Lets Play / The Museum

"So we've started this with the idea to fill the museum with wonderful artefacts, items and happy visitors. A place where young and old can marvel at the wonders of the world. An educational experience for the kids, a place you can visit with the entire family. We are currently three turns in, and the main hall is coated in blood, intestines and random corpses. There's a huge pile of 3000 items made of human body parts in a corner and the remaining members of the staff of the museum are, as I type this, being slowly choked to death by one of our adventurers.

"At least we're doing this in the true spirit of Dwarf Fortress. Armok will be proud of us."
— Bralbaard, creator of the Museum

The Museum is a Dwarf Fortress Succession Game, hosted on the Bay 12 Forums and first launched by Bralbaard in 2014. Unlike the vast majority of succession games, The Museum is played entirely in DF's adventurer mode. The players create a character and then proceed to explore the world, creating a story as they seek to find an item to submit to the eponymous Museum.

The game has gone through three incarnations:

The Museum I, which took place in DF 34.11 and ran for 78 turns before it finished in 2014.

The short-lived sequel, The Museum II, which began in 2014 and finished in 2015.

The third instalment, The Museum III, which began in 2020 and is presently active.

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Tropes applying to all three Museums:

• Anyone Can Die: Adventuring is hardly a safe profession and PC deaths are a common occurrence during turns.
• Apocalyptic Log: Most adventurers who die before reaching the Museum have their tales told in this format, with an oft-unnamed reader perusing their diaries or similar records.
• Armor of Invincibility: Adamantine armour, on the rare occasions an adventurer gets their hands on it.
• Badass Normal: Many adventurers become this over the course of their story... assuming they don't die first. Or become an Empowered Badass Normal, whether by accident or design.
• Body-Count Competition:
  • For Museum I, the crown goes to the Museum's Memetic Badass, Dishmab Northmanor the Mute Saffron Soot at 1140 total (notable and other) kills, followed by Kosoth Griffonblaze the Shaken Galleys at 930 kills and Aco Knitadmire the Sly Rhymes of Glee at 613.
  • Museum III took this up to eleven in epic fashion; after several in-game decades of Urus Ghostumbral the Cold Abbey of Knowing holding the record at 1141 kills (besting Dishmab's record by the skin of his teeth), it was veritably obliterated as Avolition Holyblood the Autumnal Kingdoms and Moldath Mournsaints reached a kill count of 9029 and 4147 respectively, over the course of two or three turns ^note It should be noted that due to the changes to the unofficial in-thread system used to record the actions of adventurers, this excludes most non-notable kills; with them, it is likely to be even higher.
• Breather Episode: In between the short tragedies and grand adventures, a few of these can be found - such as the adventure of Maloy Craftsoars, in which a Wolf Man and his pet dog (and a possibly-sentient ear) explore the world.
• Downer Ending:
  • Nine Shovelmurders dies a pointless, brutal death in the middle of nowhere at the hands of several bandits.
  • Imic Heatherwind is brutally murdered by a pair of goblins that he accidentally stumbles across, only a day or two after suffering severe emotional trauma from killing a human in self-defence.
  • Tipi Fatewalks' dreams of becoming a travelling entertainer ultimately come to nothing, as a Husk rips her to shreds in the ruins of an isolated, abandoned fortress.
  • Amala Fragrantshaft either kills her sister or indirectly causes her death due to an Evil Weapon's influence, then jumps to her death from a mountain peak out of guilt after entombing her body.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him:
  • Nine Shovelmurders was built up to have a long and rather impressive storyline (arguably the first "proper" one of the Museum as a whole, in terms of length and detail), only to be ambushed and unceremoniously killed by a group of wandering bandits that are implied to have been sent by Logic Legendfinder.
  • A very literal example in the case of Yufluggus Cavernslides, who accidentally triggered a drawbridge to fall on him.
• Due to the Dead: The Tomb of Heroes and Herograves were both founded on this principle, as a place where dead adventurers could be buried rather than left to rot in the wilderness or be resurrected by Necromancers.
• Eldritch Location: Multiple fortresses were rendered inaccessible by FPS issues or bugs with the save; these are explained In-Universe as becoming these, with the paths to the fortress looping back on themselves no matter how far an adventurer walks, or time slowing to a crawl whenever someone tries to approach the settlement until they turn back.
• The Exile: Whether as punishment or voluntarily, several adventurers are effectively barred from their homelands.
• Ghost City: The larger abandoned player-made fortresses often come off as this, prior to some unlucky adventurer or reclaim party running into whatever doomed the fortress (such as forgotten beasts, goblin invaders, or angry ghosts).
• Gorn: One of the exhibits in the first Museum consists of 31494 items made of human body parts, all stacked into a pile. Several exhibits in the third are little more than massive piles of corpses and body parts.
• I Have Many Names: Although somewhat rare, a few adventurers assume multiple identities over the course of their games, with this as the result.
• Improbable Weapon User:
  • Iden Bloodinked struck down a Charcoal Brute with a wooden crutch before dying of fatal wounds it inflicted on him.
  • Avolition Holyblood slew more than 2385 goblins, undead, and other assorted monsters with a tube agate book, Common Sense Goblins.
  • Eko Tiredlegend beat two adventurers to death with a donkey leather shoe.
• Left Hanging: Sometimes happens when a player posts some of their turn's story but doesn't finish writing it up, or when a multi-turn Story Arc's author drops out of the turn list. The Historians' Guild was created with the intent to try and subvert this by allowing players to look through legends mode, then write up their interpretation of the turn from a historian's point of view.
• Master of One Magic: A rare few adventurers accumulate massive amounts of knowledge related to necromantic magic over the course of their turns, becoming this in doing so. This is also the ultimate goal of Moldath Mournsaints in Museum III - to learn all the forms of necromantic magic in the world.
• Museum of the Strange and Unusual: The eponymous Museum; since there are no real restrictions on what can be submitted (or where they need to be put), exhibits range from the corpses of titanic beasts and priceless articles of jewellery to bags of husk-creating dust and collections of dice. Overlaps with Mishmash Museum, as the vast majority of the exhibits are located in one area with little regard for categories.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • Applies to fortress names in spades, such as the fortresses of Deathtraps, Northmanor the Unholy Cathedral, and Northevil.
  • For adventurers (without considering titles), we have Nine Shovelmurders, Iden Bloodinked, Abhaar Lungdespair, Arcturus Cinderfang, Moldath Mournsaints...
• One-Man Army: Most of the adventurers with particularly high kill counts are this by default. Kosoth Griffonblaze's combat skills Broke the Rating Scale. (To wit: DF's skills are functionally capped at a value of Legendary+5. Kosoth's melee combat skill alone was Legendary +548, with all but one of his other known skills similarly breaking the cap).
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Many new adventurers end up meeting retired ones during their travels. Whether or not they walk away, however...
• Red Baron: Frequently acquired (both in and out of universe) long-lasting or unique adventurers, such as Dishmab Northmanor the Twice-Husked/the Lord of Death, Moldath Mournsaints the Blind Sadist, Arcturus "Apocalypse Bear" Cinderfang, and Hannibal "the Ghoulfather" Valleyball.
• Superhuman Transfusion: Both the first and third Museums have large stocks of vampire blood, which a number of adventurers drank from to become vampires and gain power.
• To Hell and Back: Multiple times, by multiple different adventurers. Almost all of them submitted trophies from the down below to the Museum, ranging from adamantine weaponry to the partial or whole corpses of clowns.

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Tropes applying to the first Museum game:

• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Dishmab, having defeated everything that The Portentous Domain could throw at him, is elevated to godhood by Armok in recognition of his power and deeds. ^note The out-of-universe reason was that Dishmab essentially disappeared (possibly due to a bug) at some point, rendering it impossible to find him in-game. Since he was easily one of the most powerful adventurers in all of The Museum's continuities and had a reputation as an unofficial Memetic Badass among the Museum's players, this was written in as an explanation for him vanishing.
• Baby as Payment: Downplayed. Nine Shovelmurders was sold by her mother to pay her debts, but she was sold once breeched (~2-8 human years of age) rather than as a baby.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: Istrul Tababehal writes his last diary entry in his own blood as he lies dying from a Kobold ambush.
• Culture Clash: Nine Shovelmurders left the elven civilization over this - due to being raised by dwarves from an early age, her values were deeply different to the those of the typical elf, resulting in her walking out in disgust when given the choice between immediate exile or eating meat cut from their kills in battle.
• Enslaved Elves: Played with. The western human kingdoms are noted to possess elven slaves and their time as a powerful race is generally considered past, but at least one independent nation of elves exists.
• Escalating Brawl: The Crisis at the Adventurer Home, overlapping with Mêlée à Trois. Four to five previous adventurers (three of which were undead), ten random human soldiers (believed by players to be the companions of the retired adventurers), five to ten random civilians, and a number of zombies, all crammed into a single building. Cue absolute and immediate mayhem as the undead adventurers (being automatically hostile to the living) began to fight everyone else in sight.
• The Exile: Nine Shovelmurders chose exile over joining in with the elves' Sapient Eat Sapient practices.
• Heritage Disconnect: Nine Shovelmurders is an elf raised by enslaved dwarves in a human civilization's mines, with this as the result. She notes that the elves' morality tales come off as inane, expresses discomfort at sleeping outside rather than underground or in a building, and is revolted by the elves' Sapient Eat Sapient practices.
• Knight Templar: Istrul Tababehal, self-described Inquisitor and Religious Bruiser who actively hunts down anything he considers "unclean" (vampires, werebeasts of all ages, non-humans...)
• Lethal Joke Character: Despite being physically frail, extremely weak, and overall Butt Monkeys, kobolds still managed to kill off several adventurers during ambushes by lucky hits and weight of numbers.
• Mistaken for Undead: Logic Legendfinder (the first adventurer of the first Museum) was accused of being a vampire and left his hometown to escape a brewing mob.
• Resurrective Immortality: Sluguflonkus the kobold, who kept returning to life whenever the adventurers of the Museum killed her. By the time the game ended, she had been killed six times, with at least one of her corpses displayed as a Museum exhibit.
• Too Dumb to Live: One of Logic Legendfinder's companions thought it was a good idea to jump in front of a dragon without a shield. It was not.

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Tropes applying to the third Museum game:

• Aborted Arc: Arcturus Cinderfang died of old age some time after his player was bumped down the turn list due to scheduling issues, resulting in a multi-turn arc about his quest for vengeance on the elves over his and his people's enslavement being cut short.
• The Ahab: Prince Jeha Sanaquemer of The Nations of Honouring goes after the female giant grizzly bear Weatheredroof three times, failing to kill her each time. He brands her an enemy of his civilization for having the temerity to survive him (and possibly even names her). Like the Trope Namer, this eventually leads to his doom when she slays him on his fourth attempt, followed by Weatheredroof’s peaceful death after a long life.
• Always Chaotic Evil:
  • Shockingly subverted in the case of the Charcoal Brutes that settled in the town of Incenseorder, who are capable of peaceful co-existence with humans and even diplomacy despite their usual hostility.
  • Averted in the case of Dreamypuzzled the Eternal, who is every bit as evil as you might expect of a Demon-possessed goblin.
• Artifact of Doom: Necromancer slabs are shown to try and entice adventurers into reading them, almost invariably leading to some kind of disaster.
• All There in the Manual:
  • The Dwarf Fortress Legends Wiki is a mild, but rapidly growing case of this, with detailed information on numerous background characters and supplementary articles related to the various history-shaping events of Orid Xem. It even obliquely references this trope with the concept of Supersources, which are described as being chronicles of all that has ever happened in the world of Orid Xem.
  • Inverted with The Great Black Tome of Everything (better known as Legends Mode), which was mysteriously wiped out, intentionally or not. ^note out-of-universe, Bralbaard generated the world with "Hidden History", forcing players to discover the past by adventuring and searching clues, which only then appear in Legends Mode.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • Raki Umberclan the Bulbous' marble count was roughly in the negatives for almost the whole of his turns, which saw him siring Weremammoths all over the place and writing unhinged rants about his intent to kill those responsible for decimating the megabeasts of the world.
  • Moldath Mournsaints. Sometimes he'll kill a whole warband, sometimes he'll kill megabeasts, sometimes he'll kill the last living roc, sometimes he'll kill allies as collateral damage, sometimes he'll kill his own worshipers, sometimes he'll kill undead... and sometimes he'll just raise undead because he feels like it.
  • Kosoth Salvesank becomes this as the interaction between the Obin Blight and the Fantastic Drug controlling him gradually degrades his faculties. By the time he finally succumbs to its effects, he’s reduced to alternating between blankly standing around and rabidly attacking anything that gets in his path.
  • Lonelythrall has a moment of this when killing his first megabeast, briefly flying into an bloodlust-driven frenzy and Pummeling the Corpse of the roc into bloody shreds.
• Badass Army: Most of Ironwards’ military was very well-trained, taking on multiple sieges and returning them with interest. A few even reached hundreds of kills and gained adamantine gear, both feats usually reserved for adventurers.
• Badass Crew: The Band of Wax start out as a group of Thrall-slaying roughnecks in service to a local Lord, and they only get more badass as their story goes on - they clear out much of the Thrall population of Omon Obin, and ultimately overthrow the corrupt leadership before being installed in their place.
• Badass Normal: Prince Jeha Sanaquemer of The Nations of Honoring, who became a beast hunter at the tender age of eight and fought several night creatures (slaying at least two) before his death.
• Bears Are Bad News:
  • Well, bear people are, as Arcturus Cinderfang's rampage through the elven lands (which killed fully a third of the elves in the world) can certainly attest.
  • Cherishedfame was this for the misfortunate adventurer Urdim Brassletters. Somewhat downplayed, in that this was Cherishedfame's sole kill before it died of old age.
• Berserk Button:
  • If you're a worshipper of Otu Lovelycherished, do not have anything to do with necromancy. Urus found this out the hard way.
  • Elves are this for Arcturus Cinderfang after he uncovers their enslavement of his kind, and it only gets worse after spending several years enslaved following his capture in battle.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Kosoth Salvesank’s ‘treatment’ after being wounded by involves the use of a strange potion, which results in him becoming a mindlessly obedient puppet to Ketas Indigovaulted.
• Cultural Rebel: Athama Stalkhandled (an elf) expresses open disdain for nature, and is implied to have left the elven nation over a Noodle Incident related to this disdain.
• Deal with the Devil: Urus Ghostumbral strikes one of these with Gopet the Putrid Cyst, after unwittingly reading a scroll containing the secrets of life and death; though this cures him of his illness, Gopet demands repayment from Urus in return. The nature of this deal become clear later on, as Gopet manipulates Urus into learning further necromantic secrets, placing a large source of vampire blood within arm's reach of numerous unscrupulous adventurers, nearly resurrecting Raki Umberclan the Bulbous, and finally slaughtering over a thousand goblins in Gopet's name - the last of which is implied to have given him significantly more power than before.
• Defiant to the End: Pictham Contestlabored ultimately goes down fighting against a horde of undead goblins, trying to drag as many of the undead down with her before she's overwhelmed and killed.
• Death Is Cheap: Heavily downplayed; while there are plenty of necromancers capable of resurrecting dead characters and several adventurers have been brought Back from the Dead, actually finding the corpse of a dead adventurer is a task in its own right and there's no guarantee that the body will be in good enough condition to resurrect. ^note  Furthermore, it's entirely possible for a body to be de facto lost should an adventurer die in the wilds or a body of water, as finding it would require a player to manually search dozens to hundreds of map tiles (and the assorted obstacles there, which can hide the body) with almost nothing specific to go on. It doesn't exactly make an interesting experience for the player, and that's without considering that it has to be done within a week of real-world time.
• Demonic Possession: Dreamypuzzled the Tenebrous Obscurity's soul does this to a goblin acolyte, giving itself a new body after being struck down in a necromancer siege.
• Determinator:
  • Galka Kinddrummed. Despite being badly injured by aggressive wildlife, finding out the Realm of Silver's glory was a lie, facing off against murderous hordes of Blighted Thralls, and overall being put through a physical and emotional gauntlet he refuses to give up.
  • Moldath Mournsaints has been been to Hell and back (both literally and otherwise), is cursed by various afflictions (if being a necromancer that needs to drink blood isn't bad enough, he caught a contagion that slowly rots his body. His very immortal body), to the point where he's little more than an ambulatory corpse in perpetual physical pain. He’s still going strong by the 850s.
• Dying Race:
  • The kobolds of Orid Xem number a few dozen at best, and that number has only been dropping since the game started.
  • The dwarves are a downplayed case of this; while Oddom Girdergrove's wars royally wrecked their empire and greatly reduced their population, the creation of new player fortresses and adventurers has been keeping their population at least somewhat stable.
  • The elves are down to a few hundred of their kind still in their ancestral lands, a number which has only been dropping as adventurer rampages and time gradually take their toll on the population.
• End of an Age:
  • Double-subverted. Orid Xem actually switched between the Age of Myth and the Age of Legends three separate times prior to Lonelythrall's adventure, after which the game shifted to the Age of Heroes.
  • Furthered during turn 73, as the deaths of the last great megabeasts in Orid Xem drove the world into the Golden Age, permanently putting an end to the ages of gods and monsters.
• Evil Overlord: Dreamypuzzled the Eternal-Soul intends to become this. Again.
• Evil Weapon: Okirramtak becomes this after Kosoth Salvesank's adventures; it's indicated to be both somewhat sentient and actively malevolent, betraying its original master and waiting until its new wielder, Amala Fragrantshaft, reaches a goblin pit before forcibly driving her into a murderous frenzy that sees everyone there butchered to slake its bloodlust.
• The Exile: Irthu Bladebroken is cast out of the Realm of Silver after being framed for several murders, forbidden to return under the pain of death. His companion Athama Stalkhandled is implied to have either left or been forced out of The Squeezing Fjords for breaking the elves' prohibition against the use of wood and metal.
• Expy: By their creator's admission, The Abyssal Sanctuary and The Pit are more or less Moria, Dwarf Fortress edition.
• Eye Scream:
  • Kom Ironwhispered gets an eye torn out by a dingo early in his adventures, then cauterizes the wound with the heated tip of his spear to stop the bleeding.
  • Moldath Mournsaints' eyes eventually rot into uselessness due to an unidentified syndrome, though it doesn't come close to making him less dangerous.
• Face–Monster Turn:
  • Kosoth goes from an idealistic young dwarf seeking to prove himself to an Ax-Crazy Plague Zombie that is used to spread the Obin Blight far and wide.
  • Anybody bitten by a Blighted Thrall suffers this – the Viral Transformation immediately renders them opposed to life, sending them into a crazed frenzy and driving them to attack, kill, or infect anything in their surroundings.
• Famed In-Story:
  • Bralbaard Hammerfishes has become this following his ascent to the position of King of The Walled Dye and subsequent deposing/decision to return to adventuring.
  • Bil Hammertome became somewhat famous for having slain Orid Xem's biggest Omnicidal Maniac (Oddom Girdergrove) and destroyed her necromancer slab, avenging the dead of her omnicidal war against the world.
  • Lonelythrall is famous In-Universe for clearing a vault, killing several megabeasts and night trolls, and being the first adventurer in Orid Xem to enter Hell and kill several of the demons that could be found there.
  • Raki Umberclan has a reputation for setting off a series of werebeast outbreaks (and for his Undignified Death).
  • Kosoth Salvesank is notorious for spreading the Obin Blight on a near-worldwide scale.
  • Moldath Mournsaints the Ardent (a.k.a.: the Blind Sadist), who is widely feared for his violent exploits.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • For Pictham Contestlaboured, her curiosity about necromancy and desire for revenge. The former leads her to investigate a pair of visibly ominous necromancer towers (resulting in one of her companions’ deaths) then the latter results in her mounting a full-blown assault against the zombie hordes to recover her friend’s body despite the odds against her (resulting in both herself and her remaining companion dying).
  • For Tipi Fatewalks, her curiosity, desire to satisfy herself with the attention of others, and lack of combat skills. The former two eventually lead her to explore a visibly derelict and corpse-littered dwarven fortress, where she runs into a husk. The result was about as pleasant as you might expect.
  • For Lurker Lockkingdom, his extreme hatred of Goblins. When he picks an ill-advised fight with a goblin, he’s promptly taken out when the goblin's friends gang up on him and bash his head in with a war hammer.
  • For Vafice Wispcrypts, her reckless Do Not Go Gentle attitude. While her goal to immortalize the elves' exploits is arguably rather noble, it leads her to travel to The Realm of Silver with inadequate equipment and training, which sees her unceremoniously ripped to pieces by a group of blighted thralls within days of her arrival.
• Forced Transformation: The means by which Hands of Planegifts are made involves this, with unspecified methods being used to re-shape the subject's body into the serpentine form of a Hand.
• From Nobody to Nightmare:
  • Moldath Mournsaints went from a unknown, penniless Outsider without anything more than a whip to his name to a Nigh-Invulnerable One-Man Army with incredible knowledge of The Dark Arts, clad in full adamantine plate who regularly tears through small armies, megabeasts, and anything else that dares get in the way of his quest for more power.
  • Kosoth Salvesank goes from a weak, slow, unskilled wanna-be soldier with a pack full of "borrowed" gear to a vicious killing machine and creator of the Obin Blight, wielding artifact weaponry and armour while serving as an unwitting solider for The Abyssal Cult.
  • Raki Umberclan the Bulbous went from a mere courier for the elves to an Ax-Crazy weremammoth-spawning Monster Progenitor and powerful intelligent undead.
• God of Evil:
  • Gopet the Putrid Cyst, a human god of death and plagues. He's directly or indirectly responsible for (among other things) the Obin Blight ravaging Orid Xem, the proliferation of vampires across the world, and the mass slaughter of thousands through his mortal agents.
  • Some consider Ala (Orid Xem’s most prolific deity; also a god of blight, death, and balance who created two necromancer slabs) this. Others look even higher, towards Armok.
• Good Is Not Nice:
  • Lonelythrall is a famed Hunter of Monsters responsible for slaying numerous megabeasts and even several demons. He’s also a fanatical worshipper of Armok’s bloodthirsty religion and is incredibly brutal toward his enemies in battle.
  • Arcturus Cinderfang is an honourable warrior and deeply loyal to his friends and civilization. He’s also a rather brutal One-Man Army with a deep (if somewhat justified) hatred of elvenkind and isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty if it means killing more elves for his perceived and actual humiliation by their kind.
• The Great Offscreen War: Nêcikalnis (The Singed War) began in 125 and functionally ended some time before the main story began. It pitted an alliance of living nations against rampaging undead hordes under the command of an Omnicidal Maniac and played a huge role in the shaping of pre-Adventurer Orid Xem, with tens of thousands of casualties on both sides, several nations destroyed entirely, and dozens of Necromancer Experiments left to wander the world's wilds.
• Handicapped Badass:
  • Galka Kinddrummed becomes this by the end of his turn.
  • Moldath Mournsaints is blind thanks to a syndrome rotting his eyes into uselessness. It doesn't stop him from being a lethally strong weaponmaster who enjoys inflicting violence and pain on others, particularly after he begins accumulating multiple power-ups through several methods.
• Heroic BSoD: Amala Fragrantshaft breaks down after either killing or letting her sister die during her brutal attack on a goblin pit.
• Holy City: A number of them, though most of the world doesn't know about them due to being All There in the Manual.
• Identity Amnesia: Zig-zagged; some Hands of Planegifts are implied to retain memories of their pre-transformation life, while others like Quenir Puzzlearm lack most if not all of their original life.
• Irrational Hatred: Goblin Rage, a strange mental condition that affects multiple adventurers. Those who are affected display an extreme hatred of goblins, which frequently manifests as sudden homicidal aggression toward any goblin unlucky enough to be in the sufferer’s vicinity.
• It's Personal: Lurker Lockkingdom is a twofold example of this: aside from his Goblin Rage, he also went after Uja Hoodbathed after she first escaped him; he even admits he wanted her dead firstly because she was a plague god worshiper (and because she played a role in his exile) rather than because she was a vampire.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Galka Kinddrummed becomes this by the end of his story; while he's much more world-weary and cynical compared to his Wide-Eyed Idealist self at the start, his last appearance has him helping a young boy to achieve his dream and he's implied to be watching over a group of dwarves as a protector of sorts. This becomes even more obvious during his interactions with the Band of Wax, where he acts as something of a Cynical Mentor with sink-or-swim tendencies, but ultimately has the group's best interests at heart.
• Made of Iron:
  • Moldath Mournsaints. He endured being shot repeatedly with arrows and getting his limbs broken, having his entire body rot, having most of his rotten flesh flayed off by a amateur surgeon, and being beaten fifty times with a hammer (twice) as part of a judicial sentence. Granted, being a vampire dulls the impact a little, but still...
  • Moldath later on becomes a form of Intelligent Undead, further boosting his already impressive durability. Then surprisingly subverted once the rot progressed to the point of rendering his body "mangled", as he became killable by even mild injuries.
• Last of Her Kind:
  • The dragon Fací Glowgilds the Bejeweled was the last dragon surviving World Generation; she was slain just six years after by the adventurer Doñas Silenttowered, rendering the dragons of Orid Xem extinct.
  • Nebo Panttrue the Glad was the last living titan in Orid Xem; its death marked the end of titans as a category of megabeast (the last members of the individual titan species – mountain, sand, forest, and taiga – all died off completely at various points).
  • The last living roc, Ngomstu Beachweather the Cloudy Dell, fell to Moldath in 859; this also served as the death knell for Orid Xem’s Age of Heroes, as the last great megabeast was finally killed.
• Leave No Survivors: Okgush Irka, the bloodiest battle in the world to date, ended only with the death of all the undead in the living's way. Considering the nature of the war, this makes a great deal of sense.
• Meatgrinder Surgery: Hannibal Valleyball's specialty; he refers to a scimitar as a scalpel, his story opens with him citing a 'successful' operation (a goblin with an injury list amounting to "his everything is gone") then "dissecting" (read: dismembering) a hostile blighted thrall. Just to really cap it off: he's indicated to be a butcher by profession rather than a surgeon.
• Monster Progenitor:
  • A posthumous example. Asmel Minepass's blood is directly responsible for creating the vast majority of vampires in Orid Xem over a century after his death.
  • Zolak Wretchedmaligned, one of Orid Xem's first known Blighted Thralls. While Zolak created very few Blighted thralls in turn, their descendant-by-curse (having been infected by another adventurer, Hannibal Valleyball) Shethbah Pagetribe was responsible for infecting Kosoth Salvesank, who would proceed to unleash the Obin Blight on a near-worldwide scale.
• My Death Is Only The Beginning: After seeding several settlements with werebeasts, Raki Umberclan the Bulbous committed ritual suicide in the pyramid of Monkeycurse while leaving instructions on how to resurrect him, intending to return as a nigh-unstoppable undead werewolf lion tamarin man necromancer. The plan worked, though not entirely on schedule - most of his sired werebeasts were gone by the time Gopet the Putrid Cyst forced Irthu Bladebroken into resurrecting the mad monkey, and Raki himself was ultimately (and this time, permanently) killed before he could put his plans into action.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Galka Kinddrummed has a major one of these after accidentally killing his friend Bekdil during an argument in the mines. It continues to haunt him long after the deed is done, and is even reflected in his Museum submission - six hundred and sixty figurines of Bekdil Wavetwists, hand-carved by Galka as a sign of his regret.
  • Overlapping with Heroic BSoD, Amala Fragrantshaft suffers a severe moment of this after finding her sister Mucka dead in the wake of her rage-driven rampage.
• Mythology Gag: Moldath's name and origin is one; the original Museum had an amulet (Mournsaints the Fire-Ruler of Rewards) which would randomly teleport from site to site. Moldath pops into existence one day out of thin air and is heavily implied to be the amulet, having travelled from one universe to another.
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: The Abyssal Cult. While they're alluded to as being Ketas Indigovaulted's masters, little has been revealed about their actual structure or motivations.
• Necromancy: Surprisingly common throughout Orid Xem. While it's generally treated with revulsion by the everyday citizen (with good reason), many adventurers have learned the secrets of life and death without being shunned.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Following the discovery of civilized demons as a playable race, it was swiftly agreed upon by the players that playing as one was verboten due to their extreme size and stats relative to other adventurers. Well, with one exception for nogoodnames, who solved a Game-Breaking Bug as shown under Overpopulation Crisis.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Oddom Girdergrove, the dwarf responsible for launching several wars against every other civilization in Orid Xem. She managed to drive the elves and dwarves to near-extinction before being stopped, with the overall death toll from her wars being in the thousands.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted; prominent characters and adventurers are known to share names, such as Ketas Immortalitymatched and Ketas Indigovaulted, Vafice Wispcrypt and Vafice Lutecover, or Galka Fancyrocks and Galka Kinddrummed.
• Our Demons Are Different:
  • Charcoal Brutes can be civilized and peacefully co-exist with other sentient beings, as opposed to their normal Always Chaotic Evil personalities and extreme hostility.
  • The Cinnamon Brute Shoveth Dreamsseduce the Unswerving was different even by his kind's measure: it participated in the competitions and festivals of Adilatír while attacking it with its civilization, worshipped deities, and it even went as far as joining a religion.
  • In an interesting departure from the usual demon tropes, Egu Craftslenses the Key of Trading had several domains that you wouldn't usually associate with demons, such as birth, crafts, creation and rebirth.
• Overpopulation Crisis:
  • A strange case of an In-Universe crisis having an out-of-game effect - a bug lead to ridiculous numbers (as in, 2.5 billion by the time the issue was solved) of necromancer experiments spawning in a few hamlets, to the point of crashing the game if someone tried to enter the settlements and rendering the popular Legends Viewer utility unusable due to an overflow error. It was eventually solved by using Dfhack's gm-editor tool to delete the populations of the hamlets, after which the bug did not reoccur.
  • Istrakathroc, the castle in where all the surviving refugees of the bloodiest war in Orid Xem went. Somewhat subverted in that those who went there lived the rest of their lives in hedonism, with few of the difficulties you might expect cramming numerous refugees into a small castle might have.
• Perpetual-Motion Monster: Most forms of undead (barring Vampires) fall into this. It's actually shown to be a source of discontent for some due to the way they can no longer take pleasure in normal stimuli, and is a major problem for Omon Obin as it lets their Blighted Thralls persist without food or water for decades on end, turning every thrall into a ticking time bomb that could restart the Blight if they escape their containment.
• The Penance: Lonelythrall the Hideous is introduced plunging his face into ice-cold water then whipping himself bloody with a birch rod, praying for Armok to forgive him for the 'sin' of being a Hand of Planegifts as he does so. While it's not shown on-screen, he's also mentioned as doing this after killing his first Roc (out of shame at giving into his bestial nature and Pummeling the Corpse) and after uncovering the breach into hell at Deepvaulted the Tower of Stars.
• The Plague:
  • The early days of the game had the Silver Plague, a disease which killed just under half of the human population in the world ^note From an out-of-universe perspective, it was the explanation for a bug that caused large numbers of 'outcast' populations to appear and then suddenly disappear after an adventurer encountered them; this caused around twenty-five to thirty thousand humans to effectively vanish into thin air. The disease is indicated to attack the respiratory system, taking root in the lungs before spreading out to the rest of the body; most victims either choke to death on their own blood or suffocate as their lungs become covered in necrotic sores and then completely break down.
  • Much later on, the Obin Blight, which turns anyone infected by it into blighted thralls.
  • The first chronological plague was the Thranan Blight, which spread during the Great War of Orid Xem; as the name implies, it was a much shorter-lived predecessor to the Obin Blight, confined mostly to the elven lands and burning out when the living rallied against the dead.
• Rags to Royalty:
  • A very literal example: Bralbaard Hammerfishes goes from a rag-clad walking corpse to the King of The Walled Dye. Later subverted, as a coup occurs during an attack by Blighted Thralls that sees Bralbaard deposed, causing him to return to (un)life as an adventurer of the Museum.
  • Jas Gloryage goes from a rough, countryside-born Hunter of Monsters to the Law-Giver of the Realm of Silver, having overthrown the corrupt former government and been elected to the position by a jubilant populace.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: The Curious Horror was fond of this, often conducting massacres and razing sites during wartime. This was eventually turned back on them, as Ironwards’ dwarves repeatedly assaulted their sites, slaughtered nearly half of their total population, and even temporarily dissipated the civilisation in the late 780s. Some adventurers also use The Curious Horror’s historical record of this to justify their rampages through goblin dark pits.
• Religion is Magic: Most, if not all, of the magic in the world comes from deities.
• Revenge Through Corruption: Implied to have been Ragnar Ironjaw's motive for infecting most of Omon Obin's top nobility with vampirism.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Bralbaard Hammerfishes, after his ascent to the throne. Later zig-zagged after his deposing; while he's no longer a member of the royalty, he's still definitely in the business of doing things.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • Raki didn't take too well to reading the past journals of the Museum's adventurers, to say the least.
  • Whatever Ezif Aroirum found in the ruins of Gor and Duskhome is implied to have not been kind to his sanity.
• Scenery Porn: Crownhall the City of Stone, The Abyssal Sanctuary, Gor (The Pit) and Duskhome... pretty much any fortress made by Imic qualifies for this in terms of layout and architecture, even if DF's graphics limit the effect somewhat.
• Shout-Out:
  • Moldath's very first words are one, as the Naked on Arrival dwarf beats a goblin bandit to death.
  Moldath: I need your clothes, your boots and your *troll fur thong*.
  • Lonelythrall drops a 40K reference when killing his first Roc. His submission is also a throne made out of night troll, megabeast, and clown skulls.
  Lonelythrall: Blood for the God of Blood! Skulls for His Throne!
• Shrines and Temples: An unusual non-Japanese example. Several fortresses (most notably The Abyssal Sanctuary) are or at least possess large temples where a great deal of action happens. Even more unusually, several of them are infested with demons or home to outright evil demon-worshipping cults.
• Super-Soldier: The corrupt Omon Obin regime uses an unusual variation of this: when the Band of Wax arrive to demand an audience with them, their response is to drag several armoured Blighted Thralls out onto the battlements and throw them down to fight the Band. It's implied that this is their overall reason for doing so, exploiting their natural abilities to their military advantage.
• Suppressed History: An interesting variation. Bralbaard generated the world with "Hidden history" so the players may discover the world without Legends Mode immediately revealing everything.
• The Man Behind the Man:
  • Ketas Indigovaulted the Kind plays this role to Kosoth Salvesank; he's the one who manipulates Kosoth into spreading the Obin Blight, controlling the otherwise half-feral Plague Zombie through the use of an unspecified Fantastic Drug and necromantic magic. In turn, Gopet the Putrid Cyst and the Abyssal Cult play this role to Ketas Indigovaulted, being the ones to instruct Ketas to spread his comrade's "gift" across the world, setting off the Obin Blight and all the mayhem, deaths, and disease that resulted.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Galka Kinddrummed went from a slave laboring in The Realm of Silver's mines to a Blighted thrall-slaying immortal badass protecting a group of dwarves.
  • Moldath Mournsaints went from a penniless outsider to a megabeast-slaying One-Man Army with incredible necromantic powers and full adamantine gear.
• Tragic Mistake: Amala Fragrantshaft using Okirramtak to defend herself against Ketas Indigovaulted. This leads to her having a major My God, What Have I Done? moment when its bloodlust results in her sister Mucka being killed during Amala's rampage through a goblin pit, and ultimately results in her death.
• Uncertain Doom: Ezif Aroirum's final diary entry is nothing but the words "THE WORM" written over and over again, providing no hint as to his fate. Legends Viewer confirms that he survived to settle in a human hamlet, though his sanity probably didn't.
• Undignified Death: Overlapping with Disney Villain Death. Raki Umberclan the Bulbous, having been resurrected as a powerful form of undead, gets knocked into a Bottomless Pit by a Devil of Steam, permakilling him in something of an ignoble end for a previous Villan Protagonist.
• Unreliable Narrator: Moldath Mournsaints, in part thanks to his brain rotting and his self-confessed sadism. For an example of this, he considers the efforts of The Walled Dye’s dwarves to heal him from his debilitating rot little more than Cold-Blooded Torture (which is debatable) and his later No-Holds-Barred Beatdown unjustified (which is completely incorrect; it was prompted by his murder of several dwarves to sate his vampiric thirst).
• Vanishing Village: Gor (The Pit) and Duskhome both vanished due to a bug which erased any trace of the fortresses made there.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?:
  • Bralbaard Hammerfishes, who is disturbed by the effects of his undead nature and admits there is much he would give up to live again. Part of the reason behind his creation of Herograves was to avert this trope for future adventurers.
  • Gleefully inverted by Moldath Mournsaints, who actively sought out methods of becoming undead and even manipulated events such that he would be resurrected repeatedly, gaining even more power in doing so.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Urus Ghostumbral's initial motivation for adventuring - he was suffering from the Silver Plague, and sought a means of curing himself. This was resolved surprisingly fast courtesy of Gopet the Putrid Cyst's power, at the cost of essentially trapping Urus in a Deal with the Devil with the God of Plagues.
• Zombie Apocalypse:
  • The first (and by far the biggest) would be the wars set off by The Scholarly Manors in the 4th century, which were waged with the intent of destroying all that lived and all that opposed The Undead. This resulted in tens of thousands of deaths as the undead hordes swept across The Universes of Myth, before being narrowly fought off by a desperate alliance between the surviving civilizations (aided, in part, by the undead hordes abruptly beginning to dissipate during the early 4th century).
  • Cog Wildnesswork, another dwarven necromancer, managed to destroy her home civilization with one of these.
  • The Obin Blight began as a downplayed example of this; the blighted thralls involved in spreading the Blight were mostly confined to The Realm of Silver and a few settlements outside of it, but their ability to travel between sites (only becoming hostile when encountered) and convert others via bite swiftly resulted in them beginning to spread uncontrollably.