to follow with some of my own at some point.
I did reply to the post but I forgot I filtered ml and I must be banned because the comment didn’t show up. Thanks for the new concern of undead arsehole badgers though lmao. It also reminded to implement my own Noble Ejection System (TM) since last fort had a brewing cult problem before I condemned it. I wonder if bridges can still serve as catapults??
Appreciate the write up! I’ll be sure to post one up in the coming days. Haven’t had too much fun yet but I think children king hitting giant blind lizards and forgotten fun will do.
Assuming crutches work like other bludgeoning weapons, a mithril crutch would be right about useless. Mithril's one of the lightest materials in the game and bludgeoning weapons scale based on their weight. It's a bit of an exploit to give your Hammerer a mithril warhammer so when he goes to mete out justice to a criminal dwarf, it's more of a light tickle than a hospitalization
Wait since when is mithril a thing in DF. Adamantine would certainly be a bad idea because crutches are bound to be blunt damage and adamantine (inspired by mithril) has about the density of cork. For blunt weapons you want gold or platinum, but you'd need to edit the game files or farm moods. Silver is the next best thing that can be done without cheesing. Adamantine is for armor and edge weapons.
The unreasonable effectiveness of crutches might be due to the same factor as the unreasonable effectiveness of pickaxes: Those use the mining skill for damage bonuses, crutches might use crutch-walker you'd have to test that. In any case wielding an axe one-handed is probably not a good idea, there's even dorfs that aren't tall enough to even wield them one-handed and the ones large enough to do so will still be way better at it with two hands.
Did you know the MIR is the name of the national credit card system? There was a doc at some point about regulations concerning the design of these credit cards for banks. One of the rules said "do not decode MIR as an abbreviation", which also included an example image of such improper use showing a text in Russian using M I R that translates into English as "we and Russia". So...
Btw the word MIR directly translates as "world" and "peace".
Are they trying to start an union? Because they already struggle doing this in the US while working in companies so I doubt it will end well for them in Russian military