joe m 🐀

The first captain of the guard died in the first goblin siege of Ogurvad.

The ruins of Ogurvad look impressive: a wide tunnel into the earth guarded by a stout keep with rings of crenelated walls surrounding it. But in those first few years, the keep was a simple stone mound, and the walls were barely a palisade built only on one side of the river. And so, when goblins came, their rutherers broke down the gate, and the hammerdwarves rushed to meet them, leaving the river unguarded. Goblins riding alligators came from the river and the only dwarves close enough to defend the inner doors were the marksdwarves led by the first Captain. All ten gave their lives to rout the alligator cavalry.

The second captain of the guard died within one year of being appointed with the next goblin siege. By this point, Ogurvad’s walls had been built with stone and fortified with cover, and the military of Ogurvad was comprised of three squads of marksdwarves and two squads of elite hammerdwarves. However, despite the discipline, the second Captain found herself patrolling the walls on her own when the next goblin siege came. A full battalion of goblin archers filled her with arrows, though she was able to sound the alarm.

The third captain of the guard died after two months. The goblins came again, though this time Ogurvad’s crossbows were all in place. The militia routed the archers, but not before the the third Captain took a few arrows himself. He died a few weeks later of infection as the rest of the wounded were still being cared for.

The fourth captain of the guard lived for five years. In a siege only half a year into the fourth Captain’s career, a goblin bow master led the charge. The fourth Captain engaged the bow master and won, but not before taking an arrow to each leg, severing the nerves and rendering him unable to walk. And yet for the next four years, the forth Captain continued to crawl and shuffle to patrol the walls and fight off the hordes that tried to take Ogurvad. He even adopted two dogs.

One summer, Ogurvad dealt with yet another goblin siege. By this point, the fortress was well-trained and well-equipped to deal with goblins, and so after only a day of fighting and no casualties, the citizens of Ogurvad were collecting what was useful from the dead and disposing of the rest when another threat came: a dragon. The only militia nearby was the local guard, and so to protect the civilians outside the walls, they rushed out to fight the beast.

The first recruit that ran outside the walls didn’t even have a chance to fight as the dragon melted him. The second rushed through an infernal forest in flame to meet the same fate. The third, the Captain, burst through the burning countryside to put one bolt through the dragon’s throat and another through its lung. The dragon died, but not before dousing the fourth Captain in one last gout of dragon fire.

And yet, the forth Captain, after slaying the greatest beast Ogurvad had ever seen, crawled back, with his dead nerve limbs and uncountable burns, back to the keep over Ogurvad’s main entrance to resume his watch. He passed there with both his dogs waiting over his body.

Since the Fourth, no captain of the guard has stood watch over Ogurvad for more than a few months before meeting an early death.

As Onulalis came to my fort around age 5-10 with her mother and father and siblings who I forgot the names of. Her mother ended up as a militia squad leader and her father part of the guard. One day a forgotten beast comes up from the caverns and I’ve got a giant Moria style bridge spanning a chasm to the cavern entrance, and so I send the hammer dwarves in.

First recruit gets there, gets immediately crushed to paste, and I’m like “oh no.” Then As’ mom shows up (I did not know her at the time) and I’m like “there goes another one” but no, mom grapples the forgotten beast and takes them both down into the chasm where she manages to hold it off until the rest of the squad shows up to finish it off. Mother unfortunately dies of her wounds but is given a statue

A few years later, another forgotten beast shows up it rips through the first squad so I send in the final defense of the local guard and they manage to take the beast down but not before getting covered in it’s blood. Turns out the blood causes immediate necrosis so they all end up dying, and there are a lot of problems with cleaning up the aftermath as well.

Now since As was a child, she spent most of her time doing child things like playing and socializing and so made a lot of friends in the fortress, a lot of whom end up dying during the blood plague. She ends up snapping, to the point of attacking and seriously injuring some of my master crafters so she gets tied up in prison.

I don’t really pay attention to this for a while until I notice that her only remaining sister has been visiting her in jail and basically calming her down during her years long sentence. She comes back to society in a better place, but obviously not perfect

Several years later, a goblin siege shows up and the mayor dies somehow (I missed it) and in the chaos of cleaning all that up and burying the dead, the citizens of the fortress end up electing As Onulalis as the new mayor.

The end.