Dwarf Fortress/Awesome

"What did he draw? Moments before he bled to death? Alone on a cliff? The last gesture of the dwarves of the Hamlet of Tyranny? A picture of a demon and some dwarves. The demon was in a fetal position. The dwarves were laughing."
 * Dwarf Fortress is ripe for awesome, as is shown in the story of The Hamlet of Tyranny, originally taken from 4chan's board, /tg/. A certain fortress Dug Too Deep and discovered a pit of demons, lead by a legendary demon lord. The demons surge upwards from the depths of the earth, massacring dwarves as they go. The player forces the demons through labyrinthine traps and collapses the mountain on top of them, but their numbers are seemingly endless, and their king unkillable. In his grief, a legendary weaponsmith, one of the original expedition members, whose wife had been killed by the demons, forges a jewel encrusted artifact sword. The demons surge up into the upper halls, and only a few dwarves remain, the rest having been slaughtered by the demons. Those few dwarves put up a valiant fight, killing the last of the demons, but the invincible demon lord still remains. Finally, only one dwarf still lives, the captain of the guard and the baddest ass among the dwarves of the fortress. He takes the artifact sword, and with it he impales the demon king, hurling the demon into a bottomless pit before succumbing to his wounds and tumbling over the edge himself. Surprisingly, one dwarf is still alive. An engraver had fallen into the chasm and landed on a ledge. His bones were broken and he would soon die.


 * Another moment of true awesome from Dwarf Fortress: a lone hunter named Nil Bastionhall was out hunting when a full goblin siege arrived, right in front of him. Immediately, Nil whipped out his crossbow and cut down three of the goblins before they closed in, and then proceeded to start smashing faces with his crossbow like it was a warhammer. He ended up leaving another half-dozen goblins dead and the rest panicked and fled, and then Nil fell unconscious. For about a year he stayed comatose, tended in a safe bed in the fortress' hospital, until one day one of the wounded recruits woke up, went mad, and prepared to kill all the other wounded troops in a fit of berserk rage. Nil, still lying in his bed with one arm permenantly disabled, woke up and immediately dropped the berserk dwarf with a shot in the eye from his crossbow. Then he got up and limped off to get a drink.
 * Apparently there is no end to the level of epic that dwarves can put in their artifacts.
 * The tale of Urist Fiercewinds the Omen: a male dwarf with a penchant for wielding giant weapons. When he first starts out, he gets a quest from the king to go slay the last titan in the world, so he goes off and does it. With a giant axe blade and some used platemail that he picked up from the remains of the last fortress. He just searches the cave where the titan resides, kills some annoying antmen along the way, finds the titan, and hacks off the titan's lower body with the giant axe. Then he gets another quest from the king: to go find the last megabeast left in the world--a dragon--and kill it. The problem is, dragons can breathe fire so they are very well capable of destroying axedwarves well before they get into range. So what does he do? What every other adventurer would do: he throws stuff. However, everything he throws misses and he rapidly runs out of good things to throw, until he is down to just his axe. So he throws the axe. The dragon gets shot and bleeds to death. Urist goes down in history as the dwarf responsible for the end of the Age of Heroes. Mind you, his tale doesn't end there. He travels the world, receiving requests from various towns to go kill a local giant or other feared creature, excavating the ruins of various abandoned sites, and just generally finding things to do. Finally, when he's had enough, he goes and locates a lowly kobold cave, Teachdark, and settles there. Teachdark, unfortunately, is situated next to a chasm where various creatures capable of decimating kobolds spawn from, so it's a wonder how the kobolds managed to survive in the area. One possibility: there were a lot more kobolds in the area before Urist came along, and right now Urist is the one responsible for single-handedly ensuring that the kobolds in Teachdark are safe.
 * When the next dwarven expedition comes along, he is seen wearing several pages worth of trinkets made from the corpses of his kills (including titan leather earrings and a dragon bone crown); most of these are carried in his hands. While still holding a giant axe blade in his left hand and a shield in his right. Also of note: exports from the kobolds still read "Petty annoyance."
 * We were a small human town, out in the middle of nowhere. Just had a small quarry in the mountains to make sure we had stone for our houses. Our population was at 20, and we were doing alright, I guess, and we had a small military of 4 Swordsmen. Then the bugs came. Huge, eight legged flying things with four scythed arms, a group of 20 showed up on the outskirts. I sent the swordsmen to take them out, and they were massacred. I hastily put together a force of 7 random civilians to try and slow them down while I made preparations. They gave their lives valiantly. I garrisoned the remaining civilians inside a house, and had a mason build a wall in front of the door, so none of the bugs could get in. I managed to get all the remaining civilians inside that house. All except one.

She was a miner, one of the original seven. Her name escapes me, but at the time of the attacks, she had fallen asleep in the mines, and woke up the second the mason finished building the barricade. With the bugs bearing down on the town, I did the one thing I could think of, I stationed her in front of the garrisoned house, and told her to stand her ground. She had no military training, and only had a worn, copper pick. She saw the bugs come over the quarry hill, readied her pick, and charged... She killed all 20 of them, without a scratch. "SpiralDimentia: Oh god, you guys are dicks, I think I just unleashed a horde of demons into my base."
 * From Something Awful's Let's Play of Headshoots, we have countless Crowning Moments Of Awesome, but one of the most awesome came from Holistic Detective's dwarf, who spotted a kobold thief prowling around on the opposite side of a pool of lava. Holistic's dwarf proceeded to run across the surface of the lava and obliterate the kobold, without getting so much as a burn on her. The artifact adamantine armor probably helped somewhat.
 * A more subdued yet still awesome moment was the triumph of the Crazy Survivalist Gex. When the players finally started the apocalypse, Gex grabbed some supplies and buggered off to the one area of the fortress even the players could not find. This impressed them so much, Gex was allowed to live.
 * There was also TRIBUTE a massive, horribly broken fountain in the shape of a giant arm pouring a mug of booze in front of the fortress. But with lava.
 * We of course cannot forget the ending's
 * Behold, a triumph of dwarven engineering! Kanddak here re-engineered an entire ocean to trap walruses.
 * Mermaid Farming. Bonus points for being so hardcore even some DF veterans were squicked out, not to mention Toady himself, who promptly nerfed the value of merbone in the next update.
 * A fully functional sea serpent farm.
 * Players have also built a working computer, a digital calculator, and an airship.
 * The legends can create their fair share of awesome as well:
 * Tholtig Crpytbrain's valiant effort to save her people from annihilation.
 * Cacame Awemedinade, Elf King of the Dwarves. Despite initial scepticism, he soon proved to be the most awesome elf ever, killing a dragon with nothing more than Competent hammerman skill.
 * And he killed said dragon in response to a disparaging comment made about his pet wyvern. His pet ZOMBIE wyvern. Fanart often portrays him riding atop his wyvern while brandishing a warhammer... and a fake beard.
 * Also known as The Immortal Onslaught. And he earned every letter of that title.
 * He's the only elf to have been given official dwarf status by the members of the community.
 * BRONZEMURDER IS ALIVE!
 * Âsax the caveswallowman has now joined the ranks of the likes of Cacame the Elven Dwarf King in Dwarven history. At the age of eleven, using only a fungiwood spear and a tunnel tube shield, he killed a Forgotten Beast and badly wounded two others, fighting for months and coming out none the worse for wear aside from a broken toe.
 * The very existence of Undergrotto. Holy crap.
 * "Holy crap" doesn't even begin do describe the absurd awesomeness and dwarfity of Undergrotto. Something more along the lines "UNHOLY EVERBLEEDING CARP MOTHER OF ARMOK" is more fitting.
 * For the .31 players out there, Undergrotto was created in 40d, which does not have natural caverns. The giant cavern you see in that thread was hewn from solid rock and made to look natural.
 * This Adventure Mode player killed a Bronze Colossus... by throwing a fluffy wambler at it so hard its head broke off.
 * Syrupleaf, a fortress that as luck would have it, was built over what must be a magnet for trouble, was attacked almost every time a trade caravan came along. As a result, one of the leaders, a Dwarf by the name of Daeren sacrificed his soul to make a sort of lighthouse, that would bar demonic influence. When death showed up to take some of the ghouls that had been haunting the place, one of the ghouls asked "What about his soul?" pointing at Daeren. Then to quote what happened next:"Death of Dorfs looked up, and so did Globofglob (one of the ghouls). All Globofglob could see was the stone roof of the fortress, but Death was looking into the sky, beyond the mountain. There hovered far, far off, a massive winged shape. It soared and dove and screeched in a way that only the dead could hear. "SOMETIMES THE GODS MAKE EXCEPTIONS." Yes that's right, his sacrifice impressed the GODS so much, he gets to stay there, for eternity!
 * A fully functional in-game Turing-complete hydraulic computer. In a fantasy game. Check it out here.
 * A single post, with massive spoilers: "What's up? I just ." This, by the way, is not supposed to happen. is called "endgame" in the files, and defeating the results is supposed to be damn near impossible. But dwarves frequently go beyond rational limits so it was really only a matter of time.
 * Made even better by the fact the first responses were people telling him that it hardly counted as
 * Reg Liruklor was a Legendary hammerdwarf in a squad with something like 150 total kills in all, not counting mounts and war beasts, but Reg only had one for no particular reason other than luck and timing. So the rest of his squad all had their ridiculously long titles, and then there was "Reg." In the next siege after that original forum post, Reg rushed solo into the first squad of goblin pikemen, went into a martial trance, got credit for eight kills (keep in mind that that number only counts the killing blows and not other damage he did before another dwarf finished the job) and scattered the whole pike squad after taking down half of them single-handedly before anyone else could catch up. His title is now Reg Violenttool, the Basic Luck of Irons. Which is also an awesome title for a hammerdwarf.
 * The original poster followed up the siege with a bit of prose describing what happened. Reg danced.
 * REG LIVES!
 * The fortress of Gloveflier is implementing Conway's Game of Life using a mind-boggling system of gears, levers, and windmills.
 * The entire game gets one. You know you've arrived in digital gaming world when the grand champion of MMOs World of Warcraft not only gives you a shoutout with an NPC that floods the entire dwarven capitol (and leaving behind massive amounts of carp in the process), but when there's a quest that is titled "Dwarf Fortress" that involves getting the plans for a fortress built around a giant cannon. The plans are guarded by "Haggis Boatmurder" and have the flavor text as "A depiction of the fortress using primitive icons to represent essential structures." The kicker to the quest? It's a goblin handing it out.
 * Jim Raynor hanging out in Bay 12, with a Dwarf. If anything, someone in Blizzard seems to be a fan.
 * This thread chronicles the adventures of SpiralDimentia and forum members managing to trick him into removing the cotton candy sword from a curious structure and experiencing spoilers. To his credit he took it with a great sense of humor and it turned into an epic thread of awesomeness.

"Tiruin: Dwarves play checkers with the blood of the earth and the life of the land... And they win everytime. ThatAussieGuy: I think I just turned the most feared action a dwarf-forter can make into a simple children's board game that anyone can win."
 * The recent reclamation of Battlefailed has been amounting a large number of these, the first one being turning the sludge covered, toxic floors of the old Fortress into a defense against everything from kobold thieves to rampaging forgotten beasts. Choice picks include the successful cleanup of the decades of waste lying around in Battlefailed's exterior, the exploitation of Forgotten beasts' builder destroyer trait to create a potent trap against them, and the epic fight between a goblin warlord and a dwarven champion who had just recently been turning the warlord's brethren into pincushions atop the ruin of Fail Cannon. Unfortunately, the restoration and near activation of Fail Cannon seems to be a lost opportunity for now, since the Goblin siege that had prompted the Cannon's activation was annihilated long before the Cannon finished powering up.
 * The Legend of Ungrashzon, a 3D ANIMATED Dwarf Fortress story.
 * Dwarven Checkers (contains spoilers!).

"I set a hauler to ride a minecart to its next stop. That happened to take the dwarf down eight ramps and then up a launch ramp into an open cavern. High up in the cavern there was a wide ledge and on the ledge there was a goblin, chilling out right where I had created it. I activated the dwarf's squad, and he had just enough hang-time at the top of the flight arc to get a punch in. The goblin struck back but the dwarf jumped on to the ledge, where they continued to fight as the cart fell down into the darkness."
 * In this fort, they had a 7-year old who was cornered by HFS after the entire rest of the fort had been slaughtered. The 7-year old then proceeded to dodge every single attack for almost half a year before finally succumbing to starvation. To quote a forumgoer "a child dodged demons until he starved. Not passed out, not even dehydrated. That isn't a ninja, that's a glitch in The Matrix turning one dwarf kid into Urist McNeo."
 * The story of Weatherwires - in the author's words, "A mix between Children of Men, City of Ember, and, uh, magma." It is epic storytelling combined with massive megaproject that is possibly unparalleled in the DF world.
 * Forum user Frogwarrior posts: Just genned a world with the nastiest demon ever. 54451 sentient kills. Holy. Fucking. Shit.
 * Toady putting in minecarts for the next release is already pretty awesome, but the latest devlog post has produced this little gem:


 * As one forum user put it: "Urist McClane cancels haul item: Enacting action movie sequence".