Chapter 72 ::
An End for the Dead

It is the 12th of Timber, in the late autumn of 1298.

For the first time in a long time, I am excited to play Dwarf Fortress.

After the save loads, I take some time to survey the map - to reacquaint myself with the misery of this place, to orient myself and the dwarves for one final vainglorious effort.

Here, at the base of this accursed map, lies a unique demonic citadel. For more than a decade of my time and a century of the dwarves' it has stood here, lurking at the bottom of this save file, waiting for me.

Even now, after all this time, it still conceals a mystery from me.

Hewn from unminable slade and painted with dwarf blood, the structure spans thirteen z-levels - the dwarves hold the ground floor and the first few stories, but demons still lurk in the passages above that, which penetrate deep into the semi-molten rock layer.

Past the remaining demons, winding upwards, the uppermost reaches of the demonic citadel...

...are shrouded in darkness.

It is incredible to me, that there is yet a portion of this map that I have not yet explored, that remains hidden from my view.

A twisting corridor of abyssal stone, its terminus unrevealed. The last frontier of the Momentous Dye.

The demons that still lurk here pose a significant challenge - if handled incorrectly, a single one of these foes could spell the of the fortress.

Fortunately, I have some help in dealing with these creatures.

Since the day the dwarves struck the earth beneath the Oily Furnace, a malign curse has loomed over and within and beneath the ice, animating the corpses of the dead in mockery and hatred of the living. As ever, its influence can be seen and felt, but now, at the end - perhaps for the first time in the entire history of the fortress - it works to my advantage.

Cats, ever curious, have begun to explore upwards into the demonic citadel, past the trapped and secured corridors that I allow the dwarves to tread. The cats of the Momentous Dye, unlike their adoptees, ignore my burrow restrictions and go where they please. Unfortunately for the cats (and fortunately for the dwarves) this means that they frequently find their way into unfortunate altercations, the results of which continue to plague the demons with the same undying persistence that I have been dealing with all this time.

Of course, from the dwarves' perspective, all they know is that their pets have gone missing. They are oblivious to the slaughter going on in the darkened passages over their heads, and of course by the time they finally re-encounter the remains of their former companions, the tiny corpses have been so disfigured and mangled by repeated slayings and reanimations that they are utterly unrecognizable.

Even so, it is necessary to work constantly to keep the feline population in check. In a version of the game where gelding has not yet been implemented, the only option left to me is wholesale catslaughter - every single litter of newborn kittens are marked for incineration.

I would say that it is a bad time to be a cat in Roomcarnage, but would be misleading.

It has always been a bad time to be anything in Roomcarnage.

I turn my attention to the final demons that are left within the citadel. There is a Pig Monster - a gigantic humanoid demon-boar, skinless and gleaming, gibberish and venom spittling off of its porcine lips.

I know from experience that this beast is quite a bit more dangerous than the others.

This Monster of Tears, for example, is merely a squirming, fidgeting blob of water - with a knobby shell, and deadly spittle, of course, but it is fragile.

There is also one of these Butterfly Demons - covered in long, broad brown feathers, it has a knobby trunk - proboscis? - and deadly blood.

Four Haunts of Cinders lurk here, too - enormous theropods composed of ash. They feel to me like some kind of undead dinosaur remnant - obliterated in an eruption or meteoric collision, all that remains to infuse with necromantic energy is a roughly-shaped outline of volcanic ash.

A couple levels further down - closer to the dwarves - three more Butterfly Demons stand guard.

Ten demons, in total.

Just ten.

It feels to me as though I am reaching the end of a very long race, and coming around the last turn with the end in sight, the dwarves and I kick into a final sprint - but the home stretch is a moment frozen in time, utterly motionless and flat like cut ice. Each time I unpause, the game hitches and my computer freezes, sprawling messes of data being suddenly called up into algorithms and subroutines that were never written to handle so much. Each time I pause, it takes seconds for the program to respond, as though I am shouting an order to halt at an entire glacier - which slowly, reluctantly obeys.

If it were not for the indicator in the upper left of the screen, I would not be able to tell at a glance if the game were paused or not.

I can tell, though, that time is passing. Like returning to a plant every now and again and observing the changes in its flowers and leaves, I too can perceive that this situation is changing. Each time I come back to examine the area surrounding the three Butterfly Demons, I find more cat corpses, and more assorted cat body parts than there were before.

Otherwise, though, my experience playing Dwarf Fortress has become almost entirely static. In order to pass any meaningful amount of time at all, I must leave the game running while I am at work, while I am running errands, while I sleep. Keeping the application open in a side monitor, only the occasional magenta popup - a cat has gone missing! - reminds me that Roomcarnage is still moving forward. I go days without meaningfully interacting with the dwarves.

The game is always on, and yet I am never doing anything with it. I am always playing Dwarf Fortress. I am never playing Dwarf Fortress.

My hope - and I take a moment to remind myself of the danger of having such things, in Roomcarnage - is that eventually this tepid yet neverending assault will be enough to at least soften the remaining demons, or to at least push them around enough that they simply decide to leave. It has happened before, with many of the citadel's prior inhabitants - but I suspect that these remaining few will be a bit more stubborn.

And so, the game scrapes along.

The dwarves, with nothing much to do, spend their days idling about the dining hall - an unimaginitive rectangular chamber, strategically positioned atop a cluster of raw adamantine. The memorials that line the graven walls, too, are made from raw adamantine, and the tables and chairs are forged of the processed stuff.

I designed and placed this hall so that the dwarves could live and work closer to the abyss. The old hall was abandoned when this one was finished.

Soon, I hope to abandon this one as well.

I check back in on a wayward kitten just as it tumbles around a corner and into a hissing, snarling cat corpse.

The helpless feline is torn apart immediately. I realize, morbidly, that the animated cat corpses are piling up, as it were, in the corridor leading up to the demons.

I decide to do what I can to direct undead traffic forward - I designate a wall to be built as close to the undead cats as I think the dwarves will dare work.

I wait - several minutes - and eventually a dwarf takes up the job. The clothier Zulban Ochrehoists carries the andesite blocks through the citadel, stepping across smears of dwarven gore and demonic ichor and towards the construction site.

On his way, he walks past a section of the citadel that has been blocked off. Behind raised bridges, it is filled with undead, demons, and a collection of both straining within cages of copper and blood thorn: a prior attempt, semi-successful, to clear out the demons from their fortress and capture many of them in the process.

The demons that still tread freely inside make the whole affair too dangerous to open up. The caged monsters - truly a prize - strain eternal within their cages, never to be released.

The route upwards through the demonic citadel is circuitous - the up and down stairs on any given level are usually placed some distance apart, effectively creating a series of switchbacks.

I follow Zulban on his trek upwards.

Finally, the clothier reaches the level where the wall is to be built - and I can see at a glance that the undead cats have crept backwards, and now sit right upon Zulban's destination.

An easy fix - I simply cancel the old wall, and order a new one to be placed nearby.

After some finessing - making sure that the blocks to be used in the new construction are the same blocks that Zulban has already hauled in here - and some luck - Zulban picking up the new job right away - the construction is placed.

With the corridor blocked off, the demons that remain are now "trapped" inside with a mess of reanimated felines. We'll see if that does anything.

A (living) cat approaches the construction, no doubt hoping to explore the curious tunnels into which she has seen so many of her kin disappear. As I watch, she reaches the wall, flops down on the ground, stands up, reconsiders what to do, and begins the long walk back to the fortress proper.

Time passes, and Spring arrives on the calendar - not that the concept of the changing of seasons means anything to the dwarves of the Momentous Dye. As often happens, one of the senior cats dies of old age - Dwarf Fortress has this odd behavior of only checking a creature's maximum age as the year turns (and then summarily killing them if they are too old), which then has the peculiar effect of causing several creatures in a fort to die all at once on the 1st of Granite.

What began as a horrid necessity has become a muted, macabre routine. I order the dwarves to dump the corpse of the recently passed cat into the incineration chute.

I also check the list of corpses in the stocks menu, as I have gotten in the habit of doing - while the dwarves are so preoccupied in the depths, it has become common for cats to die alone and unseen in remote corners of the fortress, and therefore for the dwarves to unexpectedly encounter the hissing remnants of their former pets. To avoid such unpleasant situations, I just double-check to make sure all of the recently-created corpses have been designated for dumping.

As I anticipated, I find another corpse listed in the stocks - but it is not another cat.

The body lies silent and still along a barren stretch of corridor, yet unnoticed by the others.

These are the remains of Tun Noselance - the dwarf that has served as fortress manager since shortly after he arrived, during Roomcarnage's first summer. For ninety-nine years, Tun has processed work orders and managed labor distributions.

Now, as my time in Roomcarnage draws towards its ultimate close, the fortress manager signs off as calmly and peacefully as any dwarf could ever hope for, in Roomcarnage or no.

I revert to a recent save and give Tun's profile screen a final glance. "Tun Otamkûbuk likes raw adamantine" - expensive tastes, but it may help explain why Tun survived so long and so cheerfully. Roomcarnage is packed with the stuff.

Ninety-nine years of loyal service mean nothing to a shambling corpse. I order the remains to be dumped.

I consider, briefly, replacing Tun with one of the remaining dwarves - but I decide against it. I do not foresee the need to utilize the work orders menu again in this fort. There are already vast stores of construction materials, and enough equipment to outfit those who remain several times over in masterworks. If I need anything from here on out, I will simply add the job at a workshop myself.

There will only ever have been one manager of Roomcarnage.

I witness the moment when the dwarves realize that their longtime manager has passed away.

A curious notification appears - a named cat has become a stray.

The turning of the year has left poor Vabôk Goodlenses without his dwarf. The cat, and two of his kin - pets of another dwarf, Tekkud - look on as the former manager's remains are hauled off to the incineration chute.

I struggle not to allow myself to be affected by the sadness of the moment. It is, after all, just a moment - and when it has passed, this cat and its former owner and every other once-living bit of bone or flesh in Roomcarnage will eventually rise up against me.

The solution, as it has ever been, is steadfast vigilance and fastidiousness - the prejudiced handling of the moving dead, and the tidy cremation of the still.

It is the same programme that Tun Noselance has overseen for very nearly the entirety of the past century - the very same that now calls for his body to be dumped into the magma sea.

I follow the corpse the entire way to the chute, wary of the touch of necromancy - but, perhaps having earned some peace, Tun's body remains still.

The fortress manager plummets down the chute and disappears into the heart of the world.

The manager's departure is a reminder that I do not, in fact, have all the time in the world - the lives of the dwarves that remain are finite.

I order the corridor just before the mess of undead cats to be lined with cage traps.

As the dwarves work, I reflect - if only I had been more careful all those years ago, there might still be a dwarf or two in the fort who would still allow me the luxury of simply waiting.

Regrets that lurk in the shadows of my memory.

I forget, then remember to engrave a memorial slab for the former manager.

Before long - relatively speaking, of course - the traps have been built and loaded. I order the wall sealing away the undead to be removed.

The wall is removed...

...huh.

As the dwarf deconstructs the wall, the andesite blocks used in its construction appear in an adjacent tile, as normal - I also note the appearance, however, of two other items. A right eye tooth - the canine, ironically - and right front paw of one or two unidentified cats.

Nothing in the combat reports indicates that the miner even saw an undead. It is as if these two bits of matter appeared out of thin air.

It is a mystery. With the wall removed, I have plenty of time to ponder it.

Time passes, and more and more of the undead cats are caught in the cage traps. There are periodic altercations between dwarves and one or two corpses at a time, but the only wounds suffered by the dwarves are emotional - and in this version of DF, even these aren't as severe.

It is only a matter of time. Eventually, all of these cat corpses will be disposed of, and the way to the darkness and the demons above will be opened.

I reflect - my current procedure of slaughtering all kittens born into the fortress has successfully brought the cat population down to six. My heart breaks further - but I steel myself for the cold inevitability that is coming. The alternative - letting the cat population roam and reproduce freely - would very quickly produce a fortress full to the brim with snarling cat corpses who would eagerly tear their surviving kin to pieces. And once the dwarves are dead and can no longer butcher the new arrivals...

A startling announcement brings me back to the present. Tun Noselance's restless ghost has risen, and cruelly spirited away a pig tail fiber shoe.

I find the ghostly administrator hovering high above the glacier, staring out over the lava-pocked, gore-drifted icescape.

It has been years since anyone has come here. I do not know how long it has been since Tun himself felt the warmth of the sun on his skin.

Surely - he cannot feel it now.

I find an alcove along the claustrophobic tunnel leading along the outside of the demonic citadel.

As soon as it is placed, Tun's soul slips away to wherever dwarves go when they are at rest.

I take a moment to read the memorial. Tun was born in 1135, and was sixty-five years old when he migrated to Roomcarnage. By the end of the first year, he had been appointed manager. He served briefly as mayor in the early 1270s.

Creator of Strappingtame the Cosmos of Yelling,

Devoted father and husband.

Admirer of cave wheat.

Time passes, and without fanfare or celebration, the year turns again.

The centennial of the fortress' founding passes, bleak and unnoted, like any other day in this literal hell hole.

The vanguard of Butterfly Demons, though they are thoroughly bruised and scratched by the rotten clowder, still stand close to where they were a year earlier.

I shall give them a bit more time - at least to let some more of the undead get caught up in traps.

In the meantime - I unlock the hatch leading down, to the ground floor of the demonic citadel.

This is where some of the most intense fighting took place, when the army of the Momentous Dye first tried to take the citadel by force. They failed, of course, their life strewn across the entry hall like a red carpet - but in the end, the citadel belongs to the dwarves.

I order walls to be placed in between the rough slade pillars along the west and south of the entry hall.

There is a brief period of time while the hatch is unlocked when the fortress is exposed to the exterior of hell - but no demons appear, and the walls are build successfully.

Once they are placed, and the fortress is once again secured, I order all of the previously forbidden items on this level to be claimed - much of it being valuable equipment that was lost when their previous owners were slain.

With stockpiles set up and the dwarves fully occupied with the tasks before them, I once again have little to do but wait.

I check the pets menu again - and am somewhat surprised to find that a single cat remains.

It would appear that, in removing the wall that was keeping the undead back, I also reignited the curiosity of the remaining felines, and Atîs is no exception. I follow the last pet of the Momentous Dye as it trots down the corridor to join its kin.

Just the dwarves are left, now.

The time has come, I decide, for the final move. The citadel is mostly secure, and all efforts are to be focused here from now on. The dwarves have been necessarily spending a lot of time making the long journey between the fortress and the abyss - now they can become one, and the dwarves can move into their final home and grave.

The first step is to bring down what remains in the food stockpiles. There is enough here, I think, to keep sixteen dwarves fed and watered for decades.

I order the adamantine tables and chairs to be torn out of the deep dining hall, in preparation for their move to the deep.

I also go through the fort and remove all of the stockpiles.

It is a strange feeling.

For years - my years, the dwarves' years, it no longer matters - I have been settled into these halls and chambers. I can remember where I was in my life when I first set down these stockpiles. The panic and chill of death hovering just around the corner. The rush of recording gifs and publishing new chapters.

Like walking through a painfully empty house and turning off each of the lights, one by one.

I order the adamantine furniture to be placed on the ground floor of the citadel, near the food stockpiles.

The entire level is designated as a meeting hall.

The old meeting halls will be used no more. This sculpture garden was once the meeting area, when the dwarves first delved down to the caverns.

The mayor's suite, of course, has long been abandoned, walled off to keep the undead inside away. Now, the halls outside will also be abandoned.

I go through the dwarves' bedrooms - a series of irregular chambers, placed strategically along the vertical adamantine vein for maximum happy thoughts - and order the removal of all of the furniture and doors.

After careful consideration, I order a series of constructions across two z-levels of the citadel. These will be the dwarves' new bedrooms.

With all the furniture cleared, I also free up the memorials in the deep hall - even this chamber, so close to the underworld, is further up than I would care for the dwarves to go regularly.

With the constructions in place, I furnish the new bedrooms with adamantine, and have the slade walls smoothed and polished.

Smoothing and polishing slade - a supposedly unminable substance?

Well, of course, I realize. There are many exceptions to the inpenetrability of slade - smoothing is just one example. What are the others? I wrack my brain - I've spent so little time down here in all of my Dwarf Fortress playing experience - but in a flash, it comes to me.

Oh.

Right. Of course.