Lets Play / Beigeknife

"Gods damn it, Rotpar."

— First spoken words of Beigeknife, Dwarf!fishsicles

The year is 126. Seven years have passed since the final tragedy of Waterburned. Dwarves, however, are not the kind to be discouraged (or learn from their mistakes) - seeking to once more rule the wilderness, the mountainhomes sent out a new band of dwarves. And thus, Beigeknife was born.

Unfortunately, it happened to be in an area that rained dung year-round. Our heroes promptly scarpered and founded the outpost in a desert instead. And thus, Beigeknife was reborn.

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A succession game of Dwarf Fortress that spun off of the Waterburned succession game due to issues with frame rate and in-game lag. The initial location for Beigeknife was a swamp near an evil biome. Upon the first Overseer getting less than a year into the map, it began to rain rotting filth year-round. This covered the map in filth tiles and effectively killed the frame rate before the fort had a chance to grow.

It was decided to generate a new world with goblins in it for the added "FUN" goblins bring. The next location was a moderate desert with a very narrow river inhabited by two menacing giant sponges and suffering frequent Wolverine People raids.

Current thread This thread contains the journals and logs of the various overseers.

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Provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Kol Zatzuntir, the Elfslayer, made more so by the fact that her killing was done with her shield.
  • Also, half of the Beigeknife military.
• All Just a Dream: Ringsea's first few months of running the fort ended up using the wrong save, and when the restart happened the prior events were treated as a dream/alternate doomed future (from which only Journeyman escaped. Again)
• Anyone Can Die: This being Dwarf Fortress, this is guaranteed.
• Armor of Invincibility: Most of the armour in the fortress is now made of adamantine.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Watchmen, possessors of the below Badass Creed, served largely as a drain of resources and a waste of troops, whose only real combat contribution was to be occasionally slaughtered by demons.
  • Several of the Forgotten Beasts to attack the fortress also fall under this category, including the one made of stone that fell off a cliff and shattered under its own weight.
• Badass Boast:
  Durza: The gods themselves couldn’t keep me in hell, and you think you can send me back there? I saw the beginning of this world, and I shall see your end!
• Badass Creed:
  Caspellaer: I call now for dwarves to lay down their lives, to shed aside themselves and become born anew as Watchmen. I must warn you – the Watchman may have neither spouse nor children, for he must be unwavering in his duty. The Watchman will be the finest of warriors, born anew in a godsmetal skin, trained in the use of his weapon all his life. He will die for his brothers, and they for him, but above all, they must all die for the safety of the fortress. Because that, in the end, is the purpose of this project. I am setting these events in motion because I dream that a one day, a mother will not have to fear for the life of her child, that the forgotten depths of this world will hold no terror, that dwarves will need not listen in terror to the foul creatures scratching at their walls. I dream that the dwarves will have a bulwark, dwarves crafted of adamantine and righteous fury, who will fight to protect them. I do this so that honest, peace loving folk will never have to watch their friends fall to a horror from the depths again. I do this for peace. I myself will lead this project, for I will send no dwarf to face anything that I will not myself face. I leave at each of your feet a choice. Decide freely, but know that there can be no turning back. For we will be the light in the darkness, the warmth among the cold, the righteous amongst the villainous, the hope among despair and the terror that all terrors fear.
• Barred from the Afterlife: Attempted. The new overseer's tombs were meant to put Galvin's so much to shame that he would be unable to die, though he claims that the fact that he designed his own tomb rather than someone else doing it makes his the best.
• Becoming the Mask: Demon-possessed Durza spent so long pretending to be a merciful and sane overseer that she accidentally became one.
• Black Comedy: Thanks to Training Accidents, or mass bridge-crushings to increase framerate Beigeknife's children die consistantly. They still make up around a quarter of the fort's population.
• Body Horror: Condorito ended up with every part of his body rotting. The surgery to save him involved tearing open his bones to remove rotten tissue.
• Break-In Threat: The reason the overseers of the Shitrain Swamp weren't executed on their return to the capitol, and the reason they were given a decent start in the new desert area, was that the Dorf royalty found in their beds various Elephant and Cavy pieces (which species they had attempted to cross-breed).
• Continuity Snarl: Rotpar killed Waterburned so hard that history and geography died with it. (This was due to a lack of goblins on the original Waterburned world.)
• Death Course: The Mills of Armok, a series of glass serrated disc traps, collapsable ceilings (which were accidentally triggered on an empty corridor), and various other traps, was built during Count Dorku's administration to be the enemy-specific means of entry.
• Death Trap: Tuefel Hunden IV, the first Overseer, executed one of his failed-assassins via dropping miscellaneous heavy objects on her in a chamber dubbed the SHIT box.
  • A lot of goblins, some dragons, and the sponges were dealt with by dropping walls on their heads. Or at least where their heads would be if they had heads.
  • A drop-pit was also made, which naturally claimed goblins, dragons, and other assorted invaders. Fishsicles also dropped an entire human caravan inside during a tantrum over his lost child.
• Demonic Possession: Durza got possessed just before becoming overseer, which then spent most of its time trying to force her daughter into the royal family or killing goblins. Though it did kill most of the other demons in Beigeknife too, which was a plus. It should be noted that one of the first things it realized as Overseer is "This place is insane".
• Dissimile: Running Beigeknife is apparently like running on a giant spiked ball, except that the spikes are made of stupidity.
• Dissonant Serenity: Most of Archereon's updates are quite calm, considering the epic string of problems they detail.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Besides the typical sprawling fortress, Overseer Caspellaer thought it wise to put another mini-fortress (dubbed CREED, see Fun with Acronyms) in the cavern depths to fend off attackers from below.
• Eldritch Abomination: Hordes of them. One of the Fort's biggest problems is the nigh-unending stream of Forgotten Beasts constantly pouring up from the caverns.
• Empty Shell: Several of the dwarves, particularly those in the military, have the message 'He/She doesn't really care about anything anymore' in their profile.
• Epic Fail: The first embark site combines an enormous aquifer and a near-endless rain of rotting excrement. Put together, these things mean that the fort dedicated to framerate was notably slowing down before the first migration wave, and led to the fort being relocated.
  • Beigeknife managed another, with the second overseer accidentally playing a waterburned save instead.
  • And a third with its military being hopelessly curbstomped by the first goblin ambush.
• Famed In-Story: Rotpar, from the brief Time Skip into Beigeknife. His name has become a dwarven curse, even though the reasons for it aren't fully known to the users.
• Fantastic Racism / Enemy Mine: While it is expected that the Elves would bear a lot of this from the perspective of the Overseers and other dorfs, the surgeon HEALBOT was also a subterranean elf^note Living in the fortress as part of a cultural exchange program with a Drow city-state that would occasionally vent against the surface-dwelling tree-lovers.
• Fish out of Water: A yeti was once spotted crossing the desert during Wikkit's rule, and killed about a week later. As for why it was there, a number of ideas were proposed.
• Foreshadowing: Post No 4 of the thread has one person hoping for battle tigers, and exactly 1908 posts and almost 9 IRL months later, the fortress had its first weretiger leading a pack of tigers into battle.
• Freak Out: Beigeknife drove two of the first three overseers insane. By overseer standards.
  • Durza went insane just prior to becoming overseer.
• Fun with Acronyms: Continuing the Waterburned tradition, many of the Beigeknife projects are given names whose acronyms describe their purpose better than the actual name. In (mostly) chronological order:
  • SHIT Box^note Sudden Hard Impact Tower, Tuefel's execution chamber, which seems to have only been used the one time on one of his would-be assassins. Consisted of lots of objects being dropped.
  • CRUSHER^note Compressive Rubbish Unmaker to Shatter Hopeless or Evil Refuse, Count Dorku's atom smasher to help improve the game's frame rate by destroying junk items. and, occasionally, the children of the fortress.
  • BLENDER^note Baddie Liquification and Extreme Nonrecoverable Dismemberment Entryway and Response, the name for the trapped hallway(s) full of serrated disc traps.
  • SLAYER:SEQUEL^note Stupid Lucifer-Allied Yokels Eat Revenge: Terrible Hell's Entrance Surprisingly Elevated, Quite Undeniably Encouraging Looting, suggested when Archereon accidentally opened Hell by mining the very first adamantine block.
  • STFU[^note Save The Frames Up, Archereon's secret project after walling off Hell, still kept secret.
  • SWIM^note Soldiers' Water-Immersion Mechanism, GandAandR's device for teaching the militia how to swim.
  • CREED^note Creature Response and Emergency Evacuation Development, Overseer/Prince Caspellaer's further-underground fortress for handling Forgotten Beasts and other non-demon nasties that appeared below ground.
  • ROCKS FALL EVERYBODY DIES^note Rare Offshoot of Crushers which Kills Spirits Fabled to Await Local Lesions in the Eternal Veil of the Ethereal and Regal Yang which Bound their Ogrish and Destructive Yin Down in the Earth’s Silence, The possessed Durza's plan for caving in and sealing off the demons.
  • DORF^note Dwarves Obsessively Risking Failure, When Condorito was released from the hospital with only one good eye, the comparison was made between him and Nick Fury leading their troops to victory despite their handicaps.
  • HEALBOT^note Hyokai: Extradimensional Arms-collecting Lich Broker and Occasional Tourist, not a project, but the name for one of the players dorf'd into the game as a member of the hospital staff.
  • BURN^note Biased Under-woRld Nations, the cultural exchange program responsible for there being a Drow in the fortress.
  • ROFL^note Rotpar, Other Frelling Layers, referring to the plan for getting beneath the layered aquifers of Shitrain Swamp. It was comrpised of two stages, the "Light Overhead Load" and the "Loaded Massive Aquifer Opener".
  • IHOP^note Infants Have Only Protection, A children-only area that was meant to be a safe haven for the fortress' children. Too bad it partially flooded during a construction accident.
• Giant Spider: So far, only one named player has been lost to one, viz. Blueeyedrat.
• Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: Waterburned fell so hard the dwarves switched to a different calendar.
  • On being appointed Overseer, Condorito threatened to ruin the fortress just to cause another one.
• I Call It "Vera": During the first Overseer's reign in the desert, there was a worrisome recruit calling his short sword "Zuthma". Later, during the Dark Lady Durza's reign, her sword was made an heirloom and named Mesirmatul Vetorthomal, or the Dishonest Charity.
  • There was also a Forgotten Beast during world-creation by the name of Vera.
• Improbable Weapon User: Kol Zatzuntir, Elfslayer of Beigeknife, who beat a number of elves to death with a shield because she didn't have a sword.
• Improvised Weapon: The reason the Elfslayer achieved Action Girl status was because she was ordered to kill the elven merchants inside the walls. The swords, of course, were locked outside in a goblin seige, so she beat them to death with her shield instead.
  • In that same year, when the marksdwarves ran out of ammunition from shooting at the giant sponges, a goblin ambush arrived, and we got this roleplay to happen twice:
  Azaram: "Oh Armok, it's not a sponge, what do we do?!"
  Count Dorku: "Quick, hit it with your crossbow!"
• Ironic Echo: In Post 1056/Year 135, Overseer Caspellaer gave a Baddass Creed about the CREED fortress' completion much further underground. Later, in Post 1890/Year 139, those same words haunt him as part of a PTSD-styled nightmare. Certainly the rest of the nightmares as well.
• Kill It with Fire: A flying, winged, skinless crocodile that appeared at the CREED construction site managed to ignite the cavern grasses. It was predictably destructive, especially given that one of the dwarves to get caught in there was carrying a barrel full of high-proof booze, which exploded and caused the deaths of several more.
  • Earlier, in the Shitrain Swamp, this was how the Overseers escaped: Their very first caravan was sent to assassinate them via fire and exploding oil barrels, which ended up being used against them instead.
• Legacy Character: Some residents of Beigeknife are named for famous residents of Waterburned.
• Lost in Translation: "Rotpar" became a loanword for bringing about the utter ruin of a fortress, both within the thread's out-of-character moments and as a loanword used by the Drow emissary reporting to her Home City.
• Madness Mantra: After punishing his would-be assassins, and until he died of thirst, the first Overseer of the fort was found mumbling "Mr. Fwibles is sorry" to the orphan of the parents he had killed.
  • The second Overseer spent over a month bemoaning the lack of glass for a project before becoming homicidal and being killed by the guards. The journal entries relating this might also qualify for Apocalyptic Log.
• Mama Bear: Hermunster was shaping up to become this, especially when Overseer Ringsea decided to place all of the fortress' children in the IHOP.
• Mission Control: How the fort's pair of vampires got Kicked Upstairs. Their lack of a need to sleep makes the levers run on time.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Dr. Tentacles, the Red Shrine of Dying.
• Never My Fault: Most of the minor incidents that occurred during Archereon's term as overseer (or as he preferred, Lord Commander Beigeknife) were blamed (in character) on the incompetence of other dwarves.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: A Forgotten Beast was found in the caverns under the fortress, made of... fecal matter. Due to the fact that it has a dust attack, he was walled in and left alone... for a time.
  • It was later found to merely have a projectile attack instead, which it used to hit someone in the mouth.
• Pet the Dog: GandAandR is a sane, competent overseer who is decent to his dwarven minions, to the shock and horror of the rest of the thread.
• Press-Ganged: How Wikkit came to be Overseer of the Fortress. See Shout Out below for more on that incident.
• Reality Warper: Overlapping with Deal with the Devil, one Overlord "discovered" that making giant steel axe heads, melting them down, and repeating the process yields more metal than it started with. This only helped him lose his grip on sanity even further.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: See Pet the Dog.
• Revealing Cover-Up: The first time a vampire infiltrated the fort, he accused another dwarf of the death of his first victim. The accuser, in his alibi, had recently enjoyed slaughter.
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: Invoked by Durza in project ROCKS FALL EVERYBODY DIES, which killed three quarters of the demons in Beigeknife.
• Rule of Cool: Starting with Caspellaer and continuing with Journeyman, the fortress began a breeding and training program for war tigers.
• Running Gag: Imported from Waterburned. Rotpar's name has ascended to a dwarven curse word.
  • Also, how the fort is constantly set upon by fecal matter, both in the form of rain and a sentient, humanoid mass of the stuff that followed them there from the Swamp.
• Shout-Out: While not nearly as much as its predecessor, the thread is soused in Warhammer 40,000 references, particularly figuring out which Chaos God is responsible for the fortress's latest problem.
  • Of all things, a 1931 Fleischer Studios cartoon gets a mention when Wikkit was kidnapped for the vacant position of Overseer.
  • When the subject of megaprojects was brought up, Archereon suggested "a steampunk Giant Mecha powered by the heart of a dead god which would accidentally unmake the entire Dwarven race" despite the game not being able to actually do that... yet.
  • GandAandR suggested tunneling into the bedrock under an ocean, modifying the game to let dorfs shoot fireballs, turn the children into vampires, and name the fortress Wrappedsure.
  • Once the Opera House was finished, and GandAandR brought up stone instruments, mention was made of Music with Rocks in.
    • Durza also mentions that her plans for reincarnation involve a cult with eight people in it, a magic circle, two short sticks and a fresh egg.
  • At one point the squad of dorfs assigned as whip specialists were renamed the Belmonts.
  • When the profiles of the various player-character dorfs were posted in No. 1616, Azrael 341's Dwarvatar Azreal II was found to be the dorf equivalent of Cacofonix.
  • At the time when then-militiadwarf Condorito was injured, the hospital staff used Adamantine to suture the wounds. By the time Condorito ended his Overseership, he was naturally insane; whether this is due to being experimented on by the Hospital staff or demonic hauntings is still up in the air.
• Staying Alive: Dorku, Waterburned's sole survivor and current resident of Beigeknife.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Dorku's first two months running Beigeknife.
• Tempting Fate: Back in Post 176 Tuefel Hunden IV threatened violences should levers not be labeled, returning in post 507, and all the way in Post 1895, there are levers unlabeled.
  • Averted with Posts 639 & 640:
  GandAandR: [In reference to a mechanism for flooding Hell with liquid Fun] ...and when it goes Expectedly Wrong?
  Condorito: How can it go Expectedly Wrong? I have a lever. It's LABELED.
  Count Dorku: This is exactly the sort of logic that leaves you with a 50 Z-level swimming pool where your fort used to be.
  • Overseer Archereon is specifically called on this in post 662:
  Noaqiyeum: I'm impressed that you've managed to cast Summon Murphy in every single post since you became overseer.
• The Legions of Hell: Much like in Waterburned, this is an occasional threat the dwarves of Beigeknife have to deal with.
• The Tower: The Tower of Decadence, which begins in hell and goes the whole way to the top of the map, though some of the levels aren't finished yet.
• Time Skip: Seven years after Waterburned, even though the dates do not line up at all and the geography is different. Krutzing Rotpar.
• Too Dumb to Live: Rotpar's firstborn son got set on fire in hell, managed to put it out by running into a pool of water, but then ran around until he bled out from the burns.
• Victory Is Boring / Boring, but Practical: For a time around Condorito's reign, there was not a lot of drama in running the fortress, and several posts were brought up as to how to make the game more interesting. Such as the unfinished waterslide into Hell from the top of the already-existing gold-walled Tower of Decadence built by Durza.
  • In the end, the fort's framerate slowed to a crawl before it could lose in any way, causing the Tropers to mount an expedition from there to found the third TV Tropes Community Fort.
• Video Game Caring Potential - Rather than summarily execute them, the vampires of the fort are placed in a secured, glass-walled command center-styled room, with the sole responsibility of operating certain necessary levers.
• Warrior Prince: Caspellaer, founder of the Watchmen, is actually the prince of the dwarven nation, much to everyone's surprise.
• Zerg Rush: With the initial demon horde taken care of, the dwarves tried to move into hell. Except more demons kept coming.
• Zero-Effort Boss: Ola Elumasami Alisa, a hill titan that in theory attacked Beigeknife. It was defeated by the goblins, without the dwarves even needing to open the gates.
  • When hell was released, all it took to contain them was a single stone wall.
    • And one roof to crush them under.
    • Though in grand TV Tropes tradition, they didn't exactly stay down.