Boatmurdered

Yes, that dwarf IS on fire and he IS enraged.

"Welcome to fucking Boatmurdered! Hope you like miasma!"

This article is awesome. Do not fuck it up.

Boatmurdered is the story of an infamous Dwarf Fortress succession game that originated on Something Awful. Highlights include elephantine genocidal warfare against incessantly moronic-greedy dwarfs and "Fuck the World" levers that drown everything outside of the fortress in an ocean of all-consuming magma. Oh, and one unfortunate butterfly. There really is no good way to convey the insanity beyond reading the story itself. This is THE gametale of all time and set the tone of 99% of them.

Basic Summary

Essentially, Boatmurdered is a mysteriously abandoned colony in the mountains resettled by a small group of dwarves and their rulers. For the first several years, Boatmurdered becomes a respectable fortress inhabited by nearly a hundred productive dwarf workers. At this point, the rulers are beset by increasingly hostile waves of elephants and goblins who seek to maim every dwarf who leaves the mountain. Despite this, Boatmurdered continues to grow at a relatively steady rate.

One ruler, the appropriately named "StarkRavingMad" (who had been voluntold to go by a noble after discovering gold), offsets this by constructing a massive device that releases a flood of lava surrounding the fortress on command, killing all animal and plant life and leaving the surroundings a desolate wasteland. StarkRavingMad finds a body double and quickly slips away at the end of his term, returning to the mountain home to get payback on the noble who sent him as governor and reclaim his gold mine. Unfortunately, his legacy as one of the few competent (note that sanity and competence are not mutually exclusive) rulers would be soon corrupted.

As time goes on (and after one instance where the main gate of the fortress is jammed open because a butterfly died in exactly the right place to get it stuck), the increasingly liberal use of this device upsets many surrounding civilisations, including elves and even the friendly humans. This cuts off the dwarfs from trade and the outside world, which goes as well as you can expect when a line of increasingly incompetent rulers (either unqualified, hilariously inept or stark raving mad- the latter of which is not to be mistaken with StarkRavingMad, who at this point appears perfectly reasonable by comparison) are left unrestricted, and focus their entire efforts on selfishly building bigger and bigger burial tombs for themselves, while countless working dwarfs die in the process. Everything starts to fall apart when a flood is forced to be countered by a deployment of the lava; scalding, burning or cooking several dwarfs and pets to death along with the most recent elephant warband.

Eventually, Mariguana (the second ruler of the fortress, having returned for another term and blown most of it building a monument that he insists is the bottom half of a giant lizard) releases the lava in an attempt to exterminate the local elephant population and accidentally kills a human merchant caravan as well, which turns their only allies against them. On top of that, their smouldering corpses ignite some ancient siege engines that had been intended to kill the elephants before being forgotten for an entire decade, creating a smoke cloud that billows throughout the entire fortress and slowly but surely renders all of its occupants insane or consumed with rage.

This comes to a head when the (Self-proclaimed) God-Emperor of Boatmurdered Sankis Gatinbromek the Beardless goes on a bloody rampage after her masterwork carvings are destroyed, culminating in her beating an elite marksdwarf to a bloody pulp... WHILE ON FUCKING FIRE! The bloodthirsty, egomaniacal madwoman mauls the veteran to death as she burns and most assuredly ascends as a Daemon Prince. The fire spreads throughout the fortress, leading to already-insane dwarven warriors, criminals, lunatics, and even hospital patients becoming mad berserkers. Within days, the fortress becomes a bloodbath as omnicidal dwarfs kill each other without mercy or thought. One of the last survivors walks into the flames, claiming he had to "fill the pool".

The second to last soldier goes berserk, kills two civilians then bleeds and burns to death. The only two survivors of this madness - save StarkRavingMad, who had escaped just after his term as leader and left a body double who died - are a young girl and Guerillamedic, a grizzled veteran who wears both chainmail and plate armor and the de facto final ruler of Boatmurdered. Seeing first-hand the evil that lies at the heart of Boatmurdered, Guerillamedic abandons the settlement for good, leaving the girl to her fate and swearing to never return. Guerillamedic takes one last look as the girl, Dodok Sabrefrenzies, tosses her a shiny rock, which she picks up. He leaves to return to the mountainhomes or otherwise seek an honourable death, utterly broken by the horrors he has witnessed.

(Also, StarkRavingMad tells of the story and how he pities the poor bastards while drinking in a bar.)

Eventually the long abandoned fortress is discovered by archaeologists... who are then promptly killed by trolls.

See Also

• Journal of Kith

External Links

• Let's Play Dwarf Fortress: Boatmurdered

Gallery

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  Project: FUCK THE WORLD in operation.

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  All burn.

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  And thus a legend is born...