"Hello, you bearded bastards."
Kruggsmash is a LetsPlayer whose primary focus is Dwarf Fortress, having hundreds of hours in the game both as video material and his own personal play. What sets Krugg apart is the way he presents each fortress: Each has a clear identity, goal, story, characters and world that he accentuates with copious amounts of Awesome Art he inserts into every video, as well as his dedication towards making sure each character is played to their best possible ability, and plenty of audience participation. His YouTube channel can be found here
, where he posts new content every Thursday.
His major fortress series are:
Fortress series
- Steelclutches: The first fort series Kruggsmash made. Steelclutches sits alone in terrifying, evil lands as a last bastion of dwarf commerce and might, divided into a multi-part series.
- Monsterkiller: Escaping their war-torn home, a tribe of monster hunting dwarves make their home on the desert known as the Born Dunes to properly engage their favored hobby.
- Honeystoker: A fort primarily of peaceful beekeepers that descends into madness and mad expansion as the fort is slowly taken over by Vampires, at the behest of the king of the land.
- Scorchfountain: In the violent, scary world of Orid Ashi, the dwarves of the Abbey of Proliferation have hitched up their favored giant Beetles, and have gone to make an outpost on the slopes of a trio of volcanos, to be both a grand outpost, and as a staging area for striking back at the enemies that drove them there.
Tropes that apply to Kruggsmash and his videos:
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Overall
- Awesome, Dear Boy: In-Universe, this describes much of Krugg's mindset when playing. Build a fort over the ocean? Play with magma? Dedicate forts to singular, obscure in-game mechanics? Imprison a Forgotten Beast for a fort pet? All sporting challenge for Krugg.
- Cozy Voice for Catastrophes: Krugg has a very pleasant voice which helps for both dramatic effect and general listenting as he narrates the, often brutal, events of the Dwarven world.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first episodes of the Steelclutches Krugg is far more casual in his narration, including more than a few Cluster F-Bombs, and more haphazard in his recording, a far cry from his most current series.
- The Nicknamer: Dwarves that distinguish themselves usually receive a nickname related to their chosen field, their background, or for general heroism, and Kruggsmash checks in on them from time to time.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Frequently ends his series like this, including Monsterkiller, Honeystokers, and both seasons of Splatterface.
Splatterface
- A Cappella: The second sponsor of the second tournament has a barbershop quartet-esque group called: The Dapper Stache 4, that does this whenever they are plugging the product periodically. Right up until they are either drowned or mauled by sharks via a conveniently installed Shark lever which floods the arena.
- Blatant Lies: For the Mystery Arena in season III, adding sharks to the water was definitely not
thrown it in at the last second by Shrieking Sounds, and was totally planned to go that way since the start. - Broke Episode: After the events of the previous tournament resulted in the loss of both sponsors, the third tournament is held in the slag tunnels beneath the fortress (which are in a noticeably shabbier condition) while Splatterface proper is rented out.
- Lighter and Softer: Compare the first tournament, which had only two survivors and Screeching Sounds being spared as being incomprehensible/a sad fate by Krugg (The character, not the creator). Add on the fact the Battle Beetle clearly being out of it during the ending ceremony and the final shot of him mourning his teamates. For the second, Bunion, Song, Ladlore, and the Battle Beetle all survive due to being spared, either by their opponents or Kurggsmash himself due to the conduct of their opponents. It also ends with Song finding joy in being a godfather to Bunion's children for the closing shot, with the implication the Battle Beetle has softened up and become less of a Death Seeker now that's song around. Some people are happy with the change, saying it makes for better stories, while others say it detracts from the tension. :
- Pyrrhic Victory: Happens twice to the five Battle Beetles in the Splatter Face Series:
- In their semi-final bout, they manage to kill the much better armed Lady Whitefur with Zerg Rush tactics, but three are killed, two by herself and one due to falling in lava. They end up the match in such a bad position, Kruggsmash allows them to gear up more than they should to make the finale fairer.
- In the finale, one of the five originals manages to defeat Culoc and win the tournament, but not before a fourth Beetle Man gets killed. The last one is clearly devastated, despite having won.
- The Worf Effect: Happens in spades in both tournaments through upsets and even One-Hit Kills.
Steelclutches
- After the End: The entire series is fairly apocalyptic in feel, with the humans and elves being driven to extinction by the goblins, and the dwarves existing only as isolated survivalist enclaves.
- Back from the Brink: The series sees the dwarves from being on the edge of extinction to being on equal footing with the goblins.
- Badass Army: Both Futurelantern and Legendhelm have extremely competent fighting forces, driving back goblin armies twice their number. As well as the forces of hell.
- The Epic: The "SteelClutches Saga," which encompasses SteelClutches: The Legend of Delersholid, The Hero of Balance, The Bearded Kings, and Ageless War all fit within the same universe and represent decades of in-game time and hundreds of hours of play time, all forming a cohesive narrative. The more recent "Eternal Realms" series seems to be shaping up as an Epic in its own right.
- Zombie Apocalypse: Evilkings, the predecessor fort to Steelclutches, ultimately collapsed due to the strain of the evil biome it sat in resurrecting all corpses as bloodthirsty zombies.
Scorchfountain
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Moldath, The Beardless Baron, leader of Scorchfountain. An Affably Evil necromancer Sorcerous Overlord who desires to Take Over the World, he restricts most of his evil deeds to Pragmatic Villainy, appears genuinely concerned with the well-being of his citizens and seems convinced that he can bring about a united, peaceful and prosperous world for all through conquest.
Chamberpoint
- For Want Of A Nail: On par with Boatmurdered in terms of how it fell, the fortress falls to ruin all because of 2 dead hamsters acting as doorstops.
Short Forts
- Back from the Brink: In The Bastion of Beasts, all but four dwarves are decimated by a powerful forgotten beast, but despite many further troubles, Kruggsmash manages to get the fortress back to a working state.
- Tempting Fate: Happens in Murderhalls. Already suffering from many issues (undead siege, no military, dwarves almost dead of thirst, and little food), considering the list of problems, Kruggsmash says "what's a little more?". He immediately gets attacked by a Forgotten Beast and lampshades that he didn't want to say "As long as a Forgotten Beast doesn't attack..."
Mods
- Domesticated Dinosaurs: Thunderskull starts with some of these, but the attack by a titan that drives the citizens underground also kills them before they can do anything interesting with them.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: Every now and then.
- He did a one shot for Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, a mod that followed a group of toads, and more recently a cyber punk wasteland mod.
- He also did one episode about "Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom", which swaps the usual races, items etc. with those from the Super Mario Bros. franchise.
- He's done a few short forts for the Long Night mod, which overhauls the game and transplants it to a post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting instead of a Dark Fantasy setting.
- The art for Thunderskull was done by the artist North Dog rather than Krugg himself.
- Hollywood Prehistory: Thunderskull was primarily based around the Primal mod, which replaced the normal animals with prehistoric creatures like dinosaurs and dire wolves. The art style gave the characters a vague Stone Age aesthetic to reflect this.
- Human Sacrifice: The citizens of Thunderskull ritualistically hurl themselves into a crevice via a minecart as a sacrifice to their god, the Iron Mountain.
"Whistles"
