Death by Miasma

In Dwarf Fortress, things die. In life, things die. When things die in life, they rot. When things die in Dwarf Fortress, they rot. Things in life, however, do not produce a noxious purple cloud of fog upon death that slowly depresses everyone who inhales it to the point that they are driven mad.

Imagine, if you will, a budding fortress about to enter the peak of its existence. Hardworking dwarves labor in the bowels of the earth to produce beautiful gold crafts and vicious spiked armor alike. All of that wealth, however, attracts unwanted visitors.

A dragon, vicious and red and capable of destroying everything in its path, decided to claim the fortress' wealth for its own. It entered the map, and I sent out my militia. Twenty highly trained dwarves equipped with the finest iron I could produce and equipped with so much armor that I seriously questioned how they were able to move.

Several rounds of combat had reduced the size of my militia by a mere three dwarves, while the dragon suffered from multiple broken bones and a missing eye. Things were looking good. That is, they were until the goblins arrived.

A horde of goblins, thirty of them, all armed with spears and whips appeared at the edge of the map. They quickly discovered that they and the dwarves shared a common enemy, and the dragon was quickly taken care of while the fortress was sealed off.

Unable to access the fortress, the militia immediately turned their backs on the short-lived alliance with the goblin horde and began severing limbs left and right. The battle was long and brutal, destroying both my military and the entire goblin siege. Cautiously, I reopened the fortress and let a torrent of dwarves loose, hungry to get their hands on the unclaimed items of their dead friends and family.

I had established a small refuse pile to hold the corpses in the fortress while I went about building a suitable catacomb to house the bodies of the dead, and it was soon filled to the brim with freshly killed dwarves and goblins. My miners, unfortunately, were far slower than my haulers, and the catacombs were nowhere near complete when they began to rot. Oceans of miasma spewed from the refuse pile and filled my entire fortress.

Within seconds it had reached the meeting hall, generally stinking up the place and making everyone forget how well-made their tables were. The smell was so bad that it made even the happiest of dwarves cry in anguish. It turned the saddest dwarves, those who had lost loved ones in the battle, into bloodthirsty maniacs who began alternating between beating people to death with their own babies and running around babbling.

                                                         photo courtesy of df.magmawiki.com

By the end of the month, everyone in the fortress had either gone mad or had been killed.

Dwarves, man. Dwarves.