Dwarf Fortress/Deathgate



"This is an artifact fortress. All craftdwarfship is of the maddest quality. It is adorned with rings of text. It menaces with spikes of animals. It is decorated with adamantine awesome. On the fortress is an image of Overseers in demon blood. The Overseers are cackling insanely. On the Fortress is an image of animals and CPU. The animals are milling about. The CPU is in the fetal position. On the fortress is an image of the BATTERY and physics. The Battery is producing power from nothing. The physics is weeping. On the Fortress is an image of dwarves and demons. The dwarves are striking menacing poses. The demons are decomposing. On the fortress is an image of dead cats in cat bone. The cats are self-referential."

- Blade Master Model 42

Deathgate the Doom-Fortress is yet another Dwarf Fortress succession game hosted on Bay12 Forums and launched by AnimaRytak in May of 2011. Compared to other succession forts, it lacked some of the insanity and massive bloodshed that made Boatmurdered and Syrupleaf epic. It made up for this by being for being the first succession game.

In universe, the story is as follows...

The year was 751, during the Age of Fairy Tales, the dwarven kingdom of The Basement of Murder sent forth the group known as the Death-Hammers of Wrath to found an outpost in The Windy Plane. Seven dwarves set out from the mountainhome, Fistmachines, with their heads held high and their beards soaked with booze. A year after Deathgate's founding, the first overseer goes completely insane after learning the Death-Hammer's true goal

And thus begins a tale of horrible things. Half a dozen overseers are driven mad, hundreds of dwarven lives are lost, thousands of goblins slain, and several demi-gods rise and fall. In Deathgate, dwarves are born, they are raised, and they die. Even after the rest of the dwarven kingdom has crumbled, Deathgate remains defiant.

As of June 11th, it's still alive

Unrelated to The Death Gate Cycle.

Deathgate provides examples of:
"The Mad Fool: Progress! The subject survived the procedure, or at least he was still alive when he stopped screaming. He's dead now, of course, but that's hardly relevant."
 * After the End: Happened during worldgen; the dwarfs had managed killed off the last two megabeasts, but by time they succeeded so few people were left that the world passed into the Twilight Age. Hundreds years later, it became the Age of Fairy Tales; this only happens when pretty much every fantastic race and megabeast are dead.
 * Anyone Can Die: Played brutally straight. Not even the potash makers are safe!
 * Badass: Oh so many examples.
 * Karakzon was, until his death from a broken spine, a very effective combatant. His Blood Knight tendencies led to him biting a Forgotten Beast. His protege, Tryrar, was similarly badass.
 * Germayne, the leader of the marksdwarf squad, had over twenty-six kills to his name.
 * Logem Bomrekikal, Ultimate Fucking Badass, an untrained, one-handed woodcutter who managed to slay four goblins in mere seconds before being struck down by a hammer blow to the face.
 * Bizarrchitecture: The fortress is known for being extremely hard to navigate thanks to a maze of twisting passages, abandoned storerooms, and flooded throne rooms.
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer: Inverted with the Mad Fool in-universe. He's not a very good doctor, however he's the only one Deathgate has.

"noodle0117: Deathgate has never seen a finer day."
 * Butt Monkey: One dwarf, nicknamed Kelsa, somehow lost both legs and and arm in an unknown incident.
 * Two early militia dwarves were each missing an arm. This was not grounds for a dismissal.
 * Crapsack World: By the time Deathgate opens, the elves are extinct, most of the dwarven fortress have fallen, and the humans worship Llama Demons.
 * Crazy Awesome:

"Noloc Istro, "The Battles of Burning" A: 525, mostly humans, 215 losses D: 23 elves, 4 grizzly bears, 23 losses Attacker was victorious."
 * Death Course: The bridge leading to Deathgate's main entrance was lined with many deadly weapon traps. Said bridge was responsible for the death of many trolls.
 * The courtyard leading into the Hellbunker was supposed to be packed with adamantine spikes, but something went wrong and they never entered operation, thus resulting in the deaths of many dwarves.
 * Dissonant Serenity: Derm, one of the previous mayors, was creepily calm with the amount of death and murder going on in his fort.
 * Do Not Go Gentle: Overlaps with Last Stand. During the final battle between the elves and the humans, the humans brought a force of over 500 strong. Only 23 and four grizzly bears were left. The end result?

"kefkakrazy: By the way, the final confrontation with the surviving Fire Bros took place in the Hellbunker's booze stockpile, so the responding dwarves had to deal with haunt of fire blasts in addition to the occasional shower of boiling booze. I suspect that flaming wine was the cause of Super-Cat's death."
 * Doomy Dooms of Doom: The fort's full name is Deathgate the Doom-Fortress.
 * Dug Too Deep: Invoked.
 * Elaborate Underground Base: Kinda goes without saying...
 * Elves vs. Dwarves: Averted, as the humans wiped out the last of the elves during worldgen.
 * Evil Weapon: The Red Monster Sword, a sword made completely of !!Fire!! To date, it has never been used in combat as anyone who attempts to wield it is horribly burnt, and a fair number of dwarves died simply trying to carry it to the shrine built for it.
 * Fun with Acronyms: Big Acceleration Transforming Transistor Extracting Raw Energy Yield
 * Crazy Awesome Recon Patrol
 * Ghost Town: Vast sections of Upper Deathgate are practically abandoned due to the majority of the population relocating to Lower Deathgate. Many of the bedrooms and workshops have not seen use in several years, and at this point the surviving dwarves wouldn't really make a dent in the facilities anyway.
 * Giving the Sword to A Noob: Untrained recruits are often given adamantine equipment, despite barely understanding how to use any of it.
 * Go Mad From the Revelation: Tends to plague former overseers in-universe.
 * Haunted Castle: And how. One goblin adventurer was choked to death by the ghost of a woodcutter.
 * I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: It is named Deathgate after all. Also the Hellbunker.
 * The dwarven kingdom is named The Basement of Murder, and the original mountainhome was called Fistmachines.
 * Massivedemons and Reignfiend were Goblin strongholds.
 * Incendiary Exponent:

"Must not go to the circus.... Must not let out the clowns..."
 * Kick the Dog: One sadistic overseer dumped hundreds of live animals down a deep pit just for the fun of it.
 * It was also to boost lagging framerates, but mostly for fun.
 * Kill'Em All: One overseer's solution to the pet population.
 * Lava Pit: Used to execute several dozen goblin and troll captives.
 * Lethal Joke Character: During a number of demonic outbreaks, some random bystanders somehow survived significantly longer than the others around them. A dwarven child lasted longer than several adults against several fire demons, and so did a cat. The king of these, though, is the legendary Darkwing the Netherfowl, a duck so amazing that he singlewingedly made ducks a primary Deathgate mascot; Darkwing accounted for two demon deaths.
 * Mad Doctor: The Mad Fool exemplifies this trope. In-universe, he is an insane doctor who more often than not kills his "patients".
 * Made of Iron: Paindeer. It's your average deer, which somehow survived not one but two hits from a siege ballista and which wandered around for a while with vital organs hanging out of its body.
 * Madness Mantra

"AnimaRytak: The upper system was never really complete and because of the deaths it was causing, it was shut down. Dariush: You aren't true dorfs! AnimaRytak: Noodle died three times on it!"
 * Malevolent Architecture: The aptly named Doom Bridge.

"noodle0117: I might need a bit more time getting the update up, since my computer literally crashed from the sheer amounts of gore, death, and dwarven engineering awesome."
 * Man Bites Man: A fortress champion, Karakzon, used his teeth against a Forgotten Beast.
 * Mundane Utility: noodle0117's BATTEREY stands out. It was built as a super-powerful dwarven water reactor, able massive amounts of power to operate any number of Pointless Doomsday Devices. Instead, for almost the entirety of its life, it was used operate a single millstone.
 * Paint the Town Red: The primary bridge leading into Deathgate was, for a time, painted almost entirely blue due to the large amount of trolls that had been massacred in their attempt to breach the fortress.
 * In addition,


 * Deconstructed: Syndromes carried by that blood have infected the vast majority of the fort population, leading them to all have painful blisters of their feet from touching it.
 * Redshirt Army: The high fatality rate among the military has turned them into this.
 * Ragnarok Proofing: Averted with the BATTEREY. After it was shutdown, numerous large mushroom trees began to grow inside the water channels, eventually this blocked the water flow, and rendering the device inoperable. Parts of it were eventually savaged to form part of the BATTERY.
 * Running Gag: Several.
 * Virtually every new overseer begins their turn with something like "This place makes no sense at all". Also see Bizarrchitecture.
 * People requesting their dwarf's status while stating how likely it is to have died.
 * Every time the foundation is laid for a functional military, the next overseer typically finds a way to kill, maim, or skewer half the recruits before the first seasons end.
 * Typically, most named 'dorfs' suffer short lives after being named. Noodle stands out as a particular case, suffering numerous deaths in a short span. Baelor "The Bastard" II had his second dorf selected, named, and killed in the span of about a month... and the death took place within sight of the ghost of Baelor I.
 * Scare Chord
 * Sealed Evil in a Can
 * Shout-Out: Contains numerous shout outs to Boatmurdered, Warhammer 40000, and Zalgo.
 * Temple of Doom: The Temple of Armok was this. Complete with a sacrificial altar. That never really worked right.
 * Total Party Kill: "I had an update ready, but I wound up... well, I accidentally our entire military."
 * Volcano Lair: A slightly less malevolent version. Emphasis on slightly, with the occasional exception of demons coming shooting out of the volcano.
 * We Have Reserves: Subverted later in the fortress's life. Migrant waves, the main source of replacements for the military, ended when the dwarven civilization crumbled. It is possible that the citizens of Deathgate are the last remaining dwarves in the world. Which (as of NCommander's turn) stands at 56. When Deathgate dies, the dwarves likely die with it.
 * You No Take Candle: During their various descents into madness, several of the fortress overseers begin to speak like this.