How do you want your first colony to die?

My brain is rambling today and I thought this would be a fun topic. We all know that we are going to lose many, many colonies in the world of the Clockwork Empires. But do you have a secret or not-so-secret wish for how you want these colonies to meet their doom? Who knows, we may even give the devs some ideas on Horrible Atrocities (not that they really need help, they seem to come up with them pretty regularly).

I would like to see my first colony, Wormwood, die of a severe case of Extreme Raging Laryngitis. They become unable to speak to one another, and that leads to misunderstandings, and that leads to beatings, and that leads to murders, mayhem and Mysterious Warehouse Fires That Were Totally Caused By That One Hunchbacked Guy We Always Ignored until everyone is gone.

How about you?

 

A giant sinkhole in my mines followed by an invasion by denizens of hell warp the underground. Basically any form of invasion or siege, insanity and other forms of !FUN! are best reserved for later, more successful games. It's how I normally like to lose in DF, build a massive chain of forts and trenches and piss off all non-dwarven races and see how many I can deal with.

 

The discovery by naturalists of a new species of flower.

Upon investigation the nectar is found to produce Truly Delightful honey. Upon setting up for mass production, the urchins -- being fed the honey for Reasons of Nutrition by those looking to improve society by avoiding the dietary imbalances believed to give rise to Poetry -- start stealing jars of the stuff and sealing themselves in spare barrels. Upon emerging, they have metamorphosed into giant werebees, to attack and sting the general population who trespass near the flowers (which by now is pretty much everyone, due to the importance of the honey as a trade product). Each urchinbee exhibits the usual traits of a stinging honey bee, in that use of the sting kills the host, if the town militia does not Resolve the Situation first. The stung experience significant discomfort for several hours, followed by a day of perfect normality... then they too seal themselves in barrels...

Repeat until the few remaining citizens have stripey skin, wings, and feed from the flowers directly.

 

Color me as one of those who just hasn't been able to get into DF. I've sorely wanted to but...just...can't...do...it! Do you use a graphical mod or just go it old-school style?

This reminds of the Futurama episode "Sting" (one of my favorites) and sounds awesome! It also reminds me of another way I would like to see my colonists go: Colony Collapse Syndrome.

No, not the bee thing. But literally. The Colonists collapse at random intervals. Even the buildings do. "Looks like another great day in the WorkshOHNOTHEWALLS *splat*"

 

I want my first colony to die exactly like the one in David's blog post. Some bizarre unholy amalgam of coffin and Pump for Nether Stuff takes up residence in the town's steam hub and pumps Nether Stuff into all of the machinery, making it all very much alivevil, and it eats everything.

 

I can't play with graphical mods, they make it so hard to see what's going on at a glance. I enjoy the ASCII look as well but I sometimes use Stonesense to render an isometric view of the game next to the game window, helps a bit with the aesthetics of proper fort building.

The hardest part in my opinion is to get farming going, once that's done and you get a stable food supply, you can focus on bigger things like magma howitzers, orbital magma defense satellites, submarines to explore volcanoes (note: extremely !!FUN!!) and other interesting but time-consuming and highly elaborate projects.

 

I think I want my first colony to perish in a blaze of... well, not really glory.

That is, I want something random to happen which would trigger a chain reaction to which I, as the player, will be able to react but with my choices, seemingly appropriate at first, not really helping and maybe even accelerating the spiralling descent into oblivion.

In other words, I want my first loss to be "Dwarf Fortress style".

 

Colonists inexplicably drawn into the deep woods - from which they never return.

 

I know that will likely die either due to lack of experience and screwing something up really badly or getting distracted by modding and changing something that screws it up really badly. Not sure how I'd want it to die though, the idea of it never dieing and just becoming the Jewel of the Empire sounds kinda cool, of course than it will be simultaneously attacked by enemy armies, eldritch horrors, thieves, bandits, monsters, and super spies all attempting to either still, destroy or control it. Be a great way to go out though, only be better if you somehow survived and assimilated them all similar to Ankh-Morpork.

 

Ah, you're so sentimental! What a glorious plan you have for your colony!

*immediately plots something hideous*

 

Something (Eldritch Squirrels, mayhaps?) kills everyone but the Poets.

Who proceed to write a best-selling sonnet about their own starvation while surrounded by 1443 pounds of canned turnips.

 

They built themselves into a house without doors.

 

How my first DF-Fortress died (after the obligatory failures before oyu understand the game):
A vampire dwarf, a few mislead hammerings and ghosts starting parties (in that order). I never figured out who the vampire was. Got some of my best warriors. The following goblin invasion gave the finish blow (goblins riding hypos and aligators rendering my trenches useless. Also giant bat riders).

How I wish for my first Colony to die:
An epic siege where my army retreats through it´s line of defenses till it makes an awesome last stand.

How it will likely end:
I get bored and try something stupid, possibly summoning something that shouldn´t be named.

 

I want my first colony to die due to some disease that was introduced upon my garden, those evil bastards...

 

Fire. Lots of it!

 

After playing a round of Sims 3 (Don't judge me!) and reading the new situation about Gossip, I want to see a colony die because they couldn't find the bathroom and then do nothing but gossip about peeing themselves until they're all gone.

 

Perhaps the entire colony could go swimming at a pool and suddenly the eldritch ladder retracts leaving the entire colony to drown.

 

Definitely starvation, that was a remarkably common thing to happen to colonists, especially ones who weren't really intending to be colonists.

 

starvation into full scale cannibalism, and then a tragic suicide of the last, massively overweight colonist

 

I want my last colonist to be devoured by an ancient god summoned by a bored 13 year-old. I knew I shouldn't have instituted child labor laws... Damn you unions!