Hey guys,Lovely weather (and by that I mean rain) here in metro Detroit. Been doing yard work and trying to restring my guitar. Also mid-way through putting up a Pergola in the backyard for my sister's graduation. It's been a quiet week at home and it's nice just being able to hang out with my family a little bit, especially when I'm going to be traveling so much for the next little while.
It's been kind of exciting ordering plane tickets and trying to figure out grad school stuff. I've been a little hesitant about getting around to it because frankly it's a little scary that it's already coming up. I have a hard time facing big changes head on, so I've been doing my best allowing them to sneak in through the edges of my daily routine. Perhaps I will get over that and dive headlong into these adventures, but that might take a little more time.
Along with my usual reading (I'm part way through House of Leaves, and it's starting to get really odd/exciting) and writing stuff, I've been amusing myself with a couple of side projects. A bit of coding and a bit of statistics, but I've been trying to make them fun to do. One of these is a dungeon simulator done in a rogue-like style, and in doing research for it a few friends of mine have been doing a succession fortress in Dwarf Fortress.
As a side note for those that aren't familiar with Dwarf Fortress, it is a game revolving around managing and building a dwarven outpost in a procedurally generated Tolkien-eske high fantasy world. Oh and the graphics are all in ASCII. Saying that the learning curve for the game is steep might be a bit of an understatement, and it is very common to have the entire fortress crumble down around your head for any number of reasons. The level of tracked detail in the world and lack of prewritten narrative allows for story telling of great epics and harrowing tragedies that aren't often seen in any other game. A succession fortress is where you start a fortress and pass it between players every in-game year, simulating a sort of change in government.
I would like to begin telling you the story of Rockspirals, the volcanic succession fortress.
The three of us began by digging into the earth near an active volcano, and establishing our base a the peak of the mountain. It was called Rockspirals, and we quickly established magma forges to begin taking advantage of the rich galena veins and pockets of highly valuable native aluminum to produce innumerable amounts of lead, silver and aluminum. We also found sand, and were able to construct several magma glass forges to secure a near limitless amount of green glass trade supplies.
Soon, midway through our second year, a miner fell into a strange mood and demanded bone. Lacking a depth of raw materials or bones from butchery, he took matters into his own hand and... procured dog bone from one of the several dozen puppies that roamed the fortress. After his fevered carving finished, he held The Euphoria of Limbs, a dog bone ring that held a heartbreakingly beautiful scene of far off grass plains. The artifact alone would be considered meager by the standards of the great works, but he did not stop there. He wandered to the depths of the fortress and began digging. A maddening, curving labyrinth into the deepest part of the mountain. No branches, no maze, just an endlessly long spiral into the dark. When the spiral closed into itself, he dug down again and dug out a vault and painstakingly cleared it of stone.
In the halls of that spiral cursed vault, he placed the ring upon a pedestal and returned to the fortress a changed dwarf. Other dwarves made artifacts: a wombat leather helm that bristled with spikes of stone like a delicately twisted rose bush, and a sinister dog leather turban from the remains of the crafted ring, which featured images of itself repeatedly embedded on its surface like a mad mirror. Each was made and then its maker wordlessly wandered down to the deepest part of the fortress to walk the spiral. They always returned empty-handed as their precious work rested in the brooding darkness of the mountain.
The fortress is still going, and I will write little updates once it gets back around to me. I hope you guys enjoyed one of the many stories that have come out it though.
I'm personally going to go and keep restringing my guitar and finish another chunk of House of Leaves. Take care, and I'll see you again soon.
Best Regards,
Patrick
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