Line #30 LetsPlay/Battlefailed


1	-> "''This is why we can't have nice things in Battlefailed, someone will just wind up filling it with corpses.''"
2	-->-- '''Robocorn'''
3
4	One of the many {{Lets Play}}s of ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'', making the lofty (if rather accurate) claim of being the ''Blog/{{Boatmurdered}}'' of [=DF2010=], [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=57052.msg1241571#msg1241571 Battlefailed]] has spawned three sequels and a side story.
5
6	What began as the (seemingly) coincidental combination of a genocidal plot by the JerkAss Human-Queen of the Dwarves and the curious gambit of an incredibly ancient [[BodySurf body-surfing]] [[TheArchmage Sorcerer]]. Seven dwarves ended up on the [[{{Mordor}} hellish coastline]] separating the Plains of Ooze from the [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace Blueness of Malodors]]. Halfway through the first year, most of the original settlers and a good chunk of the new arrivals were either dead or dying. Ten blood-soaked years later, the fortress was an Escher-like nightmare of tunnels, shafts and stairwells leading nowhere, under constant assault from [[GoddamnedBats goblins, trolls]], [[EldritchAbomination forgotten beasts]] and hordes of [[DemonicSpiders undead grazing animals]]. Eventually, parts of the fort started leaking water or magma for no apparent reason, occasionally in places that it should not have been possible for water or magma to be. Extinction-level events that would kill up to half of the population became not only frequent but ''regular''.
7
8	When [[ForegoneConclusion Battlefailed fell]], there were attempts to reclaim it and continue the awesome. They failed, the fort was flooded beyond belief and deemed unrecoverable. The sequel, [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64258.0 FailCannon: Super Happy Fun Beach]], picks up where the previous fort leaves off, and has lived up to the Battlefailed name, albeit with [[DarkerAndEdgier a slightly different style]] at a slower pace. An intricate MetaPlot has formed out of the players' writings and the actions of the dwarves that continues to frame the gameplay.
9
10	Several months after Failcannon began, [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76193.0 Battlefailed was reclaimed,]] [[PointlessDoomsdayDevice FAILCANNON]] rigged to work properly, and everything cleaned up.
11
12	Failcannon fell on the aptly-named Failday, when the [[DoomsdayDevice Faillever]] was pulled to unleash an army of ghosts (and water from the sea) on the fortress. Now, [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=96005.0 Hellcannon]] has been started as the third fortress in the series. Whether or not it will live up to the reputation of its predecessors remains to be seen, but Hellcannon is already a hideous abomination rife with death and danger, so there's that.
13
14	The fourth and final fort began, [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=114971.0 Horrorfailed the Battle-Cannon of Hell]] before coming to a close in 2016.
15
16	You can grab the most current archive [[https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18216514/BATTLEFAILED.pdf here]].
17
18	----
19	! Tropes:
20	* AfterActionReport: [=LordSlowpoke=]'s detailed report of Failcannon's Flooding of 529: [[note]] "You see, I was busy designing the drain for the Ocean of Slime while an idea struck me. Why the hell not clean it from whatever may be floating in and feed dwarves with the most poisonous substance out there cleansed by pure dwarven engineering? Genius. Use a perpetual motion machine to clean that water? Dwarven outright. Thusly, a set of ramps, a reservoir, few sets of gears were built, and it was good. Except one part. The cleaning station was 3 z-levels below the fortification - which served as a secure entry point for the water..."[[/note]]
21	** Strategia's [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=96005.msg2782536#msg2782536 notes]] on a brief scuffle with some skeletal muskoxen, which [[FromBadToWorse escalated a little]].
22	* AllJustADream: One of the early turns gets reset because the fortress floods and the dwarves murder each other, with the {{lampshade}} being this.
23	** Also, Battlefailed's [[spoiler:breach of Hell]].
24	* AllYourPowersCombined: The Gods tend to do this when they wish to do something to another God.
25	* AnyoneCanDie: It's VideoGame/DwarfFortress, so it's only to be expected.
26	* AttackAttackRetreatRetreat: One of the players had this idea for dealing with a forgotten beast in Horrorfailed. He ended up knocking it down and walling it in a room.
27	--> "'''I WANT EVERYONE ON THIS GUY'''" ''Two dwarves die'' "'''SHIT NO GET OFF THIS GUY'''"
28	* AtomicFBomb: After returning from a long hiatus, Andreus took one look at the current state of affairs and sort of... lost it.
29	* AxCrazy: Spending most of his on-screen time bisecting things, Kubuk is some kind of this. [[spoiler: At least to elves.]]
30	* BigBad: [[spoiler:[[EldritchAbomination The Foul One]].]]
31	** TheDragon: [[spoiler:Stuzang.]]
32	*** [[spoiler:TheManBehindTheMan: [[TheChessmaster Stuzang to Ura]], [[CrazyPrepared Ura to Led]].]]
33	* BigRockEnding: [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64258.msg2793874#msg2793874 FailCannon song]].
34	--->Big purple cloud over on the horizon\
35	Miasma from a couple thousand corpses risin'\
36	Half a dozen ghosts are hauntin' the kitchen\
37	admirin' the door (which is totally bitchin')\
38	Over here we tried to drill a hole in the ocean\
39	just another mad overseer's ludicrous notion\
40	Carved into the gold of the famous sign\
41	the words "welcome to Failcannon, where gods come to die"
42	* BilingualBonus: In Battlefailed, Robocorn says a few phrases in goblin that actually translate with the DF goblin language.
43	** "Gu ek us dotom Mokgaru!" becomes " ___ many goose bloody Whoreanus!"
44	** "Obu os-usp, emxa-los!" becomes "Hail Death-god, dung-creature!"
45	** In Hellcannon, a dwarf is named Kar Puwuncobi at some point. LordSlowpoke revealed that he gave the dwarf its name and that it translates to something in one of the DF languages. [[spoiler:It is from the human language. Kar is Lord. Puwun is Slow. Cobi is Poke.]]
46	* {{Bizarrchitecture}}: By the time it ended, Battlefailed was an absolute rat's maze of chambers, tunnels, shafts and caverns, interconnected and interlaced, some of which were rapidly flooding with water or magma.
47	** The fortress of Failcannon is arguably more convoluted. Even the ''dwarves'' have trouble navigating the place, let alone the players.
48	** By the time [[spoiler:Failday]] rolled around, Failcannon was such a mess of tunnels that it ''broke the Forgotten Beasts' pathfinding.''
49	-->'''malkomk:'''"Pathfinding in Failcannon is like fighting a bronze colossus with your bare hands. Only more so."
50	* BlackComedy: In Failcannon, Fetus Head Smash Day. And, judging by one of Queen Led's letters to Cappstv, she seems to prefer using ''dwarven fetuses'' for the head smashing. Also, the forumgoers basically treat the EldritchLocation that the fortresses became for laughs.
51	** Justified when it is later revealed that [[spoiler:the reason for the festival was to summon Ura into the world with an offering of "the lives of a thousand unborn".]]
52	* BodySurf: The dwarf bearing the player Andreus' name died in the first turn. As a joke, Robocorn wrote a short journal entry about how another dwarf was being taken over by Andreus' ghost. The joke stuck, and turned into a major part of the MetaPlot.
53	* BreatherEpisode: Those happen from time to time. The last one, as of this writing, was in Turn 20 of Failcannon, where, thanks to the invading goblins and [[EldritchAbomination FBs]] having NoSenseOfDirection, a pair of dwarves actually managed to survive outside the Fortress for three entire months without major incidents.
54	--->'''Darvi''':"[[BlatantLies The only thing that happened in general was the death of 71% of the fort]], and that wasn't really worth mentioning."
55	** Hellcannon's third year started with fortifications being erected, a massive migrant wave, and the discovery of a magma pipe which jump-started metal production. [[MoodWhiplash Then some skeletal muskoxen killed an elven trader]].....
56	** Hellcanon's second try at its fourth year wasn't interesting enough to warrant journal updates.
57	* BroughtDownToNormal: [[spoiler:Lur Thiefwitch.]]
58	* TheChessmaster: [=ThatAussieDwarf=], despite having been originally introduced as a [[OutGambitted Vizzini Gambitter]], has eventually been interpreted as a memetic mastermind who is behind everything.
59	* TheCorruption: [[spoiler:The so-named "loyalty cascade" that nearly destroyed Failcannon]]
60	* CorpseLand: This SuccessionGame involves [[color:magenta:Terrifying]] (Evil/Savage) surroundings. Naturally (and unnaturally, too), it receives even more FUN than usual.
61	* CouncilOfAngels: The Gods are portrayed as such. They spend far more time discussing and observing events than interfering.
62	* DecadentCourt: Do not share drinks with Queen Led, especially if you're a known Philosopher.
63	* DinerBrawl: A distinctly lethal one erupts following a forced community meeting that results in several deaths and over a dozen fatal injuries, leaving [=Seth Creiyd=] [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone thinking he'd made a mistake.]] [[note]]It also got his dwarf killed.[[/note]]
64	* DoorStopper: The full text of the saga is currently more than 1,000 pages long.
65	* EldritchAbomination: An occupational hazard at Battlefailed. [[spoiler: Everyone in the fort was eventually killed by a colossal mutant fly known as [[OutsideContextProblem Stuzang.]]]]
66	* EldritchLocation: The Accursed Arena saw two miners trapped in a kind of [[AndIMustScream hellish temporal stasis]].
67	** The Ocean of Slime, first encountered in Battlefailed, was an underground sea that became tainted by noxious secretions of a [[EldritchAbomination turtle monster]].
68	* TheGeneralsDaughter: The Queen's Daughter is the reason Robocorn got sent to Battlefailed in the first place.
69	** The Queen's Daughter is also her only Heir, so you can't blame her. Still, the fact that the princess is willing to don a beard and fool around with a dwarf can hardly please the viciously racist Queen.
70	* [[GodOfEvil Goddess Of Evil]]: [[spoiler: Ura.]]
71	* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: Played straight. [[TheCaligula Queen Led Shakeoars]], human monarch of the dwarves. She worships a number of monsters and gods of death and is implied to send dwarves to the fort as a form of genocide.
72	* GrandTheftMe: Andreus' dwarf dies before his turn; the result is Andreus possessing one of the other dwarves, changing him into "Andreus II".
73	** It actually became a RunningGag that Andreus liked so much he continued using the plot device in all the other succession fortresses he played.
74	** Since then, several other players have begun following his lead.
75	* GeniusLoci: [[spoiler: Hellcannon itself [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=96005.msg2823219#msg2823219 became]] [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=96005.msg2824998#msg2824998 this]] after the last dwarf was killed; for some reason, the fortress didn't fall,[[note]] despite having [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=96005.msg2821771#msg2821771 zero population remaining]] [[/note]] and the players just [[ThrowItIn ran with it.]] ]]
76	%%* HauntedCastle
77	%%* HaveYouSeenMyGod
78	* IdenticallyNamedGroup: ''Stozu'' is a popular name for goblins.
79	* InstantAIJustAddWater: Joked with. When a player using Linux couldn't open the save for [=HorrorFailed=] on his turn, everyone joked that the save file had become sentient, hated Linux and wondered what they could do with it.[[note]] It was actually because of how Linux makes distinctions between a file using capital or lowercase letters when other OS's don't.[[/note]]
80	* LaResistance
81	* MadScientist: Andreus II has some elements of it, with his crazy magnetic mad science lab beneath the fortress. (It is later repurposed into a tomb, providing Robocorn's page quote.)
82	* [[TheManBehindTheMan The Man Behind]] ''[[TheManBehindTheMan Everything]]'': That Aussie Dwarf.
83	** -> "''That would explain why we didn't get killed by the sieges during our first months in Failcannon. Y'know, when TAD and I couldn't get into the fort. Dude bribed the goblins.''"
84	-->-- '''Darvi'''
85	** [[spoiler:More recently, he manipulated the fort [[OhCrap into opening hell itself]] ]]
86	* MasterOfDisguise: That Aussie Dwarf. And because they're [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame dwarves]], WigDressAccent works marvelously.
87	* MeaningfulName: ''Battlefailed.''
88	** And later, [[spoiler:FAILCANNON]].
89	** [[spoiler:Hellcannon]] almost counts after the attempt to [[spoiler:fire demons out of a cannon]].
90	* MeleeATrois: During the [[spoiler:loyalty cascade]], there were, according to [=CatalystParadox=], (technically) four factions: [[spoiler:"The 'loyal' dwarves, the Enchanted Labor insurrection, the Sword of Boots counter-revolution, and the demon-possessed "fuck everything" dwarves"]]
91	* MesACrowd: Everyone turning into TheMaster in Hellcannon. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime We see what you did there.]]
92	* TheMillstone: Whenever Meng, fake doctor, fake chief engineer, Etc., was involved with something, results tended to be disasteriffic.
93	* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Blueness of Malodors, Plains of Ooze, Ocean of Slime, Failcannon, Battlefailed...
94	** Hellcannon
95	** Taken to ridiculous extremes with the most recent installment, Horrorfailed the Battle-Cannon of Hell.
96	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: ''Every''. ''Single''. ''Administrator''. ''Every''. ''Single''. ''Turn''. Although this only works for an [[DesignatedHero extremely liberal definition]] of the word "hero".
97	* [[NiceJobFixingItVillain Nice Job Fixing It, Villains]]: A loose example of this can be found in the reclaim of Battlefailed, where the various poisons and dusts which permeated the old fortress became the new fortress's best defense; while the poisons killed all of the dwarves livestock and any dwarves dumb enough to take off their shoes, it stopped countless [[TooDumbToLive barefooted]] Kobold invaders and about a dozen forgotten beasts.
98	** There was one instance when Hellcannon was sieged by Skelks, Goblins, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking an elven caravan]]. [[EvilVersusEvil They ended up killing each other]], leaving the dwarves free to loot the battlefield.
99	* OmniscientMoralityLicense: Deconstructed somewhat with Catalyst, the psychic overseer who [[spoiler:may have saved the fort, but in the [[BlackAndGreyMorality worst way possible]] - as keeping ANYONE alive meant letting/making [[AMillionIsAStatistic more than 90%]] of the fort die.]] Then completely inverted when [[spoiler:the [[ZombieApocalypse demonic mind-plague]] she was attempting to save the fort from in the first place [[FateWorseThanDeath took her over as well]], turning her into a dangerous, heavily armed, [[AxCrazy murderous psychopath]].]]
100	* OurDemonsAreDifferent: It was planned to use them as ammo for the aptly named Hellcannon. Unfortunately, [[spoiler:the device failed to fire any demons, and caused the eventual downfall of the fort.]]
101	* PointlessDoomsdayDevice: [[spoiler:FAILCANNON]]. [[spoiler:Sadly, it [[EpicFail lived up to its name]].]]
102	** Specifically, two fundamental design failures, the first being one tile of missing wall in the stack assembly and the other being poor positioning of the source pumps meant that [[spoiler:FAILCANNON]] could not draw enough water to maintain consistent pressure, and a lot of the water it did deliver leaked out of the side. In addition, due to a previous overseer's maintenance work on its power supply that hadn't been finished when Andreus attempted to fire it, he had to activate it manually.
103	** [[spoiler:FAILCANNON PRIME]], which was only in the early stages of design when the entire fortress was destroyed by a rampaging EldritchAbomination.
104	** The fortress Failcannon was named after the device above. Its doomsday mechanism 'Faillever' was possibly the most pointless one ever, being built for the sole purpose of providing a suicide switch for the unholy abomination that is Failcannon. Rigged up to destroy all coffins and gravemarkers it was planned to release an enormous army of murderous ghosts to kill all living things. [[spoiler:While its use flooded part of the fortress and allowed an army of {{Eldritch Abomination}}s to enter, Failcannon proved to be unkillable.]]
105	*** In the reclaim of Battlefailed [[spoiler: Failcannon Prime was completed and fired. Due to a fatal design flaw, it wasn't particularly impressive.]]
106	** [[OmnicidalManiac Gizogin]] made [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=96005.msg2993289#msg2993289 one of these]] during his run of Hellcannon, and then handed the fort over without providing any details as to its operation. [[spoiler:At time of writing, several of its uses have been discovered, including [[KillItWithWater flooding several areas of the fortress]], [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice shooting random spikes out of the floor]], [[RuleOfThree and]] [[DroppedABridgeOnHim dropping a chunk of ceiling on a major meeting area]].]]
107	** Also in Hellcannon, the numerous attempts to create the fortress' namesake - [[spoiler: eventually culminating in an utter failure of a megaproject which did nothing but release the legions of Hell into the fortress.]]
108	* PsychicPowers: The Old Man makes extensive use of precognition, telepathy and teleportation.
109	** Andreus can communicate telepathically, at least when he's a ghost.
110	** Catalyst can 'feel' the thoughts and emotions of others in the fort, and later uses her psychic powers to survive death by jumping bodies and possessing the minds of others to act as her vessels.
111	* RunningGag: Selling the clothes of the dead for supplies.
112	** Rebuilding/Moving the Trade Depot during one's turn, though this is becoming a Bay 12 tradition.
113	** Andreus getting killed in a variety of ways.
114	** Requesting a dwarf while declaring how likely they are to be killed quickly.
115	** Real life events preventing people from playing their turns.
116	* TheStarsAreGoingOut
117	* TheUndead: Skeletal elks (or "skelks"), among others.
118	* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: One particular dwarf - Kar Puwuncobi, El Presidente - [[RasputinianDeath was killed forty-one times]], [[HealingFactor resurrecting himself]] and leaving a naked corpse behind each time, before being erased from the unit list altogether. It took almost 100 posts for anyone to actually realize this had happened, and almost nobody commented on it at the time.

Context LetsPlay / Battlefailed